Vampire Princess Christina Light
James' Italian-American princess shines as the undead in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula
Vampire princess Christina Light is throwing a New Year’s Eve party.
I’m sorry, what?
A few months ago I stumbled on this recent reference to Christina Light, one of Henry James’ many unforgettable female characters. She isn’t just a memorable character; she came to life so well at The Master’s hand he couldn’t let her go.
I remember at all events feeling, toward the end of ‘Roderick,’ that the Princess Casamassima had been launched, that, wound-up with the right silver key, she would go on a certain time by the motion communicated; thanks to which I knew the pity, the real pang of losing sight of her. I desired as in no other such case I can recall to preserve, to recover the vision; and I have seemed to myself in re-reading the book quite to understand why. The multiplication of touches had produced even more life than the subject required, and that life, in other conditions, in some other prime relation, would still have somehow to be spent. Thus one would watch for her and waylay her at some turn of the road to come - all that was to be needed was to give her time. (preface to Roderick Hudson)
Christina Light, who becomes the Princess Casamassima upon her unhappy marriage in Roderick Hudson (1875), is the only recurring major character in James’ work. She brings with her the Prince, her boring, annoying, clinging husband, and her patient companion of many years, the elderly Madame Grandoni, to The Princess Casamassima (1886).
English author Kim Newman discovered Christina, as he notes in the acknowledgements of Anno Dracula: 1999 Daikaiju, while reading nineteenth century anarchist conspiracy novels during preparations for his comic book miniseries, Anno Dracula: 1895 Seven Days in Mayhem, and “realised she’d be a major player.”
And thus, his Christina Light trilogy came to be.
Seven Days in Mayhem is followed (story-wise and publication-wise) by books five and six in the Anno Dracula series, One Thousand Monsters and Daikaiju. I got my hands on all three as soon as possible after learning of their existence because of course, I had a burning question: is Newman’s Princess James’ Princess? Let’s find out.
James’ Christina Light, The Princess Casamassima
Christina Light is a beautiful young woman of about twenty who is the subject of adoration and criticism in Roderick Hudson (1875). No one is interested in her as a person, only as a possession or ornament. The title character (a spoiled, lazy boy) whines after her while neglecting the very action that interested her in him in the first place: his work as a sculptor. He sees her as an ideal, as he cares “only for perfect beauty.” But she has the “step and carriage of a tired princess” long before her fated marriage, an arrangement forced upon her by her greedy mother and natural father, both of whom benefit financially from it (Christina’s beauty “floats her mother”). Her unhappiness is of no concern to her parents.
Christina grew up without money and she is playing a role she was trained for in order to snag a rich noble; others notice she seems “sort of extemporised tableau vivant” and “she was an actress, though a sincere one,” a talent she has in common with Hyacinth Robinson, the young man she enchants in The Princess Casamassima. Her first appearance in this story is in a theatre, where the two of them meet and where Hyacinth considers that he covers up his true self, going through life “in a mask, in a borrowed mantle; he was to be, every day and every hour, an actor,” for reasons relating to his parentage as well (“his own situation seems a play within a play”). 1
Descriptions of Christina include:
in Roderick Hudson:
If beauty is immoral, Christina is the incarnation of evil.
Her beauty was dazzling.
Her look expressed a languid, imperturbable indifference.
A complex, willful, passionate creature.
She is a young lady whom I should not pretend to judge off-hand.
The soul of a world-weary mortal had found its way into the blooming body of a goddess.
She glows with the white light of a splendid pearl.2
A young lady of mysterious impulses.
A siren, a sorceress, Herodias
She has a capricious temper
She is made to ornament the world
A ray in the light of her eye, sadness and bitterness, cold (when looking at her husband)
in The Princess Casamassima:
She is a person who is used to having nothing refused her.
She is perhaps the most remarkable woman in Europe.
She is the most charming woman in the world.
She was dazzling.
She might well be a princess - it was impossible to conform more to the finest evocation of that romantic word.
She glows and radiates.
She might be divine, but he could see that she understood human needs.
Luminous sweetness
Her tone had a friendly softness.
