forever in sunset

domestic utenanthy..!!!

everything that might be said about claudia's physical weakness or vulnerability is annulled by her vampirism; everything that might be said about her being lesser because she is a fledgling is pretty much equally true of louis, who for the decade of experience he has on her seems to have very little vampire knowledge to show for it. and she owes louis and lestat no kin-based loyalty or deference because for all they say they are her parents, they did not birth or raise her and she did not ask to be turned! she is a "child" but without any of the associated conditions which usually conspire to fix children in their traditional roles; and once the excuse provided by those traits is gone, all that remains is the desire for control and the willingness to enforce that control with violence.

[ID: Could the children murder the father? end ID]

something else that is so interesting is the point(s) at which louis as the narrator strategically refers to himself as a child. he puts himself on claudia's level even though he and claudia did not occupy the same role within the family structure (other posts say more about how louis' role in the family most closely resembles that of the housewife). that's not to say that louis wasn't abused — he was. it just didn't take the same form as claudia's abuse, which as one of her "parents" he also participated in.

it seems that louis draws this false parallel between himself and claudia in this moment in order to emphasize his victimization at lestat's hands and also to minimize his role in abusing claudia. if he was a child compared to lestat — innocent, powerless — then he could not have protected her, even though protection was explicitly the frame through which he justified her creation. here and at other points, louis clearly means to emphasize the maker/made aspect of his relationship with lestat in order to make it seem harder for him to go through with the murder, but like. claudia was made by lestat too, and as daniel points out, she had no problem pulling the trigger!

[ID: Quite soon before he died I realised that I had a special bequest from him. He gave us many gifts, and among them he gave me a real knowledge and deep love for mythology. I started with his classical pantheon and with the tales from the Old Testament, and these have been tools of my thinking and working ever since. In Jane Lazarre's book On Loving Men I read that in classical mythology, that bloody and treacherous web of connections and hatreds, there is no story in which the daughter kills the father. I was taken aback. I searched high and low. I sifted through the equally blood-strewn corpus of the Bible. I extended my research into other mythologies. I thought to myself, 'Oh ho, here is male dominance at work, this is the one tale They cannot afford to know.' Then I started looking at historical murders, the ones that make it to the sleazy annals of crime literature. Women, I discovered, after travelling in some pretty gruesome places, do not murder their fathers. Or do so very seldom, and under very bizarre circumstances. It is an extremely rare crime. Women murder men - their lovers, their employers, their children, their rapists, their ancient uncles, and the victims of stray meetings on the street. Clytemnestra drowned Menelaus in the bath; Jael made a bloody mess of Sisera; Myra Hindley mutilated children. Nothing can be universally claimed about women's gentleness, their lack of violence, their tender loving hearts; but they don't kill their fathers. If we don't kill our fathers then I could not have killed mine. Why did he, who taught me so many things, never teach me that my anger would not kill him? Or me? Or our love? / end ID]

Sara Maitland, Two for the Price of One

at the end of the day, vampire or not, your father is just Some Guy. the guy who made you is about just as vulnerable as you—and you can't be invulnerable, because otherwise how could he have hurt you? how could he have made you? a father needs to be unattainable somehow, which means you need to fail to reach him every step of the way.

[ID: I have another father. This one is alive and well and rampaging inside me. He never goes away, although sometimes he is silent; he is never ill, never weakened, never leaves me alone. He lurks about under other names - God, Husband, Companion, and all those relationships are made possible (which is nice) and impossibly difficult and conflicting because of the Father who is in and under and through them all. / end ID]

...and Louis to Daniel in episode 2, "Lestat, my murderer, mentor, lover, and maker. I worshipped him."

Father the God is interwoven with Father the Human (or vampire). the divinity of creation cannot be separated from the reality of flesh and bone. the creature can only eliminate the possibility of destroying his creator by rendering himself powerless.