October 2012 Discussion: Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu (spoilers)
 

Let's discuss the October 2012 MobileRead Book Club selection, Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu. What did you think?

I didn't vote for this one, but I ended up reading Carmilla and the one that I did vote for...this one was better! So it was a good win.

I enjoyed the whole book, though when I finished it I liked it considerably less than I thought I would during the beginning and middle. Loved the atmosphere created, it was rich and very visual, though only somewhat spooky to me (being far more jaded, perhaps, than his original audience). I felt the characters were engaging and believable, in the main.

However,the story didn't end well for me partly because it somehow seemed rushed or maybe I just wanted more material dealing with unraveling the mystery, finding the culprit, and so on.

But the real buzz kill for me was his vampire paradigm...I mean, really?

I've read a lot of vampire books, and each one has a slant on the origins, rules for walking among humans, how to kill, etc., but this version just didn't hold up to common sense (did I just say vampires and common sense in the same sentence?!). So that downgraded my mental rating quite a bit.

That said, I would probably read it again because I liked the place that LeFanu took me to. I would just have to be better prepared to part company at the end.

The best part was the description of the killing of the vampire.

I thought it was interesting that it was basically a warning story against lesbianism. Like "Beware! Don't let your daughters or yourselves be lured by lesbianism because all that awaits is death and vampirism!" lol. But nevertheless it's interesting, even though it wasn't ever said outright, that he dealt with lesbianism here so openly. I think he may have been partly influenced into this female antagonist/female victims aspect by tales of Elizabeth Bathory.

I love the atmosphere; it's pure gothic. The story did resolve quickly but I like that the focus of the story was on expanding the atmosphere rather than the action. When the feeling or atmosphere of a story is good enough I can overlook inconsistencies easier, but still I wish the older lady, coachmen, et al had been explained. It seems all Carmilla's family had died out and all the other vampires of her family rooted out and killed, so who were these people helping her? I wouldn't have minded it left a mystery so much if I could conceive some sort of coherency but as it is her helpers don't seem to fit with the explanation at the end.

I didn't mind this. I took it as that somehow vampires can have two bodies - one comatose in the coffin and one living outside, and the one outside is sort of like a physically solid and warm superhuman ghost that is able to eat food, be in the sunlight and can transfer shapes and disappear, and that when it feeds on humans, the blood is transferred to the "real" comatose body in the coffin (possibly by the ghost visiting the coffin), where the pool of blood keeps that body alive. And that one can't well kill the ghost body but needs to kill the real body in the coffin, and when one does the ghost body is killed too.

Not that all that is so logical, but it makes some kind of sense and anything supernatural I take with a grain of salt. Also, I felt he tried to keep it all somewhat vague on purpose. I give him slack because the atmosphere is good and because this is one of the first vampire books.

In a word, I'd have to describe Carmilla as boring. It ranks extremely low in my personal list of 'good vampire books'. I had the sense that the story was being rushed through and to me it was painfully obvious that a male author was narrating as a female; I don't want that to be palpable and noticeable when I'm reading, because it throws the atmosphere.

Like victauria, I found the mythos of LeFanu's vampire weak at best. I really didn't enjoy the way that vampires are presented in this book, and in generally I am extremely un-fussy with my vampires. Alongside that, the vampire herself struck me as vapid and stupid throughout the entire novel - now that's just not a personality that I can associate with vampires and it's one of the reasons that certain sparkle-pires set my teeth on edge in a very similar way.

I'll give some of my own opinions about this remarkable work later on but for now I'll just mention an interesting source which deals with the interpretation of the novel.

Carmilla has been analysed in considerable depth. There is a "Scholarly edition" available for $3.68 from the Kindle store. It is edited, annotated and introduced by Jamieson Ridenhour.

The introduction is quite brilliant and profound. It deals with "The Literary Vampire" {the vampire of folklore, the Femme fatale, and the Byronic Vampire} and its relationship to Carmilla.