A monster3
She always looks the same, like an angel who came down from heaven yesterday and has been rather disappointed in her first day on earth.
She is capable of giving us great surprises.
She seemed natural, vivid, generous, and sincere
Brilliant, delicate, complicated, but complicated with something divine
She will speak the truth always.
She’s a capricciosa.
Her manner has the sweetness of familiarity
A radiant angel, divine
And what does Christina say about herself; what are her motivations?
in Roderick Hudson:
I am tired to death of myself. I am very capricious.
I like ideas quite well.
I am tired of novels. I can imagine better stories for myself than any I read. Some good poetry, if there is such a thing nowadays, and some memoirs and histories and books of facts. (asking another character for books, as her mother won’t go into debt for them. like she does for jewelry and bonnets and gloves)
(She dreams of a man whom) I can perfectly respect. A man whom I can unrestrictedly admire.
The language I should like to hear from a certain person would be the language of absolute decision.
She has an immense desire to be just
I am weary. I am more lonely than ever. I wish I were dead. (after her marriage)
“I have something in here, here, here!” and she patted her heart. “It’s my own. I shall not part with it. Is it what you call an ideal? I don’t know; I don’t care! It is brighter than the Casamassima diamonds!”
in The Princess Casamassima:
We take a great interest in the things you care for. We take a great interest in the people.
I like people who understand what one says to them, and also what one doesn’t say.
I have very little respect for distinctions of class.
The people are the most interesting portion of society, they press upon me. They haunt me. They fascinate me. The characters and motivations are more natural, more complete, more naif - the upper classes are insipid!
I don’t want to know idiots.
There is nothing in life in which I have not been awfully disappointed.
Her disgust with a thousand social arrangements, her rebellion against the selfishness, the corruption, the iniquity, the cruelty, the imbecility, of the people who, all over Europe, had the upper hand.
She considered that she too was one of the numerous class who could be put on a tolerable footing only by a revolution.
She wanted to throw herself into some effort which would make her forget her own affairs and comprehend the troubles and efforts of others.
You cease to be insignificant from the moment I have anything to do with you.
Is there anything so ugly as unjust distinctions, as the privilege of the few contrasted with the degradation of the many?
(Another character) will begin very well with me, and be ‘fascinated’—isn’t that the way people begin with me?—but she won’t understand me at all.
Newman’s Vampire Princess
Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series is a darkly sarcastic vampire fantasy ride through an alternate history, beginning with a marriage between Queen Victoria and Count Dracula in the first series title, Anno Dracula, published in 1992. This violent and fun rollercoaster ride is peppered with many many references to real historical and cultural figures.4 I devoured this book so I could understand the world to which Newman brought James’ princess, and fell into it easily.5
I skipped books two through four and dove into the comic miniseries (Seven Days in Mayhem), onward to books five and six. Newman opens book five, One Thousand Monsters, with a quote from Roderick Hudson that includes: “she’s beauty itself - she’s a revelation. I don’t believe she is living - she’s a phantasm, a vapour, and illusion!”
How is Christina Light described in these three volumes, and how does she describe herself?
Seven Days in Mayhem
Shining Saturday6
(She has) a power of fascination and glows when she is annoyed
Shapeshifter - she turns into light
One Thousand Monsters
She liked to be told things were getting done.
She seesaws between callous disregard and neurotic concern. She can’t decide whether she’s our Boadicea or Mother Hen.
She has a mosaic in her mind. Each of us is a tile with an alloted position. Losing any of us means a white space in the picture.
Christina is literally a sparkling princess.
I don’t believe in titles
At the end of the world, when the red sun sets for the last time, the only living things on the face of the earth will be giant cockroaches and Christina Light.
She shone - light pulsed under her skin, poured through her eyes and mouth. Her bones showed, like coals in a fire. She had fangs but also a halo - a sparking circle of electricity.
Her rays were calming
As painful to look at as a furnace, wavering inside her shimmer, The Princess could turn into animated light.
