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Theses and Dissertations

5-2016

“Deliberate Voluptuousness”: The Monstrous

Women of Dracula and Carmilla
Judith Bell
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

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 “Deliberate Voluptuousness”:
The Monstrous Women of Dracula and Carmilla

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in English

Judith Bell
John Brown University
Bachelor of Arts in English, 2013

May 2016
University of Arkansas

This thesis is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council.

____________________________________
Dr. Robin Roberts
Thesis Director

____________________________________ ____________________________________
Dr. Lissette Szwydky Dr. Robert Cochran
Committee Member Committee Member
Abstract

Vampire women play a culturally significant role in films and literature by revealing the extent

to which deviation from socially accepted behavior is tolerated. In this thesis, I compare the

vampire women of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla to their

depictions in recent adaptations. In Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire sisters are representative of

the shortcomings of 19th century gender roles, especially in regard to women’s communities. In

recent adaptations, the vampire sisters’ revealing clothing, promiscuity, and lack of

characterization are still closely connected with villainy, and as in Stoker’s novel, the women’s

violent deaths in the films are treated as punishment for their defiance of gender codes. Carmilla

is more sympathetic than the vampire sisters, both in Le Fanu’s original text and in recent

adaptations. In Le Fanu’s text, Carmilla is the primary antagonist, but she remains an attractive

figure. Carmilla is even more humanized in recent adaptations, occasionally even being

transformed into a heroic figure, while the role of the antagonist is taken on by figures who

represent patriarchal control. Despite her more sympathetic characterization, Carmilla dies as

brutal a death as Dracula’s vampire sisters in nearly every adaptation. Ultimately, the treatment

of the vampire women in these adaptations reveals that our own culture is still largely guided by

biases against women, especially lesbians, in filmmakers’ treatment of villainous and heroic

women alike.
Table of Contents

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………....1

Chapter 1 ………………………………………………………………………………………....9

Chapter 2 ………………………………………………………………………………………...30

Chapter 3 ………………………………………………………………………………………...56

Chapter 4 ………………………………………………………………………………………...77

Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………..100

Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………………106

 1

Introduction

As one of the most popular and recognizable monsters in European and American media,

vampires have a unique cultural significance. In Our Vampires, Ourselves, Nina Auerbach

argues that vampires are especially compelling because of their versatility, which allows them to

“shape themselves to personal and national moods”; because of this adaptability, she says, their

“appeal is dramatically generational” (5). In recent years, the character of Dracula has

particularly demonstrated this versatility, transforming from the inhuman villain of Bram

Stoker’s 1897 novel to the tragic, handsome antihero of recent adaptations. Not all vampires are

so mutable, though. Portrayals of vampire women have changed very little from the 19th to the

21st century, as is especially evident in the characterizations of the vampire women in Dracula

and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s eponymous Carmilla (1872) in recent adaptations. Although the

changes between novel and film are frequently subtle, they still reveal standards for femininity

through their treatment of women. In this thesis, I focus particularly on female vampires because

they serve as signposts for cultural attitudes towards women. Vampires in general are closely

connected with eroticism and taboo sexualities, and the female vampire is thus a figure who is

particularly suited to an analysis of gender and sexuality.

In considering the various versions of the female vampire, it is useful to consider the

concept of adaptation. Linda Hutcheon writes, “Just as there is no such thing as a literal

translation, there can be no literal adaptation” (16), further noting that “as a process of creation,

the act of adaptation always involves both (re-)interpretation and then (re-)creation” (8). In this

thesis, I will be contrasting the adaptation of male and female vampires, focusing on the female

vampires as they appear in novel and in film. In the films in particular, Dracula himself has been

reinterpreted as a tragic antihero, more sympathetic and romantic than blatantly terrifying. As
 2

Holte writes, “film vampires, Draculas included, constantly change to reflect the changing

concerns and fears of the culture out of which they rise, and the monsters that walk through the

nightmares of the late twentieth century are not those of the end of the Victorian age” (Dracula

in the Dark 84). In the cases of the vampire women, though, the main difference between the

original women and their adapted counterparts is that filmmakers of the 20th and 21st centuries

can depict them more explicitly. Sensuality that was merely suggested in the books is

transformed into explicit sexuality in the majority of the films. Studying adaptations reveals that

despite the seeming permissiveness of cultural attitudes towards women, 21st century filmmakers

are still uncomfortable with depicting women as sexual, powerful, and morally complex,

especially when those women are not romantically attached to men.

It is perhaps largely due to their transgressions against social norms that vampires have

remained popular throughout the past few centuries. In his discussion of adaptations of Dracula,

James Craig Holte writes, “the vampire is a creature who stands outside of the conventions of

civilization, conventions that impose order and hierarchies within a culture. The vampire . . .

unites the lust for blood and the lust for sex, and in doing so threatens the foundations of

civilization” (Dracula in the Dark 10). While it is usually male vampires who represent the

species as a whole, these anxieties about cultural hierarchies and conventions are even more

obvious in the depictions of female vampires. Carol Senf argues, “The woman vampire . . .

differs significantly from her male counterpart in that her character is linked to specific historical

periods, and that the factors most responsible for altering her character are the same as those

which altered the characters of women in general over the past two centuries” (“Daughters of

Lilith” 213). As cultural values shift, so too do depictions of women. However, while shifts in
 3

the treatment of female vampires have occurred in some cases, many of the female vampires of

these adaptations, especially the vampire sisters of Dracula, have remained remarkably static.

Several critics have suggested that vampire women have become more prevalent in 20th

and 21st century novels in particular due to increasingly flexible gender roles. Nancy Schumann,

for example, argues that the human women who become vampires in recent novels like Anne

Rice’s Interview with a Vampire, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, and E.L. James’ Vampire Diaries

are neither the mindless seductresses nor the passive victims of earlier works. Instead, these

women are “ubermothers” whose ferocity is employed to protect their families, adopted or

otherwise (116). Carol Senf similarly argues that “The overt eroticism of the female vampire is

no longer frightening because sexuality in women is now an acceptable, even desirable, trait,”

(“Daughters of Lilith” 213).

Critics have noted a similar shift in the acceptance of female vampires in film and

television, perhaps especially because many recent vampire films are actually based on those

same 20th and 21st century novels. In addition to being “ubermothers,” the vampire women in

many recent films are made sympathetic through tragic backstories and because they are played

by attractive, nonthreatening actresses. Holte suggests that, like their male counterparts, female

vampires in recent films are increasingly complex and attractive. While “still dangerous,” he

says, they “are not monsters” (“Not All Fangs” 172). While depictions of 21st century

protagonists who happen to be vampires are usually fairly sympathetic, though, most of the

vampire women who have been adapted from early vampire fiction remain monstrous

seductresses. In some cases, these female vampires are more inhuman than in their original

versions, especially in the case of the three vampire sisters of Dracula. Erotic, remorseless

killers, they often serve as mere foils for female protagonists, like Mina Harker. These heroines
 4

are much more reflective of shifting cultural standards for women, and they are usually as

intelligent and physically active as their male counterparts. While their heroic human

counterparts gain independence and skill, the female vampires often remain chaotic, bloodthirsty

monsters, entirely under the control of masculine authority.

In this study, I examine the ways in which vampire women have and have not been

changed to fit different cultural contexts, focusing especially on critical issues in the

representation of women, including female sexuality, gender and power, and the treatment of

villainous women, especially within communities. Dracula and Carmilla offer two distinct

approaches to vampire women: the vampire sisters of Dracula are chaotic, unsympathetic

villainesses in the original novel as well as in most film adaptations, and examining their

treatment within those 20th and 21st century films reveals the extent to which transgressions

against gender norms are still unacceptable. The eponymous Carmilla is actually fairly

sympathetic in both the original novel and in film adaptations, yet she too suffers a brutal fate in

the original novel and most of the adaptations. Examining her characterization in the three most

recent adaptations reveals cultural attitudes toward sexual relationships between women.

Chapter One focuses on the three female vampires in Stoker’s original novel. These

vampire sisters are much less complex than Carmilla, and are primarily described in terms of

their sensuality, especially in the scene in which they attempt to feed upon one of the novel’s

heroic men, Jonathan Harker. The vampire sisters are comparatively alien with their constant,

inexplicable laughter and their confused relationship to Dracula. Their presence in the castle is

never explained, nor is their subservience to Dracula, who seemingly must hunt for them (43-

44). Traditionally read as representing uncontrolled female sexuality (Roth, Bentley), , they have

also been connected with corrupted motherhood (Craft). Ultimately, the three sisters exist
 5

primarily in contrast to Mina and Lucy, who are both more independent of other women and

more accepting of men’s influence.

Examining the novel before my discussion of the films emphasizes the fact that

adaptations are, as Hutchinson claims, interpreting the novel rather than transcribing it. This

reinterpretation of the novel by the filmmakers is particularly apparent in the film’s treatment of

the vampire sisters. All three films take Jonathan’s description of the women at face value,

interpreting the vampire sisters as sexually provocative, single-minded monsters. However,

reexamining the text reveals that the descriptions of them are all from Jonathan or Van Helsing’s

points of view, and while the men are both certainly attracted to the female vampires, at no point

do the women’s actions suggest any sexual interest in any men at all. The women do attempt to

tempt Mina to join them, but even then they seduce her with promises of female community

rather than sexuality. Stoker’s original novel allows for some complexity of the women by

presenting them only through Jonathan and Van Helsing’s biased points of view, and a closer

reading reveals that the female vampires serve to critique gender roles of the early 19th century.

By basing their depictions of the women on Jonathan and Van Helsing’s reactions to the women

rather than the women’s actual actions, the films eliminate much of the complexity of those

original women, who in the text serve as complex symbols rather than a mere opportunity to

titillate an audience.

The second chapter examines several recent cinematic adaptations of Dracula. Since

Stoker’s novel has spawned hundreds of adaptations, not all of which even include the vampire

sisters, this chapter examines a representative film from each of the past three decades, including

Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing (2005),

and Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D (2012). In all three films, the bloodthirsty and chaotic vampire
 6

women are dramatically contrasted with the more complex, aristocratic, and even refined

Dracula. The vampire sisters serve as a contrast to Mina and Lucy in the original novel; here,

they serve as a foil to Dracula himself. Where the women are chaotic and motivated by fury or

simple bloodlust, Dracula is motivated by a desire for his lost love in Coppola and Argento’s

films and his desire to father children in Van Helsing. The depictions of these women suggest

that it is not vampirism itself that is horrifying, but uncontrolled female sexuality and violence.

In this chapter, I clarify that when the vampire sisters have been changed from their

original characterization, they are most often simplified to fit obvious stereotypes of

promiscuous women. Still, their depiction in these films also reveals 20th and 21st century

mindsets about women and gender, suggesting that while eroticism is acceptable within the

limits of monogamous, heterosexual unions, like that of Mina and Jonathan, it is still worthy of

punishment in other contexts. Their treatment also suggests that filmmakers are often less

interested in depicting women’s relationships with each other than they are in assuming that

women’s inner lives largely revolve around men, since the films largely eliminate women’s

communities entirely.

The third chapter focuses on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1871 novella Carmilla. Unlike

the vampire women of Dracula, the eponymous Carmilla is fairly sympathetic in both Le Fanu’s

original novella and in the 21st century adaptations. As Senf suggests, “Despite the presence of

the supernatural in ‘Carmilla’. . . LeFanu uses the vampire motif primarily to focus on the

condition of women’s lives during the time that he wrote” (“Women and Power” 25). Through

protagonist Laura and vampire Carmilla/Millarca Karnstein, Le Fanu explores power dynamics

in relationships between women and between women and men, ultimately concluding with a

bleak picture of the consequences of old-fashioned notions of chivalry.

 7

I include this chapter to demonstrate how the sympathetic depiction of Carmilla has been

revised to fit later cultural contexts. In Le Fanu’s novel, Carmilla is a sympathetic antagonist, but

she does still poses the most significant threat to protagonist Laura. The secondary antagonists in

this original novel are patriarchal figures like Laura’s father and General Spielsdorf, who are

made ineffective by their own adherence to gender roles. In the film adaptations, the

representatives of the patriarchy become the only antagonists, and Carmilla opposes them even

more explicitly. In this original novel, though, Carmilla is not marked by rebellion, but

manipulation, both of the men and Laura.

The fourth chapter focuses on adaptations of Carmilla, particularly its three most recent

adaptations: two independent horror films, Styria1 (2015) and The Unwanted (2014), and

Carmilla (2014-present), an ongoing webseries in which the characters are transformed into

students at a supernatural university. Early 20th century adaptations of Carmilla, Holte says,

present a female vampire who is “depicted as clearly outside the accepted norms of traditional

Western culture: she is not only unnatural, undead, she is both a lesbian or bisexual and sexually

aggressive” (“Not all Fangs” 166). However, in 21st century adaptations of Carmilla, of which

there were three in 2014 to 2015 alone, Carmilla is often portrayed much more sympathetically.

Rather than suggesting that Carmilla herself is unnatural, either for her defiance of authority or

for her desires for Laura, these films are instead more likely to present the representatives of the

governing systems that oppose her as monstrous and violent. Still, Carmilla is not necessarily

representative of a particularly progressive mindset, since her presence still has negative

consequences for other women in the films. At her most villainous, Carmilla is portrayed with

the same signifiers of aggressive sensuality and violence as the vampire women of Dracula.

