Their sinister impact is likewise detectable in the musical realm, especially in lyrics of the noteworthy metal bands.

While pointing to their unfathomable potential to be role models for the next generations of licentious women, the author wishes to conclude that their influence is by no means limited to the literary realm. The author of the article endeavours to analyse similarities and differences between those two Countesses as far as their non-normative conduct is concerned, as it is shown in The Countess – A Novel of Elizabeth Báthory written by Rebecca Johns, Dracula – The Un-Dead by Dacre Stocker and Ian Holt and Sheridan le Fanu’s novella. She likewise appears as a large cat-like beast entering Laura’s room and biting her on the chest and then transforming into the female form with her nightdress drenched in blood. This mystifying woman prone to nocturnal habits and blasphemous unwillingness towards religion is rumoured to have infected women and girls in the nearby towns with an undiagnosed malady. One of those is Countess Karnstein, better known as Carmilla, a female vampire appearing in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Gothic novella. Nevertheless, despite Báthory’s overpowering notoriety, there are beyond any doubt other examples of women marked with transgressive behaviour. The Blood Countess – probably the most prolific female serial killer in the course of history and one of Satan’s most seductive disguises (as it is proclaimed by Zacharias in his letter that serves as the prologue to the novel The Countess) – emerges on the stage as infamous for her unquenchable proclivity for torturing and slaughtering young virgins, in whose blood she is whispered to bathe in her quest for eternal youth. One of those is undoubtedly Countess Elizabeth Báthory (Erzsébet Báthory), the prevailing Hungarian noblewoman believed to be utterly obsessed with violence and blood. Among these evil geniuses, however, women materialise as well. The pantheon of iniquitous masterminds appears to be immensely thronged with male characters such as the Miltonian Satan, the Shakespearean Richard III or the Conradian Kurtz.

The Countess by Rebecca Johns