I was recently perusing the contents of one of my bookshelves, the one with the thick, ancient anthologies that I've had for many years. One of these is a hardback volume that I picked up for three quid in a charity shop: The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories edited by Alan Ryan. This is a classic book to own if you're a Gothic scholar, an English literature undergraduate or a reader with a little more than a passing interest in vampires. Over the years, I've been all three, but it was as a reader, and a very young one at that, that I most often returned to one story in particular: Carmilla.
It is a seminal novella for sure, but one that has not elicited the same widespread interest as Polidori's The Vampyre before it, or Stoker's Dracula after. Yet, the very subtle combination of innovative themes and skillful execution make it unique to this day. I've decided to share a few thoughts about Carmilla which those of you in the middle of research (or various degrees) may find of interest. As I am working on a comprehensive bibliography of vampire literature, both primary and secondary, to make available for download, it would be silly not to talk about the most pivotal story of its kind. And, of course, it's always nice to be able to recycle one's own PhD thesis. The biblio quotations throughout are indeed from The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories, although please note that the edition linked to above is more recent than mine.
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Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, dating from 1872, remains quite possibly the most significant such tale of its time, for it consolidated the new attributes of the vampiric canon (aristocracy, isolated location as place of narrative, unaware virgin victim, a traditionally gruesome ending), with a greater sexual undertone that is dealt with at times ferociously, others subtly. It is perhaps the most seminal story of vampire literature, for it inspired the eminent Prince of Darkness of them all, Dracula. Yet, its profound connection with Stoker’s work has often obfuscated Carmilla’s own merits, in particular its being the first story in which the seducing vampire is no longer the patriarchal figure embodying at once sexual and social power, but is a maiden as beautiful and seemingly innocent as the victim herself. Furthermore, Carmilla is never a repulsive beast but an enthralling one, even in her shocking nightly outings where she shares more in common with a mythical succuba than with the ferocious Dracula.
The sexual connotations of the novella certainly are precursors to Dracula’s own, but Carmilla herself represents what Lucy Westenra would have become had she not been rescued by the zeal of the vampire hunters. Lucy’s obscene appetite for carnality is so aberrant and so unbearable as to legitimise her killing in the name of her salvation. However, it is not so much her deliverance (or the one of Laura, Carmilla’s victim), that is the crux of these narratives: the subtext is that the vampire and its supernatural power must be nailed back into its coffin, for it contaminates every woman it touches. What will the imperfect men do then?
Published twenty-five years before Dracula, Le Fanu’s work is, in a sense, more indecent than its successor, for it suggests that the sexuality of the vampire is aberrant twice over. Not only can Carmilla infect her victim with her bite; she can actually turn her into a lesbian by her mere tantalising presence. She is at once the fruit on the tree of knowledge and the serpent that promises God-like wisdom, as Laura recounts: ‘She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “[…] if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours […]”. And when she had spoken such rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek’ (Ryan, 1994: 89). The real abomination, however, occurs when the victim is attracted to the vampire, in a veritable turning point for horror literature which almost reduces Lord Ruthven’s penchant for ‘the centre of all fashionable vice’ (Ryan, 1994: 9) to a pale effort which hints at something, yet defines nothing.
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Next week for Part II.
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