Originally serialized in the magazine The Dark Blue from 1871-72, Carmilla is the first vampire story. Not only did it serve as the inspiration for for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it was written by a woman. The novel is just over 150 pages long and is presented as a scientific account of events in the life of a young woman named Laura. The novel opens with an unknown intellectual explaining that he is including Laura’s case in volume 1 of a Dr. Hesselius’ collected papers. So this is a scientific, scholarly, and true story, even though the events described will seem at odds with the normal natural world. We learn that Laura has long since died and so no further investigation is possible.
Laura serves as the narrator of this story. What we read is from an account that she wrote for Dr Hesselius about the highly unusual events of her life when she was 19. She describes how she lived with her father and servants in a “schloss” or castle in Styria. Her mother, a Styrian native, died when Laura was born. Her father is an Englishman who was a member of the foreign service. Laura knows many languages but she has not had much of a social life. The castle is located in a dense forest, with a few small local villages scattered about, but we learn that a larger village has been abandoned.
Laura’s trouble dates to a strange childhood incident when she was six. One night, a beautiful young woman visited Laura after she had gone to bed; Laura was scared but the beautiful woman comforted her and lay down next to her in bed. Suddenly Laura felt a painful needle prick just above her breast and screamed. The governess, nurse, and maids tell her it was just a bad dream, but Laura is sure it was no dream. She is afraid and never forgets the beautiful woman.
Fast forward to Laura’s teenaged years, and shortly after being disappointed by the news that an acquaintance’s daughter has fallen ill and will not be visiting (a visit that had been much anticipated given Laura’s isolation), a very strange event occurs right in front of the schloss. A fine carriage comes careening down the road out of control and crashes. Laura and her father witness this terrifying event and see an elegant older woman exit the carriage. She is distraught over some family issue and is worried about her daughter, who is in delicate health. She, the mother, must keep traveling for reasons that she is not at liberty to divulge, but she would like to leave her daughter at the schloss for a few months while she continues the journey. The woman seems like she is from their class, is genuinely upset and in a hurry, so Laura’s father agrees to let the woman’s daughter stay. When Laura sees her, she is stunned. The girl looks just like the woman from her childhood who visited her in the middle of the night!
Carmilla, the young woman, is beautiful and charming, and she, too, says that Laura looks familiar to her from a dream she had in her own childhood. Carmilla and Laura get along well, but Laura has uneasy feelings sometimes; there is something about Carmilla that is very attractive yet also repulsive. Carmilla is an unusual young woman. She sleeps late into the day, avoids prayer time and services, and refuses to reveal any information at all about herself, her family or her past. Laura finds this vexing but she also begins to see Carmilla as a real friend and confidant. Meanwhile, the local villages are experiencing some unusual activity. Several young woman who had been in good health seem to be suddenly falling ill. They become lethargic before ultimately succumbing to whatever this illness is.
The reveal about what is going on, how it is happening and how it is resolved (as we know it must have been since Laura lives to tell her tale to Dr. Hesselius) is quite interesting and worth picking up the novel to find out. I have not read Dracula, so I cannot say how the two stories compare, but this story has suspense, some creepiness, and a dramatic (if abrupt) ending. I opted to read this just because the bookseller told me that it pre-dated Dracula and was written by a woman. I had never heard of the story before but I found that really fascinating. Mary Shelley and Sheridan Le Fanu were trailblazers in horror lit.