Book Review: Carmilla by J. S. Le Fanu

My relationship with Carmilla is almost lifelong. A homoerotic horror novella from 1872 isn’t typical reading fare for an elementary school-aged kid, but you can blame Scholastic. I have no idea why the children’s publishing company put out an edition of the book, but the copy of J. S. Le Fanu’s Carmilla that I encountered as a young girl looked typical of popular novels of the time. The mention of vampires excited me, as I already had well-thumbed copies of both Vampires and Werewolves from Bantam’s Weird and Horrible Library. Filled with creepy medieval woodcuts and stories from folklore, I read those books as history. (Something going back that far had to be real, didn’t it?) I’m sure the language and vocabulary of Carmilla were far over my head, but before I picked it back up as an adult, I still retained an impression of both somnambulism and anagrams -- things that still interest me today.

The Scholastic version of Carmilla.

Years later, I rediscovered Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu when I became interested in Victorian-era mystery and horror. I read the Dover editions of both Uncle Silas, a locked room mystery with occult undertones, and In a Glass Darkly, a collection of short stories and novellas, including “Green Tea,” a bizarre tale of a man terrorized by an invisible monkey demon. It was in In a Glass Darkly that I encountered Carmilla a second time. My most recent (and third) reading coincided with a trip to Ireland. One of the hotels where I stayed was around the corner from Le Fanu’s home (I blogged about it here), so it was a stroke of serendipity that I was offered an advance copy of Syracuse University Press’ new edition of Carmilla just before I left for its author’s stomping grounds.

Carmilla predates Stoker’s Dracula by twenty-five years, and its influence on the more popular vampire book is noticeable. In his original manuscript, Stoker even placed Dracula in a castle in Styria -- the same setting as Carmilla -- before ultimately changing it to Transylvania. Stoker’s Dr. Van Helsing is deeply indebted to Le Fanu’s Baron Vordenburg, the first vampire expert in fiction. It’s Lucy Westenra that owes the most to Carmilla, though. The women are strikingly similar in description: both are beautiful and languid, large-eyed and slender. More notably, both are sleepwalking seductresses. In many ways, the character Carmilla is the vampire Lucy Westenra would have become if Dracula ended differently. Although Carmilla came first, with name changes, it could almost be read as an alternate ending to Dracula.

While you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who never heard of Dracula, Carmilla hasn’t fared quite as well in popular culture. It’s still on the radar, though, far more than many other gothic horror books of the 19th century. Persistent interest in vampires is one reason the book sticks around, but I don’t think vampires alone keep interest in Carmilla alive. Erotic lesbian vampires, on the other hand … now that’s something to keep filmmakers and academics interested for decades and decades, and both continue to remake and re-analyze Carmilla from time to time.

Illustration from the original Carmilla.

Carmilla isn’t very long, and it isn’t very complex, which may be another reason filmmakers like it -- it’s a template. The story’s ingenue is Laura, who longs for companionship in a secluded castle with her father. When the young and beautiful Carmilla ends up in the family’s care, the two feel an immediate bond. While obsessed with Carmilla, Laura also notices strange things about her: mood changes, secrecy, and, of course, the previously-mentioned somnambulism. Laura has nightmares of a creature biting her in her sleep, and over time she becomes listless and pale, her life seeming to drain out of her. The rest of the story is a vampire-hunting adventure, and while it delivers on the creep factor, the highlights of the book are in Carmilla’s steady and sinister seduction of Laura:

"Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled 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 for ever.”"

At times, though, it’s unclear just who is seducing whom. Laura’s obsession with her friend  is hardly hidden. She says of Carmilla’s hair:

"I have often placed my hands under it, and laughed with wonder at its weight. It was exquisitely fine and soft, and in colour a rich very dark brown, with something of gold. I loved to let it down, tumbling with its own weight, as, in her room, she lay back in her chair talking in her sweet low voice, I used to fold and braid it, and spread it out and play with it."

Laura’s desire, though, is mixed up with fear:

"In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had no distinct thoughts about her while such scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence. This I know is paradox, but I can make no other attempt to explain the feeling."