This selection of a paragraph taken from the introduction will give some idea of the comprehensive way the editor approaches the story:

"Thus, Carmilla has been read as a fable of repressed sexuality {with Carmilla representing Laura's own awakening sexual identity}, . . . and as a parable of patriarchal repression. . . . Other readings have highlighted ethnic differences, demonization of women, and Le Fanu's fascination with the spiritual theories of Emanuel Swedenborg. The multiple meanings critics continue to find in Le Fanu's short tale are a demonstration of the ways in which the vampire tale is itself a mirror, casting back a dark image of whatever society holds up to the cold surface."

After examining the Literary Vampire and some of the various theories and approaches to it, the editor goes on to discuss what is now probably the most interesting modern theory of the book. In a long section entitled "Blood Sacrifice and Irish Identity" Ridenhour gives a quite thorough discussion of the political overtones of Carmilla. Le Fanu was a member of the Anglo-Irish, Protestant ruling class, deeply suspicious of the ethnic, Catholic population--particularly those who advocated National Independence.

I am familiar with this approach to the work and I think that this part of the essay is quite comprehensive in its treatment of it.

Throughout the entire essay--which is about 20 percent of the total length of the ebook--significant and extended use is made of quotations from the book supportive of the positions taken.

The essay is probably what you are paying your money for. Personally, I think you get your money's worth both for the essay and the many useful footnotes.

The one problem with this edition is that there is no way of accessing specific chapters other than by using your own bookmarks--in fact, JSWolf provides a far superior text in terms of general formatting and ease of reading. So you'll have to decide for yourself if you think it's worth getting this ebook for its introduction.

One final point: Carmilla was originally presented as a four part serial over four months. The sequence was as follows:
Chapters 1-3
Chapters 4-6
Chapters 7-10
Chapters 11-16

I really enjoyed this story. I have been reading and enjoying more 19th century and early 20th century books this year than I have in a long time, so this fit in very well with that.

No in depth analysis from me, but I also wanted more background as to the group who left Carmilla. I am wondering if they were more vampires or what exactly. I suppose one advantage of reading a modern book would be that we can just go pester the author for the unanswered questions. :)

fantasyfan...thanks for talking about the scholarly edition. It does sound pretty interesting, and might be a big help in liking it more, or at least relating to it more.

Is the idea of suicide creating vampires addressed, do you recall? (That one still just baffles me....)

:rofl:

I have to admit that the first time I saw those vampires you refer to, day walking and sparkling, I had a real resistance. But the difference for me is that the paradigm is maintained and holds up throughout that particular world. The rules of their existence among humans was explained and the world was pretty cohesive. That's what is, for me, missing with Carmilla. I don't feel that LeFanu justified his world within the story.

But maybe the critique that fantasyfan mentions would help explain things.

Other then the description of the death of the vampire, I found it to be one of those stories where you wanted to slap everyone for missing the obvious. It was silly and it had 0 scare value. Why is it we allow books to be nominated for October that are not scarey in the least? Please, let's not do it again. The best thing about this was that it was short and the tedium of reading it wasn't too long.

The link between suicide and vampirism is associated with folk beliefs. Here's a snippet from Wikipedia on the subject:

"The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia; cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. However, despite the occurrence of vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity we know today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early-18th-century southeastern Europe, when verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but they can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or by being bitten by a vampire. Belief in such legends became so pervasive that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires."

The introduction to the Scholarly Edition does say that Le Fanu was drawing from folk traditions as well as the Byronic tradition--which is the one with which we are most familiar.

Concerning this introduction--If you download a free sample of the book to your Kindle I suspect that you'll get a good chunk of it.

It's been noted already in this thread, but for a book written in 1872 I was very surprised at the obvious homo-eroticism. While such passages are fare for family-hour on TV these days, they must have raised more than a few eyebrows 140 years ago. Where sun surfer sees the book as having been written as a warning story against lesbianism, I see it as a roundabout way to explore a topic that was taboo at the time. It appears to me that the author found the topic quite enticing, and any warnings against it seem to me to be lip service necessary in those days to avoid censor.

