Plot Summary: One night, the vampire Duggu Van rises from his grave and enters the castle where Lady Vanda sleeps. Attracted by her beauty, he falls in love with her instead of feeding on her, and he possesses her. Shortly after, Lady Vanda becomes ill and discovers that she is pregnant. Confined within the castle, she is cared for by the nurse Miss Wilkinson, while her body steadily weakens. The doctors find no explanation. The child she carries grows in an abnormal way, absorbing her blood and transforming her. On the night of the birth, Lady Vanda’s body changes completely: her skin darkens, her sex transforms, and from her emerges a male being—the son of Duggu Van. At midnight, Duggu Van arrives, takes the hands of his son, and together they leave through the window, leaving behind the doctors and the nurse, unable to comprehend what has just happened.
Warning
The following summary and analysis is only a semblance and one of the many possible readings of the text. It is not intended to replace the experience of reading the story.
Summary of The Son of the Vampire by Julio Cortázar
Every midnight, Duggu Van, an ancient vampire, rises from his grave and roams the castle galleries in search of fresh blood. His body, dead since the year 1060, has a damp, earthy appearance, with skin as dull as waterlogged wood and intensely vivid eyes. He walks silently, dressed in dark blue and surrounded by a stale aroma, until he reaches the bed of Lady Vanda, who sleeps peacefully, unaware of his presence. However, one night something changes: Duggu Van does not attack his victim as usual. Instead, he stops, watches her, and is overcome by an unfamiliar feeling. He falls in love.
Though his instinct drives him to feed, the love he feels for Lady Vanda holds him back. In the end, he possesses her—both as a vampire and as a lover. Upon waking, Lady Vanda feels faint and ill, and the castle fills with doctors, rituals, diagnoses, and incantations. They discard the idea of a mere nightmare when, over time, it becomes clear that she is pregnant.
The castle is sealed off, and Duggu Van can no longer reach her. He feeds on children, sheep, even pigs, but no blood compares to Lady Vanda’s. From his damp tomb, he imagines her constantly, along with the unborn child. Hunger consumes him, but the desire to build a family with her and their offspring keeps him alive. He fantasizes about breaking locks, abducting her, and building a shared marital tomb. However, malaria weakens him, and fever drives him mad. Despite his immortal nature, Duggu Van suffers like a man, consumed by a love that exhausts him as much as his hunger.
Lady Vanda, meanwhile, becomes increasingly pale and ethereal. In a fading voice, she repeats that the child is like his father. Miss Wilkinson, an English nurse, concludes that the creature is draining her from within, with refined cruelty. The doctors suggest an abortion, but she refuses, tenderly embracing her womb. As the pregnancy advances, her body slowly gives way. The creature not only occupies her womb, but begins to invade the rest of her body, displacing her from within. She can no longer speak or move; all her blood seems to have passed into the body of her son. The transformation is not sudden—it is slow, progressive, almost imperceptible at first, but relentless.
Finally, the day of the birth arrives—fixed precisely by the date of Duggu Van’s assault. Four doctors surround the bed. Outside, Miss Wilkinson sees the vampire approach. His face has deteriorated: more earthy, duller, and his eyes no longer shine but resemble two floating questions. Yet his voice is calm as he declares that the child belongs to him and that no one can stand between them.
Inside the room, Lady Vanda’s body begins to transmute before the doctors’ astonished eyes. Her skin darkens, her muscles tighten, her sex transforms. The woman disappears, and in her place a completely new male figure emerges. When the clock strikes twelve, the being gestated inside Lady Vanda rises, stretches out his arms, and looks toward the open door.
Duggu Van enters without acknowledging anyone. He approaches, takes his son’s hands, and the two look at each other with ancient familiarity, as if they had always known each other. Then, without a word, they leave through the window, leaving behind the rumpled bed, the shocked doctors, the unused birth instruments, and Miss Wilkinson at the door, asking questions no one will ever answer. There are no screams, no drama. Only a final silence that consecrates the impossible.
Characters in The Son of the Vampire by Julio Cortázar
Duggu Van is the central figure of the story—a vampire who has lived for centuries since his apparent death in 1060. He is a nocturnal, silent presence, with a disturbing appearance: damp, pale skin and piercing eyes that seem too alive for his lifeless face. He moves unnoticed, drifting through the castle with footsteps as faint as his scent of must. What sets this character apart is his sudden emotional transformation. Although his nature compels him to drink human blood, for the first time he experiences something like love. Lady Vanda is not just another victim—Duggu Van is captivated by her beauty, and his desire morphs into a noisy, obsessive infatuation. Throughout the story, he suffers for being unable to reach her, growing physically and mentally weak, ultimately consumed by the son he has fathered. Despite his monstrous nature, Cortázar humanizes him through longing and waiting, granting him a disturbing tenderness.
Lady Vanda is the most tragic figure in the narrative. She embodies the sleeping beauty, violated innocence, vulnerability exposed to a threat that manifests as violence, though shrouded in the fantastic atmosphere of the tale. Duggu Van enters her room as she sleeps, watches her, and takes her by force: the story describes the moment in suggestive language, but the violence is clear. Her role is not only that of a victim but also that of a mother to an impossible creature. Once possessed, she enters a progressive state of decline. Her body begins to change during the pregnancy, and the child within slowly drains her blood until she is entirely consumed. Yet, her attitude throughout the process is one of complete surrender—she never rejects the child and continues to caress her belly even when she has no energy left. She repeats with resigned tenderness that he is “like his father,” without questioning the fate imposed upon her. Her final transformation—being literally replaced by the creature she gestated—completes her total erasure as an individual. That erasure is not born of love, but of a forced continuity: her violated body becomes a vessel for monstrosity, and her acceptance of the pregnancy is not consent but a desperate way of reconciling herself with the inevitable.