The mixture of lesbian sexual obsession and vampirism has attracted filmmakers since 1932, starting with Carl Dreyer’s stylized and atmospheric German film Vampyr. Dreyer played down the lesbianism and upped the horror, going to extreme lengths to capture the right look. (It is said that

Still from Dreyer's The Vampyr.

the filthy look of the doctor's surgery was the result of the director breaking jars of jam on the floor, then shutting off the room for a month to let mold and insects accumulate.) The first film to adhere
to Carmilla’s homoeroticism was in 1960, with Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses, titled Et Mourir de Plaisir in French (literally: To Die of Pleasure). The story has been adapted several times since, both faithfully and with only the most tenuous of connections, from Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers to the 1989 film with Meg Tilly as Carmilla.

You can see that Blood and Roses follows parts of Carmilla closely in the clip below. From Carmilla:

I saw Carmilla, standing near the foot of my bed, in her white night-dress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, in one great stain of blood.

 

The Syracuse University Press edition of Carmilla is decidedly a definitive one, and I recommend it for both academics and those reading it for kicks. The text itself is the result of a comparison of the first publication, as serialized in the journal The Dark Blue, with Carmilla’s subsequent publication in the collection In a Glass Darkly. Extensive notes indicate differences in the text, which is helpful for those doing serious study (or even just for word nerds like me). The essays following this edition range in subject from Carmilla as an Irish novel to the vampire aesthetic. Particularly of interest to me is is Nancy West’s “On Celluloid Carmillas,” which examines the

Syracuse University Press' critical edition of Carmilla

many film versions of Le Fanu’s story, as well as films it has directly influenced.

I highly recommend that you get to know Carmilla, because chances are, you’ll run into her somewhere, whether in fiction or film. Just like in the novel, she’s going to be pretty hard to get rid of. 

Buy the critical edition of Carmilla from Syracuse University Press

Download the public domain edition of Carmilla at Project Gutenberg 

This post was written as part of the Friday’s Forgotten Books blog event hosted by Patti Abbott. You can always find the full list of this week’s entries at her site. You can find my previous forgotten book reviews here.

Book Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Ransom Riggs' YA novel from Quirk Books.

A peculiar book for peculiar readers.

I was a creepy kid. In the first grade, my favorite books in the library were on mummies and archaeology. While I was mildly obsessed with the pictures of dusty tombs and viscera-filled canopic jars, what I couldn’t stop turning to were actual photographs of preserved bodies found in peat bogs. They reminded me of raisins: blackened, dried-up skin, but still sort of juicy. One, the victim of a hanging, still had an intact rope around his neck.

Weird words obsessed me too, and I recall the first time I heard the word carcass (which fascinated me enough to color a picture of one for a second-grade art assignment). I learned mausoleum from a Trixie Belden book, though I pronounced it then to rhyme with linoleum. (From Trixie Belden #14, The Mystery of the Emeralds: The gate was ajar, and going through it, Trixie and Jim saw rows of moss-covered headstones. In the rear was a small but impressive marble mausoleum. "Ooooh! Cemeteries give me the shivers!" Trixie exclaimed.)

The Egyptian tombs, the bog carcasses, and the mausoleums had something in common besides the spectre of mortality (In the midst of life, we are in death was a concept I learned long before I ever heard the specific words). They are all things that seem otherworldly, yet are of this world. That otherworldliness, grounded in reality, goes a long way towards explaining what’s so appealing about Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, especially to a creepy kid-turned-adult like me.

Miss Peregrine's back cover.

The old photographs, on the cover and scattered liberally throughout the pages, are a huge part of the appeal. They too are both real and otherworldly. The black-and-white snapshots are of real people, strangers who are likely long-dead, that author Ransom Riggs found while scouring flea markets. While the author wove these odd and disparate images into a single story, it’s hard not to wonder what the real stories are. Why is the child in the bunny costume crying? Who are the weird twin clowns? It’s hard to know which might be more strange, the real (unknown) stories or the ones the author invented.

Riggs’ novel begins with the death of a young boy’s grandfather, and it’s a frightening and bizarre death. Clues left behind by the grandfather ultimately lead Jacob Portman to the abandoned ruins of an orphanage on a small Welsh island. See? Real-life creepy things already. Death, weird abandoned buildings, and mysterious orphans are only the beginning. In fact, the preserved body of a bog person even makes an appearance in a local museum. (My childhood self would have slept with this book under her pillow.)