1
released as Angels of Darkness and The Curse of Styria in the U.S.
 8

This chapter examines the ways in which depictions of Carmilla have changed. Again,

she is no longer the antagonist, a role that has instead been taken by violent patriarchal figures.

Her relationship with Laura is also much more openly romantic, and in two of the films she and

Carmilla are in a fairly healthy sexual relationship. Even at her most positive, though, Carmilla is

victimized by members of an oppressive patriarchy, providing filmmakers with the material to

critique traditional, oppressive power structures that lead to sexism and homophobia.

In some of these films, the vampire women are made at least slightly more sympathetic,

especially due to tragic backstories. The ways in which they remain the same, though, are

troubling in terms of what the portrayals reveal about the limits of women’s emancipation. While

the contexts change drastically, even including comedy in the web series, the depiction of highly

sexualized and amoral female vampires remain the same. Where the vampire women in recent

novels like Twilight and The Vampire Diaries often begin as humans who choose to become

vampires for the sake of love, the sister-brides from Dracula and the eponymous Carmilla

remain the villainous, sexual monsters of their original tales. This constant suggests that even in

recent sympathetic and even empowering contexts, the female vampire still serves the function

of cautionary role model, indicating that some aspects of female sexuality, like promiscuity, are

still considered monstrous. They also suggest that even when the filmmakers themselves critique

homophobia and sexism, their portrayals of groups of women are still marked by violence and

inequality. While readers and viewers might enjoy the portrayal of female power presented by

these fascinating vampire women, they must also be aware of the limits of the figure, who is still

largely defined by her existence within a homophobic, sexist culture.

 9

“intolerable, tingling sweetness”:

The Vampire Sisters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Written near the end of the 19th century, Bram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula remains one of the

most significant works of horror today. Primarily the story of 19th century Englishmen and

women fighting against the ancient, evil, and blood-sucking Dracula, the novel is also concerned

with the effects of gender on morality and villainy. These gender issues are especially prominent

in the case of the first women introduced in the novel, the three vampire sisters who first appear

to solicitor Jonathan Harker in Dracula’s castle. Though the three vampire women are now often

referred to as Dracula’s “brides” or even his “sister-wives,”2 in the original text, the relationship

between the women and Dracula is unclear, and their origins are unexplained. Harker calls these

mysterious, predatory women “those weird sisters” (51), a reference to the three witches in

Shakespeare’s Macbeth that, combined with the vampires’ bloodthirstiness and their immortality,

connects them to older traditions of violent goddesses or even the three fates. However, the

vampire sisters are also particularly 19th century monsters, and examining them provides insight

into the ways the monstrous women and gender have been perceived by audiences and critics

alike in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Although many scholars have discussed Dracula’s gender dynamics, few have focused

primarily on the vampire sisters, who are usually used either to set up discussions of Lucy

Westenra, who is turned into a vampire by Dracula and then violently staked by her fiancé, or

Mina Murray Harker, the heroine of the second part of the novel. A closer examination of the

roles of the vampire sisters, though, reveals that they play an important role in presenting the

2
See Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves.
 10

gender dynamics of the novel, especially in terms of defying traditional standards of women’s

behavior in the era. These standards for women’s behavior, closely connected to Queen

Victoria’s reign and emphasis on family values, are perhaps best understood in light of Coventry

Patmore’s now-infamous 1854 poem “Angel in the House,” in which Patmore semi-

autobiographically presents the romance between the speaker and his wife, whom he

characterizes as the ideal woman. Since then, the term “angel in the house” or simply “angel” has

been used as shorthand for the ideal but unrealistic 19th century woman: a self-sacrificing wife,

mother, daughter, and sister. These ideals for women are expanded on by authors like Sarah

Stickney Ellis, whose conduct novel The Women of England provides suggestions meant to

encourage women to return “to their domestic duties, in order that they may become better wives

[and] more useful daughters and mothers” (36). Many of the ideas presented in these works are

echoed by characters in Dracula, especially Van Helsing, though Stoker himself is not

necessarily endorsing them entirely.

Published near the end of the century, Dracula is also concerned with the idea of the

“New Woman,” a frequently exaggerated caricature of the independent women who were then

fighting for suffrage, women’s rights, and general independence for women. In “Dracula:

Stoker’s Response to the New Woman,” Carol Senf compellingly argues that Mina Harker is

Stoker’s alternative to the New Woman: she is equal to the men in intelligence while also

demonstrating characteristics of the traditional wife and mother, allowing Stoker to “show that

modern women can combine the best of the traditional and the new” (49). Though Stoker’s

model for the ideal woman is more progressive than the stereotypical angel, his treatment of the

female characters in Dracula does insist that women remain subservient to men. Senf further

argues that the vampire sisters are directly contrasted to Mina, and their “aggressive behaviour
 11

and attempt to reverse traditional sexual roles show them to be New Women” (40). However,

while the vampire women might display certain qualities reminiscent of the New Women, they

are less closely connected with them than they are a corrupted version of the stereotypical angel.

Rather than reversing traditional roles, the vampire sisters demonstrate the horror of taking those

ideals to the extreme. Surprisingly dependent on Dracula, these vampire women are specifically

connected to the domestic sphere and motherhood, though these connections are twisted,

exaggerated, and made horrifying. The vampire sisters’ connection with the stereotypical “angel

in the house” allows Stoker to question both older and newer ideals for women, though Dracula

does still reject any implication of full equality between men and women.

Finally, while criticism has certainly examined the vampire sisters in contrast to Mina

and Lucy, it has tended to view them as cautionary models of the human women’s qualities taken

to the extreme. If Lucy and, later, Mina, are not careful, the text suggests, they risk becoming

like the vampire women before them. Examining the vampire women in the context of Mina and

Lucy instead can help provide insight not only into how the vampire women came to exist, but

also into Stoker’s project in regard to gender and morality. In this light, the vampire women are

victims as well as monsters, despite scholarship and adaptations that suggest otherwise. The

vampire sisters are presented as both defying and, in some ways, embodying gender codes in

their admittedly few appearances; understanding the complexity with which they do so reveals

the fascinated horror with which cultures approach villainous women in defiance of gender

codes, both in the original text and in later film adaptations.

The vampire women’s relationship with Dracula himself, seen in two of the three scenes

in which they appear and speak, is one that both embodies and subverts traditional gender tropes.

The physical aspect of the women’s relationship to Dracula is never made explicit, and it is
 12

unclear whether or not they are lovers. Two of the women look like him, with “high aquiline

noses, like the Count” (42), leading some to speculate that they are related by birth (Stoker,

Auerbach, and Skal 42n7). The other vampire woman is a blonde woman whom the other

vampire sisters refers to as “the first” and who sleeps in a “high great tomb as if made to one

much beloved” (42, 320). It is this blonde vampire who accuses Dracula of being incapable of

love, leading Dracula to protest, “Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past”

(43), hinting at a former relationship between them that is romantic, at the very least. On the one

hand, the ambiguous relationship between them, which could be that of siblings, lovers, or a

parent and his children, leads to a potentially disturbing blurring of boundaries; as Christopher

Bentley has noted, there are certainly incestuous undertones to the relationship (29). To some

extent, then, the ambiguity of the relationships between the women and Dracula is merely the

means by which Stoker adds to the sense of surreal horror that Jonathan experiences at Dracula’s

castle.

However, the ambiguous nature of the relationships, while likely startling even to 19th

century audiences, is not entirely unprecedented, and might actually reflect the rhetoric

surrounding women and their relationships with men. In her 1839 conduct novel, The Women of

England, Their Social Duties, and Domestic Habits, for example, Ellis argues that women should

provide small domestic comforts and cheerful companionship to the men in their lives, noting

that “many of the remarks I have made upon the behaviour of daughters to their fathers, are

equally applicable to that of wives towards their husbands” (205). Of course, the vampire sisters

are hardly mending Dracula’s clothes or preparing his meals, at least as far as Jonathan sees.

Instead, they seem to exist merely to provide Dracula with companionship. This tendency

towards indolent companionship, though, does not seem to be a problem exclusive to vampires.
 13

In fact, Ellis specifically criticizes young women for a similar inclination towards idleness, since

while she does recommend that women be able to converse intelligently to entertain the men of

their households (98), she disapproves of young women who, while willing to sit and entertain

their brothers and husbands, let them return home to a disorderly house or to untended clothing

(173). The vampire women’s seeming idleness, then, suggests not that they are New Women, but

that they are failed domestic angels. By connecting the female antagonists with older gender

models, Stoker is able to question those models; however, this pattern also allows him to portray

women in positions of power over men as monstrous.

Stoker further connects the vampire women with older gender models by limiting the

women to their home in Dracula’s castle. Their presence in the castle presents an extreme

version of the concept of separate spheres, which was used to suggest that women’s place was in

the domestic sphere of the home (as opposed to the professional or even the public spheres). Ellis

explicitly praises this ideology of separate spheres by commending women of the past who

“seldom went abroad” and whose “sphere of action was at their own fire-sides” (20). “The

sphere of woman’s happiest and most beneficial influence is a domestic one” (36), she continues,

where they can act as “the guardians of the comfort of their homes” (25). The idea that women

are best suited to a life at home, where they can make others’ lives more comfortable, is one that

is echoed throughout many 19th century works of literature. In Dracula, the idea is taken to an

extreme with the vampire women who remain confined to the house despite their ability to

disappear into dust motes and travel through moonbeams (41, 48, 316). They seem to have their

own quarters within the castle, presumably the suite that Jonathan guesses once belonged to a

lady of the castle due to its furnishings and spectacular, unobstructed view of the valley below
 14

(41).3 They appear outside only once in their attempt to convince Mina to join them, but even

then they do not leave the castle grounds. While 19th century women were not necessarily

confined to their homes, of course, the concept of the home as a woman’s domain is echoed and

twisted by the vampire sisters. Restricted to the house, the sisters are apparently welcome in only

a few of its rooms.

The women’s connection to the castle also means that while they certainly drink blood,

they never seem to actually hunt for it. Dracula brings them food twice; the first time, upon being

forbidden from consuming Jonathan, one sister asks Dracula if they are “to have nothing

tonight?” as she points at his bag (43), suggesting that to some extent, they are dependent on

Dracula to hunt for them. Of course, they clearly have no qualms about drinking those who, like

Jonathan, enter their castle voluntarily. Van Helsing envisions the vampire sisters draining the

men who approach them while they rest in their coffins, not actively hunting people down. If a

vampire’s “profession” is hunting and drinking blood, then the vampire women avoid the

professional, public sphere, remaining firmly within the domestic, where they wait to attack any

who approach them. While they are trapped within the domestic sphere, they also gain a unique

sense of power that is particularly dangerous to men. The connection between deadly women and

the domestic possibly suggests that part of Stoker’s distaste with the idea of the angel of the

house is that it has the potential to empower women over men, if only in that limited space.

The vampire sisters’ strong connection to the domestic sphere, both physically and in

terms of occupation, further emphasizes their connection to older traditions and older ideals for

women. Jonathan is able to immediately identify them as “ladies by their dress and manner”

(41), an observation that connects them with the idle, predatory upper classes of previous eras,

3
Like many vampires, the vampire sisters are closely connected with images of a faded but
predatory aristocracy.
 15

especially when combined with their residence in a castle. However, in the context of the 19th

century and the doctrine of separate spheres, the sisters are also representative of the “angel in

the house” mentality taken to an illogical extreme.4 The vampire sisters obediently remain within

the house, but again, their presence is ultimately used to create a sense of horror, changing the

home from its traditional place of refuge into to a deadly snare.

The connection between the vampire women and early 19th century gender ideals also

explains the vampire sisters’ incessant, otherwise inexplicable laughter, which punctuates nearly

every line of their sparse dialogue. Jonathan and Van Helsing both find the laughter chilling, and

Jonathan describes it as “the intolerable, tingling sweetness of water-glasses when played on by a

cunning hand” (42). When viewed within the context of a tradition that values women’s constant

cheerfulness, the “soulless,” “horrible” laughter makes more sense (43, 52). Ellis says that a

woman’s part is “to make sacrifices, in order that [the man of her household’s] enjoyment may

be enhanced” (176), and even Mina discusses the need for women to hide negative emotions

from men, writing that even if she does “feel weepy,” Jonathan “will never see it”; hiding one’s

negative emotions behind a façade of false cheerfulness, she muses, is “one of the lessons that

we poor women have to learn” (226). This illusion of cheeriness is taken to a frightening extreme

by the vampire sisters, to the point where they seem incapable of any emotions besides mirth and

scorn, both of which are expressed through their endless laughter. Presenting the sisters’ laughter

as alien and unnatural allows the text to make traditional expectations for the attitudes of women

horrifying, a tradition continued in film adaptations.

4
Locked away from the rest of the world in a manner reminiscent to the plight of the protagonist
of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), in which the confinement of
women is connected with mental illness to horrifying effect.
 16

Perhaps the most striking feature of the three vampire women’s defiance of gender codes

is their overt sensuality, described by Stoker in coded language that reflects late 19th century

gender and publishing restrictions. It is this obvious sensuality, a startling departure from

contemporary gender norms for women, which has most interested critics as well as filmmakers.

