Free Carmilla Essays and Papers

(Sheridan, 2013)Carmilla is one of the first stories, if not the first, concerning vampirism. Written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, an Irish writer who is often compared to Edgar Allen Poe, this novella was originally published in 1872, thus predating in fact a full twenty-five years before Bram Stoker’s famous tale ’Dracula’, which is heavily influenced by Carmilla. It tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla and the story is thick with

come out at night? By disguising themselves with the use of costumes and performance, vampires such as Lestat and Carmilla are able to infiltrate human society and prey from within. Whenever it is to fit in or to help them prey by dressing up, acting a certain way or living in a proper house, vampires are able to survive. But sometimes they don't need to act. Both Claudia and Carmilla simply use their venerable appearance to get close to their victims. If there's one thing that vampires across

Bram Stoker and Sheridan Le Fanu’s texts, Dracula (1898) and “Carmilla” (1872), use gothic tropes in similar ways to captivate readers with horror and terror. This essay will illustrate how, in comparison, both texts include gothic tropes: the New Woman, sexuality and setting, in order to provoke emotions and reactions from the readers. To achieve this, this essay will focus on the women that challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes, and deconstruct each text in regards to the very strong

The Lilith in Dracula, Carmilla, Christabel, Geraldine and The Hunger For centuries Lilith, the Queen of the Night, has been blamed when a child or man dies without certain cause or when a woman refuses to be submissive to her husband.  While the Legend of Lilith is not widely known today, it is not difficult to find information about the demoness. However, there are slight variations found from story to story.  Here we will focus on the myth as found in Hebrew mythology, and we will particularly

Carmilla Reading Response Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is a tale about two young women from different walks of life. One of the two young ladies named Laura, plays the role of the narrator and the victim. She begins her story by describing her life and why she was so easily influenced by the antagonist, Carmilla. Laura lives with her father an English widower, retired from the Austrian Service. Laura also makes mention of the other residents in her home, her gouvernantes, who took care of

Victorian gothic story, “Carmilla,” not only challenges typical Victorian gothic, but also breaks the barrier in a society where lesbianism is considered a taboo. Through “Carmilla,” Le Fanu breaks the barrier in society for lesbianism in the 19th century by challenging three important things: traditional vampire traits, role of women, and religion.

writers or generic conventions, but vary aspects of it in significant ways.” (Clayton, 155). Sheridan Le Fanu’s, Carmilla, Bram Stoker’s, Dracula and Elizabeth Kostova’s, The Historian, clearly engage in this intertextual exchange, as evidenced by their use of narrative structure, striking character parallels and authors choice of language. Published in 1872, Le Fanu relates the story of Carmilla from a first person point of view, through four distinct perspectives. The first narrator, an unnamed assistant

Victorian Sexuality in Stoker’s Dracula, LeFanu’s Carmilla, and Polidori’s Vampyre Literature is representative of the time in which it is produced. Literature can reflect societal views, attitudes, and fears.Vampire literature, in particular, often represents the fears of a society.In the Victorian Era, a time of intense sexual repression, it was common for vampire stories to reflect the fear of sexuality that was rampant in society. Bram Stoker’s Dracula illustrated fears about sexual women

countryside, they become clearer when they are transferred to an Irish setting. During Le Fanu’s last years, his mind become almost completely occupied by the supernatural and all the short stories he wrote at this time were of that nature e.g. ‘Carmilla’ and ‘Green Tea’. His peculiar habits of life contributed to this obsession and there can be little doubt but that many of these weird tales came to him in the form of dreams. Brinsley Le Fanu, his son, gave S.M. Ellis an account of his daily routine:

which has long troubled humankind. Dracula also has considerable cultural importance. Stoker was not the first writer to make use of the vampire legend. Throughout the 19th century vampires appeared in a number of works, including Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla (1872), which Stoker read as a young man. But it is Stoker's version of the vampire legend that has had the most enduring popular appeal and the greatest influence on modern writers and filmmakers. In his book Vampires Unearthed, Martin Riccardo