Though the story does turn supernatural, the supernatural elements are the kind even the most skeptical parts of myself can manage to believe in. There are time loops. There are monsters -- hollowgasts -- that are the stuff of nightmares. The kids have powers, but they are not superheroic. Their powers are odd -- some are almost useless -- and serve to make them outcasts and freaks. In the context of an Old World-thinking Welsh village, these kids aren’t much different from the deformed or severely handicapped. They form their own world at the children’s home, which Jacob ultimately stumbles into.

Like the children themselves, the book has its flaws. Parts of the story beg believability. It’s not the strange stuff that seems so unreal, as disbelief can be suspended for the supernatural. It’s harder to believe that it’s a cinch to convince your Dad to up and take you to Wales, then leave you largely alone once you’re there. 

Ransom Riggs scoured flea markets for real photos to use in the book.

It may seem cliche to say “It’s too short!” as a criticism (a staple of reviewers who don’t wish to say anything too negative), but in this case, it really is a negative. After the world you come to know in Miss Peregrine changes dramatically, the story moves to high action, then ends too soon. If the book were expanded, the reader could spend more time in the book’s superior first half, learning more about the characters there.

The ending is grossly unsatisfying, and smacks of setting-up-a-sequel. The publisher may be to blame more than the author for the choice, but it’s still bothersome. There are ways to allow room for a sequel without damaging the story of the book at hand. That we haven’t seen the last of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is certain, in fact, a movie is in the works with TIm Burton said to be directing.

If nothing else, Ransom Riggs should be applauded for the creation of horror for young adults without any of the trendy tropes. Nary a vampire, zombie or even a teen witch is in sight. Both my creepy kid self and my creepy adult self approve.

Download and read the first three chapters of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children free at Quirk Books.



Are there elements from your favorite childhood books that still please you to find in fiction?

The 15 Most Disturbing Nursery Rhymes You've Never Heard

Nursery rhymes aren’t all pudding and pie. Look closely and you’ll start to notice the starving dogs, nose-severing blackbirds, women held captive in pumpkin shells, and tails lopped off with carving knives. Those horrific images are just the remnants, though. 

Mother Goose rhymes have been fairly sanitized over the years, and earlier versions were chock-full of atrocities. The farther back one looks, the more gruesome the rhymes become. Some even believe that the seemingly harmless “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo” counting rhymes derive from ancient methods of choosing human sacrifices (though the source material is sketchy.)


Domestic violence is one of the more common themes in old nursery rhymes, with wives and daughters bearing the brunt of the abuse, ranging from beating with a stick to flat-out murder. The early Victorians no doubt thought these rhymes were instructive to their daughters, who would learn to be obedient, dutiful wives.

Women weren’t the only ones to suffer in verse. Plenty of men are burnt, hacked or otherwise disposed of, as are children of any gender and a bevy of pets and wildlife.

Nursery rhyme reform was the rallying cause of a few upstanding gentlemen of the 1950s, including Geoffrey Handley-Taylor, who surveyed 200 popular rhymes and listed in detail what sorts of unsavoriness they contained (much as parents groups today decry animated films or video game content).

Handley-Taylor’s list of unsavory elements in the rhymes he read is a whole page long, and includes these bothersome incidents:

• 8 allusions to murder (unclassified)
• 2 cases of choking to death
• 1 case of cutting a person in half
• 1 case of death by devouring
• 15 allusions to maimed human beings or animals
• 23 cases of physical violence (unclassified)

Full list here



Here are 15 examples of nursery rhymes that don’t make the cut in childrens books today. Keep them handy if you have any children you need to keep awake.

There was a Man so Wise,
He jumpt into
A Bramble Bush,
And scratcht out both his Eyes.
And when he saw
His Eyes were out,
And reason to Complain,
He jumpt into a Quickset Hedge,
And scratcht them in again.


Originally from Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, 1744

Old father Long-Legs
Can’t say his prayers:
Take him by the left leg,
And throw him down the stairs.
And when he’s at the bottom,
Before he long has lain,
Take him by the right leg,
And throw him up again.


Originally from Nancy Cock’s Pretty Song Book for all little Misses and Masters, 1780





There was an old woman,
Her name it was Peg;
Her head was of wood and
She wore a cork leg.
The neighbours all pitch’d
Her into the water,
Her leg was drowned first,
And her head followed after.

