Carmilla
{{Carmilla}}
Basic Info
- Author: Sheridan Le Fanu
- Year: 1872
- Type: #primary1
Summary (brief)
-Laura tells her experiences with a vampire, presented form the casebook of Doctor Hesselius. Very gay. She lives in a mansion in Austria with her widowed father and her governesses, Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De La fontaine. Very isolated. She gets her way with most things. She dreamts of a girl's face watching her and then crawling into bed with her. The first time she can remember being truly afraid. General Spielsdorft (friend of Laura's father) his niece Bertha dies before she can come visit. Laura and her dad wittness a carriage crash from which an injured girl and her mother emerge. The mother tells Laura's father that her journey is urgent and she can't bring the daughter so Laura's dad watches the daughter until the mother can return in 3 months. Laura recognizes Carmilla as from her dream. Believes they were meant to be friends. Carmilla is secretive and extremely affectionate. Carmilla goes into a fit about religious stuff and the charm Laura bought from a hunchback to ward off evil dreams and spirits. A series of young girls have experienced the same symptoms. They see an old painting that looks like carmilla. Laura is visited by an evil cat demon that sucks her blood at night. Carmilla is missing from her room which is locked from the inside. It is revealed that the general was the sucker of the same wagon crash scam and Carmilla was then called Millarca and killed Beth. An oild woodman tells them how the village was attacked by vamps and fell to ruins. She is actually the countess Mircalla (their names anagrams of each other). Baron Vordenburg, a descendant of the hero who defeated the vampires, uses his knowledge to locate Micalla's tomb. They pick up a priest along the way. He fixes Laura. She sees images of Carmilla as friend and as the monster she really was.
Major Themes
- #dreams
- #gay
- #marriage/relationships/friendship
- #monstrous-femine
- #gender
- #haunting
- #pickme
- #queermateriality
- #truthandmemory
Key Passages / Quotes
Quote 1
quote:: “the thoughtful sweet face of that white-haired old man, in his black cassock, as he stood in that rude, lofty, brown room, with the clumsy furniture of a fashion three hundred years old about him, and the scanty light entering its shadowy atmosphere through the small lattice.”
page:: I.
themes:: woman as house
Genre Notes
- #confession
- foundational queer text that disrupted Victorian social structures
Characters / Concepts (if relevant)
-Laura - 19 year old protagonist and narrator
-Carmilla/Countess Mircalla Karnstein - vampire, alias is an anagram of birth name Mircalla.
-Laura's father: retired English official who owns the Austrian estate; too much of a realist
-General Spielsdort: military friend of Laura's dad
-Bertha Rheinfeldt; general's deceased ward; sudden wasting death foreshadows Laura's - a mirror to Laura's own tragic trajectory.
-Carmilla's Mother: stages carriage accidents to manipulate wealthy guardians to take Carmilla into their home.
Theory Connections
Related Texts
- Bodily Natures porousness and exchange- the fluid self; drinking blood and invading dreams.
- Autofiction : Le Fanu wrote this during a period of intense isolation following the sudden death of his wife, Susanne Bennett. Themes of grief and guilt. Mapping mental devastation on gothic monsters.
My Argument / Interpretation
Dissertation Relevance
How could this matter to my project?
-I like to call this story Dracula's queer predecessor. It's lesser known and very sapphic.