While on my facebook, I came across a post about about a lesbian female vampire that predated Bram Stoker's Dracula. So interested was I that I immediately went to Project Gutenberg to find it and begin to read it. I did find it, and I did begin to read it, even though I first felt a bit guilty about cheating on "Behold a Pale Horse", but that's for another blog entry. Apparently there's also an audio book form, for people who enjoy listening to books. I'm personally not one, so I'm not including it here. You can backtrack from the link I put up to find it.
Carmilla is a very short story, I read it in just a few hours early two mornings ago, and I loved it. The story, like Dracula, is told in a letter form, a diary entry of sorts by the young women that experienced the phenomenon with the vampire known as Carmilla.
From the beginning of the story, we know that there is something off about the entire situation to which Carmilla is thrust into the world of the protagonist, although she immediately loves the other young woman. Although I use the world love, the entire thing is platonic, at least on the part of the protagonist, there is only mentioned the exchange of kisses.
I will not get in to the plot too deeply, but I will say that vampires in the book are viewed in the same way as they are in Dracula. There is nothing deeply romantic about them, although Carmilla is described as ridiculously beautiful, with dark hair and eyes, and charming almost beyond belief. Another interesting fact about Carmilla that makes her different from Dracula, is that she can walk about in daylight; granted, she is never seen very early in the morning, she still comes out and about, and she is known to drink hot chocolate (the only thing the protagonist actually witnesses her drink).
There is a connection between the protagonist and Carmilla that I feel isn't fully explored by the author, which makes it fall a bit short for me of a really, really good novel. I felt it could have been expanded upon, and fleshed out, because it is known that Carmilla treats the protagonist different from other victims, and that the protagonist is a distant matrilineal descendant of the vampire.
It felt a bit like the story stopped too soon, which is why I think it doesn't have the same fame as Dracula, and it's not as long. There are overlapping themes, although one of the ways that vampires are seen to become vampires is by suicide, and having lived a particularly ungodly life. There isn't much work about the history of vampires, except that Carmilla's family name had been extinct for at least a century, and that they were known as bad people. There are a lot of unanswered questions that I think also makes it less popular than Dracula.
The copy of the book that I had is a good copy, on my kindle, the margins are rather wide, making for a narrow page look. There isn't much difficulty with the language, at least nothing you can't click and find the meaning to if you have a digital copy for an e-reader, but even if you don't, you can figure out the context easily, and usually the protagonist gives a meaning.
All together, I enjoyed the story, I think people that like pseudo-lesbian literature, vampires, an old stories would enjoy it. It's not long, and it's fascinating to have insight that the protagonist doesn't. I had more than once I sucked my teeth and talked to the book, telling the character that she was stupid for not realizing odd habits, but there are moments the main character acknowledges that she was being stupid, so I like that as well. It's a nice little read that I think people would enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment