On Paths Unknown discussion

Ok, and in this thread you can say anything about the novella, ha ha ha.No spoilers barred.

One thing I really find silly: how come after the first part of the General's story, even, the narrator and her father didn't immediately cry foul and point at Carmilla in shock with accusing fingers?
...and after all, the painting...

It gives you the feeling you want to shake them; like in thriller movies where they have these really dumb characters who walk into traps with open eyes. They make it obvious to the audience that the character is about to lose life or limb, so you are screaming: "Stop! Stop! Don't go there!" , but the character still dumbly goes there... :D

....okay.... but reading the ending told me nothing more than I had already gleaned. What it didn't tell me, was who the "mother" and the other gentleman aid of the vampire was, who were the servants - all vampires, I suppose, whom she had created by killing them. ...but what compels them to serve her?

Regarding the discussion in the first thread:

I re-read it today, and with Derek's accusations of prurience and titillation value in mind, I must say that I don't agree, and even found it rather hard to figure out why it should have been labeled with more emphasis on being a "lesbian" pioneer (Carmilla had had a male lover during her 'real' life, so she is bi, if anything) rather than a "vampire" pioneer, the latter which it certainly was one of the pioneers of: keep in mind that this was written long before Bram Stoker's Dracula.

I think what might give the story more of sexual sheen than it has on face-value (since there is zero, but zero "actual" sex in the story - attraction of a sort of egotistical kind yes, but not actual, physical sex) is that part of what Le Fanu is doing here, is that he is sort of conflating the vampire folklore with the succubus folklore - though he doesn't do it explicitly, since a succubus comes in the night and gives men a mighty good time in their sleep - they were probably invented to explain away men's wet dreams and soiled bedclothes in a society which frowned upon any manifestation of sexuality - even, er.. onanism. ;)

But there are never any hints of sexual ecstasy or orgasms in this story,which would qualify it for being 'prurient' or 'sexually titillating' and yes, the girls are very attracted to one another, but if such displays of affection had been deemed sexual in those days, then surely, given that it was written and published in the VICTORIAN era, then at least the male guardians of the girls in question would have been outraged, but instead, they gave the 'friendship' their every blessing. If the attraction had been deemed sexually titillating to the point of prurience, then the novella would certainly have been banned, wouldn't you think?

Oh, there is no doubt that 'vampirism' has sexual undertones, and that the attraction between the two girls, to modern eyes, has sexual undertones; but people, especially women, were always kissing and embracing in those days, without it supposedly leading to having sex.

When I was a young girl, I used to walk hand in hand or arm in arm with my friends at school; we all did it; and it never led to anything sexual. Women are generally allowed to act more affectionately by society than men are - hence, I suppose, all the contact sports men indulge in.

...and even so, I don't know how women professing love for one another is "prurient".

To me, the function of the whole attraction thing and the fact that the vampire is beautiful, adds to how treacherous this particular vampire is supposed to be; for me, the whole story revolved around how deviously the vampires acted in order to deceive their victims; a bit like the snake that mesmerizes its victim before it strikes.

Oh, and something just struck me - when they talk about "breast" in this text, they mean "chest" - the exact spot is given as at the base of the throat; just in case 'breast' was being construed as being the kind of breast that denotes the female mammary organ.

...and in any case, all that aside, what's wrong with sex, and what is wrong with depicting it in literature?

On another level, a Freudian or Jungian level, I would say that the narrator represents the ego, and Carmilla the id.

Carmilla represents the 'dark side' of everyone's own nature, or, she represents that which tempts but eventually drains us. This need not be sex; it can be any addiction or vice.

What is indeed rather sexist about the novella, is that it buys into a stereotype in that the victims are predominantly (but not exclusively) women. (Because women make easier targets, supposedly - they are portrayed as the "weaker" sex.) But keep in mind this was published around the mid-Victorian era, so par for the course.

Generally in folklore though, when the vampire or succubus-like creature is female, the victim tends to be male, and then it is indeed intended to represent a sexual thrall that the creature casts over the man; in fact, it was one of the devices used by the church with which to vilify women and sexuality.

