chapter one
I can’t have been more than six years old, when one night I awoke, and looking round the room from my bed, failed to see the nursery maid. Neither was my nurse there; and I thought myself alone. I was not frightened, for I was one of those happy children who are studiously kept in ignorance of ghost stories, of fairy tales, and of all such lore as makes us cover up our heads when the door cracks suddenly, or the flicker of an expiring candle makes the shadow of a bedpost dance upon the wall, nearer to our faces. I was vexed and insulted at finding myself, as I conceived, neglected, and I began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty bout of roaring; when to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young lady who was kneeling, with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hid herself under the bed.
the prose in this is so vivid… i think i’d love gothic fiction like this if i read more of it. the little i’ve read of it is works in a gothic style by a close friend, and this is my first foray into classic gothic fiction. the foreshadowing of the vampiric presence in this book is masterful and i’m barely into the first chapter.
chapter two
Before then I had no idea of her danger. I have lost her, and now learn all, too late. She died in the peace of innocence, and in the glorious hope of a blessed futurity. The fiend who betrayed our infatuated hospitality has done it all. I thought I was receiving into my house innocence, gaiety, a charming companion for my lost Bertha. Heavens! what a fool have I been!
I thank God my child died without a suspicion of the cause of her sufferings. She is gone without so much as conjecturing the nature of her illness, and the accursed passion of the agent of all this misery. I devote my remaining days to tracking and extinguishing a monster. I am told I may hope to accomplish my righteous and merciful purpose. At present there is scarcely a gleam of light to guide me.
i like the vibe that carmilla pulled this kind of trick prior to the story being told now. i don’t know how this ends of course but if it ends with laura dead by carmilla’s hand then i think there’s something cyclical there and that cyclical something is kind of gothic to my untrained eye
chapter three
There were candles at the bedside. She was sitting up; her slender pretty figure enveloped in the soft silk dressing gown, embroidered with flowers, and lined with thick quilted silk, which her mother had thrown over her feet as she lay upon the ground.
What was it that, as I reached the bedside and had just begun my little greeting, struck me dumb in a moment, and made me recoil a step or two from before her? I will tell you.
I saw the very face which had visited me in my childhood at night, which remained so fixed in my memory, and on which I had for so many years so often ruminated with horror, when no one suspected of what I was thinking.
It was pretty, even beautiful; and when I first beheld it, wore the same melancholy expression.
But this almost instantly lighted into a strange fixed smile of recognition.
homosexual behavior to immediately recall the face of a woman that frightened you as a child and in the moment find her pretty and beautiful just as she was when you were a child
“Your looks won me; I climbed on the bed and put my arms about you, and I think we both fell asleep. I was aroused by a scream; you were sitting up screaming. I was frightened, and slipped down upon the ground, and, it seemed to me, lost consciousness for a moment; and when I came to myself, I was again in my nursery at home. Your face I have never forgotten since. I could not be misled by mere resemblance. You are the lady whom I saw then.”
equally homosexual behavior. i love that they have this hazy, dreamlike history with each other, that neither of them can truly confirm but feel so strongly and intrinsically about each other. the story le fanu tells is so short and fast yet so layered; foreshadowing and double meanings of course, but also, the characterization of laura as lonely as she is and therefore vulnerable, and the ghostly, dreamlike presence that carmilla has brought to their house, by apparent accident. lots of set up and meaning in every word and event.
“I don’t know which should be most afraid of the other,” she said, again smiling—“If you were less pretty I think I should be very much afraid of you, but being as you are, and you and I both so young, I feel only that I have made your acquaintance twelve years ago, and have already a right to your intimacy; at all events it does seem as if we were destined, from our earliest childhood, to be friends. I wonder whether you feel as strangely drawn towards me as I do to you; I have never had a friend—shall I find one now?” She sighed, and her fine dark eyes gazed passionately on me.
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.
(girl who has limited exposure to lesbian media besides the handmaiden (2016) voice) getting a lot of handmaiden (2016) vibes from this. the immediate attraction to a girl who seems to mirror you in loneliness, especially after finding that you share this strange dream and subsequent history… is it gay tradition to be enchanted by strange weird girls who suddenly come into your life. also there’s a bit of a siren quality to carmilla here, or at least in how laura is entranced by and attracted to her.
chapter four
She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.”
And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.
CANNOT get gayer than this. my god. “I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine” — what am impactful line. if carmilla is enchanting and seducing laura she’s also doing those things to me.
“You are afraid to die?”
“Yes, every one is.”
“But to die as lovers may—to die together, so that they may live together.
Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don’t you see—each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. So says Monsieur Buffon, in his big book, in the next room.”
i have nothing to add except that this is very much my thing.