Senf argues that the characterizations of the women in the novel are largely in reaction to the

concept of the New Woman, for example, since “Stoker’s villainesses . . . radiate sexuality.

Responding to the sexual freedom and reversal of roles which were often associated with the

New Woman, Stoker uses the ancient superstition of the vampire in Dracula to symbolize the

evil that can result” (“Stoker’s Response” 39). On a similar note, Bentley writes, “Stoker’s

vampires are permitted to assert their sexuality in a much more explicit manner than his ‘living’

characters” (28), which is certainly true of Dracula and Lucy, if not necessarily the case with the

vampire sisters. Christopher Craft suggests that, as a whole, “Dracula insists, first, that

successful filiation implies the expulsion of all ‘monstrous’ desire in women and, second, that all

desire . . . must subject itself to the heterosexual configuration that alone defined the Victorian

sense of the normal” (129).

Of course, the vampire sisters’ actions are never literally sexual in nature. The

descriptions of the vampire sisters, which are only provided by men, emphasize the effect they

have on those men—everything from their appearances to their movements lead to a physical

response described in nearly as much detail as the women themselves. Jonathan remarks that

seeing them fills him with “some longing and at the same time some deadly fear,” mixed with a

desire that they will “kiss [him] with those red lips” (42), and Van Helsing, who recognizes the

sisters by their “round forms, the bright hard eyes, the teeth, the ruddy colour, the voluptuous

lips” (317), all of which, he says, “move” him and make his “head whirl with new emotion”
 17

(320).5 However, despite what Jonathan describes as their “deliberate voluptuousness” (42), the

descriptions of the vampire sisters are indicative of the men’s reactions to the women as much as

of the women’s actual actions. As many have argued, of course, the drinking of blood itself is

coded as erotic, both here and in other works featuring vampires. Still, the vampire sisters never

actively attempt to seduce either of the men: Jonathan is seemingly asleep when they first

approach him, while Van Helsing is “moved” by the insensible women in their coffins. Their

only actual encounter with a living human occurs when they ignore Van Helsing entirely as they

attempt to convince Mina to join their sisterhood (316-318). Despite the erotic language

describing their appearances and blood drinking, the vampire sisters are consistently sensual, not

sexual, though both, it is implied by the text, are immoral. The conflating of the two is one of the

most troubling aspects of Dracula criticism and adaptations, especially since the women are not

necessarily entirely responsible for their actions.

The emphasis on the women’s sensuality allows Stoker to create a shift in gendered

power dynamics, one that the text, at least, uses as a source of horror. Jonathan finds the women

even more horrifying than Dracula himself, expressing a determination that he “shall not remain

alone with them” after Dracula departs for England (55). In his oft-cited discussion of sexuality

and homoerotic desire in Dracula, Craft notes that the scene in which the women nearly drink

Jonathan’s blood is physically reversed from gendered expectations of sex itself, since “virile

Jonathan Harker enjoys a ‘feminine’ passivity and awaits a delicious penetration from a woman

whose demonism is figured as the power to penetrate” (109). While this scene is highly

eroticized, though, the fear in the text has as much to do with gendered power dynamics as it

5
Christopher Bentley observes that “languorous” and “voluptuous” are “two of the terms that
Stoker chooses from his rather limited vocabulary of the erotic” to describe the actions of
vampire women (29).
 18

does sexual ones. Jonathan is frightened of even seeing the women, seemingly afraid that he will

not be able to avoid being further hypnotized (48). In his last entry in this journal, Jonathan

writes that if he dies in his attempt to escape the women and the castle, at least he may die “as a

man” (55). This line could refer to either his fears of being feminized, as Craft suggests, or to his

fears of becoming inhuman. A large part of Jonathan’s fear of the women stems not merely from

his fear of being physically devoured, but of being changed against his will, a fear echoed by

Mina’s unwilling partial transformation in the second half of the novel. It is the unwilling

overpowering of their will, not their bodies, that the characters, especially the men, consistently

consider the most horrifying aspect of the vampires’ influence. The loss of autonomy seems to be

explicitly connected to becoming feminized.

This unarticulated fear of the vampire sisters implies that part of the horror of the novel is

anxiety in regard to women holding power over men. This concept goes back to the idea of the

angel in the house, who, according to Ellis, holds a particular influence over men’s morality.

Women’s moral influence makes them responsible, she says, for providing “the tone to English

character” (35), ultimately making women responsible for the moral character of the entire

country. Part of the horror of the novel, then, is the potential for these women to use that

influence to manipulate and even harm the otherwise morally upstanding men. Upon seeing the

beauty of the blonde vampire in her tomb, Van Helsing says, “the very instinct of man in me,

which calls some of my sex to love and protect one of hers, made my head whirl with new

emotion” (320). Rather than using their vampire abilities to hunt like Dracula, the women use the

illusion of vulnerability to capture potential prey. The sisters’ power to render men helpless is

connected both to their status as vampires and to their gender, which allows them the advantage

of seeming vulnerable. The desires to protect and be protected are specifically gendered, and the
 19

sisters’ lack of compliance with their role suggests that they prey upon men’s better natures. If

the best of men are the ones who willingly help the helpless, then the vampire women are

specifically preying upon the best men. The text does ultimately confirm women’s influence over

men’s morality, but confirms that that power is not limited to upstanding women like Mina

Harker. Once again, Dracula uses the vampire sisters to take an aspect of idealized femininity to

its horrifying extreme, allowing Stoker to question that idealization entirely.

Stoker further interrogates idealized femininity through the vampire sisters’ connection

with motherhood, since their heartless treatment of children allows them to further invert

traditional gender roles. The ideal woman in most 19th literature is a married mother: Patmore’s

Angel in the House, for example, transitions directly from a marriage proposal to a decade later,

where the speaker’s wife is presiding over several children, and Ellis’ conduct manual

consistently treats marriage and motherhood as the most fulfilling life state for any woman. The

vampire sisters completely invert this traditional idyllic motherhood by feeding on children

specifically, presumably after Dracula has stolen them from their real mothers. At two different

points in the novel, Dracula brings the women a bag from which Jonathan Harker can hear “a

low wail, as of a half-smothered child” (43-44). Later, newly turned vampire Lucy Westenra

similarly preys exclusively on children, and it is her callous treatment of a child that finally

convinces all of Van Helsing’s men that she is no longer herself, but a monster in need of violent

killing (188). Senf notes that Stoker “tends to connect sensuality in women with cruelty to

children,” suggesting that a “lack of maternal feelings,” which “violate[s] his preconceptions

about women,” is “a characteristic which Stoker appears to associate with the New Woman even

though New Woman writers did not” (“Stoker’s Response” 41). Of course, the vampire women’s

cruelty towards children is just as easily connected to the idea of the corrupted angel of the house
 20

as it is to the idea of the New Woman. Regardless, it is the lack of maternal feelings that makes

them horrifying. Craft suggests that Stoker “emphasizes the monstrosity implicit in such

abrogation of gender codes by inverting a favorite Victorian maternal function” (120). The

vampire women’s actual treatment of children specifically connects their villainy with their

resistance to gender codes. However, this connection to reproduction is further complicated by

their natures as vampires, through which they have the inherent ability to create new vampires

from their victims.

Though the text might be horrified by the vampire women’s lack of maternal feelings, it

is equally concerned with the possibility that they might reproduce. As in Carmilla, vampires by

their very nature are implicitly connected to reproduction and motherhood, since the vampire’s

bite creates new vampires. Craft argues that Dracula’s “mission in England is the creation of a

race of monstrous women” (111), and viewed in this context, Dracula himself is connected with

parenthood in his creation of new vampires Lucy and, less successfully, Mina. Unlike Dracula,

the female vampires do not reproduce in the novel itself, but their potential to do so is

consistently a major source of their horror. Their capacity to reproduce is, in fact, the main

reason Van Helsing is so determined to destroy them. Facing the graves of the vampire sisters in

Dracula’s castle, Van Helsing imagines that men throughout the centuries have come to destroy

the vampires only be distracted by their beauty, leaving “one more victim in the Vampire fold;

one more to swell the grim and grisly ranks of the Un-dead!” (319). The villainesses of Stoker’s

novel are not only women who defy gender roles by refusing to become mothers, but are

monsters who are horrifying because they are capable of producing threatening offspring.

Dracula continues to complicate gender roles for women in its treatment of sisterhood.

As the concept of the “angel in the house” demonstrates, the 19th century white middle-class
 21

ideal is for women to prioritize their husbands if they are married and their brothers and fathers if

they are unmarried. However, even Ellis remarks that this prioritization of men does not

necessarily mean that women’s relationships are entirely unimportant. In fact, she writes, “there

is sometimes a bond existing between sisters, the most endearing, the most pure and

disinterested, of an description of affection which this world affords” (176). This sisterly bond

can be created by mutual understanding of each other’s pain and can possibly lead women to

mutual education. If sisters and female friends are meant to help the ideal woman better herself,

though, the vampire sisters represent an anxiety that their companionship will be made extreme.

The vampire women, specifically referred to as “sisters” by Van Helsing (320), are dependent on

Dracula, but they do not seem to be subservient to him in attitude. Instead, the women rely on

each other for companionship, willingly sharing food with each other and apparently spending all

of their waking hours in the others’ company. In Communities of Women, Nina Auerbach argues

that in literature, insular communities of women frequently serve as symbols of “female self-

sufficiency” (5). She writes, “As this myth takes shape as part of our imaginative inheritance, so

does the fictional reality of women’s autonomy . . . their isolation has had from the first the self-

sustaining power to repel or incorporate the male-defined reality that excludes them” (6);

however, she notes, “Victorian commentaries on sisterhood tended to veer between horror and

hope” (14), since many were cautious of women’s influence on each other. Dracula is inclined to

treat these groups with horror rather than hope, as this small circle of women is dangerous

physically and socially. Already isolated from human society by their natures as vampires, they

are also isolated from Dracula himself, who seemingly abandons them when he leaves for

England. The women are further isolated and incapable of communicating with humans, thus
 22

leaving them out of the sphere of men and out of the sphere of humanity in general, suggesting

that their small community is dangerously insular.

Despite the hopeful portrayal of women’s relationships by authors like Ellis, Stoker is

consistently apprehensive of strong emotional bonds between even the morally upright human

women, whose attachments to other women are weak bonds easily superseded by romantic

relationships with men. Although after Lucy’s death Mina says that she and Lucy were “like

sisters” (203), their actual interactions seem remarkably cool. The first letters they exchange are

apologies for how long it has been since they last wrote to each other (55), and this introduction

sets up a relationship that is marked by distance and reticence. Even when they live together at

Whitby for a number of days, Mina and Lucy are often distant from each other: both take

frequent solitary walks, and Mina secretly discusses Lucy’s health with others without consulting

Lucy herself. Lucy and Mina’s reserved attachment is in direct contrast with Mina’s potential

relationship with the vampire women, who call Mina their “sister” and offer a lasting

relationship bound by blood (315). As far as Stoker is concerned, unlike the men, who are

attracted to vampirism due to sexual desire, vampirism appeals to women largely because it

presents an opportunity for female connectedness.

Though the text is suspicious of all-women communities, the alternative it presents is not

a heterosexual union between a married couple, but is instead a community of heroic men,

represented by the small group of Lucy’s former suitors who work with Van Helsing to defeat

Count Dracula: Quincey Morris, Arthur Holmwood, and John Seward. Auerbach notes that

contrary to women’s communities, “all-male communities usually possess indisputable

magnitude and significance” (7), explaining that this authority generally “springs too from the

powerful motion of the quest which so often gives them their structure” (8). Here, the men’s
 23

“quest” is the destruction of Dracula, an ancient evil who threatens England. However, this all-

male group fails to save Lucy, protect Mina, or permanently damage Dracula until they include

Mina in their planning. The suggestion seems to be that an ideal woman, who is intelligent and

intuitive while also being humble and submissive, is capable of assisting a group of men and

making them more successful.

Of course, Van Helsing does attribute Mina’s intelligence and reasonableness to her

“man-brain” (263), which might suggest that Mina’s influence on the group is because her mind,

at least, is as masculine as theirs. However, while Van Helsing is usually a source of reason and

information, he also consistently represents an older model of patriarchy with which Stoker is

not entirely satisfied. Van Helsing’s attempts to exclude Mina for her own protection, for

example, are clearly presented as a mistake, and his praise of her “man-brain” might suggest that

though Van Helsing is wise, he is not necessarily a perfect model of masculinity. Furthermore,

Mina is explicitly connected with femininity throughout the text, though again, it is a femininity

that is neither the idealized “angel” nor the liberated New Woman. Instead, Stoker seems to be

using this group of vampire hunters to present a new gender model, one in which women are

more independent than their angelic predecessors but are still more deferent to men than the New

Women. In his ideal for gender relations, ignoring the abilities of individual women actually

places groups of men at a disadvantage, especially when those women are as extraordinary as

Mina Harker. Though he still obviously still imagines women in a subservient role, Stoker is

surprisingly open to the idea of a heroic woman.

