The Irish Vampire: From Folklore to the Imaginations of Charles Robert Maturin, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker by Sharon M. Gallagher

Author:Sharon M. Gallagher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2017-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

Carmilla’s vampirism makes her dangerous, but her interest in women does not definitively mark her as perverse, unnatural, or different.110

When information about the Victorian beliefs surrounding the matrilineal connection between the characters is also considered, an interesting picture emerges. According to Jarlath Killeen, “the maternal blood link between Laura and Carmilla is a significant one, partly because it goes some way to explain the intensity of the relationship between them” because Laura’s feeling of being drawn to Carmilla “may be due not only to a (repressed) sexual desire for her guest … but to their familial connection.”111 Victorian doctors believed that “mother’s hereditary disorders were likely to be passed on to their daughters and on down the female line,”112 so the blood of the Karnsteins, that “bad family” with their “blood-stained annals” and “atrocious lusts,”113 not only ran through Carmilla’s veins but Laura’s, too—even before Carmilla attacked her.

Carmilla, though, is the one perceived as a threat that must be removed because she undermines the male authority in the text. If Bertha and Laura were part of a marriage arrangement made by the general and Laura’s father, then Carmilla’s power over them means that “they lose [their] masculine power over [the girls].”114 Therefore, the males in the form of Laura’s father, Dr. Spielsberg, General Spielsdorf, and Baron Vordenburg must reassert their control by killing Carmilla and whisking Laura off to Italy for a year. However, the story’s end seems to indicate that the male victory was more appearance than reality. Years later, as Laura writes about the experience, Carmilla remains a strong presence. She is so strong that Laura’s story lacks the expected Gothic ending that even Maud’s has: marriage to a suitable man and a child. Of course, her childless and spouseless status may result from further male control since the Victorian doctors also “warned mothers with a background of family illness (whether physical or mental) to refrain from reproduction if at all possible as the threat of ‘infection’ was particularly high. Insanity was a condition believed to be passed from mother to daughter with terrifying ease.”115 The bad blood of the Karnsteins passed to Laura through her mother, compounded by the traumatic vampire attack of a female Karnstein, could easily have rendered Laura ineligible for marriage and motherhood. She is still troubled by what happened, still thinks about Carmilla, and still hears her step in the hall. When this is added to the fact that she was seeing Dr. Hesselius in his professional capacity, it would not be surprising if those near her thought she was insane.116 She was certainly trying to understand her experiences and determine how they fit into her own identity. As Robert Smart points out, “if anything, her [Laura’s] willingness to submit to the urgings of Martin Hesselius reveals that for the remainder of her life she worried about who she was, who or what she had become, and perhaps most important for a woman who represents the end of her family line, what the future held for her.

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