A living star
(She has) gold blood
She finds it difficult to retain the semblance of human form
Christina might turn into a scatter of stars
Courage masked by ruthlessness
I will be worshipped. I will be loved. I don’t say this from pride or because it’s what I want, but because it’s what must be . . . so I may carry out my duty.
She was not an ornamental vampire.
I do not believe in rank.
I am opposed on principle to tyrants of all types, including vampire royalty.
She assumes command by divine right of Christinaness
She is a genius
Daikaiju (in which she holds the aforementioned New Year’s Eve party)
Feeds on admiration, excitement, emotion, applause, not a draining vampire
Christina must shine - it was the dominant trait in her bloodline
All roads lead to Christina Light
Hollywood makes movies with Veronica Lake and later, Madonna; Broadway features a musical about her
(Christina’s) The Light Channel broadcasts a soothing, off white glow - hours and hours of nothing is prized in an information saturated society
Christina has no puppet master, she is herself alone.
Is Newman’s vampire princess truly James’s Christina Light?
James’ Christina is dismissed as an ornament, useful first only for the money she can marry into to share with her selfish parents, and later, for her financial contributions to the cause rather than for her revolutionary heart. In both James and Newman, Christina dazzles and glows, radiating in an otherworldly way that almost parodies her name (which, incidentally, is not her biological father’s). In Anno Dracula, however, she is “not an ornamental vampire.” Newman does her justice, and while she often seems on the brink of insanity, her true spirit always shines. She offers comfort and hope; she is worshipped not only in the vampire refuge she protects but in Hollywood as a powerful entity worthy of big screen treatment. Make no mistake; she has been and still is ruthless in her determination. But she’s not waiting for a man she can admire and respect for his commitment to his ideals; she’s not waiting for anyone.
Why should she care about the lower class and the discarded in society? Christina grew up poor; she wants to give her true self dignity. She sees herself as one of those she is serving now; she identifies with them and not with what she was made to become. Sold for a title and money, she wants to shed the trappings of the life she didn’t choose for herself and give her life for those in need. She suffers for it in The Princess Casamassima and fails at her mission, but not through any fault of her own7 Newman gives her the chance at a new life, an eternal life where she continues her revolutionary quest for equality. Is she more successful in Newman’s story than in James’? You’ll have to read for yourself to find out, but I can honestly say that thanks to him, Christina Light shines on.
Two or three times she turned her eyes upon him, and then they shone with the wonderful expression which was the essence of her beauty; that profuse, mingled light which seemed to belong to some everlasting summer, and yet to suggest seasons that were past and gone, some experience that was only an exquisite memory. (The Princess Casamassima)
I reference the Penguin Classics edition of Roderick Hudson (1878 text) and the Library of America edition of The Princess Casamassima (1886 text). Cover images from Goodreads. I have so much to say about both stories, but especially about Christina and Hyacinth (tears on the keyboard, right now). But that is for another day.
I read What Maisie Knew (1897) before I read Roderick Hudson, and was struck by this description of Christina because Maisie, an innocent child treated like an object by her selfish parents, has a name that means pearl. Pearls represent purity and innocence. I have always believed Christina innocent where others might not agree (the implication that she sleeps around is rather an accepted fact). But this, again, is for another day.
Some men resort to name-calling when Christina won’t sleep with them. La plus ça change.
The references are spectacular. Yes, the story is great but seriously, the references. Check out this mood board on Newman’s website for so much fun, especially after you read the trilogy.
Rob Latham wrote a thorough review of the series in The LA Review of Books. It’s entertaining in and of itself.
Seven Days is a reference to The Man Who Was Thursday. It works.
There are those who fault her for failures and deaths. They are wrong. When I cry (every time) during the last two chapters of The Princess Casamassima it’s as much for her as for a certain someone else.
Just a little something I made for fun as a preview to the above:
A middle aged author declining in popularity. An up and coming literary agent with an eye for genius. A partnership that would forge a prodigious legacy in American literature. Read An Eye for Genius today.
I don’t drink coffee anymore but I adore matcha. You can buy me one or just click over, take a look at some random photos, and snag a free black cat lined notebook page PDF to print or use with any PDF annotation app.
