Carmilla di Le Fanu - Analisi romanzo, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Carmilla di Le Fanu - Analisi romanzo e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Carmilla Vampires are supernatural figure but for humans they represent fear, superstition but also inspiration, their figure acquires religious connotation. This creatures have been represented not as part of the human being but as a kind of nemesis, as "the other", as something that is dead but at the same time it is alive, threatening the pure existence of human by disrupting, carefully constructed borders that all over the centuries the civilization has reacted between the self and the other because the vampire is other. The borders between the human and the animal because a vampire can be also an animal or the borders between life and death.  “our relation to death made concrete” (68) and thus, they “disrupt the crucial defining line which separates real life from the unreality of death” (69 Jackson)  The monster can stand for everything that our culture has to repress - proletariat, sexuality, other cultures, alternative ways of living, heterogeneity, the Other. There is a certain arbitrariness in the content that can be projected onto this point, and there are many attempts to reduce the uncanny to just this content (quot. in Gelder, 52). This is one of the key figure that make the figure of the vampire very popular. The fact that vampire and more others creatures in general have functioned as the projection of the other, this relation depends on the different cultures and historical situations. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu  He was born in 1814 in Dublin and died at the age of 58 in 1873, also in Dublin.  Educated at Trinity College  He started writing in 1838 for the Dublin University Magazine.  London publisher, Richard Bentley, who, for marketing reasons decreed that Le Fanu’s fictions should have an English subject and be set in contemporary times so that they could better satisfy an English readership. Carmilla was written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, he was a very prolific Irish writer who wrote not only horror or gothic stories like Carmilla, he wrote about some other themes such as historical or sensational novels but actually he is best known for his gothic and horror ones. He was born in Dublin and died there too in 1873. He spent his life mostly in Dublin during the Victorian age, but not the entire Victorian age. He came from a literary family of Hugeno, from Irish and English descend, because his father was a church of Ireland clergyman. He start writing in 1838 for a magazine called "The Dublin University Magazine" but as an Irish man and in the late 30s/40s/50s he was very much aware and frequently critical of Irish problems at the time e always lived in Ireland and started setting his fiction in an Irish context but there was a big problem about the Irish publishers because the non-existent publishing industry in Ireland forced him to look for a London publisher and this one was Richard Bentley who said to Le Fanu he should have written something about English context not only the Irish one and his writing should be set in contemporary times so that could be more interesting for the contemporary readership. Le Fanu accepted his tips and he wrote novels from another prospective such as the gothic mystery: Uncle Silas and the novel Carmilla. Other books by J. Sheridan Le Fanu  The Cock and Anchor  Torlogh O'Brien  The House by the Churchyard  Uncle Silas  Checkmate  Carmilla  The Wyvern Mystery  Guy Deverell  Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery  The Chronicles of Golden Friars  In a Glass Darkly  The Purcell Papers  The Watcher and Other Weird Stories  A Chronicle of Golden Friars and Other Stories  Madam Growl's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery  Green Tea and Other Stories  Sheridan LeFanu: The Diabolic Genius  Best Ghost Stories of J.S. LeFanu  The Best Horror Stories  The Vampire Lovers and Other Stories  Ghost Stories and Mysteries  The Hours After Midnight  J.S. LeFanu: Ghost Stories and Mysteries  Ghost and Horror Stories  Green Tea and Other Ghost Stones  Carmilla and Other Classic Tales of Mystery In a glass darkly are 5 short stories, published in 1872, a year before Le Fanu's death. In this book we can find Carmilla. Although it's lend qualified rather as a novella.  Green Tea  The Familiar  Mr. Justice Harbottle  The Room in the Dragon Volant  Carmilla The story of Carmilla is set in the gothic environment of a isolated castle, it contains romantic relationship between the two young ladies who live in the castle and one of them; Carmilla is a vampire. The fact that this text includes the presence of a female vampire before the popularisation of the creature thanks to Bram Stokers's Dracula is quite surprising, it is strange and what make this story even more interesting is the way the relation between Lora, the human protagonist, and Carmilla, the ancient female vampire is described. Indeed we have the protagonist Lora, that is also an internal narrator, presents sadly connection between herself and the female vampire a relation that’s lowly develops into Carmilla's love and very passionate love for Lora, it becomes a strong attraction mixed with repulsion but Lora feels in her turn in Carmilla's turn. This relation becomes increasingly strange because of Carmilla's attempt to convert Lora into a lesbian vampire. PLOT: The plot is really particular because we have three female vampires in a single body and they are: Mircalla, Carmilla and Millarca. This ancient vampire the Countess Mircalla is a vampire who comes back in the form of other two girls which are Carmilla and Millarca, it is also particular because when there is the discovery, that we don't know until the end of the novel, that Carmilla and Millarca are the same person that is the ancient Countess Mircalla in the castle. At the end of the novel it is a General who is a friend of Laura's father, this