Still, the fact that Van Helsing’s group has room for only this one ideal woman suggests

that Stoker remains uneasy with women’s influence upon each other, regardless of the value

systems individual women represent. The approval of the mostly-male community comes at the
 24

expense of women’s communities and praises isolated, individual women. Auerbach suggests,

“As a recurrent literary image, a community of women is a rebuke to the conventional ideal of a

solitary woman living for and through men, attaining citizenship in the community of adulthood

through masculine approval alone” (5). In this regard, Stoker’s narrative is fairly conventional in

its praise of the “solitary woman” at the expense of relationships between women. In fact, the

narrative explicitly forces Mina to make the choice between female community and male

approval when she faces the vampire sisters’ invitation to “Come, sister. Come to us. Come!

Come!” (317). Van Helsing approvingly notes the “terror,” “the repulsion, the horror” that Mina

expresses at this invitation, which, he says, “[tells] a story to [his] heart that [is] all of hope”

(317). Van Helsing’s approval of her rejection of female community emphatically places Mina in

the tradition of Auerbach’s “solitary woman,” who has “no sanctioned existence apart form he

relationships with men,” and will “exist relative to nothing, and in the very absoluteness of her

isolation, she becomes a late Victorian culture heroine” (19).

The very fact that Stoker is so anxious that Mina reject this all-female community hints at

the potential power of such a sisterhood. Of course, the two all-female communities presented in

the novel are ultimately vulnerable to men, who invade their homes with the express purpose of

harming them. Mina and Mrs. Westenra, who stay in a cottage with Lucy, cannot protect her

from Dracula’s influence, and even the vampire women are virtually helpless when Van Helsing

arrives to slaughter them. However, Van Helsing’s relief at Mina’s rejection of the vampire

women suggests that he is aware of the extent of the temptation such a community offers,

especially since this particular community is connected with the aristocracy and a lack of other

responsibilities. The vampire sisters’ strength as a community is also particularly threatening to

the men who hunt them. The vampiric Lucy acts alone, and the group of men has little trouble
 25

dispatching her. The vampire sisters, on the other hand, twice outnumber both Jonathan and Van

Helsing, each of whom is nearly overwhelmed by them and is only saved by an outside source—

Jonathan by Dracula, and Van Helsing by Mina. Ultimately, the communities of women

presented in the novel, despite being depicted as flawed and vulnerable to men’s influence,

suggest that women in communities hold a surprising amount of power over men. Even though

these communities are defeated, the men consistently fear feminine solidarity.

The novel’s general anxiety regarding women’s potential influence is reflected in the

violent, sexual depictions of the women’s deaths. The vampire sisters’ death by Van Helsing,

who stakes them while they scream and writhe (320), is remarkably violent and described in

particularly sexualized language, especially when compared to Dracula’s anticlimactic end.

Many critics have noted that the female vampires’ deaths contain an element of punishment for

their actions as vampires, though it is unclear whether those “crimes” are their sensuality or their

specific preying upon children. Craft, for example, argues that the tradition’s “insistent

idealization of women . . . encodes a restriction on the mobility of desire,” which then “licenses a

tremendous punishment for the violation of the code” (126). This violent slaying of the vampire

women suggests a desire to restore traditional power dynamics, as well as to destroy the potential

influence the vampire women hold over the men.

This pattern of restoring traditional gender balances helps to explain the novel’s

insistence that through death, the vampires, especially the female ones, are restored to their pre-

vampiric state. On the one hand, Stoker’s insistence on pitying the vampires as possible victims

suggests that there is more to their deaths than mere punishment. Van Helsing describes his

“butcher work” as way to “restore these women to their dead selves” (320), acknowledging that

the killings are brutal while also insisting that they “restore” the vampires to the women they
 26

would have been had they not been infected by vampirism. Later, when writing about the death

of one of the women, Van Helsing describes the “gladness that stole over [her face] just ere the

final dissolution came, as realization that the soul had been won,” after which, he says, he can

“pity them . . . and weep” (320). It is important to the men that they are not punishing the

vampires, but are releasing them from a state from which they would desire to be freed if they

had a choice. However, this moment also allows the men to appreciate and even pity the vampire

women’s vulnerability without fearing that the women will use that pity to manipulate them.

Now that the men are safe from the vampires’ influence, they are free to once again take a

position of authority over the women, a position Stoker repeatedly endorses.

Despite the fact that the men have killed the women largely to restore the (im)balance

between genders, the fact that the women are pitied at all for their state as vampires complicates

readings of the women in which they are mindless seductresses or are deserving of punishment.

The fact that the vampire sisters seem to be at peace after their deaths suggests that they

themselves are victims—after all, despite vampirism requiring the drinking of the vampire’s

blood, neither Lucy nor Mina drinks Dracula’s blood voluntarily. The vampire sisters’

background is unknown, but if Lucy becomes a vampire against her will and is their equal in

violence and sensuality, then there is nothing to suggest that the vampire sisters are any more

responsible for their state than she is. Critics’ continued insistence that Dracula’s “kiss” is an

“empowering”6 one that “threatens [the women’s] presumably static position in the male alliance

system” (Signorotti 625) is thus made particularly troubling. At no point do any characters

voluntarily seek out vampirism, and those who are bitten, especially Mina, desperately seek a

6
A particularly odd descriptor for this scene, which Signorotti elsewhere refers to as a rape
(626).
 27

cure; treating them as voluntary violators of social norms is troubling, as it suggests that they are

responsible for being victimized.

Mina, whose struggles against vampirism reveal the impossibility of fighting against the

infection, provides further insight into the text’s dilemma of destroying victims. Perhaps alarmed

by the group’s growing animosity towards vampires, she urges them to remember that though

they “must destroy [Dracula] even as [they] destroyed the false Lucy so that the true Lucy might

live hereafter,” their efforts are “not a work of hate. That poor soul who has wrought all this

misery is the saddest case of all. Just think what will be his joy when he too is destroyed in his

worser part that his better part may have spiritual immortality. You must be pitiful to him too,

though it may not hold your hands from his destruction” (269). Mina thus gives the men

permission to take any action they believe necessary for Dracula’s destruction. In terms of

symbolic punishment, her speech is horrifying, making the destruction of the Other—whether

that Other is representative of different genders, races, ethnicities, or classes—a righteous action.

It also evokes the idea of destroying the body to save the soul, framing the group as righteous

religious warriors for whom destruction is an act of mercy.

However, the narrative’s insistence on this point suggests an element of anxiety that Van

Helsing’s group is not entirely in the right, at least in their gratuitously violent descriptions of the

vampires’ deaths. This anxiety is connected to the implication that the vampire sisters, at least,

are being viciously punished for actions against their control. Sos Eltis insists that Dracula’s

“moral scheme is more complex than a dichotomy of opposites: the ‘good’ characters’. . .

sexuality is different from the vampires’ only in degree. Men and women resist becoming

vampires by controlling and containing their sexual urges” (464). However, as is evident in the

cases of Lucy and Mina, this assessment is not entirely accurate. Vampirism, once contracted, is
 28

a disease rather than a moral failing, and Lucy dies of blood loss, not lack of willpower. Mina

contracts and develops vampirism without succumbing to any “sexual urges,” metaphorical or

otherwise, and nearly becomes a vampire despite her heroism. The vampire women, then, while

still presented as violent, bloodthirsty, and dangerous, are not necessarily treated as responsible

for their state as vampires, and in theory, are not being punished for it. This interpretation is not,

however, one that is consistent with the film adaptations, as will be seen in Chapter Two.

In Dracula, Stoker examines late 19th century shifts in the roles of women, especially the

two competing ideologies of the angel in the house and the New Woman, ultimately presenting

his own model for femininity in Mina Harker. The three vampire women, who serve as twisted

versions of the mid-19th century angelic ideal for women, are meant to horrify, and their isolated

community of women serves mostly to uplift the ideal community of heroic men. Still, as

potential victims, the vampire women seem meant to evoke some degree of pity and forgiveness,

even if their restoration to their pre-vampiric selves is only possible after their disturbingly

violent deaths allow the men to regain their security as protectors of women.

Despite his questioning of certain ideals for women, Stoker is uninterested in the

complete overthrow of traditional gender power dynamics, especially since he is so against the

idea of the New Woman. Stoker consistently reinstates a traditional balance between genders—

while men and women may work together, women who gain positions of power over men are

immediately destroyed. However, he does reject the early 19th century ideals for women, both by

presenting Mina as an alternative and by presenting the vampire sisters as the examples for that

ideology taken to the extreme. Confining women to a single sphere, he suggests, is dangerous as

well as foolish, since isolating women from men makes them dangerous and also limits their

ability to assist men’s communities. Stoker’s ultimate ideal for women, then, is in a supporting
 29

role to men that is still more active than those early 19th century models. Like all ideals, it is also

contradictory and impossible to meet, as he demands that women be at once intelligent, active,

and independent while also respectful of men’s authority and aware of their roles as future

mothers. It is unsurprising that only one woman in Dracula fulfills this ideal. It is also

unsurprising that their failure to meet this ideal leads to the deaths of all of the vampire

women—the failure to fully meet the standards for moral femininity still frequently motivates

the deaths of female characters, even in films of the 20th and 21st centuries.
 30

“vixen, leering, slut”:

The Vampire Sisters in Dracula Adaptations

Since its release in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula has become a cultural icon, spawning

numerous adaptations and influencing nearly all other vampire films and texts. As Jeffrey

Weinstock says in his study of vampire film, Stoker’s Dracula is “the vampire cinema Ur-text . .

. the original from which everything else is copied” (2), and this popularity is reflected in

Dracula’s innumerable depictions on screen, whether that be as part of an adaptation of the

original work or as a mere guest appearance in various shows and films. While Dracula himself

is seemingly malleable enough to fit many roles, though, his female companions are rarely seen

without him. When they do appear, they are nearly identical to the vampire sisters as they appear

in Stoker’s novel. In early 20th century films, their roles are often limited to that of mere set

dressing; in Senf’s analysis of the sisters in Dracula films up to 1984, she notes that in at least

one instance the women “serve only to provide atmosphere in the film . . . They are mere ghostly

presences, as passive as the heroine” (“Brides of Dracula” 67). While the vampire sisters are

rarely so passive in 20th or 21st century adaptations, they also seldom receive interesting subplots

or personalities. In some films, one or even all of the female vampires are eliminated entirely.

Rather than characters in their own right, the vampire sisters often function as a monstrous,

bloodthirsty backdrop for a more sympathetic, compelling Dracula. Their bloodthirstiness, their

sexuality, and even their attire suggest that they are monsters. Their treatment suggests that even

in the 20th and early 21st century, the ideal woman is one who seems independent but remains

committed to and dependent upon men alone.

 31

Where the original vampire sisters are villainous because they subtly embody the worst

failings of the domestic Victorian angel, the vampire women in these adaptations reflect 20th and

21st century mores. Their blatant sexuality is still presented as obscene, and although they are

more individualized than their original counterparts, they are even more concerned with men.

The most notable aspect of the vampire women’s depiction in recent adaptations is that they are

actually surprisingly similar to their book counterparts; of all of the characters, the vampire

sisters of the films are the most similar to Stoker’s vampire women. The changes in the vampire

women from text to adaptation are subtle ones, but even those seemingly minor differences

reveal an ongoing discomfort with sexually aggressive women and anxiety towards women’s

relationships.

Perhaps the most obvious change is the fact that the female vampires’ sexuality is no

longer implied by the men’s reaction to them, but is made explicit through the women’s actions

and apparel. As in Stoker’s novel, women’s uncontrolled sexuality outside of a monogamous,

heterosexual relationship is still presented as monstrous and deadly. The films’ treatment of the

women as a group is also significant. Stoker’s vampire women are part of a community that is

frightening in its uniformity. In the adaptations, the communities of women lack both harmony

and effectiveness, which ultimately leaves the women vulnerable to outside forces and to each

other. This trivialization of women’s communities leads all of the women, especially the

vampiric ones, to focus entirely on men, thus minimizing the complex relationships with

motherhood and sisterhood as seen in Stoker’s novel. Even homoerotic moments between the

women are centered on men. Most significantly, though, the vampire women in the adaptations

are denied redemption, even the troublingly violent redemption presented in the original novel.
 32

Ultimately, the vampire sisters remain frustratingly one-dimensional, reduced from mysterious

emblems of uncontrolled femininity to mere hysterical bystanders.

To better examine the ways these factors play out in a variety of Dracula’s numerous

adaptations, this chapter examines a representative adaptation from each of the past three

decades. The three films vary in popularity, budget, and even genre, but each film includes at

least one of the vampire sisters. Francis Ford Coppola’s critically acclaimed Bram Stoker’s

Dracula (1992) remains one of the most popular adaptations of the novel in recent decades,

winning several Oscars for costumes, makeup, and sound effects. Though it does contain some

original elements, this film mostly follows the plot of Stoker’s novel. Stephen Sommers’ Van

Helsing (2004) was less critically acclaimed, though it was nominated for several Saturn awards7

in 2005, ultimately winning for Best Music. Sommers’ film makes an action hero of Van

Helsing, though Dracula and his brides play prominent roles. While less faithful to the plot of

Stoker’s novel, Van Helsing remains one of the few adaptations to feature the vampire sisters as

fully-drawn characters in their own right, and their characterization and relationship with

Dracula makes an analysis of the film useful. Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D (2012) is one of the

most recent adaptations of Dracula, though it was much less popular than either of the other two

films; according to IMDB, it earned less than $700,000 worldwide. Despite his attempt to use 3D

effects to make a unique addition to the growing list of Dracula adaptations, Argento’s use of 3D

has largely been considered overly contrived, and the DVD release, titled simply Argento’s

Dracula, entirely removes any mention of 3D effects. Like Coppola’s film, Argento’s Dracula

mostly features the plot and characters of Stoker’s novel, though Argento’s adaptation omits two

of the vampire sisters.