Miss Wilkinson is the English nurse in charge of caring for Lady Vanda. Her presence provides a curious contrast in the story: practical, fond of gin, and laced with a certain cynicism, she represents an external gaze that witnesses the events without fully understanding them, yet without losing her composure. She is a witness who sees what happens but cannot intervene. Though not a central character, she is the only one who remains from beginning to end, observing Lady Vanda’s gradual decline. Through her reactions—such as when she sees Duggu Van approaching on the night of the birth—the reader perceives the incomprehensibility of the situation. Her final confusion, as she stands at the door asking questions no one can answer, encapsulates the impotence of logic in the face of the inexplicable. She serves as a mediator between reader and the fantastic and is the only one who maintains an emotional stance without losing practical sense. Her disbelief is not merely scientific—it is profoundly human.
The doctors surrounding Lady Vanda function more as a collective entity than as individual characters. They represent science, the effort to explain the unexplainable through rational means. They provide diagnoses, suggest abortion, and ultimately become silent witnesses to a transformation that exceeds their comprehension. Their fear during the birth and inability to act leaves them paralyzed. They have no names, no faces, and thus they embody the frustration of technical knowledge when confronted with the unknowable. They are almost theatrical figures whose discourse fails when reality slips beyond what language can name.
Analysis of The Son of the Vampire by Julio Cortázar
The Son of the Vampire, written by Julio Cortázar in 1937 and published posthumously in 1994, is a story situated within the fantastic genre, but from an unusual perspective. The supernatural doesn’t erupt suddenly—it unfolds as an internal, devastating logic. Instead of constructing a tale of persecution or resistance against a monster, Cortázar offers a dark fable in which horror emerges from within: from the female body, from desire, from inheritance. Though it belongs to the Gothic and vampire subgenres, the story diverges from their common tropes: there are no stakes or hunters here, only love, pregnancy, illness, and disappearance. The vampire does not threaten from the outside—he impregnates, consumes, and replaces.
The action takes place in a nameless castle, in an indeterminate time that could be medieval or timeless. The space is marked by enclosure: the tomb, the galleries, the room, the bed. Each becomes symbolically charged as places of waiting, confinement, and transformation. The castle is not just a setting—it’s a metaphorical womb where the story itself is gestated, just as Lady Vanda carries the monstrous child within her. The story is told by a third-person omniscient narrator who watches from a distance, often with a subtle, ironic tone that reinforces the narrative’s ambiguity. This narrator does not judge or moralize—but neither does he soften the strangeness.
One of the most unsettling themes in the story is the entanglement of love, violence, and gestation. Duggu Van doesn’t simply fall in love with Lady Vanda—he rapes her. The narrative suggests this through stylized prose, but the elements are clearly present: she sleeps, he observes her, and when she awakens, she faints. Their union is neither desired nor consensual. This foundational act, which might traditionally produce connection between two beings, instead generates a creature that ultimately destroys its mother. In this way, the story radically subverts the image of motherhood as fulfillment: here, to gestate is to vanish. Pregnancy doesn’t result in the birth of an Other but in the replacement of the self.
The female body in this story is not merely a site of reproduction, but a field of occupation. Duggu Van’s child doesn’t just inhabit Lady Vanda’s womb—he overflows it, invades it, absorbs it. His internal presence erases her voice, her strength, her blood, and finally her identity. There is no childbirth—there is substitution. No delivery—only transfiguration. Lady Vanda’s body, like the castle, becomes a container for the monstrous.
Another major theme is inheritance and perpetuation. The vampire’s son is not a hybrid or ambiguous figure. He is not a fusion of the human and the monstrous—he is the pure continuation of vampirism. He inherits nothing maternal: he eliminates it. He is a perfected replica of the father. This vision of lineage is profoundly disturbing: instead of producing newness or renewal, the son is an unbroken repetition of the monstrous line. Cortázar seems to suggest that, in certain symbolic orders, inheritance doesn’t transmit life, but death. What perpetuates is not a story—but a curse.
The style of this early Cortázar story—written when he was just over twenty—already displays a highly developed aesthetic sensibility. The prose is dense, rhythmic, filled with sensory imagery that oscillates between the elegant and the macabre. There are no dramatic twists or shifts in time; the narrative moves with a hypnotic cadence, like a ritual. Horror is not declared—it is insinuated. The narrator avoids explaining, doesn’t seek to convince the reader, but rather places them before the inevitable. Transformations occur not as miracles or punishments, but as the inner logic of a world that folds in on itself.
The tone of the story is ambiguous, blending Gothic solemnity with subtle irony. Cortázar allows a few humorous touches (like the vampire’s malaria or Miss Wilkinson’s gin), but never breaks the oppressive atmosphere of the tale. This mix of sinister and ironic doesn’t neutralize the horror—it deepens it. The monstrous doesn’t scream—but it never stops advancing.
The final scene distills the entire symbolic weight of the story. At the stroke of midnight, Lady Vanda’s body is gone. In its place, her son rises—fully formed, autonomous, free of human need. Duggu Van recognizes him instantly, and the son accepts him without hesitation. There is no generational conflict, no separation. Father and son leave through the window, abandoning the world of doctors, surgical instruments, and rational witnesses who cannot understand what happened. There is no explanation, no punishment—only a void filled with questions.
Miss Wilkinson, the final witness to the ineffable, embodies the reader’s position in the story. Her muted, hopeless questioning is the echo left after the tale ends. As in much of Cortázar’s work, the fantastic here is not meant to be resolved—it remains open. In this story, bewilderment is not a literary effect but the core of the reading experience. The story ends not with an answer, but with a disappearance. And that makes it all the more disturbing.
