By Narayan Saimbi
When we think of vampires, I’m sure a few familiar names and faces come to mind. Dracula would be one of them. Edward Cullen would be another. Maybe even The Count from Sesame Street, for the more cultured amongst us. But I want to shed some light on the sharp-toothed seductive predecessor to all of these iterations of the vampire that we know and love today. Enter Carmilla, the demonic brainchild of Sheridan Le Fanu.
The Plot
Carmilla opens with our introduction to the main character Laura, a young girl who lives a secluded life in a castle in Styria. Through what appears to be an accident, Laura comes in contact with a mysterious, seductive yet seemingly kind-hearted woman called Carmilla, who moves into Laura’s home to rest and recover. Little does Laura know that she has invited the greatest evil Styria has ever known straight into her family home.
Before long, things start to take a strange turn for Laura, and an even darker turn for Styria. Young girls around the village fall unwell, all showing the same symptoms. At the same time, Carmilla displays very intense feelings of emotion towards Laura, which Laura finds both intriguing and slightly alarming. To round all of this off, Laura has a very distrubing visit from a black cat in her sleep, followed by a sharp pain in her chest. After this encounter, Laura begins to fall ill with the same symptoms as the other girls in the village.
As Laura’s illness develops, Carmilla vanishes from the Styrian manor without warning. After meeting with General Spielsdorf, a man whose niece was killed by Carmilla, he reveals that Carmilla’s true identity is Countess Millarca, a noblewoman who resided in Karnstein in the 17th century. With this information, as well as confirmation that Carmilla was the black cat that attacked Laura, the General, Laura and her father travel to Karnstein in search of Carmilla.
Upon arriving in Karnstein, they find Carmilla- however, she manages to run away. The party do however find Baron Vordenburg, a descendant of an old hero who slayed vampires in the past. With Baron’s information, the party find Carmilla’s tomb and drive a stake through her heart the next morning, effectively killing her for good.
What It Means to Be a Vampire
A lot of what we associate with vampiricism is clearly evident in Le Fanu’s novella. Carmilla’s charming nature, her long life and her malicious night time activities are very reminiscent of Bram Stoker’s Dracula– as well as the fact that Carmilla also rests in a coffin-like abode.
The metamorphic nature that Carmilla displays also seems to have been a precursor for the baseline of ‘what makes a vampire’- at least until the early 2000s. Whilst Dracula is synonymous for turning into a bat, the Twilight depiction of vampires omits this key physiological aspect, in favour of clunky dialogue and teen romance. Whilst metamorphising into a creature of the night seems to be in the classic definition of the vampire, the 21st century appears to be shifting this definition, in accordance with new audiences and their tastes in media. Of course, you can’t expect people to like the same thing forever, and most modern adaptations of the vampire do keep the classic traits of the vampire intact (case in point, the Castlevania series).
Yet, there is certainly a shift in tone away from maintaining the definition of the vampire, or even developing it in any meaningful way. Media like Twilight and The Vampire Diaries have shown that you can strip the vampire to its bare bones and sharp teeth, throw in a surface level plot and story arc and still call the characters ‘vampires’, despite them not sharing much detail with the original source material that the creature derives from.
Image credits: Printerval
Carmilla laid the foundations of what it means to be a vampire, with Dracula developing those building blocks to bring the creature more to the mainstream. But in recent times, the vampire has lost its way in popular culture and media. Instead of being the feared blood-sucking creature that it was known as, vampires are instead associated with teen romance and badly written Netflix shows. Having said that, there is a rennaisance of the classic vampire on the horizon- the success of the 2024 Nosferatu remake and Netflix’s recent Castlevania adaptations are evident of that. We can only hope that the image of the vampire is restored again. I’ll take Carmilla over Cullen any day of the week.
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