For LeFanu and Stoker, both members of the Protestant Anglo-Irish ruling class of nineteenth-century Ireland, these legends [of vamps, vampires, necrophiles, and necrophilles] were at once local folklore and metaphors for their class’s anxieties about the unhyphenated Irish, who were emerging from centuries of suppression to demand political and economic power. The Anglo-Irish feared intermarriage with the Irish, which would lead to racial degeneration, and the loss of power which would inevitably follow letting the Irish gain ownership of land. These anxieties underlie such works as Carmilla and Dracula.

XREF: Connects classic horror to colonial-postcolonial readings of Gothic literature, resonating with other interpretations of Dracula as a colonial anxiety text. DEFINE: Establishes vampire legends as political metaphor for the Anglo-Irish ruling class's anxieties rather than mere folklore.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 536