Let's Read: Carmilla!
Part Two: Chapter Five through Chapter Eight.
This is Part Two of Let’s Read: Carmilla. See this post for more information & a reading schedule; see Part One here.
Conversation thread will go live today at noon EST.
Good morning! I hope you’re enjoying your weekend.
CHAPTER V. A Wonderful Likeness
In which we find out that Carmilla and Our Narrator are… related?
• A horse and cart arrives with a load of paintings that have been sent out to be cleaned. Among them—mostly all been passed down from Our Narrator’s mother’s side of the family—is a surprise:
“There is a picture that I have not seen yet,” said my father. “In one corner, at the top of it, is the name, as well as I could read, ‘Marcia Karnstein,’ and the date ‘1698’; and I am curious to see how it has turned out.”
I remembered it; it was a small picture, about a foot and a half high, and nearly square, without a frame; but it was so blackened by age that I could not make it out.
The artist now produced it, with evident pride. It was quite beautiful; it was startling; it seemed to live. It was the effigy of Carmilla!
• Our Narrator LOVES it, and wants to hang it in her room, which goes over VERY well with Carmilla. It turns out that the name on the painting isn’t Marcia, it’s Mircalla… which is SUSPICIOUSLY similar to Carmilla, no? And Our Narrator and Carmilla have an exchange in which it is established that they’re both descended from the same family, the Karnsteins.
Carmilla, basically playing with her food at this point, asks a question that I’m PRETTY SURE she knows the answer to:
“Ah!” said the lady, languidly, “so am I, I think, a very long descent, very ancient. Are there any Karnsteins living now?”
And it’s also established that the nearby ghost town and ruined castle a few miles away was their domain.
• The two of them go out for a walk in the moonlight, and I know that female friendships are all different, and obviously it’s a different era and so friendships are even MORE different, but… I’M REALLY STARTING TO WONDER ABOUT OUR NARRATOR’S INABILITY TO TAKE A HINT:
“And you asked for the picture you think like me, to hang in your room,” she murmured with a sigh, as she drew her arm closer about my waist, and let her pretty head sink upon my shoulder. “How romantic you are, Carmilla,” I said. “Whenever you tell me your story, it will be made up chiefly of some one great romance.”
She kissed me silently.
“I am sure, Carmilla, you have been in love; that there is, at this moment, an affair of the heart going on.”
“I have been in love with no one, and never shall,” she whispered, “unless it should be with you.”
How beautiful she looked in the moonlight!
• I MEAN!!! SHE REALLY TALKS ABOUT OUR NARRATOR DYING, like, A LOT:
Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. “Darling, darling,” she murmured, “I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so.”
I started from her.
• While she doesn’t tend to express—or even show—it much in her interactions with Carmilla, Our Narrator does express discomfort in her narrative:
So, indeed, she had; and she and I talked a great deal, and very animated she was; and the remainder of that evening passed without any recurrence of what I called her infatuations. I mean her crazy talk and looks, which embarrassed, and even frightened me.
She doesn’t explicitly say which part of Carmilla’s behavior concerns her, though—whether it’s all the death stuff or it’s the more romantical stuff or both or something else. As it’s the death stuff that results in her more Dramatic Reactions, I’m inclined to chalk it up to that.
CHAPTER VI. A Very Strange Agony
In which we find out that vampires play cards, and there is a visit from a Ghost Cat.
• This chapter opens shortly after the last one ended, with the whole household in the drawing room. The four ladies—Carmilla included—play cards, and the idea of Carmilla sitting down with this crew and passing the time by playing cards is vaguely hilarious to me. But then again, eternity is a long time, so you gotta do what you gotta do.
• When the card game is over, Our Narrator’s father approaches Carmilla and asks her if she’s heard from her mother—which, I feel like he’d know? It’s not like they have cellphones, and everyone seems nosy enough that they’d have noticed if she got a letter, but whatever, it’s probably just his entry point into the conversation.
Anyway, she hasn’t heard from her mother, but then shows that she’s a master manipulator:
“I cannot tell,” she answered ambiguously, “but I have been thinking of leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage tomorrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not yet tell you.”
I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong? Maybe she’s not trying to actively manipulate them? But this just feels like she’s angling to get everyone to be like WHAT NO, WE LOVE YOU, PLEASE STAY.
• Bedtime. Our Narrator presses Carmilla AGAIN for information about her past—which, I have to say, is pretty rude, considering that based on the information that she’s had FROM THE BEGINNING, Carmilla isn’t supposed to talk about her background. And Carmilla shows that underneath her languid exterior, she has no chill:
But I am under vows, no nun half so awfully, and I dare not tell my story yet, even to you. The time is very near when you shall know everything. 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. and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.”
I read this as: Carmilla’s planning on killing Our Narrator no matter what, but she’d turn her if Our Narrator was so inclined?
• She talks about going to a ball, which includes—in a not-very-veiled way—the story of how she was turned:
“I remember everything about it—with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent. There occurred that night what has confused the picture, and made its colours faint. I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here,” she touched her breast, “and never was the same since.”
