The Story
- Genre: Gothic fiction, horror
- Form: novella
- Reading time: 2h
- Published in 1872
- Status: in the public domain everywhere
- Read online for free at Standard EBooks
- Setting: The story takes place in Austria during the Victorian Era.
- Premise: Laura and her English father live in a remote castle in the countryside in Styria, with a staff of servants and governesses. Though not alone, Laura sometimes feels isolated and longs for friends’ visits to the castle. She also has a secret memory of an apparition when she was 6 years old, and she still cannot shake away the lingering dread of that nightmare. One day, a carriage accident in front of the castle provides her with a companion: a young lady shocked by the accident will stay at the castle while her mother goes on the planned journey alone. They become friends and feel a strange attraction to each other. But soon afterwards, Laura starts to experience new nightmares. And what to think about a mysterious illness spreading among the inhabitants in the surrounding area?
Literary and Historical Context
Though not the first, Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu is one of the earliest examples of vampire fiction. It is the most elaborate in that first step, and contributed to defining the main tropes of the genre. It greatly influenced Bram Stoker, and this inspiration can be seen in different aspects of the novel Dracula.
The story is based on the ancient folklore of Germanic and Eastern European countries. So why has vampire fiction developed so late in history? Maybe because of the emotional and sexual repression of the Victorian Age. The vampire may have provided a pretext to tackle these themes. Maybe because this era was plagued by serious, long-lasting diseases like syphilis and tuberculosis, during which you may cough up blood. The mysterious illness triggered by being bitten by a vampire may have struck a chord in the Victorian mind. But especially because the Victorian Age is also an age when people became interested in the supernatural and folklore. It saw the development of spiritist societies and the compilation of legends and folkloric tales as a literary and scientific endeavour.
Close Reading
I will be very vague to avoid spoiling, but for those who would like to slow read the book, you may want to pay attention to:
- The way the landscape descriptions transform from a fairy tale setting to a gothic one throughout the book – Elements of the Gothic
- The role of isolation in the countryside in the story plot. Would it have been different in a town?
- The way the characters don’t talk to each other: secrets, don’t want to alarm, etc – the role of silence in the plot
- Religion and religious symbols vs lore and folklore vs nature and natural things
- Dreams – the nature of Laura’s dreams: are they ordinary dreams or something else?
- Laura’s feelings for Carmilla, their evolution and their paradoxical nature. The role of emotions and sensations in the story. Is Laura consensual?
- What’s the nature of Laura’s illness?
- Predation: the strategies of predation. The modus operandi: the main strategy (event) and the way the predator seduces its victims. How would we understand them nowadays?
- Love and death – love as sacrifice – love and lust – the sexual undertone of vampirism.
- The characteristics of vampires in this story. How do they become a vampire, and how do we get rid of them?
