Carmilla

Carmilla, much like Dracula, seems to seek out young, beautiful women as victims—temporarily picking a noble girl to live with and slowly feed off of, while more quickly killing local commoner women for sustenance. She is not only predatory, but also very seductive. Vampires are often highly eroticized, as are their feeding practices, and Carmilla is no exception. Laura constantly refers to Carmilla’s behavior as like that of a lover, and though she does not put it in these terms, Carmilla seems intent on a sort of seduction. Laura is disturbed by this but also somewhat receptive, in part because she is very lonely and almost never gets to interact with people her own age. At the same time she seems put off by Carmilla’s advances and doesn’t quite know what to make of them. It is difficult to tell whether this is because Carmilla is a woman or because Laura senses that there is something off about her. We are more used to the standard template of seeing male vampires biting women, particularly as an act which has sexual overtones. Those same overtones are present in Carmilla, giving the 1872 novella an unexpectedly homoerotic subtext.

Carmilla actually conforms to many of our ideas of what makes a vampire. She is largely nocturnal, drinks blood, has shapeshifting abilities, is unusually beautiful and hypnotic, and sleeps in her coffin when possible. She is also only killed once a wooden stake is driven through her heart and her head is cut off.