Happy Autumn, and welcome to my latest queer history blog post! In keeping with the season, I’ll be exploring spooky themes and subjects in queer history throughout October. If you enjoy this article, make sure to sign up for my newsletter and stay up to date with my blog and Historical Fiction novels. Thanks for reading!
When most of us living in the 2020s think of vampires in media, we often think immediately of the infamous Dracula by Bram Stoker as the progenitor of the genre. While Stoker’s acclaimed novel was undoubtedly a cornerstone of horror, it is far from the earliest modern vampire novel. Dracula was first published in 1897, but a distinctly queer vampire story had already chilled Victorian audiences over a generation prior: Carmilla.
This Gothic novella was penned by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu, a prolific writer in the horror and historical fiction genres, in 1872.[1] Intriguingly, Le Fanu only outlived his most notorious work by months. He passed away in Dublin, Ireland in 1873 in perhaps odd circumstances. Though records suggest he died of heart failure, one of his contemporary colleagues would opine that Le Fanu “is believed to have literally died of fright” – though whether or not he was in earnest in this assessment is unclear.[2]
Whatever felled Le Fanu, natural or supernatural, this devoted family man crafted a compelling vampiric tale with palpable lesbian influences. Carmilla draws heavily on dark romantic themes prevalent in the mid- to late-19th century, but its underlying meanings have been debated and dissected by generations of readers since its publication. Unsurprisingly, modern scholars have noticed the overt and covert sapphic themes littered throughout the novella’s plot and particularly in the complex relationship between the titular vampire and her conflicted prey, a teenage girl named Laura.
“My strange and beautiful companion…”
The basic plotline of Carmilla is predictable to anyone familiar with the vampire genre. A mysterious young noblewoman, Carmilla, joins the household of Laura’s father in a rural province of the Austrian empire. During Carmilla’s sojourn with Laura’s family, the pair grows increasingly intimate even as the enigmatic Carmilla refuses to tell Laura anything about her own past. The text itself strongly suggests an intense, passionate and even physical relationship between the young women. In Chapter 4, for example, Laura explains:
“Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again…It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, “You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one for ever.”
Carmilla, Chapter 4
Carmilla has intrigued readers for decades
But Laura hears mounting reports of unexplained deaths of young women throughout the nearby village. She soon experiences strange dreams where she herself is attacked by a mysterious beast which bites her neck. Laura’s experiences, and physical symptoms, rapidly worsen. Her condition leads her father to seek out the help of a priest and a Moravian nobleman (Baron Vordenburg) notorious for hunting vampires.
Vordenburg describes a vampire of old, Mircalla Karnstein – the given name which, it is revealed, is an anagram of Carmilla. Eventually the group determines that the vampire Carmilla/Mircalla must be impaled back into her tomb. The Baron ultimately locates her burial site, drives a stake through her heart, decapitates her, and burns the rest of her body. Laura struggles to come to terms with her experiences in the wake of her sometimes romantic, sometimes manipulative, sometimes parasitic relationship with Carmilla. The novella closes on a pensive Laura, who sometimes imagines that Carmilla is still with her.
Nineteenth Century Queer Literature?
The queer elements of this story are obvious in even a superficial reading, as are the sexually subversive and feminist undertones of Carmilla’s narrative. This is particularly true when the novella is set against the backdrop of the late Victorian era of its publication. While we often think of the Victorian age as deeply repressive of sexual desire outright, let alone homosexual desire, female platonic and even romantic love was in fact commonplace during this period (even if explicit lesbianism was not socially endorsed). You can read my other blog post on Boston Marriages to learn more about such 19th and early 20th century sapphic relationships.
