This article contains spoilers for the following shows, film(s), and book(s): Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (1872), Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009), and the Carmilla Web Series (2014-2016).
In a previous article, I discussed only a few pieces of media in the speculative fiction world that tackled sapphic representation, and the highs and lows that came with them. In this next piece regarding sapphic representation, I want to take a moment to highlight a very important figure in the sapphic sphere: Carmilla the vampire, and how the original work as well as references and adaptations of the character have impacted sapphic representation, specifically lesbian representation, over the years.
To start, let’s take it waaaay back to the 1800s. The outstanding and influential novella, Carmilla, was written by Sheridan Le Fanu and published in 1872. The novella is described as a gothic horror and is considered one of the first pieces of vampire fiction, as well as the start of the female vampire and lesbian vampire archetypes (Vučković).
If you’ve never read, or even heard of, Carmilla the novella, then here’s a general run down of the events of the story. Carmilla opens in Styria, Austria, with a 6-year-old Laura waking in the middle of the night to a woman at her bedside. The woman—Carmilla—slips into bed with the young Laura and holds her, and just when Laura is about to fall back to sleep, she feels a piercing sensation on her chest, making her cry out in pain (Sheridan Le Fanu). Carmilla flees soon after and when Laura’s father and the nurses rush into the room, they see nothing. Although the spot next to Laura in the bed is warm, Laura’s father chalks it up to a bad dream and leaves it at that.
Fast forward many years, and Laura is now a teenager. Laura and her father catch sight of a carriage crashing near their castle. An older lady and a young woman around Laura’s age emerge from the wreckage. The young woman bears a striking resemblance to the woman from Laura’s childhood encounter. The older woman requests that her daughter, Carmilla, stays with Laura and her father at the castle, as she has urgent business to attend to elsewhere. Laura’s father accepts and thus begins a fast friendship between Laura and Carmilla. Carmilla stays with Laura’s family for many months and over that time, Laura begins to have nightmares and starts to feel unwell. At first, they don’t associate her condition with Carmilla’s presence, but as the months pass by and Laura’s condition continues to worsen, Carmilla’s presence grows more suspicious. Despite this, Laura’s time with Carmilla is something that she enjoys and they develop an increasingly intimate bond.
Eventually, Laura and her father travel to Karnstein, a village in Styria, to meet with a man named General Spielsdorf who shares how his niece suffered from an illness that sounds very similar to Laura’s condition. He also claims to have seen a creature at her bedside. When Carmilla shows up to the village soon after, the General recognizes her as the creature that hurt his niece. Carmilla flees captivity in that moment, and although Laura is heartbroken at this discovery, she still can’t help but feel affection towards Carmilla and their time together. However, in the end, the General and Laura’s father find Carmilla within a tomb in Karnstein and take it upon themselves to stake, burn, and decapitate her, thus ending the plague on the region (Sheridan Le Fanu).
Carmilla is an interesting case, because even though it was published in 1872, the main antagonistic feature of Carmilla was never her sexuality in itself. It was the fact that she was, simply, a vampire that brought a horrible blight upon Styria, much like many other vampire characters in their own stories. Many women fell victim to Carmilla, but there were a few women that Carmilla also became romantically involved with and deeply loved before their unfortunate fates. Laura was one of these women, and it’s clear during the novella that the bond between them is a mixture of attraction, lust and genuine affection, as well as repulsion and uncertainty from Laura’s side of things due to her confusion on Carmilla’s likeness to the woman from her childhood, and also her own questions on her sexuality.
Still, there are some issues with the novella. One is the fact that Carmilla originally preyed on Laura when she was just six years old. Although their attraction to each other never goes beyond touching or words of affection when Laura is older, it’s clear that it’s there and that it’s strong from Carmilla’s side. The novella never suggests that Carmilla’s encounter with Laura at six years old was anything more than a vampire’s need for survival, and Carmilla is merely following instinct from a predator vs. prey perspective with Laura’s demise as a consequence of this need. However, through the lens of sapphic representation, it is an issue due to the fact that Carmilla encountered Laura so young at the start. The relationship is a bit concerning, as having a sapphic pairing build their relationship this way could lead people to see it as perverse, and view Carmilla’s sexuality as perverse in itself rather than Carmilla’s identity as a vampire. because Carmilla knows who Laura is and knew her when she was a child.
Additionally, the novella is the first instance of the lesbian-vampire trope. A negative consequence of that is the fact that many of the stories told since then have taken the lesbian vampire to be about objectification and the anxieties of men, rather than the importance of sapphic representation and the intricacies of a female vampire and a human woman being together. An example of this is the 2009 film Lesbian Vampire Killers, directed by Philip Claydon, where two men travel to a rural town for a getaway and discover that the women of the town have been enslaved by the vengeful spirit of Carmilla the vampire with each woman turning into a lesbian vampire on their 18th birthday to join the coven. The town asks these men to “save their women” from joining this lesbian vampire cult.
