Carmilla By Sheridan Le Faun

 Carmilla 

By Sheridan Le Faun

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Faun (That is one hell of a name) was born in Dublin on August 28th, 1814 to Thomas Philip Le Faun and Emma Lucretia Dobbin. His family was Huguenot, French Protestants who fled abuse and prosecution in French to settle in England and later Ireland. Sheridan was the middle child of three, having an older sister and a younger brother. He was also the grandson of playwrights, and his mother Emma was a published writer, most known for her biography of Charles Orpen, the founder of the first school for the Deaf in Ireland. So it is little wonder that he was writing poetry before he was even 15. His family moved around a lot due to religious and political upheaval in Ireland, specifically the Tithe War. In short, the Tithe war was an uprising over whether Catholic Irishmen should be taxed to support Protestant ministers and churchmen like Sheridan's father (On principle I say no.  It is wrong to tax the members of the indigenous religion to support the clergy of the settler-colonialists {I would argue it’s wrong to force people outside of your religion to pay for it’s upkeep in general but I suppose at this point we’re splitting hairs(I don't really have a problem with a system whereby tax dollars are used for the upkeep of old churches or as part of a conflict avoidance-system etc)}.  But of course, this is Great Britain, which ruleth the waves and crushes the Irish underfoot.  Granted, Sheridan’s family were literally refugees so that’s a bit different.). 

Sheridan Le Faun studied law at Trinity College in Dublin and was elected Auditor of the College Historical Society. Strangely enough, he attended few lectures, instead, he studied from home and took examinations at the campus when needed. He was called to the bar in 1839 but never actually practiced law, instead preferring journalism. In 1838 he had written and published his first ghost story, in 1840 he was the owner of several newspapers. He married in 1844 to Susanna Bennett, daughter of a leading Irish barrister. In 1847 he publically campaigned against indifference towards the Irish Famine, writing a 40-page analysis bluntly calling it a national disaster, this cost him heavily and at the very least lost him a chance to run for Parliament and earned him enemies in the Tory Party (Because heaven forbid an Irishman protest the genocide-by-neglect of his people.). By 1856 he was living in a house owned by his in-laws and Susanna was suffering a mental breakdown. She would die after a hysteric attack in 1858 (Uh.  Okay, medical and historical note here.  “Hysteria”, from the root word Hyst for Uterus was a catch-all term 19th and even 20th-century doctors used to describe any illness or symptoms a woman might have that they could not be bothered to actually investigate or accept the actual existence of.  She probably had some sort of organic problem like cancer that they just dismissed because she was a woman and they were all, according to those doctors, prone to uncontrollable fits of fancy that originate in her women-parts.  By the way, this sort of bullshit where doctors don’t believe women when they say something is wrong continues to this day, and it is why women have poorer medical outcomes across the board than men.  Rant over, please continue with your regularly scheduled Review.). The details of the attack have been lost to history. This stopped Le Faun from writing until 1861 when his mother passed away. He then kept writing until his death by a heart attack in 1873. 

Le Faun wrote widely, writing historical fiction mostly set in Ireland as well as contemporary novels based on criminal biographies. His longest-lasting works are his horror stories, however.  He wrote the earliest locked room mystery series titled Uncle Silas.  Another notable title, the mystery historical novel The House by the Churchyard also has a great amount of horror in it.  Lastly of course is the topic of today's review: Carmilla, which was released in 1872. Le Faun is widely considered one of the fathers of the Victorian ghost story and having heavily influenced mystery and horror genres at the same time. I think Carmilla might be one of his longest-lasting legacies in literature and popular culture, especially considering how the character, or at least some version of her, keeps reappearing in movies, television, and other novels. Not to mention how it impacts vampire fiction as a whole. Let's summarize real quick, shall we? 

