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Overview

Carmilla is set in Austria during the late 1800s and is the original vampire story. Le Fanu’s writing is steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance as Carmilla, a female vampire who is later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, is a lesbian vampire and is romantically interested in the protagonist, Laura, who is also the narrator.

Another interesting aspect of Carmilla is that Laura and her father belong to the middle class. Her father is an Englishman who served in the Austrian military and retired to Austria. He has risen to become a landowner as supported by this quote:

“In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don’t see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.”

Laura’s father has a strong faith in science and God and initially refuses to recognise that Carmilla, the young girl he has generously taken into his home so that she can convalesce from an accident, is the cause of his daughter’s illness. In this respect, Laura’s father was like the character of John Seward M.D. appearing in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula (Carmilla was published in 1871 – 1872).

The story begins with Laura narrating her childhood which she describes as “picturesque and solitary”. She is brought up in a schloss by her widowed father and her governesses. Her life is isolated as the nearest village is miles away and she is lonely with no friends of her own age.

Laura recounts a traumatic event from her early childhood which she has never forgotten. She had a nightmare about a beautiful teenage girl who watched her and then crawled into bet with her. Laura was extremely fearful as she had no concept of ghosts or the paranormal due to her sheltered upbringing.

Laura is expecting the niece of her father’s friend, General Spielsdorf, to come and stay with her in the schloss for some months. Sadly, her father receives a letter from the General saying that his niece has died.

Shortly afterwards, Laura meets Carmilla when a carriage crashes in front of their schloss. Carmilla has been injured and as her travelling companion, her mother, must go on to fulfil an urgent engagement, Laura’s father offers to keep Carmilla in his care until her mother’s return.

Carmilla is exquisitely beautiful, and Laura soon recognises her as the teenager from her dreams. Carmilla’s behaviour towards Laura confuses her as Carmilla is overly affectionate and makes inappropriate romantic advances towards Laura.

A series of unfortunate deaths of young women in the surrounding countryside causes anxiety and discord although Laura’s father is convinced the ‘illness’ affecting these girls could not infiltrate his middle-class home.

When Laura starts to show symptoms of the illness, her father sends for Doctor Spielsberg who speaks with her father about her illness. Her father refuses to consider any paranormal cause for the affliction contaminating the countryside and his own daughter.

General Spielsdorf, who has been researching the bizarre nature of his niece’s demise, comes to visit and he opens the door to greater understanding by Laura’s father. General Spielsdorf reminded me of Doctor Van Helsing from Dracula.

Themes of Carmilla demonstrated through quotations

Women and sexuality

“You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.”

Loss of Innocence

“For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.”

Love and lust

“Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardor of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet over-powering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips traveled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, “You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.” Then she had thrown herself back in her chair, with her small hands over her eyes, leaving me trembling.”

Class and Class Warfare

“In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss.”

Science, Religion, Nature, and the Supernatural

“We are in God’s hands: nothing can happen without his permission, and all will end well for those who love him. He is our faithful creator; He has made us all, and will take care of us.” “Creator! Nature!“ said the young lady in answer to my gentle father. “And this disease that invades the country is natural. Nature. All things proceed from Nature—don’t they? All things in the heaven, in the earth, and under the earth, act and live as Nature ordains? I think so.”

Why the story of Carmilla should be remembered

Carmilla is a masterful Gothic novella and is a pioneer in respect of vampires and lesbianism. The writing is beautiful and intriguing. Nowhere in the story is it explicitly stated or revealed that Laura and Carmilla are together as a couple but there is a sexual energy between the two of them that jumps off the pages. The lesbian overtones in this story would have been shockingly perverse at the time of its writing. Vampirism is always linked with perverse sexuality.

I found this story to be enthralling, and I am glad I came across it quite by accident when reading up on Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula.