A Dowry of Blood

Alexi’s arrival in the story heralds another moment of Rebirth and Self-Discovery. For Alexi, becoming a vampire means gaining new opportunities to travel and live a better life after working as a starving artist’s model. In Paris, he gets the chance to connect with thinkers and artists he would never otherwise have met. The rest of the family, with the possible exception of Dracula, also experiences a kind of rebirth. Constanta and Magdalena rediscover their joy and start participating in the world again. It is common in vampire stories for immortal vampires to retreat from a changing world, particularly as technology advances and the world around them becomes more overwhelming and less recognizable. New blood is a good way for vampires to remain connected to the human world; Alexi provides that sense of connection.

The exploration of Abuse and Vampirism enters another cycle. The happy times in emotionally abusive relationships are often referred to as “honeymoon” periods, which S.T. Gibson takes literally in A Dowry of Blood: Alexi “marries” into the family and then goes on a honeymoon with his new lovers. After a while, Dracula reasserts his control over his three spouses, and tensions rise again. At this point in the story, things are worse than they have ever been: Dracula hits Alexi, shifting his abuse into the physical realm when it was previously primarily emotional. This is a turning point for Constanta, who previously believed Dracula would never physically hurt them even though she is aware that Dracula killed at least some of his former lovers before he made her.

This section of the book raises new questions about Immortality, Violence, and Morality. Constanta wonders whether it is moral for them to turn Alexi into a vampire, which is a question many vampire stories ask. After all, turning someone into a vampire is an irreversible act of violence that dramatically changes their life, even if they give consent. Although Alexi is an adult, Constanta remarks several times on his youth, suggesting that he is too young to make such a decision for himself. Alexi is not a child, but Constanta’s concerns are echoed in other vampire fiction, where vampires are often strictly forbidden from turning children into vampires. The relationship that Constanta has with Alexi is indeed quite like a parent and child, at least at first. Turning someone into a vampire does generate a category crisis in terms of relationships, as Constanta and Alexi are alternately framed as mother and son, brother and sister, and lovers. fictional monsters often exist outside of human social conventions, giving their relationship space to exist as all three at once. 

Constanta says that she is often mistaken for Alexi’s mother, raising more questions about her age that continue to highlight her status as an unreliable narrator. Vampires typically stop aging after they are turned, so Constanta should look the same as she did when Dracula first bit her. A Dowry of Blood never explicitly states whether the vampires continue to age, leaving the reader to come to their own conclusion. This section of the book raises further questions without answering them. For instance, Constanta does not share what language or languages she and the other vampires speak. There is no indication that any of them ever takes the time to learn new languages or that vampirism makes them polyglots, but they nevertheless communicate effortlessly even as new arrivals in a country. Dracula also advises his lovers not to drink each other’s blood because doing so could be dangerous, but all of them have been drinking from each other since the beginning of the book with no mention of any ill effects.

In this section, Constanta makes the book’s only direct reference to the plot of Dracula when she briefly mentions the Harkers. She does not say when they met the Harkers, where they were living, or who the third bride of Dracula was. She also does not mention that at the end of Dracula, the protagonists kill all three of the wives and Dracula himself by staking them through the heart and decapitating them, again highlighting that A Dowry of Blood is not a direct retelling of its source material.