Another aspect which I had meant to mention, is the "you will die for me" aspect, which can of course be seen on different levels. The narrator obviously saw it metaphorically whereas Carmilla meant it oh so literally.

However, these days, the connection between death and sex is of course well known - I am not sure if death and sex were seen as metaphors for one another before Jung and Freud, but I do seem to remember that they were, and of course, lovers have always, through the annals of history said that "I will die for you", so I found that little touch almost humorous - though it was obviously meant to be ominous and melodramatic at the time, if the reader started to glean the 'true' context.

No doubt the reader was supposed to "see through" Carmilla before the narrator does, in order to raise the tension, but with the sophistication of the modern reader, it becomes almost a bit unbearable. This is of course not Le Fanu's fault - the novel is well-enough constructed, and I am sure it worked very well at the time that it was written.

I like your call outs here, wish my brain were not mush right now as I'd like to provide more discussion. (Doing a read-a-thon today.)

Have you seen anything about public reception of the book at the time? I'm not finding much of anything. (Didn't someone say on one of our many threads that prosecution for obscenity was considered but dropped because Carmilla wasn't human? I'm not seeing that anywhere. But Oscar Wilde was sent to prison for homosexual acts in 1897; Carmilla was published in 1871, and I thought the sexual undertones came through crystal clear (Laura mentions a couple of times that she was embarrassed by Carmilla's affections), although Derek is right in that this is slash, not LGBT, given that it is written by a straight man pushing the envelope.

Overall, Carmilla is such a perfect vampire! Her aristocratic selfishness, her disregard for all lives not her own, her deceit, her sexuality, her strength, her relentless hunting... Honestly, I had not remembered it clearly and it was a very fun read as vampire fiction. (I also loved the 'you must die for me' attitude; it summed her up completely as a predator.)

Also, (and I am stealing this a little from a thread I saw out on the web somewhere and do not remember, but it confirmed my own thoughts) Laura seems a bit the unreliable narrator, there at the end, does she not?

The following Spring my father took me a tour through Italy. We remained away for more than a year. 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.

I had that delightful shiver there, like this is not over. Either that Carmilla could possibly rise, or that perhaps Laura succumbed after all? May just be me, but I loved it.

Yeah, there definitely is a glamor to a beautiful, masterful vampire, isn't there? Regarding the narration, I had wondered who she was writing this whole narration to - some aristocratic woman, judging by how she addresses her. It would have been cool, if she - the narrator, was now a deceitful vampire, tricking people into exposing their necks for her. :)

But still, I don't like the idea of dismissing this just because it is supposedly "prurient" and because it was written by a man. The implication is that women cannot write M/M GLBT, and yet I know that many of them do, and are read and enjoyed by male gays, so why can the reverse not be true? As a woman, I don't see anything offensive in Le Fanu's story beyond the unpleasant little detail that, you know, C is actually a vampire literally sucking her friends dry...
Isn't that so true of many sexual and non-sexual relationships, though? Where one person sucks the other one dry on an emotional level?

Ok, but back to the 'prurient'; in case anybody didn't know what "prurient" prose looks like, here is a good example: ;)

(view spoiler)[ I follow his orders immediately. Jeez, can I touch my ankles? I find I can, with ease. The t-shirt slides up my back, exposing my behind. [...]Oh, it feels good. I moan. His breathing halts, and I hear him gasp as he repeats the motion. [...]He lifts his hand and brings it down in a resounding slap against the junction of my thighs, my behind, and my sex. The balls are forced forward inside me, and I’m lost in a quagmire of sensation. The stinging across my behind, the fullness of the balls inside me, and the fact that he’s holding me down. I screw my face up as my faculties attempt to absorb all these foreign feelings. (hide spoiler)]

Guess where that came from? ;) I deliberately kept to the less juicy bits, because, you know, this is not an erotica group...

It's funny, though, what different people find sexy in literature. It looks like what is sexy for one person and what is sexy for another, is not the same thing. The material in my spoiler leaves me far more cold than the material in this novella, truth be told... I've never been too impressed with lit that focuses too much on the physical - I went through a stage where I read some....really smutty erotica that crosses all sorts of lines, out of curiosity, and my final verdict on it is : "meh".