I've read it a lot of time ago (it was one old spanish traduction), but I can not agree with the idea of it as a warning against lesbianism. I see more of a way to explore sexuality and the tabus of the time it was written. It was the first book about female vampires, and it set a stereotype to our days, and not only for female vampires. Carmilla uses its beauty and feminine arts with her victims, who fall in love and voluntarily surrender to her. This too happens in Dracula, and in more modern vampire books.

I agree. The lavish descriptions in the book of the sexual tension between Carmilla and Laura are not of the sort that would have been written by an author who was repulsed by the subject.

Yes. I would tend to agree. But it is interesting that Laura is deeply conflicted about her feelings towards Carmilla:

"Now the truth is, I felt rather unaccountably towards the beautiful
stranger. I did feel, as she said, "drawn towards her," but there was
also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the
sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she
was so beautiful and so indescribably engaging."

So perhaps there is a comment on the contradiction of feelings which are socially acceptable and those which are innate and spontaneous but deemed to be unacceptable.

Now that I can accept. It does appear that Laura was struggling between her own innate desires and what the society of her day expected of her.

The book didn't do much for me.

Coincidentally, the book I'm currently reading (Anno Dracula, Dracula Cha Cha Cha), has a couple of passing references to Carmilla (the character) in it.

I liked this story in the sense that I thought the language was quite well done and I did like the idea of the story, a parasite being placed in the midst of a household in this manner.

However, what I suffered from here (as I do with most older classic horror stories) is the lack of immediacy in the writing. I have to work extra hard to place myself in the position of any of the characters which is a shame because in this case I would have found some scenes quite chilling.

This is not the fault of the novella as it's a product of its time. I have similar problems with H G Wells and Henry James, I have to work hard to get the atmosphere intended in the telling.

I can see why people would have issues with the explanation part at the end, but for me it seemed like it wasn't the point of the story. To me, the point was the chilling bedroom scenes, the insidious nature of Carmilla's friendship with Laura. So it doesn't surprise me that this could have been a cautionary tale about lesbianism or something similar.

What is that strange girl doing with your daughter behind closed doors?

Anyway - I liked it, it was a quick read, but I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get the impact I would have liked from it.

Nice creepy little tale, I enjoyed it.

I think that the references to Carmilla's "family" is a way giving what is a rather short localised novella an extended context. It means that Carmilla is only one facet of a problem which is part of the wider world of the book. She dies but there are others. They continue.

Personally, i found the actual horror of the tale lay in the psychological terror combined with a diseased acquiescence created in the mind of Laura. There is also the reference to the fact that a mindset which puts total reliance on "natural" explanations can be disastrous. This is even more powerfully seen in another novelette, "Green Tea". That awful, awful Monkey could be a psychological construct or it could be real. Maybe it's both. The altogether too facile "natural" assurances of Dr Hesselius at the end really fail to convey any certainty. And I don't think they are meant to do so.

BTW, one of the interesting features of the Scholarly Edition is the wealth of material about other literary references to the vampire including complete texts, e.g. Stoker's "Dracula's Guest" which are in an extended appendix.

I got the audiobook from the LibriVox. The attraction between Carmilla and Laura came out even more prominently in the audiobook, which was a bit distracting at few places as it made me wonder if I had downloaded the right book :D. I would not call it horror but a good selection overall.

I got the Audiovox version and the ebook versions, but abandoned the audio version and read the ebook. The audiobook was good, but this one for whatever reason was more enjoyable in my opinion in print.

Horror is one of the few genre that I can't really get into reading. The only way I could have read it was audiobook. In hindsight, I would have read it, had I started the ebook first.

I loved this one, as well. This book was a great read and brings in many parts of the Vampire legend. It builds off of early 19th century tales.

I agree with you on this.

As for the lebianism... While I agree that Laura seemed quite conflicted - attraction & attention vs social norms - I think Carmilla's advances were strictly a well practiced means to an end. I think that at some point, she found that young, innocent, lonely girls made easy marks. There would be no competition for her attention.

Overall, after a relatively slow and plodding start, this turned into something quite striking. It wasn't the story itself, which was very predictable, but the legend of the vampire given at the end, that I found interesting.