can i say something. i don't like carmilla. i'm a lesbian deeply invested on vampires (particularly lesbian vampires) and i think dracula is a better classic vampire story. i don't even think this is a controversial or fringe opinion, it's just that seeing people talk about this book often makes me feel like i'm going insane. i'd like to talk a bit about carmilla (sheridan's novella) and carmilla (sheridan's character), and try to make sense of what i think of them.
for those unfamiliar, carmilla is a 1872 vampire novella, predating bram stoker's dracula by 26 years. the narrator, laura, is an eighteen year old girl, living in isolation with her father, two governesses and "the servants" in a castle in styria. at the beginning of the story, she and her father are awaiting the visit of a general and his niece, who's around laura's age, until they unexpectedly receive a letter from the general saying she suddenly fell ill and died.
not to worry though: a carriage accident in front of the castle leaves a girl, also around laura's age, injured, and she's left under their care as her mother must hurry for unspecified, highly secretive, reasons. carmilla has some odd habits, only leaves her room in the afternoon, is particularly languid and weak, looks identical to an old portrait of countess mircalla karnstein, but laura is delighted with her presence and the two of them grow close, carmilla clearly approaching laura romantically. at the same time, a mysterious illness affects girls in the nearby village, and laura is affected by nightmares and her health declines as well. so on and so forth, and so far so good, right?
this, to me, is the turning point to the story. the consequences of this chapter are something which any good reading / adaptation of the novella has to grapple with, and something people seem to ignore in praising carmilla as an iconic sapphic text. and now to be clear i'd like to say that i have no desire to dismiss it or call it problematic or whatever, just that i think the back half of the narrative is often left unexamined, and i don't think it should, for it makes the book officially Lame in my eyes. it is what prompted me to really write about this book.
laura and her father are on their way to the nearby ruins of castle karnstein when they meet general spielsdorf, the one whose niece died. and he has a story to tell, of the events leading to his niece's untimely death.
first, let's look at a quote from this chapter:
He then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury, inveighing against the "hellish arts" to which she had fallen a victim, and expressing, with more exasperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell.
this is how he consistently refers to the situation. there is a very straightforward parallel between the death of his sweet young girl at the hands of a seductress and garden variety "X turned my child gay" homo- and transphobia, is there not? he's talking about vampirism but what he's also clearly talking about is lesbianism.
as he tells the story of how millarca (it's been a century and a half, we know she's carmilla, and also mircalla) entered his and his niece's life, we see the seduction not through the woman, as we had until now with laura, but through a man whose ward was seduced and killed. the story never goes back to laura's hands, not truly. she retells the events, but she's kept on the dark about her father, her doctor, the general's plans, and carmilla's eventual murder. before this chapter, carmilla was about laura and her slow predation, but that is abruptly cut short by a man who already knows all about the matter actually, so don't worry your pretty little head.
well, so that's why i dislike the novella. 19th century or no, i think taking the narrative out of laura's hands sucks and is bad, i just don't like reading it, i find it boring. but that's only half the story, because carmilla herself is the face that launched a thousand lesbian vampires. so i wanna talk about my perception of the way she seems to be perceived.
there's a tumblr post i can't find for the life of me, and i think about a quote from it all the time, it goes something like this: in this current political climate, medusa can't be a woman if she's a monster, and she can't be a monster if she's a woman
. that is (at least to me, it's from a joke about the met gala), it is antifeminist for a woman to ever be a monster — medusa's myth rewritten so her curse is a blessing to shield her from the unwanted male gaze, and so on, whatever, you get the picture.
so, if carmilla is to be a ~sapphic icon~ she can't be a predatory lesbian, and the book can't be homophobic, can it? we must latch onto an idea of carmilla instead. and you know, that's fair. the idea of an irresistible external force coming into laura's isolated life, a sexual awakening, vampirism used as a way to vilify and explain these away as in the 2019 adaptation. but as this is also horror, laura is definitely being destroyed. that complication is something i think we need to keep. i want carmilla to be monstrous, dangerous, the village has reason to be scared, the men — representative of cisheteropatriarchy — should be repulsed. if carmilla is to be a reclaimed icon, it must be because of her monstrousness, not in spite of it (it will have to be in spite of the book itself, because. it's just not very good in the third act!). and i think reclaiming her means centering laura and giving back her agency as a character, even as the same events unfurl. carmilla's death can be an inevitable tragedy, or a form of catharsis, but we must see how it relates to laura. or so help me god.
this focus on laura is why i liked the 2014 adaptation styria so much, and why carmen maria machado's introduction to her edition of the book interested me so much (although she doesn't quite keep that same strength across her sparse footnotes). carmilla as a lesbian exists in relation to the objects of her desire, in particular laura. she exists through laura's narration and her feelings, and laura is fighting against the author to tell that story, and losing. but at this point, am i talking about the novella carmilla as it stands? or am i also talking to all interpretations that followed it?
do i have a point? i'm not sure where i'm going with this. i write to make sense of my thoughts, put ducks in a row, but sometimes that's not enough for full cohesion. well, that's why i'm calling these notes. they might feel incomplete for now, i think, but i'll come back if more pieces fall into place.