Carmilla as Femme Fatale and Feminist Prototype in Le Fanu

Carmilla as Femme Fatale: Seduction, Isolation, and Female Desire

Carmilla chooses her victims — young women isolated from society and without friendship — mainly because they are easy prey. She is a sensual, tender, and affectionate woman herself: beautiful to behold, as Laura describes: "She was slender, and wonderfully graceful…her complexion was rich and brilliant; her features were small and beautifully formed; her eyes large, dark, and lustrous" (Fanu 30). Bertha is a young woman intended to meet and befriend Laura, until she falls victim to Carmilla; Laura is equally young and eager for a confidante. The fact that Carmilla first introduces herself to Laura when Laura is a girl crying because she has been left alone in the nursery suggests that Carmilla is an altogether different kind of femme fatale — not one who preys upon men to achieve her own aims, but rather one whose very nature compels her to seek the embrace of young women, and then their blood.

Why does Carmilla choose to seduce women when she could just as easily, one assumes, seduce men? The answer is that Carmilla is attracted to women and they to her. Whether the attraction is merely sexual or part of a gender formation that rivals the patriarchal power structure of the Victorian era is perhaps incidental in the light of the greater significance that is Carmilla. As Kathleen Costello-Sullivan states, the Victorian foundation was crumbling, and the popularity of the vampire in Gothic literature signaled the "Victorian uncertainty" (xviii) regarding a patriarchal society that had built itself upon the Church and then abandoned the Church for science and reason. In Carmilla, the patriarchs have their revenge on one who destabilizes their power by decapitating the title character and burning her body parts.

If Laura longs for a friend and companion, it may be said that Carmilla longs just as much for a female companion and lover from whom she can take blood. Trapped in a state of isolation — both because of her desires and her undead existence — Carmilla must achieve what she wants covertly, making friends through deception, changing her name everywhere she goes, and lurking in the night to find satisfaction. In this context, Carmilla's vampirism appears more sympathetic; her anger at Laura for singing a Christian hymn at a passing funeral is the result of a bitterness at her own inability to pass into the next world, held back as she is by the curse that keeps her undead. There is a tragedy hidden in the story of Carmilla, and it is rooted in her exclusion from the natural rights of others.

That her "friendships" tend to be deadly for the other is what makes Carmilla a femme fatale. Without this lethal aspect to her persona, Carmilla at once becomes more than a type: she becomes a complex being with real humanity. Such an individual would have been absolutely unconventional for Victorian audiences — thus, the lesbian persona had to be presented within the vampire trope and molded within the femme fatale type: her embrace brings joy; her mouth brings death.

The Friston Illustration: Sympathy, Patriarchy, and Visual Meaning

In the illustration by D. H. Friston, the reader sees Carmilla half-leaning, half-climbing into the bed, reaching toward the chest of the General's niece, Bertha Rheinfeldt. Bertha is exposed from the chest up, a prominent bosom on full display, concealed materially only by the form-fitting thin fabric of a nightgown. Her head is turned to the left, her left arm extended back over the pillow behind her head, and her long golden hair flows outward to her right. The outline of her legs is discernible under the bed's blankets, and they appear to be slightly parted. Her position suggests a number of interpretations: she may be in deep slumber, caught in the feverish struggle of sickness, or in the climax of sexual sensation. From the waist up she is bathed in a kind of ethereal light. Carmilla, on the other hand, is bathed in shadow.

What is she reaching for? Is she reaching to snatch the beauty that belongs to her victim? Is she reaching to begin a ravishing embrace? To steal her life? Her face indicates no evil threat, no perverse desire. There is in it rather a curious fascination, as though Carmilla were an innocent, aroused by the beauty of the goddess-like woman before her, wanting only to reach out and touch it — to crawl out from her dark corner and feel its glory. This original pictorial representation of Carmilla gives a subtle suggestion as to the sympathies of both artist and novelist: as Žižek states, it is the ability to "elevate the everyday, trivial object into a sublime Thing" (117) that separates the masters from the amateurs. Here, the sublimity of the sketch is found in the sympathetic portrayal of Carmilla, the femme fatale.

In the background, General Spielsdorf approaches with a sword, ready to do violence to Carmilla, as though he represents the established order determined to ensure that no one taints the purity of the princess in bed. His sword is held waist-high, and the image carries certain phallic connotations, as though his masculinity were more a threat to both women than Carmilla is to Bertha. The image, taken on its own, gives an uninitiated reader no sense of the evil that Carmilla is represented to be in the story. One wonders whether the artist betrays some sympathy with the titular character, pitted as she is against a patriarchal power structure and an elitist purity that keeps her hidden, dark, and oppressed.