General explains at the end of the novel that Carmilla is also Millarca because both Millarca and Carmilla are anagrams for the original name Mircalla who was a Countess. In the last 30 years, the popularity of the story increased and this lesbian relationship even created both a web series and a film. In the web series Lora is a student at the fictional SIlas University and she starts investigate in the disappearance of her roommate. She is assignee a new roommate who is Carmilla and then starts the relationship between them. Le Fanu published his Carmilla in 1872 but the readers of the time would have been completely shocked by this sensual story of a young dark lady that falls in love with the lady of the castle and she feeds on her in order to transform her in a vampire and to live together forever in fact Carmilla's intent was to love each other for the eternity, but Carmilla can be seen as a parentheses in the development of the demon creature because its representation of Carmilla differs from previous and even following embodiments of this creatures. Following the description of John Polidori's vampire, Le Fanu wrote about an aristocratic figure, as Carmilla is because she is a Countess, that has anything to do with the monster of folklore but at the same time Le Fanu gives Carmilla a lot of feelings that make the reader empathies with the creature, she is not such an evil monster. This human side of Carmilla maybe is linked to her female nature and the gender of the vampire is important in terms of characterization of the creature, indeed female vampires have always been related to freedom and sin, so both to freedom and sin. In the 90th century female vampires were used as an example not to be followed by any "angel in the house" so by any woman, any typical The emphasis on financial security here might have come straight out of Jane Austen is the same, and the castle which has none of the mysterious underground cavern so familiar to readers of Radcliffe too, remember the country houses found in Austen, besides using contemporary settings Le Fanu provides other evidence that he means to focus on realistic details we know that Styria is marvellously cheap, this is a realistic details. There is also something linked to Carmilla because Carmilla initially appears only as an eccentric who likes to sleep late in the day and wander about at night, so we always have this particular realistic details in Carmilla, because this were the tips by Sheridan Le Fanu's publisher. [“Carmilla” and Dracula] spend more time diagnosing the vampire than showing it at first hand, introducing a number of ‘paternal figures’ – often doctors – into the story exactly for that purpose. […] The men in fact form a kind of bureaucracy which signifies Carmilla as a vampire precisely in order to manage the threat – and, eventually, to destroy it. (49) Apart from the loneliness of the place, the protagonist also feels alone, feels secluded because Laura is the only girl in the castle and there is no one her age, she has the company of the servants, the governess of her father but she misses the presence of other young girls. This is actually really important because even during Dracula is the same, this is a really gothic theme because there is the use of suspense and horror and Laura, the servants, her father, the physician, everybody tries to protect the young girl from the rest of the world but not from Carmilla because they don't know that Carmilla is a vampire, but in order to protect her, she wanted to discover this supernatural figure as Gelder says: Both Carmilla and Dracula spend more time diagnosing the vampire than showing it at first hand, introducing a number of "paternal figures", remember that Laura's mother is dead and we have so many paternal figures such as; Laura's father, the Doctor, the Detective etc. "often doctors- into the story exactly for that purpose" "the man in fact form a kind of bureaucracy which signifies Carmilla as a vampire precisely in order to manage the threat- and, eventually, to destroy it" So the presence of a supernatural figure such as the vampire underlines the gothic atmosphere and there is always a woman that should be saved in the story and the lack of a mother, the lack of a feminine model for the young lady Laura to identify with in order to grow up and mature is another very recurrent mot if when talking about the gothic. Lesbianism, the gothic and romanticism  Laura : Carmilla = Virgin : Whore  Lesbianism in this story is visible  Carmilla’s beauty: ...it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips traveled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, "You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one forever." (Ch. IV) In this story both the gothic and the romantic side are linked to lesbianism. They are closely related due to nature of narrative all the themes are reunited in the principal characters, Laura and Carmilla because they are both young girls, but in terms of representation that is the only thing they initially have in common, they embody the polarity virgin and whore that is Laura stand to Carmilla like The Virgin stand to the Whore. Indeed Laura is presented as the virginal lady, blonde and delicate who initially seems to be innocent and pure, she loves his father, lives happily by his side in the castle, she has been educated and she is well mannered but she is not happy because she is alone. The important thing is that lesbianism in the story is visible, in part because there are not heterosexual figure to oppose Carmilla's seduction, there is no attractive male figure in the story, no human neither vampire, but there is a very beautiful vampire. During the day Laura is attracted by Carmilla like a lover and Carmilla's nightly visits are less dangerous than her day time attention, although she never becomes aggressive as Lord Ruthven or Varney. Sometimes there tame a sensation as it a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me. and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. (Ch. VII) This