7
Awards created by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. Incidentally, the
organization was founded in 1972 by Dracula scholar Donald A. Reed.
 33

In these and other recent adaptations, when the vampire sisters do appear, they receive

more narrative time than ever before; however, that screen time is never spent making them more

sympathetic. Instead, the vampire sisters remain chaotic and evil, fulfilling a complex role as

emblems of villainous women. Their characterizations suggest that despite real women’s

improved social and legal status, the misogyny that underlined their original incarnations

remains even in recent films. These women, who are denied the complexity of their male

counterparts, are still connected with sexuality and promiscuity. Their portrayals suggest that to

some extent, sexual double standards still persist.

The increased prominence and continued villainy of the vampire sisters in film

adaptations of Dracula have occurred simultaneously with the more sympathetic treatment of

vampires in all fiction in recent decades. Vampire men, who have slowly become more antihero

than villain, are now just as likely to be heroic, especially in young adult fiction. The status of

vampire women is more dubious. My analysis of the vampire sisters contrasts with a general

critical notion that that female vampires in film and literature are also becoming more accepted,

representing a cultural movement towards acceptance of women’s sexuality. Senf, for example,

argues that the vampire woman’s “character is linked to specific historical periods,” meaning that

in the case of most of their 21st century depictions, “The overt eroticism of the female vampire is

no longer frightening because sexuality in women is now an acceptable, even desirable, trait . . .

Furthermore, the rebellion against authority that has been part of the woman vampire’s character

since the beginning is now more generally accepted” (“Daughters of Lilith” 213). Holte similarly

notes a “trend of increasingly positive depiction” of the vampire sisters, ultimately concluding,

“a figure that began as horrific with an undercurrent of sexual attraction has become more

familiar and more attractive, although still dangerous. Contemporary female vampires . . . are
 34

attractive and sympathetic female characters whose vampirism is only one part of their complex

characters; they are not monsters” (“Not All Fangs” 170, 172). It is certainly true that many

vampire women original to the 21st century are less monstrous than their predecessors, in part

due to the growing trend of female protagonists who themselves become vampires.8 However,

Dracula’s villainous vampire women have not received the same treatment as the female

characters in other films and movies. Their monstrosity is emphasized by their bloodthirstiness,

their blatant sexuality, and even their appearances, especially when compared to changes in the

depiction of Dracula himself. The vampire sisters of Dracula are still depicted as entirely evil

and are unable to either escape punishment or garner sympathy. Neither the 19th century text nor

20th and 21st century films allow for much complexity in female villains.

The vampire sisters’ undiminished monstrosity emphasizes the softening of Dracula

himself as a character. Late 20th and early 21st century adaptations of Dracula portray him as

villainous but increasingly sympathetic, both in terms of motivation and appearance. Senf notes

that even in the original text, despite Dracula’s “bestial characteristics,” Jonathan Harker still

“continues to see him as a noble adversary” (“Women of Dracula” 3). Characters continue to

express this grudging respect for Dracula even in these three recent adaptations. In Coppola and

Argento’s films, Dracula targets Mina Harker because she is the reincarnation of the love of his

life, a move that makes his preoccupation with her much more understandable. In Van Helsing,

Dracula’s main motivation is his desire to help his offspring reach adulthood, and this desire for

parenthood continues to make him sympathetic. In the original text, Mina must remind her

companions in that they should pity Dracula; 21st century audiences, it seems, have no trouble

with this concept, which makes the films’ much less sympathetic treatment of the vampire

8
Bella Swan, the heroine of Stephanie Meyers’ wildly popular young adult novel Twilight
(2005), is a notable example.
 35

women even more conspicuous. Once again, male villains are allowed the complexity that their

more polarized and sexualized female counterparts lack.

Reinforcing his increasingly sympathetic motivations, Dracula has also become more

physically attractive in recent adaptations. Stoker’s Dracula is never handsome; even when he

appears in London as a young businessman, Mina writes that “His face [is] not a good face” and

is instead “hard, and cruel, and sensual” (155). Recent adaptations, though, almost uniformly

depict him as a handsome gentleman through costuming and the casting of good-looking actors

in the roles. In all three films, Dracula’s clothing is fitted and expensive, his hair is neatly

arranged, and he is impeccably accessorized with top hats, gloves, and even subtle jewelry, all of

which seem designed to create the impression of a Romantic flawed hero. Coppola’s Dracula

originally appears as an unnaturally pallid, inhuman looking older man. As soon as he arrives in

London, though, Dracula, played by actor Gary Oldman, abandons his silk robes for gloves,

tailored suits, and top hats. Argento’s Dracula is similarly youthful and handsome, though his

all-black clothing provides him with a more somber presence. Even in Van Helsing, in which

Dracula transforms himself into a giant bat-like creature at will, his clothing is tailored and

aristocratic. In all versions, Dracula is capable of infiltrating upper-class human society, both

because of his clothing and because of his generally polite, calm demeanor when in public.

Stephen D. Arata notes that in Stoker’s novel, “A large part of the terror [Dracula] inspires

originates in his ability to stroll, unrecognized and unhindered, through the streets of London”

(639), and this ability remains a part of his more attractive self in these recent adaptations. The

vampire sisters lack this ability to blend in to human society, both because of their revealing,

anachronistic clothing and their seeming inability to be anything but chaotic, violent, and
 36

blatantly sexual. Dracula can appear human even if he does not necessarily always choose to do

so; his female counterparts, though, lack that same freedom.

Rather than portray Dracula as unattractive, all three films clearly distinguish between his

handsome human form and a more monstrous transformation, which he usually uses during

fights with other men. In Coppola’s film, for example, Dracula appears pale and unnatural in his

castle, and he later becomes a werewolf-like creature to seduce Lucy Westenra. In Van Helsing,

he transforms into a bat-like creature to fight, and in Dracula 3D he inexplicably transforms into

a human-sized praying mantis. Stoker’s Dracula is not actually connected with either of these

latter two creatures, and the connection to the praying mantis appears to be original to Argento.

However, the fact that filmmakers easily connect Dracula with a variety of inhuman creatures is

yet another indication of the mutability of the character. These transformations allow filmmakers

to endow Dracula with many of the more sinister qualities of his counterpart in Stoker’s novel,

but their comparative brevity—none of the transformations last for more than a few minutes—

still allows the filmmakers to maintain the impression of a handsome and charming Dracula.

By contrast, the villainous women rarely have a separate monstrous form; instead, their

monstrosity lies in their potential to seduce the male characters. The exceptions are the brides in

Van Helsing, who, like Dracula, transform into large humanoid bats when they fight the titular

hero. The willingness to allow these women to appear as monsters might suggest that Sommers

is deliberately distinguishing between their monstrous forms and their attractive human selves.

However, while Dracula only transforms to fight at the end of the movie, spending the majority

of the film in his handsome human form, the vampire women constantly shift between their bat-

forms and their attractive, sensual human forms. In nearly every scene in which they appear the
 37

women transform into creatures, connecting them even more strongly than Dracula with

monstrosity.

Despite claims that women’s sexuality is becoming more accepted, every adaptation of

Dracula clearly connects overt female sexuality to moral corruption. In her discussion of

Coppola’s film, Senf writes, “this version continues to demonstrate that vampirism brings out

latent sexuality,” though she does note human Mina’s increasing independence (“Women of

Dracula” 16). Unlike their novel counterparts, who are never actively sexual despite their

sensuality and who are, according to Jonathan, “ladies by their dress and manner” (41), the filmic

vampire sisters are blatantly sexual in dress and in action. Combined with their bloodthirstiness

and violence, the vampire women serve as intentionally nightmarish figures.

Coppola’s film in particular emphasizes the sexual potential of most characters, a change

that is particularly conspicuous in the case of the vampire women. In a journal entry published in

Coppola and Eiko on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Coppola writes of his plan to make vampire

Lucy’s makeup “sexy . . . in a more vixen, leering, slut kind of way” (70). This emphasis on the

newly changed vampire Lucy as attractive, promiscuous, and threatening is a key component to

his depiction of all of the vampire women. As is typical for filmed versions of the vampire

sisters, they are played here by young, beautiful women, and they first appear topless. When

clothed, all of the vampire sisters are costumed in gauzy dresses that reveal cleavage and

midriffs, and they nearly always wear gaudy jewelry. In their introductory scene, the vampire

sisters appear in bed with Jonathan in an encounter that is clearly meant to be uncomfortably

titillating. The first few shots of their encounter are erotic and sensual, and the vampires emerge

from the depths of the bed between Jonathan’s legs as the sheets are transformed from a dusty

white to colorful silk. The women, who are topless, kiss and lick Jonathan, and several extreme
 38

close-up shots focus on their mouths and tongues in a manner that suggests the moment is

certainly meant to be erotic. As the music intensifies, though, the quick shots of the women’s

mouths on Jonathan fill with blood, changing the moment from titillating to horrifying. This shift

from erotic to horror is made especially apparent by the arrival of the third sister, who has snakes

tangled in her hair in a manner reminiscent of Medusa. Her appearance and connection with

Medusa reveal the monstrous nature of the women, as does the quick shot of the mirror above the

bed, which shows only Jonathan. This scene in particular sets the stage for the rest of the film by

conflating sexuality and monstrosity, especially in the case of women.

Though less sexually explicit, Van Helsing similarly conflates female sexuality and

monstrosity. The vampire sisters dress in colorful, gauzy clothing that reveals their cleavage,

stomachs, and legs. Though similar, the costumes are unique to the individual women,

emphasizing this film’s emphasis on them as individuals—eldest bride Verona’s costume has an

old-fashioned collar, for example, which emphasizes her status as a mature leader. Another

bride, Marishka, wears an outfit that consists of a bikini top and pantaloons. Her costume seems

to be inspired by the outfits of belly dancers and emphasizes her seductive gestures towards Van

Helsing. Their clothing seems to literally be a part of all three brides, and when they transform

into their bat-like fighting forms, their clothing changes with them to become large gray wings.

The women are designed to entice with their revealing clothing, but the effect of the gauzy

costumes changing into large gray bat wings makes those images disturbing as well. The overall

effect of their repeated transformations is to suggest that their excessively feminine, overtly

sexual costumes are merely a disguise for their true monstrosity.

In both of these first two films, the vampire women’s clothing is accented with copious

expensive jewelry, connecting them with the excesses of the aristocracy without the
 39

corresponding manners and adherence to social codes. Unlike Dracula, though, the women are

incapable of blending in with any humans, even those of the upper classes. As in the novel,

Coppola’s vampire women never leave the castle grounds, and they only appear outdoors when

they approach Mina and Van Helsing towards the end of the film. Dracula is, of course, easily

able to mingle with the upper classes of London, attending art galleries and walking about

London with Mina Harker. The more independent brides in Van Helsing are well known to the

villagers, who identify them by name and explain to other characters that the vampire women

visit their village on a monthly basis. With their brightly colored, impractical costumes, the

brides provide a stark contrast with the villagers, who wear plain, simple, and modest clothing.

The fact that they prey upon the villagers, taking, as the undertaker says, only “what they need to

survive—one or two people a month,” again connects the vampire women with a predatory

upper class. Even so, the vampire women would not blend in even with the aristocracy—when

Dracula holds a ball in the city, surviving bride Aleera is not even present.

Argento’s adaptation does not as clearly connect vampire women and aristocracy, but it

does maintain the connection between villainous women and sexual promiscuity. This film

replaces the three sisters with Tanja, a villager who becomes a vampire when Dracula catches

her outdoors after her rendezvous with a local married man. Tanja wears a simple, if revealing,

white shift, which is particularly notable when compared to the colorful clothing of the vampire

women in other films. Between her simple clothing, her emotional outbursts, and her isolation

from other women, Tanja seems more vulnerable than the vampire sisters in other films. She

soon reveals this vulnerability to be a pretense, though, and she is just as bloodthirsty and sexual

as the other women in her seduction of Jonathan Harker. Unlike other adaptations, Jonathan is

actually killed and changed into a vampire in this adaptation, which might suggest that Tanja’s
 40

deliberate play of vulnerability is a more effective technique than that of her counterparts in

other films, who instead rely solely on physical seduction. Tanja’s use of her own apparent

emotional vulnerability to lure Jonathan and make him a vampire suggests that the trope of

women using vulnerability to seduce kind men is still as present now as it was in the 19th

century.

That female sexuality is still largely villainized in these films is made even more apparent

by the fact that all of the vampire women are directly contrasted to their more virtuous female

counterparts. As 20th and 21st century versions of Stoker’s Mina, many of these traditionally

feminine women are heroes in their own right, especially Anna, the agile heroine of Van Helsing.

