Part I is right here Of Carmilla’s soothing lullabies, Laura says, ‘I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had no distinct thoughts about her while such scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence’ (Ryan, 1994: 90). In a way, the author describes nothing other than sexual awakening, but the excitement is tumultuous because it is uncanny: as the horror pushes through the unconscious, Laura becomes familiar with a desire that has lain dormant within her and yet, that is destabilising in its forceful surfacing. This immense, disturbing power is what is mostly relevant when Carmilla is analysed as the vital literary ancestor to Dracula and when the vampire stories that followed these two tales are analysed as parts of an ever-evolving whole. While Polidori ends his tale on the high note of an epiphany (‘Lord Ruthven had disappeared, and Aubrey’s sister had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!’ [Ryan, 1994: 24]), Le Fanu concludes his novella with the melancholic, languid suggestion that, despite the dreadful denouement, Carmilla is very much missed (‘to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to my memory with ambiguous alternations […] and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door’ [Ryan, 1994: 137]). The dual disquieting nuance here (which was not present in The Vampyre) is one that shall return... Read more →
