Carmilla : Themes

2. Bibliography: Choose one of the assigned paper topics and compile a bibliography related to your choice of paper topic for the Interpretive/Research essay. It is strongly recommended that you use Refworks (provided through UCSD Library) or Zotero (a free bibliography site; https://www.zotero.org/) to create your bibliography. You should supply at least ten sources (if there aren’t 10 items specifically on your topic then cast your net a bit more broadly to include related issues or texts). At least two of the bibliography entries should be annotated

3. This assignment is designed in part to get you to work with scholarly sources utilizing the UCSD Library. You will be evaluated based on the quality/breadth/depth of the sources you assemble. Provide a descriptive title for your bibliography. Do not list sources already provided on the syllabus. You are welcome and encouraged to use on-line sources, but you will be in part evaluated on your ability to find reliable sources of scholarship. I would therefore recommend not using Wikipedia or other non-refereed sources as part of your listings for this assignment.

4. Carmilla: Themes Disease Ireland Vision Women/Sexuality The Doppelgänger Framing/narration/voice

5. Women and Sexuality • Threat of lesbian sexuality (how the vampire loves) • Young people love on impulse 87 • You will die into me • You and I will be one forever/ What is Carmilla’s gender? 90-91 • Orgasm as a cold thrill • I ran to her in an ecstasy of joy • Laura still thinks she hears her • Attraction/repulsion (87)

6. Women/Sexuality • The seduction of Laura happens under the noses of men • Girls are carefully chaperoned, but not carefully enough… • Seduction at a ball, the heterosexual marketplace

7. Women/Sexuality • The mother tries to warn Laura, but Laura is related to Carmilla through her mother • How can we characterize the father figures in this story?

8. Women/Sexuality • Laura’s father quotation of Shakespeare • Is it a misquote? • What are the implications of this choice?

9. Disease in Carmilla • A theme throughout vampire literature, from the 1730s reports and earlier to contemporary references to AIDS and other plagues • Elements of the old tales of vampirism, but seen through the frame of the times

10. Disease • 19th century theories of disease: • Contagionist and anti-contagionist • Le Fanu is mixing these ideas • References to Carmilla and fogs, miasmics • contagionist: diseases passed from one person to another through close contact or tough • anticontagionist: • stressed things like conditions, damp, foul air, poor hygiene

11. Disease • Contagion-theory opponents didn’t like its “democratic” nature—it could hit anyone and also didn’t look at root causes • class and disease in Carmilla—Laura isn’t really worried that she will be infected, but the real problem is in her very house, part of the upper class

12. Disease in Carmilla • The significance of science • In the 19th c. the advance of the microscope is opening up a new world (Willis)

13. The Microscope • Anon. writing about the microscope from 1806, Willis: page 118-19 • “The microscope displays to us, in each object, a thousand others which escaped our knowledge. Yet, in every object discovered by this instrument, others yet remain unseen, which the microscope itself can never bring to notice. What wonders would we see, if we could continually improve those glasses, which are invented for the assistance of our sight. Imagination may, in some measure, supply the defect of our eyes, and make it seem as a mental microscope to present each atom thousands of new and invisible worlds”

14. Disease/Science/Supernatural • People can see a world they never dreamed of—there were also skeptics • Is there more out there? A supernatural world? • General: “you believe in nothing but what consists with your own prejudices and illusions. I remember when I was like you, but I have learned better” 115

15. Disease/Science • science and other types of “authority” come together here, as in the original legends—all mixed with fear • 94 • imperial commission and the baron’s fictional library

16. Disease/Science/Supernatural • Carmilla’s father: science vs the supernatural • Solving the mystery of Carmilla is a bit like trying to pick out patterns under the microscope (Willis) • Page 95: Carmilla on God and Nature • Page 92: Carmilla on religion

17. Disease, Religion and the Supernatural • Exchange between Carmilla and Laura’s father • What is Carmilla’s relation to Christianity:

18. Vision • Many references to people seeing and noting things • Laura notices Carmilla’s mother 81 • Carmilla observes Laura’s father 109 • Observation at the ball • Obscured paintings/tombstone markings • How are we to see Carmilla? Woman? Cat?

19. Ireland • Willis and others read Carmilla as an allegory of Ireland • Styria is like Ireland with similar religious tensions and colonial issues • Why is Laura in Styria: it’s cheap!

20. Ireland • In this reading Carmilla would be Irish (native) and Laura is Anglo-Irish (her mother is native) • Le Fanu presents an ambivalent portrait of Carmilla (and hence of Styria/Ireland) • Le Fanu himself was ambivalent on Ireland

21. The Doppelgänger and the malleability of identity • Why does it take us so long to learn Laura’s name? What was her mother’s last name? • We learn of Laura’s appearance through Carmilla • Why does Carmilla use anagrams? • Why does she lie about the childhood dream?