From James Halliwell Phillips Nursery Rhymes, 1842 

THERE was a lady all skin and bone;
Sure such a lady was never known :
It happen'd upon a certain day,
This lady went to church to pray.

When she came to the church stile,
There she did rest a little while ;
When she came to the churchyard,
There the bells so loud she heard. 

When she came to the church door,
She stopt to rest a little more ;
When she came the church within,
The parson pray'd 'gainst pride and sin.

On looking up, on looking down,
She saw a dead man on the ground ;
And from his nose unto his chin,
The worms crawl'd out, the worms crawl'd in.

Then she unto the parson said,
Shall I be so when I am dead :
O yes ! O yes, the parson said,
You will be so when you are dead.

Here the lady screams.*


*The person reciting the rhyme is meant to scream bloody murder at the end of the verse.


Originally from Gammer Gurton’s Garland, 1784 (Full text online)


----

There was a man, he went mad,
He jumped into a paper bag;

The paper bag was too narrow,
He jumped into a wheelbarrow;

The wheelbarrow took on fire,
He jumped into a cow byre;

The cow byre was too nasty;
He jumped into an apple pasty;

The apple pasty was too sweet,
He jumped into Chester-le-Street;

Chester-le-Street was full of stones,
He fell down and broke his bones.


From an early Mother Goose

----

I charge my daughters every one
To keep good house while I am gone,
You and you and especially you,
Or else I'll beat you black and blue.

From an early Mother Goose

----

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

From an early Mother Goose

Die, pussy, die,
Shut your little eye:
When you wake,
Find a cake,
Die, pussy, die.


From an early Mother Goose (Actually less threatening than it sounds, this is a rhyme to be recited while stopping a swing.)

---- 

Baby, baby, naughty baby,
Hush, you squalling thing, I say.
Peace this moment, peace, or maybe
Bonaparte will pass this way.


Baby, baby, he's a giant,
Tall and black as Rouen steeple,
And he breakfasts, dines, rely on't,
Every day on naughty people.


Baby, baby, if he hears you
As he gallops past the house,
Limb from limb at once he'll tear you,
Just as pussy tears a mouse.


And he'll beat you, beat you, beat you,
And he'll beat you into pap,
And he'll eat you, eat you, eat you,
Every morsel snap, snap, snap.


From an early Mother Goose lullaby

----


Here come I,
  Little David Doubt;
If you don't give me money,
 I'll sweep you all out.


Money I want,
  And money I crave;
If you don't give me money,
  I'll sweep you all to the grave!


From an early Mother Goose’s Almanack

----

John Ball shot them all;
John Scott made the shot,
But John Ball shot them all.


From James Halliwell Phillips Nursery Rhymes, 1842 (Full text of the poem, which continues on in "The House That Jack Built" style)

----

Little General Monk
Sat upon a trunk
Eating a crust of bread;
There fell a hot coal
And burnt into his clothes a hole,
Now little General Monk is dead.
Keep always from the fire,
If it catch your attire
You too, like General Monk, will be dead.


From Rhymes for the Nursery, 1824

---- 

I married a wife on Sunday,
She began to scold on Monday,
Bad was she on Tuesday,
Middling was she on Wednesday,
Worse she was on Thursday,
Dead was she on Friday,
Glad was I on Saturday night,
To bury my wife on Sunday.


From Tom Tit’s Song Book, 1790

----

 A man of words and not of deeds
Is like a garden full of weeds

And when the weeds begin to grow
It's like a garden full of snow

And when the snow begins to fall
It's like a bird upon the wall

And when the bird away does fly
It's like an eagle in the sky

And when the sky begins to roar
It's like a lion at the door

And when the door begins to crack
It's like a stick across your back

And when your back begins to smart
It's like a penknife in your heart

And when your heart begins to bleed
You're dead, and dead, and dead indeed.


Originally from Gammer Gurton’s Garland, 1784

---

A  long tail’d pig, or a short tail’d  pig,
Or a pig without any tail,
A sow-pig, or a boar-pig,
Or a pig with a curling  tail.

Take hold of his tail,
And eat off his head,
And then you will be sure
The pig-hog is dead.


Originally the street cry of the pig-pie man, reproduced in several early nursery rhyme books.

----

What's the grimmest nursery rhyme or story you recall? Give me your creepiest verse in the comments section.