is an attack by Carmilla, but this attack, which is the more aggressive that Carmilla gets in the story, is described in terms of love instead of violence. From the opposite to the same lassitude, languor, and melancholy Laura: “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” (50). Laura: : “I was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly” (7). A voice, sweet and terrible: “‘Your mother warns you to beware of the assassin’” (52). Laura continues: “At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw Carmilla, standing, near the foot of my bed, in her night-dress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, in one great stain of blood” (52). We have to read this relationship like a sort of progression between both girls that leads Laura take on Carmilla's appearance because at the beginning of the story Carmilla is white, her appearance is not like Laura's appearance, as the story goes on Carmilla feeds on Laura, that lose blood, she looks like sick and became even more white and pale while Carmilla begin to be stronger and more alive. Lassitude, Languor and Melancholy have been Carmilla's straight, so far at the beginning were Carmilla straight, now they belong to Laura as well. Although initially starting from a well established polarity in patriarchal culture so the virgin and the whore, Le Fanu's story and narrative moves to complicate female identity by mingling both terms or rather by approximating the virgin and the whore a strategy which is fatal for the patriarchal gender system, indeed, this respect although we are familiar with the image of the vampire biting their victims neck, in Carmilla, Laura feels that she is pricked in her breast, as she herself record when narrating her infantile dream fantasy or hallucinations. Non c'è nessuna scena del morso bensì ci sono più scene e più riferimenti ad un nutrimento tramite i seni. When Carmilla is already visiting and feeding on Laura nightly in a dream Laura can hear a voice and this is a very sweet and tender voice but also terrible and this voice says " your mother warns you to beware of the assassin", Laura's says: " At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw Carmilla, standing, near the foot of my bed....." Here like in Dracula blood is important. The figure of Carmilla is associated to that of Laura's mother, because the voice speak as her mother would have done. Laura, Carmilla are related by blood, that we find in the entire novel, the three of them, descending from Countess Mircalla through the maternal line, indeed, Countess Mircalla Carlstein appear to be the original mother of an exclusively female vampire line and she intends on establishing a vampire matriarchy to contrast with that of a usual patriarchy of vampire. Carmilla continues to feed on her victims with the particularity that they are all female, there is no mention that Carmilla refuse male blood, however for Carmilla not all her prays are equal, probably because Laura is the only girl that Carmilla recognises as her double, because Carmilla feeds on and then kill other girls. But we have to admit that she loves Laura's personality, in this passage, we can see how Carmilla shows her passions as vampire and this is a mixture of love, cruelty and violence: “She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die–die, sweetly die–into mine” (29). Even though in the entire story Laura has confronted Carmilla's sexual advances with a mixture of repulsion and attraction she admits: Laura: “[i]n this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed” (25). The narrative closes without fully demonising Carmilla: “It was long before the terror of recent events subsided; and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternations– sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door” (96). The narrative closes without a demonization of Carmilla and it still keeps Laura ambivalent feeling about Carmilla and suggesting her melancholy, sense of loss because of Carmilla absence (quotation). There is a strong relation between the two girls because the males in Carmilla are ineffective and this created not by chance but this was done on purpose. So the males in Carmilla are as in effectual as their attempts to protect women as they control them. As Veeder notes, General Spielsdorf: "submits to the charms of sex and rank by convincing himself that Millarca's mother was 'throwing her self entirely upon my chivalry.' Such manly protectiveness is in fact a form of emasculation, as Spielsdorf's diction indicates. 'She in some sort disarmed me . . . quite overpowered, I submitted'" (204).* *Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in "Carmilla" and "Dracula" Gli stessi personaggi dicono di non poter far altro che sottometersi a questa presenza femminile vampirica and it is the same with Laura's father because he is at the same way ineffectual as the protector of women and when Carmilla disappears, Laura and the other in the castle "grew frightened... and the bell long and furiously. If my father's room had been at that side of the house" Laura says, " we would have called him up at once to our aid. But alas! he was quite out of hearing". Anche quando c’è da chiamare e da proteggere, il padre nonostante i richiami non riesce a sentire la figlia che ha bisogno del suo aiuto, questo è il motivo per cui si crea questo legame così forte tra Laura e Carmilla. Laura and Carmilla's female alliances result in a rejection not only of marriage. (sono una dimostrazione del rifiuto del matrimonio) But of mother hood as well. (ma anche della figura materna). Laura's and Carmilla's female alliances result in a rejection not only of marriage but of motherhood as well. Senf notes that "during the nineteenth century [it was assumed that] motherhood was a woman's highest duty“* *Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in "Carmilla" and "Dracula" La maternità era, nel 800, il più alto dovere della donna, ecco perché è così trasgressivo il novel e perchè fu anche censurato.