Manifold interpretations of the novella’s text abound. Some focus on the intersection of feminist and lesbian themes. Elizabeth Signorotti opines in this vein that “Laura’s and Carmilla’s lesbian relationship defies the traditional structures of kinship by which men regulate the exchange of women”. She adds that Bram Stoker’s later work Dracula acts as a foil to Carmilla’s “reckless unleashing of female desire.”[3]
Amy Leal emphasizes the “unameable desires” of Carmilla, suggesting that Carmilla’s anagram name games are perhaps a symbol of the closeted queer experience of the Victorian period. She notes, “[i]n every incarnation over the centuries, Carmilla must adopt an anagrammatical variation of her original name, each of which carries its own host of interpretations hinting at the forbidden same-sex desires in the text.”[4]
Likewise, Marília Milhomem Moscoso Maia opines in her analysis that “Carmilla is a mysterious character and the same monstrous, who feeds on blood to the innocence of the young. It is a transgressive figure and a threat to the patriarchy of a society that lives under the aegis of the Victorian Era.”[5] She adds, “Sheridan Le Fanu sustains a perception of lesbianism in the book depicted in something torturant and codified in a double system of opposite binary significations such as pleasure/displeasure; love/hatred; joy/rage and forbidden/desirable.”
Lindsey Vesperry expands on these themes of a female monster as a threat to Victorian heteronormative social hierarchy. She notes, “[t]he vampire Carmilla, who is a vehicle for the natural world, transgresses the boundaries of Victorian femininity by preying upon young women, and the male characters attempt to reestablish the patriarchal system by staking her. The ‘unnatural’ Carmilla certainly stands as a challenge against a male-dominated civilization by her mere existence.” She concludes that the novella itself represents masculine fear of “the monstrous feminine” which so boldly challenges patriarchy.”[6]
Modern Adaptations
Despite decades of re-evaluation of the text, what is absolutely clear is that Carmilla enjoys a place of honor in the pantheon of queer literature today. The novella itself continues to fascinate, and adaptations have abounded – to say nothing of its influence on other written works (notably, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series).
horror genre as well as queer media
Carmilla has appeared in multiple comic book adaptations, television shows and movies. The 1932 Danish film Vampyr features a version of her story as does the 1970 The Vampire Lovers. She also appears in the comedy Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009) and a 2017 horror comedy The Carmilla Movie based on a web series. Carmilla’s story was even adapted into an opera with Carmilla: A Vampire Tale in 1970. Carmilla remains a persistent influence on the broad “female vampire” genre in all forms of media today – from Doctor Who to True Blood to Shadowhunters.
What is perhaps most intriguing about many of these modern adaptations is how Carmilla (or rather, her archetype) is increasingly understood through an empowered, antihero lens. Though we cannot be certain how Le Fanu wanted his original vampire to be interpreted by his contemporary audience, her character seems to have adopted a more positive, admirable (or perhaps enviable) persona.
Much of this is due to her modern interpretations as an explicitly queer, sexually liberated femme fatale. Far from being an unholy threat of the Victorian age, modern creators often view her today as an attractive, if dangerous, sapphic icon. This transformation, in light of the experiences many queer people face, makes perfect sense: Carmilla’s tale can be read as a coming-of-age into one’s full self, unadulterated passions and deep-seated desires. Carmilla represents a feminine form that is liberated – fully wild and untamed. Whatever his intentions, Le Fanu has left us with an endlessly entertaining and compelling character whose implications, no doubt, will continue to be pored over for generations to come.
[1] Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Sheridan Le Fanu”. Encyclopedia Britannica, Invalid Date, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sheridan-Le-Fanu. Accessed 30 September 2022.
[2] Russell Kirk. The Surly Sullen Bell. NY: Fleet Publishing Corporation, 1962, p. 240.
[3] Elizabeth Signorotti, “Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in ‘Carmilla’ and ‘Dracula,” Criticism 38, no. 4 (1996): 607–32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23118160.
[4] Amy Leal (2007) Unnameable Desires in Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Names, 55:1, 37-52, DOI: 10.1179/nam.2007.55.1.37.
[5] Moscoso Maia, Marília Milhomem. “VAMPIRISM AND LESBIANISM IN CARMILLA BY JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU.” European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies [Online], 3.4 (2020): n. pag. Web. 30 Sep. 2022.
[6] Vesperry, Lindsey M., and Joyce L. Huff. Female Vampires, Masculine Anxiety and Nature: The Ecological Gothic of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, 2014.