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GABRIELLE:
Although your name of Gabrielle gives you a good appreciation of material values, business ability, and skill in organizing and managing others, your success is restricted by a lack of self-confidence and initiative. This name brings out a practical, materialistic quality, with a strong desire for a good standard of living in an environment where you are in contact with refined, successful people. You try to further your interests through pursuing the association of people with influence. Being well-groomed and well-dressed at all times is important to you as you always strive to make a good impression on others. Your interests are more focused on your social life and convivial living, with any pressing or difficult issues being put off as long as possible. Any weakness in the health would affect the fluid functions, and you could suffer through kidney trouble or female problems.
BIOGRAPHY
Lestat's mortal mother and first vampire companion. She is named for an archangel and a messenger of God, who announced the birth of Christ and will announce the Day of Judgment.
Gabrielle is a marquise, the wife of a blind and indigent lord in the Auvergne. Originally from Naples, she has eight children but only three - all sons - survive to adulthood. Blond, with cobalt blue eyes, she keeps mostly to herself, reading books. She does not like to be touched or to communicate with words. She never voices ordinary thoughts and, when she does talk, can be blunt to the point of cruelty. She hates being called "Mother" and exhibits no sense of humor. Her dream is to detach herself from her family and take lovers of all kinds to her bed. She wants to be purely herself, belonging to no one. (VL 30-36)
There is a bond between Gabrielle and Lestat, her youngest son, because they are alike in their hatred of the castle life and their family's attitudes. They are two parts of the same soul, and Gabrielle tells Lestat that he is the male part of her, the organ she does not possess. She intervenes for Lestat when she can and uses her own gold and jewels to obtain things for him, like a pair of mastiffs, a riding horse, and a trip to Paris. (VL 38-40, 60-62)
Ganrielle has consumption, a fatal disease, and urges Lestat to leave for Paris before she dies. After he becomes a vampire, Gabrielle comes to Paris and Lestat visits her. Gabrielle realizes that he is "not alive," and when he offers existence as a vampire to her, she takes it without hesitation. Their union as they engage in the transformation is highly erotic. (VL 157-158)
As a vampire, Gabrielle quickly discards her mortal ways and female garb; she wants to be free of all female entrapments. Instead, she dresses as a young man and chooses for herself the sarcophagus of a man, rather than one carved for a woman. She tries to cut her hair and when it grows back to its natural longer length, is greatly upset. (VL 171, 180)
Gabrielle is obsessed with finding truth and beauty in nature. Her curiosity leads her away from mortals, in much the same way she had been withdrawn from people in her mortal life. She wants to unite with that never changes: the mountains, the jungles, the deserts. Soon she learns to sleep in the earth and abandons the use of coffins. She quickly acquires her own strength and no longer needs Lestat to be her "male part." She is completely androgynous, bold, tenacious, and practical. She embodies a sense of freedom that Lestat cannot grasp: the freedom from gender, social roles, familial expectations, and the demands of relationships. Despite Lestat's aspirations for their relationship, a strange mental silence falls between them; this is a metaphor of their destines estrangement. (VL 178, 253, 331)
Gabrielle claims that she would be happy if nature totally overran the world of men. In this desire, she prefigures Akasha. In fact, Gabrielle even predicts that some dark monarch may arise and attempt to sow chaos in the mortal world. She tries - and fails - to get Lestat to go with her to the jungles of Africa, to live in her world, with her vision. His continuing attachment of mortals irritates her, so she leaves him. (VL 334-335, 347)
The character shows up again near the end of VL; she is the limousine driver who takes Lestat away from his chaotic rock concert to a retreat in Carmel Valley. Their reunion is happy but short- lived, for Akasha abducts him that same night. Gabrielle then joins with other vampires in planning a stand against the vampire queen that could be potentially fatal for them all. (VL 543, QD 276, 439)
