Carmilla (Blog 1 Response) - Bethany Stayer

I feel the gendering in this story plays a large part in why Laura finds herself susceptible to the attentions of the vampire Carmilla. Women are stereotypically the physically weaker sex, and they are in general less aggressive. The average person would be significantly more likely to trust a woman over a man because they would see this person as less threatening - especially during the Victorian age where women are expected to be very effeminate and submissive.

Carmilla’s beauty (feminine nature) only enhances the general feeling of trust between her and the others in the story. Carmilla even says (when recalling her and Laura's first meeting), that she should not be fearful of Laura because she is so young and beautiful, implying that Laura should feel the same for the same reasons.

Laura, on meeting Carmilla after the carriage crash, was likely even more susceptible to her than the average young girl given that Laura was not only fairly young and naïve (given her general isolation from the world) but that she was already desperately seeking a friend her age to share her youth with. Laura was given what she wanted and chose (at least at first) not to see indications that Carmilla might not be what she seemed. Even the general discomfort that haunted Laura when Carmilla would embrace her would be ultimately ignored in favor of maintaining her only friendship. Laura’s naiveté and loneliness made her very weak to what Carmilla was offering.

It is also worth noting, again, that were Carmilla a man the two would have had a very different relationship; in which Laura might not only have been less trusting, but she would also presumably be forbidden to do certain things that might have seemed inappropriate like playing alone unsupervised and sharing kisses on the cheek. Instead even when Carmilla’s attentions have a distinct sexual overtone, Laura only asks if they are related and does not equate them to sexual advances in the same way that she might have if Carmilla was a man. Even onlookers to their relationship would find nothing inappropriate about two girls sharing a close companionship, but were one a male and one female others would inevitably take notice and comment on its appropriateness. This is likely why Carmilla focuses on female victims.