In Argento’s film, Mina even replaces the other male vampire hunters, assisting Van Helsing in

the decapitation of Lucy and the preparations against Dracula on her own. Coppola’s Mina is less

physically active, but even she plays a greater role than Stoker’s Mina, serving both as Dracula’s

love interest and, eventually, as the one who finally kills him.

Though virtuous, these heroic women are interested in romance and sex, potentially even

with Dracula himself. However, they openly wrestle with remaining faithful to their respective

lovers and are ultimately rewarded for their loyalty to them. Coppola’s Mina, for example, is

faithful to her husband Jonathan despite being tempted by Dracula, with whom she shares an

intense spiritual connection as a result of her relationship with him in a past life. She expresses

guilt for even harboring these desires, fearing that they make her “a bad, inconstant woman.”

Mina does remain faithful to Jonathan, though, and is even the one who stakes Dracula,

suggesting that even the filmmakers do not consider those desires to be inherently wrong. Even

the most respectable women in these films are hardly virginal. However, the films still clearly

distinguish between the promiscuous villainesses and the faithful heroines, who are only sexual
 41

within marriage. While women’s sexuality is, in general, more acceptable in recent vampire

films, as Senf has suggested, that sexuality is socially acceptable only within those specific

limits.

Dracula 3D and Van Helsing similarly contrast the virtuous, faithful human women with

the sexually promiscuous female vampires. Argento’s Mina remains faithful to Jonathan despite

her recognition of an emotional connection with Dracula, and as in the novel, she is the only

woman to survive. Lucy is neither engaged nor married in this adaptation, which omits most of

Van Helsing’s group of men. Lucy’s surrender to Dracula’s seduction lacks the element of

unfaithfulness, which is likely a factor in the tone of her death scene. Rather than staking and

beheading Lucy, Van Helsing throws a lantern and sets her on fire, which, while still violent,

does lack the sexual connotations of Lucy’s death scene in the other adaptations. Both Mina and

Lucy are contrasted with the vampire Tanja, who is repeatedly connected with unfaithful

sexuality. She is turned into a vampire largely because she is having an affair with a married man

from her village, an act that is presented both as morally wrong and, since it leaves her

vulnerable to Dracula’s attack, foolish. She later seduces Jonathan, who is already married to

Mina. Her death is violent where Lucy’s is not, once again hinting at a punitive element in the

deaths of promiscuous, unfaithful women.

Van Helsing does not continue this theme of potentially adulterous women, but it does

contrast the promiscuous vampire women with Anna, the only other notable woman in the film.

While she dresses in tight-fitting clothing and exchanges flirtatious quips with Van Helsing,

Anna never does anything more than kiss him, instead choosing to remain faithful to her mission

to kill Dracula. Only faithful women receive a happy ending in these films, though even for them

happiness is not guaranteed. The women in these adaptations are certainly allowed more sexual
 42

freedom than their 19th century counterparts; however, that freedom only extends so far.

Sexuality outside monogamous, heterosexual unions is reserved for monsters, and the violation

of that standard brings cruel punishment.

Lucy, the only character who changes from human to vampire in the course of the story,

is as indicative of female monstrosity in the 20th and 21st century films as she is in the 19th

century text and deserves special mention here. In Stoker’s novel, Lucy is initially flattered by

the attentions of three different men. After all three propose, though, she expresses her pity for

all of her suitors, even wishing that a woman might marry “as many men as want her, and save

all this trouble” (60), a wish that stems from a desire to avoid hurting any of her suitors.

Coppola’s Lucy is crueler and more promiscuous. She thoroughly enjoys being pursued and

openly flirts with all of her suitors, and unlike Stoker’s Lucy, she hints to Mina that she is

deliberately attempting to make them fall in love with her. Coppola’s Lucy also blatantly invites

Dracula in by opening her window to him, and after having sex with Dracula in his beastly form,

she remembers the incident with a smile. Holte, who suggests that Coppola’s film “foregrounds

the sexual nature of the vampire,” argues that “Coppola’s adaptation, following Stoker’s novel,

suggests that Lucy can be vampirized, and then must be destroyed or put back in her place,

because she was willing and capable of embracing her own sexuality and eager to throw off the

domination of the men around her” (“Not All Fangs” 171). Of course, this argument applies to

the Lucy of the adaptations more than the Lucy of the book, since that Lucy is unconscious for

nearly every instance critics point to as evidence of her “sexual awakening” before she becomes

a vampire. Like the vampire sisters themselves, though, the Lucy of the adaptations is

undeniably depicted as enjoying and seeking out sexual pleasure, both from Dracula and from

several men within her group of suitors. Her destruction at the men’s hands is correctional as
 43

well as retributive, though it entirely lacks Stoker’s novel’s emphasis on restoring her to her

angelic but dead pre-vampiric self.

Coppola’s group of vampire hunters ultimately punishes Lucy’s actions with an even

more violent death than that of her counterpart in Stoker’s novel. As many critics, particularly

Christopher Bentley, have argued, even in the novel Lucy’s death is strongly suggestive of

sexual violence. However, unlike her death in Stoker’s text, the film omits Van Helsing’s

comment that Lucy would have chosen Arthur to stake her vampire self “had it been her to

choose” (191), and there is no moment after her final death when Van Helsing encourages Arthur

to kiss her, as she “would have [him] to, if for her to choose” (193). Instead, Van Helsing forces

her back to her coffin while she screams and vomits blood all over his face and clothing, a

moment that seems to highlight her inhumanity. As in the novel, Lucy’s fiancé Arthur stakes her

as she writhes and screams, a moment that Craft describes as the novel’s “most violent and

misogynistic moment,” noting that “Violence against the sexual woman here is intense, sensually

imagined, ferocious in its detail” (122). In the film, that violence is emphasized by Lucy’s

inhumanity. In the novel, the scene ends on a moment of peace, and Seward describes a “holy

calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form” after she is staked. They then send

Arthur and Quincey away and “cut off the head and fill . . . the mouth with garlic” (193), further

distancing Lucy as a vampire from her “true self” by referring to “the” body rather than “her”

body. In the film Van Helsing sends her head flying across the room while all of the men are still

present, a violent end to Lucy that neither allows for the Van Helsing-sanctioned kiss between

Lucy and Arthur nor for the possibility for a peaceful rest for Lucy.

The omission of even the discussion of choice in Lucy’s death in the film suggests that

her destruction is meant to be punitive, not a means of releasing her from vampirism to paradise
 44

or an idealized purity, and a similar suggestion of corrective violence is also present in the

sisters’ deaths at Van Helsing’s hand. Far from embracing women’s sexual freedom, this film

presents sexual women as promiscuous and in need of punishment. If in Stoker’s novel Lucy’s

death represents the 19th century need to punish women for sexual behavior, then this much more

violent death seems to suggest a similar desire in the late 20th century, at least for women who

fulfill sexual desires outside of the boundary of a long-term monogamous relationship.

While the vampire sisters’ depiction in these recent adaptations suggests a continuing

discomfort with women’s overt sexuality in general, the vampire sisters’ sexuality is also closely

connected with issues of race. Many critics have noted Dracula’s complex attitude towards race

and colonization: Stephen Arata, for example, argues that the text “enacts the period’s most

important and pervasive narrative of decline, a narrative of reverse colonization” (623). Such a

narrative requires that Dracula himself and, to some extent, his female companions, represent a

racial “Other.” In the footnotes to their 1997 edition of Dracula, Nina Auerbach and David J.

Skal suggest that the two sisters described as “dark” with “high aquiline noses, like the Count”

could “share the racial characteristics of Eastern vampires” (42n7). This connection between the

vampire women and a racial or ethnic “Other” remains a part of their depiction even in recent

films, despite the fact that the casting of the actresses makes the connection largely a symbolic

one. All of the sisters’ actresses have been white, as have the most of the other cast members; the

only people of color who make an appearance at all in most versions of Dracula are the so-called

“gypsies” who apparently mindlessly serve Dracula as long as he is in power, though they are

quick to abandon him when he is killed. Still, through costuming, musical cues, and even

accents, the vampire sisters seem to represent a racial “Other” that, combined with the treatment
 45

of their sexuality, suggests similar fears and, as Arata suggests, even guilt (623) as represented in

Stoker’s novel.

The simultaneous fascination with and mistrust of women of color’s sexuality is

especially apparent in Coppola’s version, in which the clothing of the vampire sisters is

ambiguously “exotic,” drawing on Eastern themes with revealing chiffon dresses, elaborate

braids, and expensive hairpieces. Eiko Ishioka, the costume designer for the film, suggests that

the cultural ambiguity of the costumes in the film is deliberate, saying, “With my costumes I

aimed for a symbolic reflection of the culture of the characters in the film . . . Their culture was a

hybrid, a mixture of East and West reflected especially among the aristocracy and royalty” (29).

This mixture of different cultural trends is particularly evident in the vampire women’s hair. One

of the vampire women, played by Monica Bellucci, wears tight braids partially covered by a

heavy beaded headpiece in a manner reminiscent of ancient Egypt. Another, played by model

Michaela Bercu, wears a thick, jeweled headband that seems to be drawing from Romani

influences. Combined with the ambiguously “Eastern” musical cues and the jingling of bells that

accompanies their movements, the vampire sisters’ appearances seem positioned to evoke

stereotypical European fantasies of Eastern harems. According to Eiko, Coppola “wanted a

decaying, deteriorating feel to the fabric [of the brides’ clothing], like the shrouds of the

mummies in the catacombs of Bombay” (44). Since Mumbai has neither catacombs nor

mummies, the wording of Coppola’s request reflects the conflation of cultures that is reflected in

the vampires throughout the film. These costuming choices result in less depth of

characterization than in merely using cultural signifiers to suggest that these women are a

sexualized, “exotic” Other.

 46

The vampire sisters’ very speech also marks them as Other. In Coppola’s film, the

women’s very few lines are spoken in Hungarian, not English; unlike Dracula, they apparently

lack the desire or the ability to interact with the English. In Van Helsing, the women speak with

exaggerated accents, seemingly mimicking Bela Lugosi’s Dracula’s distinctive Hungarian

accent. In a 21st century context, though, the obviously faked accents suggest a desire to make

the vampire sisters seem exotic, which is particularly troubling when combined with their

revealing clothing and bloodthirstiness. Several critics have compellingly argued that Stoker’s

vampire women represent societal fears of the foreign Other;9 the fact that similar themes arise in

these 20th and 21st century adaptations suggests that those anxieties remain in white American

and European filmmakers and audiences. Emphasizing the sensuality of the women thus

connects women of color with white fantasies of “exotic” women. These representations of the

vampire sisters suggest both a continuing exotification of women of color and continuing

discomfort with their sensuality. These qualities likely contribute to the brutality of the vampire

sisters’ deaths in both Van Helsing and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Like Stoker, these adaptations treat communities of women in general with suspicion

and, eventually, violence, though for slightly different reasons. While the novel expresses

anxiety regarding communities of powerful and deadly women, its treatment of them suggests

acknowledgment of those communities as sites of potential female power. In her description of

the literary history of communities of women, Auerbach writes that even those sisterhoods that

are depicted as “outcasts” can be granted “a subtle, unexpected power” (7, 3), a type of

community that is exemplified by the original group of vampire sisters. In Stoker’s novel, theirs

9
See Sos Eltis’ “Corruption of the Blood and Degeneration of the Race: Dracula and Policing
the Borders of Gender” (2002) and Elizabeth Signorotti’s “Reposessing the Body: Transgressive
Desire in ‘Carmilla’ and ‘Dracula’” (1996).
 47

is an idealized sisterhood in which they work together harmoniously, which allows them to

present a united front against Dracula and Van Helsing alike.

In recent adaptations, though, that community of women is divided and fallible rather

than powerful in its unity, indicating a possible reluctance on the part of 20th and 21st century

filmmakers to acknowledge the potential strength of women’s communities. In Van Helsing, the

women are more individualized than the women of other adaptations: they are each given a name

and a distinct personality, and they are also allowed to openly grieve the death their sister

Marishka, who dies early in the film. However, this individualism comes at a cost, since as

individual women, they are apparently incapable of coexisting as a unified community. It is even

suggested that their increased individuality and seeming independence is what leads to

Marishka’s death, since she fails to follow Verona’s instructions and is promptly killed by Van

Helsing. Successful communities of women, the films seem to suggest, are only possible with a

lack of individual identity. They also suggest that sisterhoods are never as powerful as women’s

relationships with men. Where the original novel condemned communities of women as more

chaotic and less effective than communities of men, the films of the 20th and 21st century are

skeptical that such communities of women could even exist, leaving the women no alternative to

the masculine-focused communities the films present.

Similarly, these adaptations suggest that women’s communities in general are incapable

of existing without infighting. In the original text, the sisters voluntarily give up the right of the

first bite to the blonde vampire, graciously insisting, “there are kisses for us all” (42). In Van

Helsing, though, vampire sisters Aleera and Verona fight each other over Anna’s blood, despite

the suggestion that Verona is higher in the hierarchy. Where the original sisters respect each

other, these 21st century brides are much more competitive. Auerbach notes the stereotype that
 48

groups of women cannot exist without infighting, a cliché that she argues is often refuted in even

in 19th century literature (Communities of Women 12-13). The depiction of women in these

adaptations, though, emphasizes the stereotypical image of the backbiting group of women.

