J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla: A Tri-Part Exploration of the Vampiric Novel

Abstract

This thesis presents three new interpretations into Carmilla scholarship. This thesis moves away from the current interpretations, which use queer theory with Laura and Carmilla and an Anglo-Irish context, by looking at characters largely ignored by current scholarship and by engaging politics in countries other than Ireland and Britain. My first chapter proposes a different relationship than one of potential lesbian lovers for Carmilla and Laura. I propose that the characters need to be read in terms of a familial and sisterly relationship. By altering the common reading of Laura and Carmilla, I bring the focus of the chapter to the character of Laura’s father and demonstrate that, in addition to embodying the nation of England, he and England are at fault for the ruin of their daughters.|My second chapter examines General Spielsdorf and proposed that he performs the hero role in a novel that notably lacks such a character. I look specifically at his surname and how he often parallels, in both appearance and actions, the novel’s Styrian setting. Then, I build a case for the General representing the Austrian side of the Austro- Hungarian Empire and performing the heroic deed of building a diverse army that fights for under him and for one purpose, defeating the vampire. By doing so, I claim that the General is a wish fulfillment for the Austrian side of that empire and becomes the hero of the novel.|My final chapter looks at Bertha Rheinfeldt’s character and the cautionary tale that she presents simply with her name. I draw parallels between her character and that of Bertha Mason both in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. By engaging these outside texts, I propose that Bertha Rheinfeldt’s cautionary tale is one that warns father’s of losing domestic control and that such a warning can be expanded into a warning for empires and their ability to control their colonies. Therefore, with these chapters I broaden current scholarship from the gender and queer theory that currently dominates it as well as introduce a more global reading of the text.