Carmilla

Carmilla is a Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu. First published 1872, it tells the story of a young woman's contact with a vampire. Carmilla predates Bram Stoker's Dracula by over twenty years and had a strong influence on Stoker's famous novel. However, Carmilla was not the first vampire novel — both it and the considerably older The Vampyre by John William Polidori probably being too short to hold that title.

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, retired from the Austrian Service, moves to a stately castle in Styria with his daughter Laura. When she is six years old, Laura has a vision of a beautiful visitor in her bedchamber. She later claims to have been bitten on the chest, although no wounds are found on her.

Twelve years later, Laura and her father are admiring the sunset in front of the castle when her father tells her of a letter he received earlier from his friend General Spielsdorf. The General was supposed to bring his niece to visit the two, but the niece suddenly died under mysterious circumstances. The General ambiguously concludes that he will discuss the circumstances in detail when they meet later.

Laura is saddened by the loss of a potential friend, and longs for a companion. A carriage accident outside Laura's home unexpectedly brings a girl of Laura's age into the family's care. Her name is Carmilla. Both girls instantly recognize the other from the 'dream' they both had when they were young.

Carmilla appears injured after her carriage accident, but her mysterious mother informs Laura's father that her journey is urgent and cannot be delayed. She arranges to leave her daughter with Laura and her father until she can return in three months. Before she leaves she sternly notes that her daughter will not dispose any information whatsoever about her family, past, or herself and that Carmilla is of sound mind. 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 occasionally Carmilla's mood abruptly changes. She sometimes makes unsettling romantic advances towards Laura. Carmilla refuses to tell anything about herself or her background, despite questioning from Laura. Her secrecy isn't the only mysterious thing about her. Carmilla sleeps much of the day, and seems to sleepwalk at night. When a funeral procession passes by the two girls and Laura begins singing a hymn, Carmilla bursts out in rage and scolds Laura for singing a Christian song. When a shipment of family heirloom portraits arrive at the castle, Laura finds one of her ancestor, Countess Mircalla Karnstein, dated two centuries before. The portrait resembles Carmilla exactly, down to the mole on her neck.

During Carmilla's stay, Laura has nightmares of a fiendish cat-like beast entering her room at night and biting her on the chest. The beast then takes the form of a female figure and disappears through the door without opening it. Laura's health declines and her father has a doctor examine her. He speaks privately with her father and only asks that Laura never be left unattended.

Her father then sets out with Laura in a carriage for the ruined village of Karnstein. They leave a message behind asking Carmilla and one of the governesses entreated to follow after once the perpetually late-sleeping Carmilla wakes up. En route to Karnstein, Laura and her father encounter General Spielsdorf. He tells them his own ghastly story.

Spielsdorf and his niece had met a young woman named Millarca and her enigmatic mother at a costume ball. The General's niece was immediately taken with Millarca. The "Countess" convinced the General that she was an old friend of his and asked that Millarca be allowed to stay with them for three weeks while she attended to a secret matter of great importance.

The General's niece fell mysteriously ill and suffered exactly the same symptoms as Laura. After consulting with a priestly doctor who he had specially ordered, the General came to the realization that his niece was being visited by a vampire. The general hid in a closet with a sword and waited to see a fiendish cat-like creature stalk around his niece's bedroom and bite her on the neck. He leapt from his hiding place and attacked the beast, who took the form of Millarca. She fled through the locked door, unharmed. The General's niece died immediately afterward.

When they arrive at Karnstein the General asks a nearby woodsman where he can find the tomb of Mircalla Karnstein, so that he may remove her head and end the nightmare. The woodsman tells that the tomb was relocated long ago, by the hero who vanquished the vampires that haunted the region. He goes to find his master who knows all the monuments of the Karnstein family.

While the General and Laura are left alone in the ruined chapel, Carmilla appears. The General and Carmilla both fly into a rage upon seeing each other and the General attacks her with an axe. Carmilla flees and the General explains to Laura that Carmilla is also Millarca, both anagrams for the original name of the vampire Countess Mircalla Karnstein.

The ordeal ends when the Countess's body is exhumed and destroyed.

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.

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.

Some critics, among them William Veeder, suggest that Carmilla, notably in its outlandish use of narrative frames, was an important influence on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw.

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 to a great extent influenced by Le Fanu's short story. Harry Ludlam has said that Dracula is "the product of ^* own vivid imagination and imaginative research", but it is clear that Stoker was inspired by Carmilla.

In the earliest manuscript of Dracula, dated 8 March, 1890, the castle is set in Styria, although the setting was changed to Transylvania six days later. Stoker's posthumously published short story Dracula's Guest, known as the deleted first chapter to Dracula, 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 plausible background story for them having been compiled. Stoker also indulges the air 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 descriptons of Carmilla and the character of Lucy in Dracula 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.

Stoker's Dr. Abraham Van Helsing is a direct parallel to Le Fanu's Dr. Hesselius: both 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 Godalming.)

Carmilla in culture

Danish Director Carl Dreyer loosely adapted Carmilla for his 1932 film Vampyr.
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 Hammer Film Productions also produced loose adaptations of Carmilla with its trilogy The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil. Ingrid Pitt appeared in the first of these films as the Mircalla followered by Yutte Stensgaard in Lust for A Vampire and Katja Wyeth in Twins of Evil.
Mystery and Imagination: Carmilla (1966)
In 1974 José Ramón Larraz 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 a horror film, extending the tale beyond the spectrum of the book. The characters Fran and Miriam (presumably named for 'Millarca') are similar to Laura and Carmilla.
Alucarda, la hija de las tinieblas (1978)
Nightmare Classics: Carmilla (1989)
In 1990, Gabrielle Beaumont created the movie Carmilla which is one of the more faithful adaptations of the story.
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.
In 1998 Carmilla was updated to present-day Long Island, New York in a film of the same name. The film 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, gory, erotic counterpart to the Gothic novel. While the film 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.
Carmilla appears as the bride of Dracula in the direct-to-DVD animated movie The Batman Vs. Dracula.
Cradle of Filth, a popular black metal band, has produced an instrumental track entitled "Carmilla's Masque"
Carmilla appears in the anime "Hellsing", in the episode 9 "Red Rose Vertigo"; she uses at the beginning of the episode the fake name of Laura, trying to fool and take revenge on the descendant of someone that tried to kill her before.
The story was very loosely adapted in the shoddy^* 2004 straight-to-video splatter movie Vampires vs. Zombies.
In the video game The Sun is in Your Hand, Carmilla is one of the Immortals, who appears either as a young girl in a red dress, or a huge half-human, half-snake creature. Her powers include turning enemies into stone, and is often referred to as a banshee rather than a vampire.
In at least two of the Castlevania games, there is a character named Camilla, described as being a longtime worshiper of Count Dracula. ^*This character is most likely inspired---albeit partially---by the novel's title character. The name of this worshipper has been spelled and misspelled as both Carmilla and Camilla. The masked woman Vampira of Castlevania II is also assumed to be the same Carmilla.
In episode 30 and beyond of Yu-Gi-Oh!GX,Camulla is introduced as a soul stealing vapiress trying gain control of the three Sacred Beast cards.She is a psuedo-referance of carmilla.

External links

Carmilla: The Return by Kyle Marffin: ISBN 1891946021

The critics rage: Vampires versus Zombies

1872 books | Vampires in written fiction | Gothic novels | Fictional vampires