Carmilla is told to us in first-person narrative through the eyes of Laura, the only child of an Englishmen who settled on the eastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Oh no). Her mother passed away when she was very young so she is close to her father. She has had, however, an isolated upbringing and because of this is rather lonely especially for the company of girls her own age (Which makes her vulnerable to the allure of Lesbianism? {read and find out}). This loneliness is made all the sharper when news that her father's best friend won't be visiting or bringing his niece, because of her sudden death (Oh that’s not good, but not uncommon in this time period…). What has caused her death, her fathers' best friend General Spielsdorf won't say (But the doctors probably called it “hysteria”{but the general didn’t}) but promises to explain later after a needed trip to Vienna. This loneliness is assuaged when a sudden carriage crash on the road in front of their home brings Carmilla, a girl Laura's age of aristocratic background, to stay with him while her Mother continues on a mysterious journey of her own. Laura is distracted by this when she realizes that she's seen Carmilla before in a dream she had when she was six when she had a nightmare of a beautiful woman slipping into bed with and attacking her. A woman with Carmilla's face. Carmilla claims to have seen Laura in a dream at the same time and starts charming her way into Laura's affections (Oh no!  Predatory Lesbianism!  This must be the Trope’s origin!). 

As time passes Carmilla and Laura become closer but Laura can't help but notice that her friend has some odd habits, like not rising until well past noon. She also always sleeps with her room locked and seems affected by some kind of languid manner. She also never joins the family in their prayers and refuses to answer any questions about her past. Still, Laura is desperate for any company that isn't someone at least 15 years older than her and Carmilla is charming and affectionate enough to paper over these danger signs (Eh.  I mean, Atheism and Depression.  Wait, am I a red flag? {I don’t know do you also use elaborate ruses to insert yourself in other people’s families and then isolate your target while lying about your very identity to people?} Nyet!). 

Danger signs they are too, because it's not too long before strange and awful things begin to happen. The daughters of the local peasants begin to die in their sleep. Carmilla shows no sympathy, even scolding Laura for joining in singing hymns for the dead. Strange signs show up, for example when a shipment of restored old paintings is brought back to their home, one of them a portrait of a Countess Karnstein that looks just like Carmilla. While Laura laughs it off and even hangs the portrait in her room as a keepsake of her friend... Unease starts to build. Then Laura starts taking ill and having terrible dreams of her own. Dreaming of a fell beast in the shape of a large black mountain cat that crawls into bed with her and drains her dry. Carmilla is found to have been sleepwalking at night but focuses on comforting Laura, but her comfort takes a strange and dark turn, as Carmilla whispers that even though Laura dies, Carmilla will carry her within herself (Creepy…). In the last dream, Laura has, a voice rings out from the darkness “Your Mother warns you of an assassin!” Laura wakes to see Carmilla at the foot of her bed... Covered from chin to waist to blood and wakes screaming. Which to be fair, who wouldn't? 

Laura is no Victorian maid however, she may live in a heap of stone and wood dating from the medieval period but it's still healthier than the average Victorian home (This is true.  Medieval peasant homes were way the fuck less toxic than just the paint in any Victorian home.  Lead flakes everywhere…{In this case it’s more a manor house} Same thing.  Plaster whitewash and paints made of natural pigments are way the hell healthier than lead paint everywhere.). For that matter, Laura has been exercising regularly since she was a small child and eating a healthy peasant diet instead of Victorian fare (Also a thing! When they had food that wasn’t pilfered by the nobility, peasants actually had a pretty healthy diet.  Lots of veggies, some grain, very very little sugar, abundant dairy and a little meat now and then.{To be fair she also drank a lot of tea, her Father insisted they do so to maintain their essential Britishness}). So she is not just gonna collapse from something as small as massive blood loss or the emotional shock of seeing her only friend covered in blood. Because she can take a hard shock… Unlike some protagonists.  On top of that, she has the kind of relationship where she tells her father about her weird dreams and Carmilla's weird idea of comfort! Her father does what any right-thinking parent does when their kid is sick and dreaming weird stuff besides, he calls a bloody doctor! Who then proceeds to listen to Laura and perform basic medicine!  The doctor examines Laura and finds two small pin-sized wounds in her upper chest, he then gives directions that Laura is never to be left alone and he needs to call in a specialist, which you know isn't that like modern medicine always needing specialists to actually get a treatment completed? 