narrator telling the audience about how different Count Dracula was from what he was used to back then. It was the nineteenth century, and, obviously, many things were not the way they are today. Instead of creating a gay vampire like the author of Carmilla chose to do, Bram Stoker decided to make Dracula this different-looking person by giving him some peculiar characteristics, such as pointing ears and massive eyebrows. Also, the Count has three brides, who are also vampires. Having more than one

attempt to discuss the two gothic tales ‘Carmilla’ and ‘Dracula’ in relation to cultural contexts in which they exist as being presented to the reader through the gender behaviour and sexuality that is portrayed through the texts. Vampire stories always seem to involve some aspect of sexuality and power. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu wrote Carmilla. It was first published in 1872 as part of the collection of short stories titles ‘In a Glass Darkly.’ Carmilla predates the publishing of Dracula by 25 years

attempt to portray the rising lower class and foreign influence as evil and harmful to modern civilization. The Irish Protestant author Sheridan Le Fanu uses vampires to represent the Catholic uprising in Ireland in his story Carmilla. Like much of gothic fiction, Carmilla is about the mixing of blood and the harm that results from it. When vampires strike, they are tainting the blood of the pure and innocent, causing them to degenerate into undead savages who will take over and colonize until their

who, despite the passage of time, remains haunted by the memory of Carmilla: “[To] this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alterations– sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl…and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door” (ch.16). At this stage, arguing that Laura was simply under the vampire’s hypnotizing effect is moot seeing as Carmilla is extricated by the end of the novella. She no longer

through the novels, the reader himself becomes the director creating different images in his mind. In the same way, while reading Carmilla, I, becoming the director, have chosen three songs (introduction, middle and climax part) that would fit in this novel; somehow giving the directions to the film.

The source material used for “never quite sane in the night.” was the 1872 gothic novella “Carmilla”, a first person narrative from the perspective of Laura, the target and victim of a vampire. Taking inspiration from the semi-monologue style in which it was written, I created an episodic account of specific significant and reflective moments from throughout the lifetime of Carmilla, the novella’s love interest and antagonist. The time setting used to make the accounts accurate to the canonical

In Christina Rosseti “Goblin Market” and Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, both authors mythologize homosexuality and the structures which hinder the agency of homoeroticism within the sphere of homosocial women’s relations; and in doing this, Rossetti and Le Fanu symbolize representations of these structures and shed a light on their society’s attitudes towards feminine desire, longing, and, ultimately, lesbianism. Their use of symbolism allegorizes their respective stories so to comment, or illuminate/challenge

Psychoanalytic Criticism to Carmilla Vampire fiction is one of the most interesting genres in literature today. Every vampire story has a division between romance and death. When analyzing a gothic novella, the reader conveys feelings of suspense and thrill. There are many different literary criticisms that can be applied to vampire stories. When you study the literature extensively, you identify that the story isn’t just haunting undertones. Although the supernatural is illusory, many of the

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla: Bram Stoker’s Inspiration for Dracula “3 May. Bistritz. Left Munich at 8:35 p.m.” Abraham Stoker in this unassuming way begins his Gothic masterpiece, Dracula (The Annotated Dracula 1). Dracula has been called ‘imaginative’ and ‘original.’ , and Harry Ludlam calls it “the product of his own vivid imagination and imaginative research” (Senf 41). However, the originality of Stoker's Dracula is in doubt. By a similarity in the setting, characters and plot, in

The New Woman in Fanu’s Carmilla, Stoker’s Dracula, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer The correlation between the vampire, a figure that is usually regarded as the subject of social ostracism, and the New Woman, the advent of which was feared by the majority of the British Victorian patriarchy, was a prominent aspect of much mid-to-late Victorian era literature. Supplementary evidence to support the compelling Victorian era literary connection between the vampire and the New Woman can be extrapolated