“Were you near dying?”
“Yes, very—a cruel love—strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood.
• Info that shouldn’t be surprising, given her reaction when the peasant funeral went by: Carmilla avoids morning and evening prayers. Our Narrator assumes she’s a Christian because she mentioned that she’d been baptised.
• Inspired by Carmilla’s habits, our narrator has taken to locking her bedroom door at night, and checking for axe murderers—but apparently not vampires—before doing so. But then (this is a long one, but it rules):
I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony.
I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep.
But I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in bed, precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and its furniture just as I had seen it last, except that it was very dark, and I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or five feet long for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed over it; and it continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. The room was lighted by the candle that burnt there all through the night, and I saw a female figure standing at the foot of the bed, a little at the right side. It was in a dark loose dress, and its hair was down and covered its shoulders. A block of stone could not have been more still. There was not the slightest stir of respiration. As I stared at it, the figure appeared to have changed its place, and was now nearer the door; then, close to it, the door opened, and it passed out.
Once she’s got control of herself, she jumps up and checks her door—but it’s STILL!!! LOCKED!! !!! ! !!!!!
So she jumps back in bed and hides under the covers until morning.
Movie interlude: The Blood Spattered Bride (Vicente Aranda, 1972)
Okay, so this one names Carmilla as the inspiration right in the opening credits, though plot-wise, it’s very very VERY different. Regardless, I was INTO IT… even though I’m still trying to decide what point it was trying to make (if it was trying to make a specific point).
Susan and her Unnamed Husband—I will never not think it’s SIGNIFICANT when a major character doesn’t have a name—are newlyweds, and have settled into his childhood manor house/mansion/castle thing for good, or at least for an extended stay. She starts having nightmares about a beautiful woman and blood and stabbing her husband.
Turns out that there’s an old legend associated with an ancestor of his who was murdered by his wife—MIRCALA KARNSTEIN—because he made her “commit unspeakable acts” on their wedding night.
Enter CARMILLA, via a bonkers scene where the husband LITERALLY finds her buried on the beach:
AND THEN THINGS GO FROM THERE.
I don't think Carmilla is necessarily a driving force behind Susan's awakening/change, I think she's the catalyst. She provides direction, but I don't think she is, like, MAKING Susan do anything via vampiric compulsion or whatever.
Long story short: Ultimately, I don't think this is a WOMEN AMMIRITE story, I think it's a TRAMPLE THE PATRIARCHY story. But I might need to watch it a few more times before I decide.
CHAPTER VII. Descending
In which Our Narrator becomes Carmilla’s regular midnight snack.
• So now, Our Narrator feels unsafe in her own room, but doesn’t talk to her father about it:
I could not bear next day to be alone for a moment. I should have told papa, but for two opposite reasons. At one time I thought he would laugh at my story, and I could not bear its being treated as a jest; and at another I thought he might fancy that I had been attacked by the mysterious complaint which had invaded our neighborhood. I had myself no misgiving of the kind, and as he had been rather an invalid for some time, I was afraid of alarming him.
Since when is he ill? I feel like that’s the first I’ve heard of it. This whole situation, by the way, is a great example of why so many people in trouble don’t ask for help? Because the people who are supposedly there for them have proved in the past that they would not take them seriously? Bah and also sigh.
• She does tell the governesses—the younger one laughs and the older one is worried—and, ever helpful, the younger one adds that the lime tree walk behind Carmilla’s window is haunted:
“Martin says that he came up twice, when the old yard gate was being repaired, before sunrise, and twice saw the same female figure walking down the lime tree avenue.”
Hilariously, there is no thought that the female figure might be… Carmilla? Walking right outside her own room?
• When she finally gets up, Carmilla, as before, prevents suspicion by preemptively bringing it all up:
“I was so frightened last night,” she said, so soon as were together, “and I am sure I should have seen something dreadful if it had not been for that charm I bought from the poor little hunchback whom I called such hard names. I had a dream of something black coming round my bed, and I awoke in a perfect horror, and I really thought, for some seconds, I saw a dark figure near the chimneypiece, but I felt under my pillow for my charm, and the moment my fingers touched it, the figure disappeared, and I felt quite certain, only that I had it by me, that something frightful would have made its appearance, and, perhaps, throttled me, as it did those poor people we heard of.
I mean, I don’t know about you, but I think she’s full of it.
• Regardless, Our Narrator does NOT agree with me, so with Carmilla’s advice and at her urging, Our Narrator carefully pins the charm to her pillow and sleeps “delightfully deep and dreamless” for the next two nights. THAT SAID:
But I wakened with a sense of lassitude and melancholy, which, however, did not exceed a degree that was almost luxurious.
• I… what??:
“And what do you think the charm is?” said I.
“It has been fumigated or immersed in some drug, and is an antidote against the malaria,” she answered.
• Time passes, Our Narrator has less and less energy and more and more Carmilla-like, and Carmilla is INTO it:
For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome, possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet.
Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.
I would not admit that I was ill, I would not consent to tell my papa, or to have the doctor sent for.