It's at this point that General Spielsdorf returns and convinces Laura's family to join him at the ruin of the Karnstein manor. It's there he explains that some time ago, he met a woman and her daughter at a masquerade. Despite not seeing her face the mother convinced him that they were old friends and asked him to look after her daughter while she attended some mysterious business. The General's niece, a lonely girl excited at the idea of companionship her own age, convinced him to say yes (Oh no…{Oh Yes}). The girl in question charmed the family despite never rising before noon or joining them at their prayers. However, soon the girls of nearby villages began to die in their sleep and the General's niece took ill and died, her body empty of blood. The General went to Vienna to track down some vampire hunters and found the name of his nemesis: Mircalla Karnstein, whose grave had been hidden by an old lover. They dig her up and stake and behead her and Laura heals. 

Carmilla is a short story but a well-written one. Its main weakness lies in its narration style, which means that we don't really get shown the different characters but instead are told about them through Laura's eyes. Additionally the fact that Laura is the one narrating does drain a bit of the suspense out of the story in my opinion. The secondary weakness is an artifact of the time and places it was written in I feel. Laura is a very passive character and in the end is saved by the men around her and plays very little direct role in her own deliverance (Except for surviving.  I mean, massive blood loss…{sure but that’s passive, not active}). Mina in Dracula is a much more active character and Dracula is written only some 20 years later (Mr. Stoker, however, was queer as fuck and hung around with Lord Byron though… Little different from the Huguenot Widower in that respect.).  That said I respect Laura more than Aubrey, I’ll admit that. Much like Vampyre, this is a story very much carried by its villain.

Carmilla is the first-named woman vampire in English literature as far as I can hunt it down. That's not even her primary importance, if you ask me. Where Lord Ruthven is a harsh predator, often all but rampaging through society, Carmilla takes pains to camouflage herself, building a relationship with her main victim. She takes on the aspect of an abusive partner here, gaslighting and isolating her victim. Acting like an attentive, supportive friend in public but in private draining her victims dry and enjoying it. Because of this, Carmilla also takes on lesbian overtones, since she prefers female victims pretty much exclusively and her relationship with her main victims takes on sexual and toxic romantic overtones (Yeah, she is literally the Origin Story of that particular queer trope in literature.). Given the opinion society had of same-sex relationships at the time, it helped tie the idea of vampires to what was considered deviant behavior at the time and I think people preferred to pay attention to this rather than the abusive partner aspect in most adaptations (Well, that’s because domestic abuse was perfectly normal.  Even the doctor's gaslit women, all the time.  It was considered the forefront of medical science.). 

While I've seen media that tries to reinvent Carmilla as a figure of female empowerment against male hierarchies (Usually in Aristocratic Girlboss form, the sort that needs to be unalived in a basement by the forces of the revolution…{but she’s already unalive?} Then she needs to be re-unalived {The stabbing will continue until rigor mortis sets in!}), I don't think that's the point of the character. Carmilla is a woman who preys and tears down other women, which isn't very feminist, is it? Instead, Carmilla is a predator who hides in that same hierarchy, using it as camouflage and cover for her own abusive and predatory acts. Carmilla frankly upholds the old power structure because it is the very environment that allows her to operate as she pleases.  It's more sophisticated and complex behavior than what we see in the Vampyre but it is the same basic behavior and we'll see more of it in Dracula. 

I enjoyed reading Carmilla a lot more than I did Vampyre, the text is easier to follow and the story is told in a much more interesting way. I think this is why Carmilla the character has stuck around, while Lord Ruthven was superseded by Dracula and faded away. That said there are profound weaknesses in the story and it does show its age by more than a little. If I had to grade it as a stand-alone story, it would be at best a C but the historical value of this lifts far above such a grade. I do encourage people to take a look for themselves and see if my comparison to an abusive relationship holds up. 

I hope you enjoyed our doubleheader opening of Fangsgiving!  Next week we’ll be stepping into a nonfiction overview of the Vampire mythos The Dead Travel Fast by Eric Nuzum.  This month’s theme and monster was chosen by our ever-wise patrons via poll at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Join us there for as little as a dollar a month to vote for themes, what books get reviewed and more!  Hope to see you soon.  Until then, stay safe and keep reading!