Tanja is the only vampire woman in Dracula’s castle in Dracula 3D, and she demonstrates a

marked dislike of other women, especially Mina. Their relationship is marked by jealousy, and

Tanja petulantly throws Mina’s picture in the fire and cries after seeing Dracula and Mina

speaking together. The fact that so many films eliminate one or two of the sisters suggests that

fears of women’s communities have been replaced with ambivalence and scorn towards them, at

least in the case of violent, villainous women. However, where the power of women in

communities was once feared, now they are portrayed as flawed groups of contentious,

uncontrolled individuals who, while frightening, are also easier to ridicule. If in the 19th century

groups of women are dangerously insular and destroyed only by men’s influence, 20th and 21st

century groups of women are prone to fighting and betrayal and are only fully united when they

are led by a man, suggesting a shift from fearing women to setting them up for failure.

The adaptations’ focus on the vampire women’s reactions to men is reflected in the

female vampires blood-drinking habits. Where the original sisters fed exclusively on children,

the vampire women in the films instead frequently prey upon men—in Dracula 3D, Tanja drinks

from Jonathan, who becomes a vampire himself. The only time the vampire women of Van

Helsing are seen drinking blood in the film, it is that of an anonymous peasant man. Coppola’s

vampire sisters do feed upon the blood of a child Dracula brings, but they are far more interested

in Jonathan himself. Where in the original novel, they desire to drink the blood of an

unconscious Jonathan, in Coppola’s film they outright perform sexual acts upon him, eventually

holding him captive and drinking from him for an unknown length of time. Overall, the film
 49

adaptations of the women are entirely more interested in men in general than their novel

counterparts, hinting that even in the 21st century, women are expected to be attentive to, and

even dependent upon, men.

The women’s change in preferred victims is also reflective of the decline of the

importance of motherhood in recent adaptations. Stoker’s vampires are horrifying because, as

vampires, they possess the ability but not the desire to become “mothers,” though their

connection with children also suggests concern that they are acting outside of gender norms. In

the adaptations, motherhood is only a major issue in Van Helsing, in which the vampire women,

like Dracula himself, are desperately working to find ways to bring their undead offspring to life.

Though it is clear that vampires also reproduce in the usual supernatural way, presumably

through blood and biting, these vampires are more interested in natural means of reproduction.

These women are made horrifying both because they desire motherhood and because they are

capable of it. Still, the vampire brides of Van Helsing are the most complex and thus the most

sympathetic of the depictions of the vampire sisters, which might also be connected to their

connection with motherhood. Their depiction suggests larger cultural issues with controlling

women’s bodies, and hints at continuing social pressure for women to define themselves in

relation to mothering and a family.

Coppola and Argento’s films are far less concerned with directly connecting the vampire

women to motherhood. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire sisters more frequently prey upon

men than children. While the novel emphasizes the women’s drinking from children and merely

hints at their feeding upon men, the film does the opposite by lingering on shots of the women

drinking from Jonathan. By contrast, the death of the child happens off-screen while the camera

focuses on Jonathan’s horrified reaction. Lucy does still feed primarily on children, and as in the
 50

novel, her callous dropping of a child is the moment in which the men decide that she is

irredeemably monstrous. However, the film removes references to Lucy feeding upon other

children in the village, and her attempt to mesmerize her fiancé Arthur is the focus of the scene

in the crypt. Though the women still have some relationship with children in Coppola’s film, that

relationship contains little of the cultural significance that it does in the novel, suggesting that

monstrous femininity is not necessarily strictly connected with the absence of mothering

instincts.

Dracula 3D further deemphasizes the vampires’ connection to motherhood, since Tanja

does not drink the blood of children at all. Instead, she seems to feed only upon men, particularly

Renfield and Jonathan Harker. The fact that she is the only vampire woman to successfully turn

Jonathan into a vampire might suggest that splitting the focus between men and children makes

for a less successful monster; it also, though, removes the element of the female vampire as

representative of the mother at all. With the notable exception of Van Helsing, the vampire

women are severed from motherhood, even failed motherhood. With the potential for

motherhood and sisterhood both removed, then, it is unsurprising that women in these

adaptations are defined primarily by their relationships with men.

Where the original novel presented the bonds between women as threatening, but strong,

the vampire women in the adaptations are often more closely connected with men. Those bonds

they do share with other women are often either weak or nonexistent. The sisters in Coppola’s

film are similar to the women in the original novel, lacking individual names and, to some

extent, distinct personalities, both factors that present them as a united front. However, these

women are ultimately much more closely connected to men’s influence than their book

counterparts. The change in plot, which makes Mina Dracula’s long-lost love, entirely changes
 51

the meaning of his rebuke to the vampire sisters: “Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it

from the past” (43). In the original novel, the line suggests that Dracula once had some emotional

connection to at least some of the vampire sisters. Here, though, the line refers to his dead wife

Elizabeta, which makes the sisters entirely his victims; while the original sisters could potentially

have chosen Dracula out of love or some emotional bond, this motivation is entirely denied them

here, making them either his victims or his pawns. More significantly, in their second

appearance, Coppola’s vampire sisters hypnotize Mina into seducing Van Helsing. Their focus

on Van Helsing is a significant departure from the original novel, in which they mostly ignore

Van Helsing and instead attempt to seduce Mina into joining them as their sister. The focus of

the scene, then, shifts from that of a horrible, beckoning female community, a threat to virtuous

women, to a community that is centered on men, either in using them or threatening to harm

them.

Initially, many of the vampire women of recent film adaptations seem to less constrained

by societal conventions regarding women’s place in the domestic sphere, since several of them

leave their homes and even work for Dracula. Upon closer examination, though, this attempt to

make the women seem more powerful actually reinforces the notion that women are not well

suited to a life of action. Physically, all of the vampire sisters seem slightly stronger and thus

more independent than the women in Stoker’s novel. In Coppola’s version, they do eventually

get to drink from Jonathan Harker, though the fact that he is able to escape from them without

being killed might suggest that they are still not entirely capable of hunting their own prey. They

also actively kill Van Helsing’s horses, which die of fright in the original novel, which similarly

suggests more physical prowess. The vampire women of Van Helsing are Dracula’s companions

and his willing collaborators. In their first scene, the sisters terrorize a village without Dracula’s
 52

presence, and the townspeople hint that the sisters hunt there frequently. These women are

clearly successful killers, and are much more difficult to destroy than their counterparts in the

novel or in other adaptations. However, their seeming feminine power is undermined by the fact

that they utterly fail to kill human protagonist Anna, and Marishka is destroyed largely because

she apparently cannot resist the infantile urge to taunt Van Helsing. Tanja is similarly sent to kill

Van Helsing; like Marishka, she is promptly killed. All of these instances of failure suggest that

despite the appearance of being more powerful, the vampire women of the adaptations are not

actually more effective or powerful than in their original incarnation.

The vampire sisters are also much more reliant on Dracula for emotional strength in

many of the adaptations. The brides of Van Helsing turn to Dracula for comfort after Marishka’s

death, sobbing on his shoulders while kissing and licking either side of his neck. They also begin

the scene by cowering away from him, huddled in a corner of the room together, apparently in

fear of his wrath. After Dracula rebukes them for failing to carry out their mission, he calls them

to him, saying, “Come. Do not fear me. Everybody else fears me. Not my brides,” a moment that

hints at physical and emotional abuse. Despite his apparent desire to be working with them at

equals, it seems, Dracula is incapable of treating the women as such. In Stoker’s novel, Mina’s

self-worth comes from her relationship with the men. In the adaptations, all of the women find

self-worth from Dracula, including the vampire women, who in the novel present a united front

against Dracula. As far as the filmmakers are concerned, it seems that women can only find self

worth from relationships with men; other relationships are not even important enough to them to

be depicted.

While Stoker appears concerned that female communities will lead women to reject their

ideal roles, these film adaptations shift to examining women as a threat to men. They seem
 53

especially concerned with the possibility that such communities lead to lesbianism—in their

seduction of Dracula, the sisters in Coppola’s film kiss each other, as do Mina and Lucy later in

the film. Similarly, Van Helsing’s bride Aleera also begins to seduce Anna, saying, “Don’t play

coy with me, princess. I know what lurks in your lusting heart” as she moves towards her. Such

behavior is treated as villainous by the filmmakers, and it hints at a continuing conflation of

women’s communities and lesbianism, a fear that is further developed in the adaptations of

Carmilla. Even the idea of lesbianism, though, is centered around the men in these films—the

vampire sisters in Coppola’s film kiss to bewilder and arouse Jonathan, for example, and while

the sisters in Sommers’ adaptation are involved in some sort of polyamorous relationship, it is

clear that it hinges around Dracula’s desires, not theirs. The fears of lesbianism seem to be more

closely connected to anxieties about the possibility that relationships between women might be

used to manipulate men, not that they necessarily are villainous for their own sake.

As originally presented in Stoker’s novel, the vampire sisters’ deaths are closely

connected with their restoration to a pre-vampiric state, though that restoration occurs in a

particularly violent, corrective way. In these adaptations their deaths remain gruesome, but the

films lack any promise of final peace. In all three films the women die in similar ways to their

novel counterparts, including the screaming and the writhing on stakes, crossbow bolts, or

sharpened crucifixes, which, as Bentley and other critics have frequently noted, seem to be

blatantly phallic imagery. None of the vampire women are given the same hint of a peaceful rest,

though. Coppola’s film includes the scene in which Van Helsing decapitates the sisters in their

coffins; instead of the final image of their faces that turn peaceful before crumbling into dust,

though, the last view of the women is Van Helsing taking the heads by the hair and vengefully

throwing them over a cliff. The moment seems intended to be a lighthearted end to the villainous
 54

trio, but the lack of the possibility of peace for the women is troubling, especially when

compared to Dracula’s death at the hand of his reincarnated love, Mina. In “The Women of

Dracula Films,” Senf argues that Dracula’s death leads to “the suggestion . . . that Dracula is

released from his pain” when Mina stakes and beheads him (17). The vampire sisters receive no

such mercy. Tanja, too, suffers as she dies, and all of the sisters in Van Helsing die screaming as

they crumble into dust. Together, the lack of a peaceful resolution for any of the women suggests

an end of the fallen woman trope, in which a fallen woman gains redemption through death;

instead, though, they are denied even the possibility of redemption.

As representatives of what we deem most monstrous in women, the vampire sisters in

these films present a standard for femininity that is frustratingly one-dimensional. Female

protagonists may be virginal or sexual, as long as they stay within certain boundaries, and as

long as they remain faithful to their ideals, they remain heroic. They must also center their entire

existences upon men—not necessarily because doing otherwise would lead them to villainy, but

because the option to form a community with other women simply does not exist. Still, the

heroic female protagonists are given a degree of complexity that the villainous women lack, and

while films center around their ability to choose between men, the villainous women have very

little choice at all. They are certainly not given the potential for redemption. While sexual

women are not necessarily villainous in these films, villainous women are always sexual.

Women outside the gender ideals are no longer fallen creatures in need of (violent) correction as

well as pity, but are objects of scorn and venom, and most are killed with a startling amount of

vindictiveness that, if present in the original novel, is at least subtextual. Denied complexity and

relationships separate from their respective men, the monstrous women in recent adaptations of
 55

Dracula suggest that even now, vampire women in film serve mostly to enhance Dracula’s

sympathetic portrayal and to further misogynist stereotypes about explicitly sexual women.
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“languid adoration”:

Le Fanu’s Carmilla

J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1871-72) is one of the most well known of the 19th

century vampire novels, and is today mostly remembered for the intense romantic relationship

between Laura, the narrator, and Carmilla, the vampire who preys upon her. Carmilla explores

the dynamics of women’s relationships, and like Dracula, the text ultimately suggests that

excluding women from male communities is detrimental, even dangerous, for men and women

alike. Unlike Dracula, Carmilla treats the relationships between women fairly ambiguously.

Carmilla herself preys upon young middle-class and lower-class women alike, suggesting that

she represents anxieties of predatory women and predatory aristocrats in general; however, she

remains a remarkably sympathetic character due to her emotional relationships with Laura and

Bertha Rheinfeldt. Laura’s conflicted feelings towards the simultaneously charming and

frightening Carmilla reflect the text’s own ambivalence towards women’s relationships. To a

certain extent, Le Fanu treats women’s relationships surprisingly positively, especially by

prioritizing the bond between mothers and their daughters. However, his treatment of women as

potential predators does undermine that positivity, and though he does present the romantic

relationship between Laura and Carmilla fairly favorably, the text eventually overtly posits that

the best relationships, romantic or otherwise, are mutually beneficial heterosexual ones. The text

ultimately serves as a warning against the idea that men and women should be entirely isolated

from each other, since such isolation leaves them vulnerable to the manipulation of outside

forces, especially predatory women, and thus reflects cultural attitudes that prioritize

relationships between men and women.

