Carmilla is a vampire novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, first published 1872, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula by over twenty years. It is considered one of the greatest in the genre, despite the overwhelming popularity of Dracula, which was strongly influenced by Carmilla (see section 4, this article). Though Carmilla was not the first vampire novel (the considerably older The Vampyre by John William Polidori probably holds that title), it was certainly an influential work.
Publication
Carmilla was first published in the magazine The Dark Blue in 1872, and then in the author's collection of short stories, In a Glass Darkly the same year. The story ran in The Dark Blue in three issues; January (1872), pp. 592-606; February (1872), pp. 701-714; and March (1872), pp. 59-78.
There were two original illustrators for the story, both of which appeared in the magazine but which do not appear in modern printings of the book. The two illustrators, D. H. Friston and M. Fitzgerald, show some inconsistencies in their depiction of the characters, and as such some confusion has been made in identifying the pictures as part of a continuous plot.
Plot
A wealthy English widower, having retired from the Austrian Service, moves to a stately castle in Styria with his daughter Laura. When she is six years old, Laura recieves a beautiful visitor in her bedchamber and claims to have been bitten on the chest, although no wounds are found on her. Sixteen years later, a accident renders a girl of Laura's age in the family's care. Her name is Carmilla, and both girls instantly recognise the other as per the 'dream' they both had when they were young. However, Laura notices that Carmilla looks the same age as she did sixteen years earlier.
Laura and her father witness a carriage crash, and a frail young girl (Carmilla) appears to be hurt. Her mother seems to care little about her and firmly assures Laura's father that her journey cannot be delayed for the sake of the girl and that she will have to leave her behind, to return for her three months hence. Laura's father offers to watch her with care and the mother hastens away with little care for the girl. Before she leaves she sternly notes that her daughter will not dispose any information whatever about her family, past, or herself. Laura comments that this information seems needless to say, and her father laughs it off.
Carmilla and Laura grow to be very close friends, but Carmilla is in love with Laura and makes romantic advances towards her. Carmilla will also not tell anything about herself, despite the constant agitation over this of her friend Laura. When a shipment of family heirloom portraits arrive at the castle, Laura finds one of her ancestor, Countess Marcilla Karnstien, dated two centuries before. The portrait resembles Carmilla exactly, down to the mole on her neck.
Carmilla is languid and grows tired easily during the daytime. She sleeps long hours and is of very mild temper. But when suspicious events that could lead to intelligence about herself or her ancestry are presented, she grows angry or aloof and distracts the conversation. Comments made about her resemblance to the painting, and her incredibly sharp teeth are met in this way.
Laura and her father also meet a young woman named Millarca at a costume ball. Laura and Millarca quickly become friends and frequent companions. Laura then begins to be troubled by dreams of being attacked at night by a fierce beast that resembles her new friend Millarca.
Immediately after Carmilla's arrival (and indeed immediately preceding it), the sparse area is ridden with a mysterious malady in which young girls die after having frighful dreams of being visited in the night. Laura also reports her night terrors. A neighbour, General Speilsdorf, lost his niece in this way, and is convinced that it is a supernatural being that is seducing and killing these girls. He says that an odd woman who claimed to be Millarca's mother deposited the girl in the town surreptitiously. A Baron Vordenburg joins the group, and they discover that Carmilla is the same person as Millarca and the Countess Marcilla Karnstein. Carmilla hunted to death and staked, beheaded, and incinerated by the troupe.
Influence
Carmilla, the title character, is the original prototype for a legion of female (and often lesbian) vampires. Though Le Fanu portrays his vampire's sexuality with the circumspection that one would expect for his time, the reader can be pretty sure that lesbian attraction is the main dynamic between Carmilla and the narrator of the story. Carmilla selected exclusively female victims, though only became emotionally involved with a few. Carmilla had nocturnal habits, but was not confined to the darkness. She had unearthly beauty and was able to change her form and to pass through solid walls. Her animal alter ego was a monstrous black cat, not a bat as in Dracula. She did, however, sleep in a coffin.
