Carmilla and Female Desire

          Assigning the vampire role to a female character causes female desire to be seen as corrupt or not real when expressed openly; at the same time, that the victims remain female suggests that women require protecting in all cases. Le Fanu's Carmilla demonstrates the predatory desires of the vampire Carmilla while also emphasizing women's constant need for protection.

Carmilla demonstrates the corruption or falsity of female desire by claiming that Carmilla’s affections for Laura were a mere attempt to victimize her. In the conclusion of Carmilla, the narrator suggests that Carmilla’s actions in the schloss as a courtship of her victim; however, Laura takes care to emphasize that a vampire’s actions are not love though they may resemble it. Laura writes: “The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons… [I]n these cases, [the vampire will] husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure, and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship” (81). The passage above shows that a vampire’s attraction to its victims resembles that of a passionate lover’s to his beloved. Yet despite all resemblances to love, the vampire calculates the courtship as to lure the unwitting victim with the intent to hurt the person. The unstated premise here is that a "pure" love would not be so calculating. The description of Carmilla’s desire as corrupt suggests that female desire should not be expressed so openly; rather, the female’s role is to receive affections from a lover. In Carmilla's case, a woman risks becoming predatory and hurtful if she chooses to pursue her own desires.

The narrative also depicts Carmilla’s desire as corrupt in its homoerotic dimension. As suggested by the excerpt above, Carmilla’s desire is a mere copy of love-- that is, a man’s love for a woman. Both Laura and Bertha were subjected to the same “courtship” from Carmilla, and the narrative shows that Carmilla’s desire is not viable. The story rejects the possibility that Carmilla’s same-sex homoerotic romances can end happily, so her exploits always end in violence. In Bertha’s case, Carmilla’s actions resulted in Bertha’s death; in Laura’s case, Carmilla’s actions resulted in her own death (thanks to the intervention of the General and the Baron). Though Carmilla’s desire may resemble romance, the novella shows her corrupt desire can only result in pain--hers or another woman's.

Finally, the female sex of both the vampire and its victims serves to reinforce the idea that women are weak and need protecting. Carmilla shows that women need protection from predators and sometimes, as in Carmilla’s case, women need protecting from themselves. Laura and Bertha become prey to Carmilla’s advances after both of them had insisted to their fathers that Carmilla be invited to stay at their home (12; 63). The believed predatory nature of the vampire explains why both Laura and Bertha seemed to have been mesmerised into allowing Carmilla to stay close with them; both Laura and Bertha need to be protected since neither of them knew that they were falling into a trap. However, the novella does not seem clear on who will be capable of protecting women since Carmilla bypasses both the General and Laura’s father. As for Carmilla, the Baron’s intimation that suicide results in vampirism suggests that Carmilla may have taken her own life. At the very least, the narrative only offers suicide as the possible cause for becoming a vampire. If Carmilla had committed suicide then she needed protecting from herself. But as in Laura’s and Bertha’s case, the story is not clear on who could have protected her.