I love Sookie: she’s smart, brave, and kills evil guys with spades (way cool), but in this article I want to take a look at some of True Blood’s other women … er …well, once were women anyway.
I’m talking about the female vampires of True Blood: Pam, Lorena, Jessica, and Nan. They are quickly becoming some of our favorite fictional vampire ladies.
Pam Ravenscroft
Pam is Eric Northman’s number one hench-vampire and helps him run the Shreveport vampire bar, Fangtasia. Eric turned Pam about 100 years ago or so, and, to her everlasting joy, freed her from the strictures of Victorian propriety. Pam never looked back.
Pam is a no-nonsense, smart-talking, cynical, world-weary, sort of gangster’s moll type of girl. In a film noir movie she’d be the hooker with heart of gold, but neither hooker nor the heart really apply to Pam, do they?
Though she didn’t get a lot of screen time in Seasons 1 and 2 of True Blood, word is Pam will be a regular in Season 3.
Lorena
Lorena is Bill Compton’s maker, snatching Bill from his family in 1868 and led him on a 70-year blood soaked frenzy until he forced her to release him.
Lorena is a femme fatale: beautiful, sexually dominating, vengeful and dangerous, but underneath all that she is co-dependent and so very lonely (not to mention as nutty as a fruit bat). She uses her immortality to seek out a perfect man and then enslaves him.
Lorena appeared only once in Season 1, but re-appeared in a number of Season 2 episodes just to torture Bill some more, all in the name of love. The big question of Season 3 is whether she will get her comeuppance.
Jessica Hamby
Jessica is the sweet, virginal, home-schooled girl who, like Persephone, is dragged down into the underworld to be turned into a vampire against her will. (Not that I’m saying that Bill turned Persephone – at least not that I know of.)
Jessica is transformed by the change in more ways than one. Just like Pam, Jessica is freed from suffocating societal strictures and becomes a teenage vampire rebel without a cause. Just like all teenagers, she seeks an identity separate from her parents, both human and vampire, and we go along for the tempestuous ride.
Introduced as a guest character in the latter part of Season 1, Jessica stole the heart of the True Blood writers and became a regular in Season 2. In Season 2 she got to explore her sexuality, test her boundaries, and get into a whole lot of trouble by the final episode. We are all on tenterhooks waiting to find out what Season 3 has in store for little Jess.
Nan Flanagan
Nan is the first female vampire we meet in True Blood. In Season 1 we see her as the talking head for the American Vampire League (AVL). In Season 2 she is revealed as a much more powerful figure when she knocks heads together after the FoTS debacle.
We don’t know much about Nan. In public she is the acceptable face of vampire society – all professional lines and cool colors. In private she is a kick-ass, black leather clad enforcer who can even face down Eric with a withering glance.
And, no, I didn’t forget Dianne who we met so briefly in Season 1. I do wish she’d return in a flashback – she is such a deliciously mean girl.
(Photo credits: HBO Inc.)
Lizzie 1701
Thanks Patty for this article! We do tend to forget our wonderful women of True Blood and what makes them tick.
Good on you from a fellow Aussie!