Carmilla is richly atmospheric, eerie, unsettling and deeply frightening to those of a nervous disposition. It was Its setting is a parochial section of Styria state, Austria. As such it sets the standard for Gothic vampire literature, a genre which is not usually dealt with, as vampire stories (such as Dracula) lean more towards horror than Gothic or romantic in style of writing.
As such, this novella absolutely suceeds at putting into words the feelings of the modern Gothic subculture. Not only did Carmilla set the standards for Gothic and vampire style and characteristics, it influenced a number of books and movies, most notably Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Although Carmilla is a lesser known and far shorter Gothic vampire story than the generally-considered master work of that genre, Dracula, the latter is heavily and directly based upon Le Fanu's short story. Harry Ludlam has said that Dracula is "the product of [Stoker's] own vivid imagination and imaginative research", it is clear that Stoker was heavily inspired by Carmilla and based his novel upon this.
In the earliest manuscript of Dracula, dated 8 March, 1890, the castle is set in Styria, but the setting was changed to Transylvania six days later, showing that Stoker had full cognition of Carmilla's influence from the onset of his notes for Dracula. However Stoker's posthumously published short story, Dracula's Guest is known as the deleted first chapter to Dracula, and shows a more obvious and intact debt to Carmilla, and the setting of Styria remains unchanged.
Both stories are told in the first person. Dracula expands on the idea of a first person account by creating a series of journal entries and logs of different persons and creating a plausable background story for them having been compiled. He also indulges the aire of mystery far better than is executed in Carmilla, by allowing the characters to solve the enigma of the vampire along with the reader.
The descriptors of Carmilla and Mina are similar, and have typified the now-stereotypical appearance of the waif-like victims and seducers in vampire stories as being tall, slender, languid, and with large eyes, full lips and soft voices. Both women also sleepwalk, and Carmilla was described as a suicide.
Stoker's Dr. Abraham Van Helsing is a direct parallel to Le Fanu's Dr. Hesselius and Baron Vordenburg are also parallel characters, used to investigate and catalyse actions in opposition to the vampire, and symbolically represent knowledge of the unknown and stability of mind in the onslaught of chaos and death. (Baron Vordenburg also influenced Dracula's Lord Godlming.)
Film and Book Adaptations
Carmilla has been the subject of a number of films. French director Roger Vadim's Et mourir de plaisir (literally "And to die of pleasure", but actually shown in England as "Blood and Roses") is based on Carmilla and is considered one of the greatest of the vampire genre. The Vadim film thoroughly explores the lesbian implications behind Carmilla's selection of victims, and boasts cinematography by Claude Renoir .
The British pulp horror movie house Hammer Films also had a go at Carmilla its trilogy Lust for a Vampire , Twins of Evil and The Vampire Lovers . Ingrid Pitt appeared in these as the anagramatically renamed Mircalla.
In 1974 Joseph (Jose) Lazzar created Vampyres, which explored not only the erotic lesbian activity of the vampires, but the brutal, bloody vampire activity itself, which was usually not touched upon so heavily. As such the film was less Gothic and more of an horror film, extening the tale beyond the spectrum of the book. The characters Fran and Miriam (presumably named for 'Millarca') are similar to Laura and Carmilla.
The animated film Vampire Hunter 'D': Bloodlust includes a character named Carmilla who is the lingering spirit of a long-dead yet very powerful vampire countess who continues to rule her castle. This is one of a very few movies that portrays a vampire's spirit as having not only the capacity to physically manifest itself, but also the ability to reasonably and dynamically interact with living beings (i.e. one could carry on a normal conversation with her).
In 1998 Carmilla was updated to present-day Long Island, New York in a movie of the same name. The movie is the brainchild of Jay Lind, the writer, director, and producer for the film. Starring Maria Pechukas, Heather Warr and Andy Gorkey, and co-produced by Jeff Schelenker, Carmilla is a horrific, gorey, erotic counterpart to the Gothic novel. Whlie the movie is in no way Gothic or romantic, it shows a different side of the story presented in the book.
Though Carmilla was a seminal work for the genre of vampire fiction, there is also a modern tale that directly incorporates Le Fanu's character. Carmilla: The Return, written in 1999 by Kyle Marffin, begins in 19th-century Austria but follows Carmilla's life into 1990s Michigan.
External links
Last updated: 10-13-2005 19:42:42
