A review by maises
Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

4.0

“‘Darling, darling,’ she murmured, ‘I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so.’”

I read the Lanternfish Press edition, published in 2019 and edited by Carmen Maria Machado. I have to be honest here: I was absolutely irritated by Machado’s editorial footnotes. She restates certain imagery via footnotes just in simplified terms multiple times enough to make me crazy, and some “additional” information like the general’s secret lover Kurt came without any actual source noted (I had to look this up because it seemed so specific, but it seems like some kind of made-up tidbit? Why?). I appreciated the very sparse geographical clarifications, but other than that Machado’s footnotes very much detracted and gave nothing to the overall work in general. Other than this unfortunate element of the book, I really enjoyed Carmilla.

Can Carmilla love? Did she love the general’s niece as Millarca, or Laura when she was known as Carmilla? Did she love the nobleman she had favored as the alive Countess Karnstein? I think that this novel Carmilla is a love story, beautifully written and remembered. Laura felt her love and gave it in return, as had the general’s niece, and likely the nobleman. But the love she imposes is all-possessive, encompassing. It leaves a mark.

“[…] You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me and still come with me, hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.”

Here Carmilla states that there is no such thing as “indifference” to her, and this is true. Laura will always die for her, and she would do it willingly. But not once does she say she would die for Laura. In the last chapter, Laura recites how vampires sometimes indulges in “an artful courtship,” almost detached enough that it seems like this is something researched to comfort her own worries. With Carmilla no longer there to explain herself, how can Laura truly know what Carmilla felt for her, if she felt for her at all?

The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons. In pursuit of these it will exercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem, for access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways. It will never desist until it has satiated its passion and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will, in these cases, husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of a connoisseur, and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases, it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent. 

Carmilla’s fiery love and attention comes with death as a conclusion. How transactionary is love supposed to be with the people you adore? Can you say you love someone, own them body and soul, even though all you do is take? Maybe in when Laura tries to carve herself a future in the aftermath, she finds the answer. As for me, all I can say is that Carmilla loved Laura, but not enough to starve.