Is Carmilla a love story or a warning?

M

I don't knowwww. That might be true? I'm not a historian or even a classics expert.

My read? Carmilla is irresistible, and it's hard not to cheer for her. Do they bring up that she doesn't seem to pray? Yes. Is her sapphic interest subtle? No. But guess what? Carmilla doesn't read as evil. She's kind of just a victim of circumstance.

M

She didn't choose any of it. The book tells us some suicides become vampires, and vampires create more vampires — that's the line Carmilla is descended from. It tells us about the special relationships vampires can have with some people, and it never tells us those relationships aren't genuine. It's even implied that Carmilla DID plan to tell Laura everything at some point.

M

The depth of love Carmilla expresses for Laura is Heathcliff-esque, and the evil of Carmilla pales in comparison to Heathcliff's. So if this book can only be read as an indictment of gay love (and again, it might be), then Wuthering Heights should be read as an indictment of the counterpart. And both should be read as failing in their quest, because it's hard not to fall in love with either one — twisted as each may be.

M

Look — it might be! I don't know. One thing is true though: calling vampirism censorship is nuts. Vampires are hot, obviously, and so is star-crossed love. If the goal of this book was to douse the flames of love-sans-Y-chromosome with a little blood-sucking, it certainly failed at that.

M

OK: one, I am super amped to read Machado. But two — yea, “inventing,” “excavating.” Maybe. THE LOVE FEELS ALREADY THERE TO ME! I went to Catholic school. Eisegesis, exegesis. No way to really know author intent. What you read is what is there. Books belong to their readers.

M

OK: yes, yes, yes. That is what is refreshing about Carmilla. I mentioned the sapphic love not being some buried thing we have to squint to see — and yes, that is lovely!

M

No, I really didn't. My arrival to Carmilla was sideways: about three months ago I started building an app for reading books — public domain classics, huge shoutout to Project Gutenberg — and Carmilla is the 5th book I've finished on my own app, and the 8th I've started. I say the 8th I've started because I'm a famous DNFer. Chromatics has improved that for me — it really has. But it hasn't cured it. And we aren't talking the quit-at-page-75 thing: I re-read Frankenstein this year and DNF'd at three-quarters, quit North and South at two-thirds. Been hung up on Ulysses for months (but that's a whole other thing).

M

So I've been trying to figure that out. It isn't just length though! I read Crime and Punishment and Wuthering Heights this year. I crave the weird (Murakami, Shelley), I crave an unexpected ending (Christie, Larsson), and I like a book that captures you the whole way through instead of setting up an ending you saw coming three fourths of the way in.

In any case Carmilla checks all three. Deeply weird, and I genuinely didn't know where it was going until it went there. Finished it within a few days.

And then I googled it afterward, since I had nobody to book club with, and was so happy to learn that everyone else is reading and re-writing this book too.

M

Hmmmm! I haven't read Dracula in a while. My first take is suspicion. I adored much of Carmilla, but ultimately it is a novella that is begging to be novel-length. And so, sure — Dracula is, at the bare minimum, that. Dracula also adds in all sorts of cool Gothic atmosphere we miss out on a little in Carmilla. If Dracula was a woman, would I be even more enthusiastic to read it? Yea, probably. But my first guess is that, yea, maybe Dracula is Carmilla fanfic that finished what the original started.

M

Even still — it seems a little unlikely. I think it's unlikely because even in CARMILLA they make it clear how common the superstitious belief in vampires is in the region. There's already this super rich mythology that Stoker, like Homer before him, snagged a piece of and wrote down.

M

Honestly that's lit. I guess we always assume that statements like “Dracula is an extended-cut fanfic of Carmilla with a gender-swapped cast” are too good to be true and better left unquestioned. But just like the “superstition” about the oupire turned out to be warranted in Carmilla, I should have trusted my gut on this one too.

M

Honest answer? It's a really worthwhile question to ask, and I'm not sure. This is the part of the book where I trust my own read the least.

M

Laura. Her discomfort is real — but the book never tells you which kind of discomfort it is. And it sparks this memory: Buck Mulligan in Joyce? Based on a friend of his, if I recall, who I think actually did turn out to be romantically interested in James… no — it wasn't Buck. It was some other guy — the one Stephen is always having memories of.

M

Right! Cranly. For anyone who hasn't read Joyce: Cranly is Stephen's very, very close friend — but Cranly wants to be more than a friend. Stephen is bound head-to-toe in repression and religiosity, so who knows for sure what he wants. But as far as we can tell, Stephen isn't gay — so the advance is (at least mostly) unwanted.

The point is: close intimate friendship is OFTEN threatened by the possibility of romance. And Laura? She seems to find her companion very beautiful. She clearly enjoys the intimacy — playing with Carmilla's heavy hair, and so on. But that doesn't mean she's gay. She might not be. At one point she even gets excited by the idea that Carmilla might be a young suitor in disguise, courting her. Which tells you two things: Laura can't even imagine desire between two women as a real possibility — and she's fantasizing about being courted by Carmilla anyway. So the question under my question is: is Laura into the advances, and uncomfortable because they're forbidden? Or is she not entertaining them at all — this is her friend — and they're truly unwanted? Which, I'll admit, is a bit of a digression from what Rae is actually asking.

M

Idk. Rae — you can make that argument. My general sense is that Carmilla is no predator — at least not in the sense you're arguing for. But that doesn't mean it's not so. Different readers could experience her differently.

M

Hmmm. I mean, they are kind of useless, no doubt. I want to be sympathetic to the General — he did lose a daughter to her — but he baselessly killed a woman without any sort of trial. And there is ample evidence throughout history of killing women for all sorts of things. Salem witch trials, etc.

M

A mourning father's daughter dies of tuberculosis. He goes mad with his own mourning and superstition, and he ends up killing his friend's daughter's best friend — with the help of her father. So yea… they are far from protecting anyone. Bertha is dead. Carmilla is dead. Laura's poor soul is dead, and, as before, she has no companion.

M

Laura starts the book lonely — her sole desire is to find a bosom friend.

M

Yes! Walton! The lonely captain whose letters open Frankenstein. Funny how that romantic-era friendship always reads homoerotic, even when it isn't meant to be romantic. Here, I think it probably is. Doesn't that just make you want to give your best friend a kiss though!

M

I haven't read enough Foucault to agree or disagree, but I love the idea. And yea — repression is a monster. I felt no joy at the (spoiler) death of Carmilla. The fear of a beautiful woman killed that woman and left us with what? No Bertha? No Carmilla? No joy — we all loved her!

So you could read it that way — if you blamed the bodies piling up on malaria or tuberculosis, which is entirely plausible. In a world of many things to fear, we fear most the thing we actually love. Yeesh.