It’s a horror comedy, but it’s not funny in the slightest. If the punchline of the film is that this ancient lesbian vampire is taking all the women from the men, and that they need to save these women from becoming…well, lesbians, in general? Yeah, that’s not good. It also sexualizes the women and the lesbian vampires within the movie and makes it more about how hot women are together, and overall, it’s just a terrible inspiration from the original source material that pushes harmful themes regarding lesbians and lesbian vampires, in general.
However, the novella also spawned some amazing adaptations and inspirations, and is often credited as the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, arguably the most famous vampire story ever told. There have been countless movies, shows, and pieces of writing that include or reference the iconic Carmilla character. One that is important to highlight for me, on a personal level, is the Carmilla Web Series, which aired from 2014 to 2016 and included Carmilla: The Movie in 2017 as an add-on to the series itself.
The web series became an obsession for me during my teenage years; I believe it does a great job of adapting the source material into a modern version, as well as adding more positives to the representation originally presented in the novella. The web series takes the characters from the novella and adapts them to university students, at Silas University located in Styria, Austria (the same location as the novella). It focuses on our protagonist, Laura (Elise Bauman), who pursues a career in investigative journalism. At the start of the series, Laura uses her laptop’s webcam and a blog format to the “audience” in the show to begin a journalism project connected to her classes. However, this shifts into an actual investigation when Laura’s roommate Betty Spielsdorf (sound familiar?) goes missing after a night of partying. Just when Laura thinks things can’t get any worse for her, after a friend and roommate suddenly disappears, she’s immediately given a brand new roommate: Carmilla Karnstein (Natasha Negovanlis). And it’s after Carmilla’s appearance as her new roommate when Laura realizes that Betty’s disappearance is connected to a string of cases of missing women at the university. The first season follows Laura as she tries to unravel the mystery of what happened and who (or what) her new roommate is, all while trying to come to terms with her feelings for said roommate.
The web series is amazing for many reasons, such as retelling the original story of Carmilla with a new, more complex lens that also allows for a well-written lesbian enemies-to-lovers story at the heart of it. Carmilla, in this version, is painted as a misunderstood, complex character. The series details how she was a victim of a horrible fate long ago and continues to be used for horrors that she isn’t fully committed to. Despite the many mistakes she’s made and lives she’s ruined in her wake, many details are included that show she still deserves a second chance to shift to the side of good and find love. Within Carmilla, there are her vampiristic duties, like luring women to “The Dean”, a woman that raised her after she became a vampire. These duties, and other parts of her, such as her jaded look of the world and a belief that she’ll never be good, are at war with the humanity inside of her as well. Her humanity shines through when she shows her genuine love for Laura, and performs small revenges on The Dean by letting some of the girls go despite her mother’s wishes. The portrayal of this battle inside of her is a powerful message, and for sapphic people watching this show back then, it meant the world to see strong, non-male characters on our screens, with the center of the show being the love between Laura and Carmilla.
Additionally, other characters on the show were also shown to be under the sapphic umbrella, or at least with different identities and labels that were important for the time. LaFontaine (K Alexander), one of Laura’s friends and a secondary character, is nonbinary and although it takes some time until we learn that they prefer they/them pronouns, it still showed a normalcy to it that was ground-breaking back in 2014-2016, when nonbinary characters weren’t shown or understood as much.
The web series may not be perfect; lack of budget, outdated humour, iffy acting at times, and some writing blunders here and there attested to this, but with a queer team behind the show with a clear passion for showing this representation positively and with care, it’s definitely a gem when it comes to sapphic representation, specifically lesbian representation. Despite some negatives that arose from Carmilla the character, she also influenced a well-liked, albeit cheesy, adaptation that allowed us to see this type of love normalized and celebrated. Carmilla made her mark in the speculative fiction world as well as within the landscape of sapphic representation, and we have Sheridan Le Fanu to thank for the creation of such an impactful character.
Be on the lookout for more pieces in the future that discuss sapphic representation in spec-fic media, as there’s still a plethora of areas to cover!
References
Sheridan Le Fanu, Joseph. Carmilla. Project Gutenberg, 2003, p. 1, www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10007/pg10007-images.html.
Vučković, Aleksa. “The Story of Carmilla: Literature’s First Vampire Was Actually a Woman.” Www.ancient-Origins.net, Ancient Origins, 4 Feb. 2022, www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/carmilla-0016379.