In any case: what I am trying to say is that depicting sexuality in literature is not the same as writing smut/erotica. In smut/erotica, the entire narration focuses on sexual feelings and acts. I can give another example of 'real' smut to make my point - and this time I will post the intro to the "story" (a 'lesbian' one). It starts off very.... physical : (view spoiler)[ Allison was a freshman in college studying medicine. She was 5'6" tall, had brown hair, and always kept her pubic hair trimmed to a small landing strip above her *spoiler*. She had a bit of a bubble butt, a d-cup breasts, and a fluffy *spoiler*. She was very dedicated to her school work, but she was more dedicated to herself. She took at least an hour every day just to go around her dorm naked while playing with her *spoiler* a bit. She didn't have a roommate, so she didn't have to worry about anyone else seeing her naked. (hide spoiler)] I *spoilered* it a bit. :P

Also, if the depiction of 'love' and passionate attraction makes literature 'bad', then surely this must be confined to the dregs (and yet it can be found as a 'set work' in secondary schools the world over):
(view spoiler)[
JULIET
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties, or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.
Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle till strange love grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
-Shakespeare(3.2.5-16)

..and how about this, a poem in which I find the "toy doll" image to be pretty sexist and uncomfortable, as I find many of Neruda's poem's where he speaks of the woman's "absent eyes", and where he prefers her silence. Does the general acclaim for Neruda mean that society prefers a woman to be "absent" and passive as far as love and sex is concerned?:

I HAVE GONE MARKING

I have gone marking the atlas of your body
with crosses of fire.
My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide.
In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.
Stories to tell you on the shore of evening,
sad and gentle doll, so that you should not be sad.
A swan, a tree, something far away and happy.
The season of grapes, the ripe and fruitful season.
I who lived in a harbor from which I loved you.
The solitude crossed with dream and with silence.
Penned up between the sea and sadness.
Soundless, delirious, between two motionless gondoliers.
Between the lips and the voice something goes dying.
Something with the wings of a bird, something of anguish
and oblivion.
The way nets cannot hold water.
My toy doll, only a few drops are left trembling.
Even so, something sings in these fugitive words.
Something sings, something climbs to my ravenous mouth.
Oh to be able to celebrate you with all the words of joy.
-from: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of
Despair by Pablo Neruda

Also, we should confine the opera Carmen to the dregs, since there is definitely sexual passion there; - also, Blood Wedding, by Federico García Lorca etc. - oops, run out of time - I should have been working...

Anyway, I could list many more examples if I only had the time... (hide spoiler)]

(view spoiler)[When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be
by John Keats (1795 – 1821)

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;–then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
===

From : Sonnet:

Bright Star - Poem by John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

==

Madonna of the Evening Flowers
by Amy Lowell. 1874-1925

All day long I have been working
Now I am tired.
I call: “Where are you?”
But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you?
I go about searching.

Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes,
You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud, sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.

A Lady

You are beautiful and faded
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an eighteenth-century boudoir.
In your eyes
Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes,
And the perfume of your soul
Is vague and suffusing,
With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.
Your half-tones delight me,
And I grow mad with gazing
At your blent colours.

My vigour is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.

The Giver of Stars
Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With its clear and rippled coolness,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,
Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.

Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me,
That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire,
The life and joy of tongues of flame,
And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune,
I may rouse the blear-eyed world,
And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten.


The Temple

Between us leapt a gold and scarlet flame.
Into the hollow of the cupped, arched blue
Of Heaven it rose. Its flickering tongues up-drew
And vanished in the sunshine. How it came
We guessed not, nor what thing could be its name.
From each to each had sprung those sparks which flew
Together into fire. But we knew
The winds would slap and quench it in their game.
And so we graved and fashioned marble blocks
To treasure it, and placed them round about.
With pillared porticos we wreathed the whole,
And roofed it with bright bronze. Behind carved locks
Flowered the tall and sheltered flame. Without,
The baffled winds thrust at a column's bole.

