The main theme of Mykola Hohol's story is the sexual orientation of women when they enter puberty. According to ancient beliefs, this age is from 10 to 18 years old, because ancient people often married very early compared to modern people. For example, in Vietnam before the twentieth century, being 20 years old without being married could be considered old.

In this story, demon Viy is actually a version of Veles, the god of sex in Eastern European pagan culture. Here, the corpse's harassment of seminarian Khoma is a manifestation of the rebellious behavior of adolescents. This is a topic of great interest in the existential literature period, that is, the mid-twentieth century.

I will cite another story from the late 18th century of Vietnamese people : The Ghost of the Terrible Mother (桑滄偶錄·乾剎鬼母, Tang thương ngẫu lục - Mẹ ranh càn sát).

In Từ-Liêm rural district (now North Từ-Liêm urban district, Hanoi), there was lived an orphan who kept asking his younger uncle for permission every night to go to his maternal grandparents' house to sleep. However, the younger uncle accidentally discovered that he had not been to his maternal grandparents' house for a long time.

One time the uncle secretly followed the orphan, he saw his nephew enter the village's grave site. There was a woman with breasts one meter long holding the boy to breastfeed, and there were a few other children around.

When the orphan wanted to go with that mother, she told him : The drought was still a few years away, and in the meantime, the boy must absolutely stay away from carp and softshell turtle meat.

Here, "drought" (hạn) is a category of East Asian philosophy, which is very close to the Christian concept of "debt" (nợ). Asians believe that people live in this world to repay a debt from a previous life, so they only relax when they have paid this debt. Thus, that woman has a very similar role to Viy. She seduces children through her motherly instincts so that she can die peacefully. In other words : These children must die if they follow her, at the same time, this woman seems pitiful because she had to die before she could get married or have children.

Why do I say that ? Carps and softshell turtles are very common animals in Vietnamese rivers, what are often considered top foods for pregnant women. Their smell is very fishy when unprocessed, so maiden's hormones often cannot stand it. Therefore, the woman in the story definitely has not had a chance to get married.