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Carmilla

Page history last edited by William Patrick Wend 11 years, 9 months ago

Biography 

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Journal

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About

  • There are even earlier vampire literature such as The Castle of Otranto (1764) 
  • Despite Carmilla being about the supernatural, Le Fanu, "uses the vampire motif primarily to focus on the condition of women's lives during the time that he wrote." (Senf 25)
  • This is an era of vast changes in culture, politics, and industry.
  • Science becomes more prominent than religion.
  • Women's lives were centered more around the home, although there are vast differences between working class and higher class women (in other words, it's not quite that simple) 
  • Le Fanu comments on the role of women during Victorian times and attitudes towards women. In Le Fanu's novella, sickness and hysteria in one woman leads to more of it in other women. 

Summary

  • Carmilla portrays Laura, who also narrates, a young lady who lives with her widowed father in a castle somewhere in Eastern Europe. The arrival of another young woman named Carmilla leads to a close friendship between them. The newcomer behaves oddly, however; she sleeps for most the day and rarely, if ever, eats. As the story goes on, Laura emulates her friend's behavior, “alarmingly los(ing) her own health and energy.” (Heller 78) Carmilla feeds, literally, off of her beautiful friend, 

Questions?

Analysis

Characters

Carmilla

  • Uses her power to put herself in an advantageous situation with Laura
  • In many places during the narrative, Carmilla portrays dominance over Laura (Funeral, nightmares, blood) 

 

Laura

  • Is repressed at the beginning of the novella, but evolves as the narrative plays out

Symbolism

Theme

Gender

  • During this time period, Victorian medicine often attacks women using their blood and portrays them as bloody, whether in childbirth, menstruation, or sex, monsters
  • See the works of Havelock Eliis or Sigmund Freud
  • Anemia leads to women being compared to animals, whose instinctive drives for sex, blood, and reproduction control their being.
  • These desires, it was argued, could "infect" women and, especially, men.
  • Hence, a lady vampire like Carmilla... 
  • Carmilla and Laura are both portrayed as being "sickly" 
  • Freud's theories about sexual repression 

Point of View

Irony

Ending

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Adaptations

Wordle

Video

Bibliography

  • Davis, Michael. "Gothic's Enigmatic Signifier: The Case Of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla." Gothic Studies 6.2 (2004): 223-235. Academic Search Premier. Web.
  • Nethercot, Arthur H. "Coleridge's "Christabel" and Lefanu's 'Carmilla,'" Modern Philology 47.1 (August 1949) 32-38. Web.  
  • Signorotti, Elizabeth. "Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in "Carmilla" and Dracula."Criticism 38 (1996). Print.

Previous Paper Topics

  1. Something we talked about in class a bit was the role of decision making in Carmilla. How is decision making portrayed in the novella? How does who makes the decisions affect the text or your close reading? How does decision making affect some of the themes we have discussed this semester. Something I noted could be interesting to discuss is how the novella portrays Laura's entry into agency and the ability to decide for herself. 
  2. What is the role of companionship in the novella? There are a number of pairings in Carmilla you could talk about (Laura/Carmilla….Carmilla/Mom…Laura/Father…Carmilla/Father….General/Father). How is companionship portrayed in the novella? How does your close reading of the role of companionship affect any of the themes we have discussed this semester?
  3. What is the role of power in Carmilla? I think the best approach here is to discuss how much power Carmilla has all over the novella and discuss Laura's lack of power. How do these discussions affect the themes we have discussed this semester? 

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