Representations of Women in True Blood: Lorena Krasiki (Mariana Klaveno)

As most of you know, I’m a student. I’m finishing up the final term of my degree, and I ended up taking a Women’s Studies class to fill an elective credit: Representations of Women in Popular Culture. When essay time rolled around, I started writing about women on True Blood (…such a fangirl…True Blood always on my mind).

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There are not many examples of powerful female vampires in True Blood. Queen Sophie-Anne Leclerq is arguably the most powerful, with Lorena Krasiki and Nan Flanigan trailing somewhere behind her.

Both Lorena and Sophie-Anne are unsatisfied with themselves and show the desire to be a 'normal girl' instead of a powerful vampire. There are two problems with this: first, they appear to reject their status and power in favour of normalcy, and second, their deepest desires are strongly gendered.



Actress Mariana Klaveno plays Lorena on HBO's True Blood

Lorena is similar to many other female characters in conventional vampire fiction: a virginal victim of a male vampire, and “once bitten, turns into fanged, voluptuous temptress who desires to infect all the men who enter her life” (Wisker 6). Her power as a 250-year-old vampire is undermined by her feminine desire for eternal, heterosexual love. She is Bill's maker and ex-lover, and she becomes an antagonist and romantic threat to Bill's current, human girlfriend, Sookie. In her appearance and personality, she is represented as the complete opposite of Sookie: pale with dark hair, irrational, manipulative, violent, and undead. However, Lorena was not always this way; she was corrupted by her maker who forced her into enticing “men with [her] flesh, luring them into [his] clutches so that he could murder them as [she] watched” (“I Got A Right To Sing The Blues”). Even when she becomes independent from her maker, she continues to use her body, rather than her abilities as a vampire, to lure men into sex before she drains and kills them.

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The context in which Lorena made Bill into a vampire reveals a mixture of female stereotypes; she is presented as a deadly temptress, but her loneliness influences her to make Bill into a vampire instead of killing him like the other men who “proved to be no more than savages once [she] let them into [her] home” (“Sparks Fly Out”). When Bill finds Lorena's cabin after the Civil War, he is starved and injured trying to get home to his wife and children. Lorena cunningly presents herself as a nurturing, lonely widow, and intending to feed on him, invites him to stay the night with her.

When Bill declines her sexual advances, Lorena decides she wants to turn him into a vampire instead because she admires his loyalty to his wife. She reveals her history of abuse when she says to him, “You're an honourable man. The others have not always been so” (“Sparks Fly Out”). Lorena maintains her passive, feminine demeanour and doesn't reveal her strength as a vampire until Bill is about to leave. Her actions in this scene show her preference for her victim to stay the night by choice, rather than by force (through her strength or power to glamour humans). She has been taught that her value is in her appearance, so her self-esteem depends on validation from men. As a result, she prefers to use her power as a beautiful, manipulative woman than her power as a vampire.

Before Bill gets out the door, Lorena overpowers him and drains most of his blood. She reveals her dream of finding an honourable man to love her when she says, “I've waited a long time for a man such as you.” She straddles him and slits her neck, telling him “if you do not drink, you will die. Together, we'll be forever” (“Sparks Fly Out”). Lorena's representation here is complex: though many of her qualities conform to conventional female stereotypes, as a female vampire, she is also “masculinized because she penetrates her victim” (Creed 70). Her role as a maker is further masculinizing because, in addition to her maker-progeny power over him, it is her blood inside him that creates his eternal life.

Lorena turning Bill into a vampire ("Sparks Fly Out").

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The unappealing portrayal of Bill and Lorena's 70-year relationship “characterized by sadism and an aggressive sexuality” is a confirmation of traditional sexual ideals, and it validates Bill's romantic relationship with Sookie (Burr 350). In a flashback, Lorena seduces a couple for her and Bill to feed on, and they violently torture the couple before killing them. There is a clear sexual tone as they alternate between kissing each other and feeding on the couple, and later, they have sex on the bloody bed beside the body of one of their victims (“Hard-Hearted Hannah”). Lorena is “an active predatory seducer” (Creed 70).

In another flashback, Bill begs Lorena to release him, and Lorena is simultaneously portrayed as physically strong but psychologically weak (“Release Me”). Again, Lorena's poor self-esteem is apparent as she determines her self-worth by her physical appeal to men, and fails to understand Bill's rejection: “Men have readily laid down their lives just to spend one night with me. What more can I give? What is it that you want from me?” (“Release Me”). Lorena's uses her power to fill her need for male companionship, and it is her irrational dependence on Bill that prevents her from forming an independent identity required for her power as a vampire to be respected.

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Lorena enters the current storyline in seasons two and three (over 70 years after releasing Bill), and in both cases, her obsession with Bill is used as a tool by more powerful male vampires to help with their plots. In season three, when Bill is held prisoner at the King of Mississippi's mansion, he tells her again that he will never love her, but she begins kissing him. Bill roughly throws her off him and initiates extremely violent sex with her (he twists her head around), but Lorena embraces her masochistic position and is sexually aroused by the pain he inflicts on her (“It Hurts Me Too”). Later, she is ordered by the King to execute Bill for attempting to murder him. She tortures him and allows his blood to be drained by werewolves. When Sookie finds him, Lorena bites her (“I Got a Right to Sing the Blues”). Bill pulls Lorena away and holds her down while Sookie stakes her (“Hitting the Ground”).

Although Lorena wants true, eternal love with Bill more than anything, Lorena is also “voracious, seductive, and deadly” (Wisker 2). In conventional vampire fictions, female vampires' “sexuality, seen as dangerous in terms of a patriarchal status quo, must be constrained, their deviant energies must be destroyed and order restored” (Wisker 2). In this case, order is the romantic relationship between Bill and Sookie; “their roles—delineated by clear gender categories—complement each other ideally” as Sookie needs nurturing and protection and Bill is validated as a lover through his ability to provide it (Spicer 3).

Sookie meets Lorena at Godric's nest in Dallas.

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Thoughts from @LorenaTheMaker.

How do you compare to Lorena's character? What about her can you identify with? What do you like about her? Dislike?

I am nothing like Lorena, aside from her fashion sense. *laughs* It is hard to identify with her in any way. I understand that she adores William, but there has to come a time when you move on. She has horrible self esteem and thinks keeping him is what makes her whole. I cannot even imagine feeling that way. No man is worth so much. It is clear it was her maker that made her this way, the years of abuse that she and William touched on briefly as she was torturing him. I would love to know more about that.

I do adore Lorena and love playing her. I like her being a bit on the unstable side and exploring the way she thinks. I like that she is tough and does not give up on what she wants, no matter how crazy it really seems to me. I like the very obvious layers she possesses, being so devoted to William, yet at the same time, wanting to make him what she sees as the perfect mate, whether he is happy about it or not.

I simply cannot say that I dislike anything about her other than the fact that she is now a pile of goo. *cries bloody tears* If she were a real woman, I would probably not enjoy her company much. *laughs*

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Let me know what you think about Lorena's character in the comments!

Burr, Vivien. “Ambiguity and Sexuality in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A Sartrean Analysis.” Sexualities 6.3-4 (2003): 343-360. Print.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine. London: Routledge, 1993.

Spicer, Arwen. “'Love's Bitch but Man Enough to Admit It': Spike's Hybridized Gender.” Slayage 2.3 (2002): n. pag. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.

Wisker, Gina. “Vampires and School Girls: High School Jinks on the Hellmouth.” Slayage 1.2: n. pag. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.