22. Framing/narration/voice • The frame, Dr. Hesselius’ record • Laura as unreliable narrator—eyewitness 76

23. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) • Born in Northwest Germany, trained as a jurist • Kept moving as various areas of German-speaking world adopted legislation that persecuted homosexuality • Died in poverty in Italy, where he wrote “Manor” (1885)

24. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) • Arguably the first “gay rights” advocate • 1867: he is the first person known to give a speech advocating gay rights; he addressed the 500 member Association of German Jurists, in Munich • He was twice jailed for his beliefs

25. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) • Early in his life, Napoleonic code had been relatively liberal • 1851: Prussia issues Section 143, which mandates unconditional punishment for “unnatural sexual practices • 1866: Formation of the Northern German Federation impacts laws governing sexuality • 1872: Section 143 becomes paragraph 172 and then paragraph 175, law later used by Nazis to imprison and murder homosexuals

26. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) • Theorist of homosexuality • He believed sexual orientation was something one was born with • Urning—a male with a feminine soul • Uranism—his term for homosexuality

27. Faero Islands

29. Ulrichs, “Manor” (1885) • From the collection Matrosengeschichte • How do the portrayals of vampirism and sexuality compare to the other texts we’ve read so far?

30. “Manor” • What is the parental role in this story? • Laera doesn’t allow Har to go to sea (100) • Laera attempts to comfort Har (101) • Laera’s attempt to save has created a fatal and painful separation (107) • Laera finally agrees to Har’s request

31. “Manor” • What is Har’s reaction to Manor’s return? (102) • Har’s blasphemy (104)

32. Ulrichs and Mythology • Urda—a Norse figure similar to the Fates (103)

33. Housekeeping • Shift in syllabus • No change to assignment due dates

34. Romanticism

35. Gothic • Era of the “High Gothic” 1764-1817 • Literary genre obsessed with medievalism • “Dark Ages” • Gothic architecture (12th c-16th c (ex. Reims Cathedral) • Name derived from the Goths –Germanic tribe that opposed Roman Empire • Barbarians and independence

36. Gothic • “rhetorical style and narrative structure designed to produce fear and desire within the reader” (Halberstam)

37. Gothic genre • Emerges in late 18th c. • Revolution (French, American, Haitian) • Fall of ancient institutions • Rise of evangelicalism, Empire • Age of Enlightenment • Increase in literary • Rise of lending libraries • Rise of the novel

38. Gothic themes • Excess and transgression • Emotion over intellect • Transgression of social norms • Terror as transcendent experience • Terror—elevation of the senses • Horror—not transcendent, recoil and withdrawal

39. Gothic themes • Good dependent on the existence of evil Evil has a function in an overall Good • The return of the repressed • Live burial, dungeons, graves, basements, ghosts and hauntings, curses

40. Gothic themes • Gender and family • Subversion and/or reinscription of gender roles • Patriarchal power questioned • Alienation and isolation

41. Some Features of Gothic Narrative • Imperiled heroine • Dark hero • Overbearing or evil father figure • Jealous, murderous mother/lover • Ghosts, vampires, zombies (20th c), shapeshifter • Castles, dark forests, monasteries, decaying mansions, cemeteries

42. Some early Gothic novels • Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto (1764) • Ann Radcliffe,The Mysteries of Udolpho(1794) • Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)

43. Carmilla and the Gothic Many gothic elements but also reflects on them • Opening is a mixture of the gothic and the domestic • “no drugging, no tampering with locks, no witches” (father making fun of gothic) 122

44. “The Mysterious Stranger” • Text itself is mysterious; is it really a translation, what is the source? Who is the author? • Appeared in the magazine Odds and Ends in England in 1860, but I have found an example in Chamber’s Repository of Instructive and Amusing Tracts (1854) • Considered source for Dracula

45. “The Mysterious Stranger” • Contains familiar elements of the vampire narrative • Azzo—the aristocratic vampire • What is Franziska’s attraction to Azzo? • The role of the East—setting in the Carpathians • The vampire and the invitation

46. “The Mysterious Stranger” • What is the relationship between the Knight of Fahnenberg and his new possession in the Carpathians? • Reading the story with an eye to issues of empire and colonialism

47. “The Mysterious Stranger” • Empire and colonialism: How to consider the various characters: • Knight of Fahnenberg (no experience of the Boreas or reed-wolves 39, introduces “German improvements” 43) • Franziska (wants to be tyrannized, 38, attracted to novelty vs. Germany 44) • Baron Franz von Kronstein (“dreamy softness” 36) • Bertha • Castellan of Glogau, Knight of Woislaw, “true model of a soldier” (56); a Christian knight

48. Count Azzo von Klatka • He can command the wolves (42) • He seems to have had dealings with Turks (“Turkish-Sclavonian hordes” 43) • His appearance, 50, “like that of an Indian who has been suffering long from fever” • Can read thoughts, appears to have influence over Franziska

49. “The Mysterious Stranger” • Christianity in the story • The method for killing the vampire—recitation of the Credo (64)

50. Credo • EnglishI believe in God, the Father almighty,creator of heaven and earth. • I believe in Jesus Christ,his only Son, our Lord. He was conceivedby the power of the Holy Spirit,and born of the Virgin Mary, He suffered under Pontius Pilate,was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended into hell.On the third day he rose again;he ascended into heaven,he is seated at the right hand of the Father,he will come againto judge the living and the dead. • I believe in the Holy Spirit,the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body,and the life everlasting. Amen • LatinCredo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem;Creatorem caeli et terrae. • Et in Jesum Christum,Filium eius unicum, Dominum nostrum;qui conceptus estde Spiritu Sancto,natus ex Maria virgine;passus sub Pontio Pilato,crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus;descendit ad inferos;tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;ascendit ad caelos;sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis;inde venturus estiudicare vivos et mortuos. • Credo in Spiritum Sanctum;sanctam ecclesiam catholicam;sanctorum communionem;remissionem peccatorum;carnis resurrectionem;vitam aeternam. Amen.