Le Fanu’s Carmilla: Lesbian Desire in the Lanternist Novella

Abstract

Carmilla is Sheridan Le Fanu’s most sensual, cunningly constructed and elegant work. The outspoken transgressive lesbian sexuality of this novella is famous, with the sultry vampire being given some of the most famous lines in sapphic fiction such as: ‘In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die — die — sweetly die — into mine.’¹ Yet, though the tale has spawned at least 11 major films, perhaps most remarkable a Hammer trilogy, critical studies have almost totally overlooked the author’s explicit insistence on the role of pre-cinematic media in evoking this erotically charged mystery. Indeed there is considerable evidence to support the case that the author structured his tale as the literary equivalent of a phantasmagoria show and that he viewed his sultry vampire, indeed lesbianism itself, as phantasmagorical.