Carmilla, the 1872 gothic novella by J. S. Le Fanu, understands that when you are lonely enough, a dangerous friend can feel like a miracle. It can feel like a blessing from God, even if they are really jealous amphibians who soak in blood like a tampon.
Laura is nineteen. Pause. Listen to Hayley Williams’ cover of the Tegan and Sara song Nineteen right now. Come back. Now you’re in the brain of a 19-year-old girl.
Laura lives in a very rural world with her aging dad, no mom, next to no social life, and very little experience. Life is boring, anything new that happens feels so big and exciting.
When Laura meets Carmilla, she isn’t entering the world of someone living a full life, she is meeting someone with a big gaping lonely hole of a life who dreams about making a friend her age. She is very naive, which makes Carmilla (beautiful, intense, new) look like The Apple to Eve.
Carmilla is seductive in every sense. She has the pull of an intense new friendship: fast closeness, emotional whiplash, obsession, secrets, quick codependence, and the feeling that someone fascinating has chosen you. When you’re a teenage girl, you throw yourself into people like this. You want to feel special, you want to be chosen. Laura knows absolutely nothing about Carmilla, and points out multiple times that Carmilla won’t share details about her life.
I like the sapphic take, and that is a different lens to view the book in. My personal read comes from knowing how it feels to be absorbed by a friendship before you know whether that person is safe.
Carmilla is a predator. She’s your best friend who only wants you to spend time with her. She has mood swings, strange expressions, possessiveness, manipulation, and this constant sense that she knows more than she is saying. She is plotting, but she is also driven by appetite. That’s why this version of the vampire is so compelling and can be seen going strong today in pretty much everything. She is manipulative, but she also may not fully have self control.
Thinking about how this type of vampire that J. S. Le Fanu has crafted shows up in other famous works, Dracula feels like a male vampire story about purity, possession, and men rallying around Mina. We must save the purest woman. The purest woman will inspire us all, as Men.
Carmilla is more intimate. Laura isn’t perfect, she’s very naive because she has no experience. The vampire takes advantage of her loneliness. The vampire gets into the home, the bedroom, the friendship, the nervous system. She does not only attack Laura, she makes Laura love her.
And Carmilla is an amphibian! Picture her naked and perfectly preserved, pickling herself in a coffin filled with blood. She is a tampon of monstrosity. That was my favorite depiction of a vampire. She is beautiful, weak, ancient, deadly, and dependent all at once.
I have been going back to the “sources” of some of my favorite creatures like vampires, fairies, werewolves, witches, etc. and reading the original works and comparing to the modern versions. This version of the vampire feels very familiar, and very cool to have held up this long.
Is Carmilla… Edward Cullen? Is Bella Swan, Laura? I can’t get into this right now.