Carmilla, Mary Magdalene, and the Religious Undercurrent

Indeed, there is almost a holiness about Carmilla, whose head is covered by a long veil, as though she were a medieval woman covering her hair in a church out of respect for the Holy of Holies in the sanctuary. She could remind the viewer of Mary Magdalene — for the beauty in her face and the piety in her demeanor. There is a degree of reverence in the posture of Carmilla, too, seen as she is bent at the waist with one arm stretched out: she appears to be making a gesture of obeisance and supplication while simultaneously finding herself unable to resist the lure of the beautiful Bertha. The parallel that can be drawn between Carmilla and Mary Magdalene, the sinner turned saint, is striking — Mary Magdalene possessed so strong a love for Christ that she was among the first to learn of His resurrection, before any of the male heirs to the Apostleship. Just as Mary Magdalene combines sensuality and spirituality in her character, so too does Carmilla combine the two. Just as Mary Magdalene may be seen reaching forward to touch the sandal of Jesus who saves her from stoning, so too can one interpret the image as Carmilla reaching out to touch the breast of Bertha, which contains the life-giving solution to Carmilla's needs. Yet, is Carmilla to be considered an anti-Magdalene because she ultimately crosses a line set by the Church's doctrine? Or is she simply misunderstood within a patriarchal power structure that restricts female sexuality so severely that it is rendered nearly obsolete — represented by the darkness that covers Carmilla?

Laura's depiction of her first meeting with Carmilla is in fact indicative of the religious aspect that lies subtly below the surface of the novella. Carmilla presents herself to Laura in a most pious manner, as though praying for admittance: "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" (Fanu 8). Laura's reaction is not fright — for she had been vexed at being left alone in the nursery. Now, as later in the story when she is older but equally isolated, a new "friend" comes to see her, bringing affection: "she caressed me with her hands…and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed" — and an almost mystical experience for Laura, who "looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder" (Fanu 8). Yet when Carmilla attempts to take from Laura a return of pleasure, Laura cries out, startled by the feeling of "two needles" sticking into her breast. Her cry appears to startle Carmilla just as much: "The lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me" — yet the way in which Carmilla hides under the bed may appear less innocent when considered in the light of the childhood stories in which monsters lurk out of sight underneath one's bed.

The "Carmilla experience" is soon replaced by the "priest experience" as Laura is visited by a new kneeling, praying individual — the "white-haired old man, in his black cassock"…with the "thoughtful sweet face" (Fanu 10). He prays with his entourage, "Lord hear all good prayers for us, for Jesus' sake," in an attempt to ward off the evil that has apparently so distressed Laura (Fanu 10).

Thus one sees in the presence of the priest the Victorian Age's answer to the awakening of the sexual appetite: prayer. That Carmilla's bedside manner is replicated this time by a man whose vocation is defined by celibacy — the exact opposite of Carmilla's sensuality — may suggest that the patriarchal control of that era was based on an anti-sex ideology. Here, the male authority prays (just as Carmilla appeared to be praying), but not for admittance to Laura's bed: rather, one can assume that part of his prayer is that no one be admitted to Laura's bed to do her harm. The spiritual man replaces the sensual woman, whose spirit is driven by sensuality and rooted in female sexuality. The patriarchal response is to override the sensations caused by this exposure to female sexuality by insisting on prayer, with the ultimate focus coming to rest on Jesus.

The religious connotations of this early scene are important in understanding the interplay between religion, sexuality, feminism, and the patriarchal power structure. As Rosemary Radford Ruether states in her assessment of the Catholic Church and its disposition toward feminist ideology, "traditional views of women and sexuality" are still maintained within the patristic nature of the Church, which even today "is still pursuing a global crusade against abortion, birth control, and redefinitions of the family that might include homosexual couples" (184). Ironically, Laura postulates that "it is the nature of vampires to increase and multiply" (Fanu 111). This reference to the divine dictate to Noah in Genesis 9:7 suggests a still greater significance to the Carmilla femme fatale: she represents a new order transposed upon the old Christian order — instead of begetting children in the old order, Carmilla begets vampires like herself, new beings with their own codes and sexual needs.

Conclusion: Carmilla's Enduring Spirit

Thus, the fear that the Victorian Age has of Carmilla is that she is more powerful, ultimately, than the patriarchs who head the era. Their "juridical systems" prohibit the license that Carmilla takes — and the lethality of her license is what they condemn: the awakening of female sexuality and lesbianism is something that must be suppressed or eradicated fully. And yet the novel suggests that the eradication process, while desirable to those in power, is not effective. Laura still possesses the longings that Carmilla awakened in her, and while she sleeps better at night — having suffered none of the disturbances that plagued her during Carmilla's visits — she finds herself musing on the sweet presence that was Carmilla and the touch that she gave and the sensations they aroused.

It is clear that Carmilla seduces through affection and sensual caresses. She preys upon the lonely and isolated and enters their hearts through displays of piety and tenderness. Yet when she bites, she poisons, drawing life from her victims, in whose blood she sleeps inside her coffin. Le Fanu's Carmilla, then, stands as an enduring Gothic text precisely because it refuses to resolve the contradiction at its center: Carmilla is simultaneously predator and sympathetic outcast, femme fatale and feminist prototype, monster and martyr — and it is this irresolvability that has allowed her to haunt literary criticism long after the patriarchs of the Victorian Age have themselves turned to dust.

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