In a Garden

Gushing from the mouths of stone men
To spread at ease under the sky
In granite-lipped basins,
Where iris dabble their feet
And rustle to a passing wind,
The water fills the garden with its rushing,
In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns.

Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone,
Where trickle and plash the fountains,
Marble fountains, yellowed with much water.

Splashing down moss-tarnished steps
It falls, the water;
And the air is throbbing with it.
With its gurgling and running.
With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur.

And I wished for night and you.
I wanted to see you in the swimming-pool,
White and shining in the silver-flecked water.
While the moon rode over the garden,
High in the arch of night,
And the scent of the lilacs was heavy with stillness.

Night, and the water, and you in your whiteness, bathing!

====
Again and Again
by: Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.


The Ragged Wood
by: William Butler Yeats

O, hurry, where by water, among the trees,
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have looked upon their images
Would none had ever loved but you and I!

Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood?
O, that none ever loved but you and I!

O hurry to the ragged wood, for there
I will drive all those lovers out and cry
O, my share of the world, O, yellow hair!
No one has ever loved but you and I.

=====

She Walks In Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

– Lord Byron

===

(hide spoiler)]

Traveller wrote: "But still, I don't like the idea of dismissing this just because it is supposedly "prurient" and because it was written by a man. The implication is that women cannot write M/M GLBT, and yet I know that many of them do, and are read and enjoyed by male gays, so why can the reverse not be true? As a woman, I don't see anything offensive in Le Fanu's story beyond the unpleasant little detail that, you know, C is actually a vampire literally sucking her friends dry..."

I agree with you on the prurient point, and even if Le Fanu intended prurience, he hit a deeper reality, which you have pointed out, that lovers really do prey on each other, and not infrequently.

The only distinction I would make is between actual GLBT literature written by people with real knowledge of GLBT people and community (including, say, a queer woman writing about gay relationships in fiction) vs the slash community (including straight women writing m/m romance). I make this distinction specifically because I have seen many comments by GLBT people protesting slash for various reasons, so I don't think it is accurate or probably respectful to call it GLBT.

Carmilla is definitely slash fiction, not GLBT. I think a GLBT critic would point out that Carmilla is a monster and her bisexuality is repudiated along with her vampirism.

Hmmm, though, the initial remark was 'lesbian'. What exactly is lesbian? What exactly is a gay person? Does that include bi people? ...and if not, why not?
After all, GLBT stands for: "Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian, or Transgender".

I know there are subcultures, but I don't think any subculture should try and claim the GLBT label for themselves.
...it's rather similar to that syntactic bugbear "normality". Now, exactly who falls within that label and who falls outside of it?

I'm not for making boundaries too narrow. I admit that I haven't researched Le Fanu's orientation, and I have to leave the internet for a bit, but yeah, although I said myself earlier that I don't agree with the reviews who called this a pioneer in lesbian lit, it's more for other reasons, such as that it doesn't pioneer lesbian attraction in literature, (because it doesn't- "pioneer" means "one of the first" ) rather than that I'd want to make my distinctions too narrow.

Of course, it's not "lesbian lit" in the sense of lit written by lesbians. But I blame the reviewers who labelled it there, rather than Le Fanu or the story, since I very much doubt that Le Fanu would have made any such claims, publicly or privately.

Bottom line: No, it's not a pioneer in lesbian lit, but not because it's too prurient, but because it was not written by a lesbian, and it doesn't pioneer the phenomenon either.

Traveller wrote: "I know there are subcultures, but I don't think any subculture should try and claim the GLBT label for themselves."

I agree with you there, but by definition it does exclude straight people (which Le Fanu appears to have been).

Traveller wrote: "Bottom line: No, it's not a pioneer in lesbian lit, but not because it's too prurient, but because it was not written by a lesbian, and it doesn't pioneer the phenomenon either. "

Agree totally.

Cool!

Traveller wrote: "One thing I really find silly: how come after the first part of the General's story, even, the narrator and her father didn't immediately cry foul and point at Carmilla in shock with accusing finge..."

Exactly, Traveller! At this point I was like, yawn, make people stupid to add suspense.