Carmilla became more devoted to me than ever, and her strange paroxysms of languid adoration more frequent. She used to gloat on me with increasing ardor the more my strength and spirits waned. This always shocked me like a momentary glare of insanity.
• And we’ve got a legit description of Our Narrator being fed on:
After all these dreams there remained on waking a remembrance of having been in a place very nearly dark, and of having spoken to people whom I could not see; and especially of one clear voice, of a female’s, very deep, that spoke as if at a distance, slowly, and producing always the same sensation of indescribable solemnity and fear. Sometimes there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses left me and I became unconscious.
• It’s visibly affecting her—she’s pale and has rings under her eyes—to the point where her father is concerned, but she puts him off. And this is so familiar, the way that people—and women in particular, I think—second-guess our own concerns about our health:
In a sense this was true. I had no pain, I could complain of no bodily derangement. My complaint seemed to be one of the imagination, or the nerves, and, horrible as my sufferings were, I kept them, with a morbid reserve, very nearly to myself.
• She considers the possibility that she’s got the “illness” that’s ravaging the peasants, but they’re generally only sick for three days before dying, whereas this has been going on for three weeks.
• And then, she has a DIFFERENT dream:
One night, instead of the voice I was accustomed to hear in the dark, I heard one, sweet and tender, and at the same time terrible, which said,
“Your mother warns you to beware of the assassin.” At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw Carmilla, standing, near the foot of my bed, in her white nightdress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, in one great stain of blood.
• She barrels into the hall, sure that the dream/vision means that Carmilla is being murdered in her bed, and together with her two governesses, bang on Carmilla’s door!
There is no answer!
She finally resorts to having the servants force the door open… AND EVEN THOUGH IT’S LOCKED FROM THE INSIDE, CARMILLA ISN’T IN THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CHAPTER VIII. Search
In which things go a little Agatha Christie.
• In the way of locked room mysterious, Our Narrator informs us that they checked everything, and there was no way Carmilla could have left the room. And then she also tells us, eight chapters in, that there might be secret passages in the house?? And that she’s always known this and NEVER LOOKED FOR THEM??:
I was utterly puzzled. Had Carmilla discovered one of those secret passages which the old housekeeper said were known to exist in the schloss, although the tradition of their exact situation had been lost?
I ask you: How on earth could someone live in a creaky old place like that and NOT LOOK FOR SECRET PASSAGES??????
• Daylight comes, and Carmilla is still! missing!!!:
The whole household, with my father at its head, was in a state of agitation next morning. Every part of the chateau was searched. The grounds were explored. No trace of the missing lady could be discovered. The stream was about to be dragged; my father was in distraction; what a tale to have to tell the poor girl’s mother on her return. I, too, was almost beside myself, though my grief was quite of a different kind.
what KIND of grief, tho
• That afternoon, she goes up to Carmilla’s room alone… and there is Carmilla.
Her story is… not particularly convincing:
“It was past two last night,” she said, “when I went to sleep as usual in my bed, with my doors locked, that of the dressing room, and that opening upon the gallery. My sleep was uninterrupted, and, so far as I know, dreamless; but I woke just now on the sofa in the dressing room there, and I found the door between the rooms open, and the other door forced. How could all this have happened without my being wakened? It must have been accompanied with a great deal of noise, and I am particularly easily wakened; and how could I have been carried out of my bed without my sleep having been interrupted, I whom the slightest stir startles?”
• Despite the fact that he’s a pretty serious pushover, Our Narrator’s father is the one with power in the situation, so Carmilla does have to keep him convinced/placated:
My father took a turn up and down the room, thinking. I saw Carmilla’s eye follow him for a moment with a sly, dark glance.
• Luckily for her, he’s also a huge skeptic and not exactly very observant. He decides that Carmilla must have been sleepwalking—he asks if she has a history of it, and she claims that she did in her youth—and he comes up with the idea that in her sleep, she:
unlocked her bedroom door
wandered into one of the 25(!) other rooms (many of them unused) on the floor—I still can’t believe Our Narrator hasn’t done more exploring, yeesh—or upstairs or downstairs and hung out there for a while
and then, after her room and dressing room had been searched, she came BACK to her room—still asleep, despite the house being in an uproar for hours—unlocked her dressing room door, and lay down on the sofa, where she eventually woke up
…i mean, the simpler explanation would be that Carmilla is lying through her (possibly) pointy teeth, but okay:
“And so we may congratulate ourselves on the certainty that the most natural explanation of the occurrence is one that involves no drugging, no tampering with locks, no burglars, or poisoners, or witches—nothing that need alarm Carmilla, or anyone else, for our safety.”
• Last major note! OUR NARRATOR FINALLY HAS A NAME!!!
Her name is Laura. It was her father who spoke it—while expressing concern about the change in her appearance, and thus, her health. All of which feels significant to me.
Conversation thread goes up at noon EST!
Talk to you then,
Leila
I hadn't come across The Blood Spattered Bride yet. Seems more promising than most. Even if it takes so many liberties, it becomes its own democracy.