CARMILLA: The vampire book that started all vampire books

Comments · 208

• CA

  @Caradiene · 1 year ago

  The even more og vampire story would be Polidori's The Vampyre. Also, as a saphic woman myself, I really love Carmilla. Yes, it has overt homophobic elements to it but it is in a way extremely relatable (the childhood dreams about women, the intimicy between the characters, Laura missing Carmilla after her death), it honestly makes me kind of feel seen.

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• PA

  @paxcattus · 1 year ago

  I wish they went into Carmilla's character and opinions more in the book. I wanted to know more about how she became a vampire and how she feels about living that life! Her death seemed so sudden without hearing any final words or goodbyes from her.

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• PI

  @pinkdolly · 9 months ago

  I just finished Carmilla, and for such a simple story, I still have questions. Mainly, who is the woman who pretends to be Carmilla’s mother? Is she also a vampire? Who are the evil, undead looking coachmen and the black woman seen in the coach? There were more things to explore that could have added more interest to the story, but these characters are never fully explained

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• YE

  @yersg9510 · 1 year ago

  What i liked about this book is how you can feel how lonely the protagonist is. Even the same can be said for Carmilla's character. She just wanted a friend :(

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• TR

  @TrevorJamesMcNeil · 1 year ago (edited)

  On the Polidori point, that really is where modern vampire fiction started as it was published in 1819, predating even Carmilla by 50 years but is also technically a short-story, so you are correct to refer to Carmilla as the first vampire book. Also, Polidori's story has similar homoerotic elements, the main character, Count Ruthven, directly based on the flamboyantly bisexual Lord Byron.

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• CO

  @cosmictraveler1146 · 1 year ago

  I was shocked how early this was written and that it had a sapphic tone even though she didn’t have the best intentions lmao

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• NI

  @Nick20_02 · 11 months ago (edited)

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWG845ncnF4&amp;t=513">8:33</a> maybe i am overthinking about that part but i read it as Laura being confused. Carmilla is confident in her sexuality and she knows what she wants, where as Laura is experiencing everything for the first time and she likes every aspect of it and the &quot;repulsion&quot; is of two things: 1st obviously, the vampire, also strange highs and lows that Carmilla made her feel; and 2nd, which u r talking about, is her confusion as society had told her that it&apos;s wrong, but she likes the feeling of it. And never once in the book did the author insinuate such views.<br><br>Her &quot;repulsion&quot; tells us about the societal stigma and confusion. I don&apos;t think the author was trying to say being gay is bad. Cuz there were few instances where the author could have written something negative.

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• AN

  @angelus1uk · 1 year ago

  Vampires appeared in poetry before novels - The Bride of Corinth (1797) and Der Vampir(1748). The same year as Polidori&apos;s Vampyre (1819) was The Black Vampire: A legend of St.Domingo by Uriah Derick D&apos;Arcy. Also, Wake not the dead (1823) by Ernst Raupach.

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• JU

  @jussofdemonland1765 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Hot take: &nbsp;Carmilla&apos;s possessive and selfish love for Laura (which slowly kills Laura) is a mirror of Laura&apos;s father selfish love for his daughter, which also slowly kills Laura.<br><br>I can&apos;t tell with certainty, but the idea that suicides can turn into vampires might actually come from real folklore.

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• 14

  @14littledude · 4 months ago

  The first 2/3 or so of the book is really good in the sense that the scenery, atmosphere and old prose with the aristocratic and formal speech builds immersion for the period in which the book was written. Around chapter 10, however, when they meet up with the general, there is about two to three chapters of uninterrupted dialogue, and dialogue within dialogue just explaining everything instead of letting characters figure stuff out or some sort of flashback.<br><br>I was finding it hard to follow and pay attention so I switched to the audiobook but then suddenly the scenery and timeline starts changing and I couldn&apos;t tell when Laura was talking and when the general was talking. It felt like a completely different book and not in a good way. It&apos;s worth the read but good god those last few chapters were a headache.

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• FA

  @fantasy9865 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Hi, Vampires enthusiast and Dr in Literature here! I LOVED the analysis of the psychology of the characters you made here! <br>Besides Carmilla, I own &quot;John Polidori, The Vampyre and other tales of the macabre&quot; from Oxford World&apos;s classics and the introduction written by Robert Morrison and Chris Baldick is phenomenal, it literally answers all the questions that you asked in the video, summarising how vampires started (very much differently than Polidory was used to, too) and evolved in literature. I really suggest anybody to read it if they can, that is a VERY good volume for lovers of gothic horror literature. I will just say that all this craze for horror fiction indeed came after Polidori&apos;s The Vampyre was published (erroneously in Byron&apos;s name but they explain everything) and developed within magazines. polidori was the very first to give the portrait of a noble, good looking, weel groomed and charming vampire, from which Stoker created Dracula and Le Fanu his Carmilla. Also, the very first accounts of &quot;vampired&quot; are from Dom Calmet. Really suggest to read his treaty if you can, that&apos;s the real deal.

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• YE

  @yellowantphil · 1 year ago

  There&apos;s also Varney the Vampire from 1847, which is ponderously long and not well written (so not recommended), but it was (I think) the first story of a vampire who hated his own condition. Every time he died, the universe (or some power) conspired to bring him back to life, seemingly to make him suffer longer. Of course, everyone around him suffered too. (The first half of the book has a lot of filler, but it improves somewhat in the second half.)<br><br>Carmilla is also somewhat reminiscent of Christabel by Samuel Coleridge, an earlier poem about a woman who seems like a vampire (she can&apos;t cross the threshold to a house under her own power), but the story was unfinished, so it never revealed what sort of creature she was.

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