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In this text that is largely about women’s relationships, the supernatural is largely

gendered as female. All of the major representations of the supernatural are women, and they are

opposed by human men who are consistently unwilling to accept the reality of supernatural

influences. While the men are generally depicted as the keepers of knowledge, they are largely

incapable of understanding the supernatural, which prevents them from drawing seemingly

obvious conclusions about the identities and natures of the vampires. Relying largely on

masculine, human systems of authority, the men are consistently unable to reframe their

understanding of the world to include supernatural feminine threats, leaving them unable to

adequately react to the vampire women. The human women, including Laura and her two

governesses, are more open to accepting supernatural explanations, and it is implied that

knowledge of the supernatural is passed down from mothers to daughters. Laura and Bertha

Rheinfeldt, who have both been raised by men, are thus lacking that essential feminine

knowledge, leaving them vulnerable to the feminine influence of the supernatural. This tension

between the human men, who attempt to enforce patriarchal authority through the control of

knowledge, and the supernatural women, who threaten that authority, is one of the key themes in

the novel.

The narrative repeatedly questions the men’s insistence on preventing Laura from

learning about the supernatural, especially since they are motivated by a chivalric impulse that

Le Fanu repeatedly presents as outdated and unrealistic. Set in a remote schloss in Styria, the

novella is narrated by Laura as a letter to a distant friend a decade or so after Carmilla’s death.

Laura emphasizes her isolation from others—both men and women—before meeting Carmilla,

and it is partially her loneliness that convinces her father to let Carmilla stay with them after her

carriage crashes near their home. Even in childhood, Laura says, she was “one of those happy
 58

children who are studiously kept in ignorance of ghost stories, of fairy tales, and of all such lore

as makes us cover up our heads when the door creaks suddenly” (3). Unaware of any potential

dangers, little Laura is unafraid when the vampire Carmilla approaches her one night in her

nursery, and is thus especially vulnerable to her bite. Since Laura’s mother has been dead since

Laura’s infancy (2), the “studious,” deliberate restriction of Laura’s knowledge occurs at her

father’s command.

As the family patriarch, Laura’s unnamed father fulfills his role by controlling Laura’s

access to information. His management of this information, however, is incomplete and

irresponsible. In fact, his very first lines in the book are his admitting that he completely forgot

to inform Laura that a family friend, Bertha Rheinfeldt, has died. This moment is merely the first

in which Laura’s father infantilizes her, a recurring element of their relationship throughout the

novella. Late in the novel, Laura’s father refuses to tell her what the doctors have said about her

mysterious illness, which, unbeknownst to her, is the result of a vampire’s bite. He repeatedly

dismisses her to other parts of the house while he confers with her doctors, despite the fact that

she is close to twenty (32, 50). After they hear the story of Carmilla’s previous attack on Bertha

Rheinfeldt, Carmilla arrives in the chapel and a “brutalized change” comes over her features

before she flees; even at this obvious reveal of Carmilla’s vampiric nature, though, Laura does

not understand what has happened, merely noting that she feared the significance of Carmilla’s

“sinister absence” (78). Her father’s attempts to protect her from supernatural influences only

serve to make her more afraid, here and elsewhere. Laura’s father offers her no explanation, and

she does not even understand that Carmilla is a vampire at all until “a few days later” (77-78).

Her father’s condescending treatment of Laura presumably continues on even past the end of the

novel, since Laura concludes by noting that following Carmilla’s death, her “father took [Laura
 59

on] a tour through Italy” (83); her father still directs her far into her adulthood, and there is no

indication that she ever marries or leaves her family home with him. Although Laura is certainly

a victim to Carmilla, she is also treated as a victim of her father’s patronizing, infantilizing

attitude towards her. His dismissive attitude toward her is at least partially responsible for her

melancholy nervousness at the end of the novella.

As is the case with Mina and Van Helsing in Dracula, preventing women from gaining

knowledge, even when it is supposedly to protect them, actually leaves those women vulnerable.

Because her father mistakes ignorance for safety, Laura is entirely unaware of the supernatural

threat that is plaguing the area, and she remains oblivious to the need to exercise caution in her

relationships. Laura thus has neither the means nor the knowledge necessary to resist Carmilla’s

influence, either as a child or as an adult. In Dracula, the men eventually learn the importance of

sharing information with women—after Mina is attacked, the group of vampire hunters

unanimously decide that she is to be included in all planning. The decision to include her proves

to be a key component to their victory over Dracula, suggesting that a fully informed woman is a

component to success. The men of Carmilla—Laura’s father, their family friend General

Spielsdorf, vampire-hunter (and likely model for Van Helsing) Baron Vordenburg, and the

assorted doctors and priests—never learn the same lesson. While they succeed in killing

Carmilla, they entirely fail to investigate the extent of her influence, which continues long after

her death. Laura’s final lines, in which she says that even years later she still occasionally fancies

that she can hear Carmilla’s footstep outside her drawing-room door (83), suggest that she

remains under Carmilla’s influence. The vampire hunters’ failure allows Le Fanu to expose the

problems inherent in the traditional treatment of gender roles, especially in regard to men’s

adherence to outdated, idealized models of chivalry.

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Le Fanu also uses the men’s repeated failures to critique 19th century society’s exclusion

of women from education and decision-making. The deliberate suppression of Laura’s

knowledge apparently leads her to a nervous breakdown, transforming her from a calm, curious

girl to a nervous, hallucinating woman by the end of the narrative. Laura is deliberately kept in

ignorance about her illness, the possibility of vampirism, and even, perhaps, her own attraction to

Carmilla until the end, when she can merely report on Carmilla/Mircalla/Millarca’s10 death with

a detached tone. She uses notably impersonal pronouns to refer to “the body” and “the heart of

the vampire,” suggesting that she has still not been able to reconcile the memory of her close

friend with the horror of the vampire even a decade later. Rather than learning of Carmilla’s

death firsthand, she has merely received the official, impersonal report of the proceedings, a

copy of which was given to her father, not Laura herself (79). William Veeder writes,

“Information is what the characters in this tale of repression never get enough of” (199-200),

further noting that in Carmilla, “gains in knowledge are inevitably partial, and the ideal of

complete understanding is repeatedly undercut” (217). However, while all characters only gain a

full understanding in the final few chapters, the men consistently have access to more

information than any of the women, and they repeatedly limit the women’s access to that

knowledge. In doing so, the men allow the dangerous supernatural influences of Carmilla and her

mother to gain influence over their daughters, who have no defense against them.

That the men are making a mistake by excluding Laura and the other women from their

confidence is further demonstrated by their inability to protect any young women from the

10
The vampire calls herself “Carmilla” and “Mircalla” when she stays with Laura and Bertha’s
respective families, both of which are anagrams of her true name, Millarca Karnstein. Signorotti
argues that the anagrams represent “Carmilla’s refusal to bear her ‘ancestral name,’ an example
of “her refusal to be subsumed by male authority” (614), while Heller reads the anagrams as
suggesting “a fluidity of identity that suggests how impossible it is to define the enigma of
woman” (81).
 61

vampires. In Communities of Women, Auerbach notes that groups of men are usually inherently

endowed with a sense of significance that reflects the importance of their task (8). While the men

of Carmilla share the goal of destroying an ancient vampire, any potential significance of their

group is undercut. Their consistent failure to recognize danger to themselves or others, even

when they should have access to all of the available information, shows the men to be

incompetent. Neither Laura’s father nor his friend General Spielsdorf recognize that Carmilla is

the vampire until it is too late, despite the fact that Laura’s father is aware that the community

has been plagued by vampire attacks since Carmilla’s arrival. Despite his awareness of the threat

and his knowledge of Carmilla’s odd behavior, he never quite manages to make the connection

between the two. In their persistent, unnecessary secrecy, Laura’s father and the General

represent a seemingly masculine inability to either understand the supernatural or to share

knowledge.

By depicting the men’s dedication to patriarchal standards as patronizing and dangerous,

Le Fanu critiques 19th century ideals of masculinity. It is the men’s desperation to support their

patriarchal authority by limiting women’s access to knowledge that nearly ruins them all, and

Carmilla and her mother both use the men’s adherence to patriarchal standards, like chivalry and

the need to protect women, to gain access to their homes and daughters. Veeder suggests that the

“limitations of chivalry and of male efficacy generally are most evident with General Spielsdorf”

(204), and though the problems with chivalry are demonstrated by all of the male characters,

including Laura’s father, General Spielsdorf in particular is entirely failed by the system he so

heavily relies upon. The General’s military rank suggests that in the past, he has been rewarded

for successfully adhering to masculine military protocols. However, his rank, which should
 62

suggest his capability to solve real-world problems, is entirely useless against Carmilla and her

mother, who are not bound by traditional standards and so can manipulate them to their benefit.

Carmilla’s mother in particular uses the men’s adherence to tradition against them by

appealing to the men’s instinct to protect upper-class women. As soon as he sees her, the General

notices that Carmilla’s mother is “richly and gravely dressed, and with a stately air, like a person

of rank” (59). Later, he references Carmilla’s beauty, which shows “the elegance and fire of high

birth” (63), as another reason he agrees to take in Carmilla. The General’s reliance on old

systems of honor and chivalry makes him ineffective, and his inability to see past gender and

class to the predator beneath makes him ridiculous. In this text, the most significant threat to

male dominance is men’s own rigid adherence to their sexist codes, which prevents them from

recognizing women’s potential to be either allies or enemies.

The men’s ineffectiveness increases with their knowledge of the supernatural threat and

is compounded by an increasing distance between the men and women. Signorotti notes, “As

Carmilla’s power over Laura grows, so too does the alienation between the narrative’s men and

women” (616). While Laura is apparently her father’s confidant at the beginning of the narrative,

by the end he has begun to snap at her for asking questions. This alienation is psychological and

emotional as well as physical—when Laura and her governesses call for help in the night, her

father, in his distant room, is “quite out of hearing” and is unable to come to their assistance (44).

Laura never explicitly protests her exclusion from the men’s knowledge, nor do either of her

governesses, suggesting that to some extent, they are submissive to the men’s instructions.

However, Laura does repeatedly draw attention to the men’s age and physical unattractiveness.

Veeder argues that Laura is particularly aware of the men’s age because “On the one hand, she

perceives that gray-beards patronize her from positions of supposedly superior knowledge and
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efficacy . . . Gray beards are not only condescending about their efficacy; these old men are

ineffectual” (203-204). The men’s ineffectiveness, then, is particularly frustrating to Laura

because they consistently exclude her from their knowledge. Though she seems to share their

traditional values on a surface level, her subtle frustration with them prepares both Laura and the

audience to turn to Carmilla for intellectual stimulation.

In contrast to the consistently ineffective and secretive men, Carmilla uses the promise of

knowledge to seduce Laura. Part of what attracts and frustrates Laura is the mystery behind

Carmilla’s past, and Carmilla is able to entice her with the promise of answers and knowledge.

Laura specifically notes that it is Carmilla’s “confidence” that “won [Laura] the first night” they

meet (21), but it is unclear what she means by confidence. She could, of course, merely be

referring to her attitude: Carmilla is self-assured and immediately treats Laura like an close

friend, making it natural for Laura to find her attractive from the first moment they meet.

However, Carmilla’s “confidence” could also be referring to the secret she shares with Laura:

Carmilla claims that she remembers seeing an adult Laura in her dreams as a child. Had Carmilla

not shared this (presumably fabricated) story, Laura, who does immediately recognize Carmilla

as the woman who crept into her bed as a child, would likely have remained suspicious and

guarded. By mentioning the supposed dream immediately, Carmilla is able to gain Laura’s trust

and to present herself as someone who will give Laura access to the knowledge she so

desperately craves.

Laura’s desire for knowledge increases as the story progresses, which occurs

simultaneously, Tamar Heller notes, as “Laura’s relation to knowledge becomes increasingly

mediated by male authority” (89). Her frustrated desire for knowledge also increases as she

grows closer to Carmilla. While the male authorities increasingly limit Laura’s access to
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knowledge, Carmilla promises that “the time is very near when [Laura] shall know everything”

(37). A large part of Carmilla’s appeal to Laura, then, stems not only from Carmilla’s beauty or

seductiveness, but from her promises of knowledge. Carmilla represents the danger of limiting

women’s education—when left on their own, Le Fanu suggests, women are easy prey for other,

more predatory women, who share their own versions of truth. He suggests that women will

inevitably seek out knowledge from their companions, whether those companions are men or

women. As long as only other women provide knowledge, then women will find relationships

with each other more attractive than relationships with men.

Le Fanu further presents communities of women as potential sites for sharing dangerous

knowledge through Carmilla’s mother, another beautiful, mysterious woman who is, presumably,

a vampire. Little about her is ever definitively known, including her name, and like Carmilla

herself, Carmilla’s mother uses both her beauty and the hint of secrecy to entice, though

Carmilla’s mother attracts Laura’s father and General Spielsdorf instead of young women.

Appropriately, the General and Bertha first encounter Carmilla and her mother at a masquerade

ball, where Carmilla’s mother teases the General with hints that if he could see her face, he

would recognize her as an “older and better friend” than he suspects (62). Her sudden departure

to some secret, mysterious end heightens the mystery, though like Carmilla’s promise to Laura,

Carmilla’s mother assures the General that she will explain everything when they next meet. The

vampire mother’s appeals to the General’s chivalry also help to convince him to protect her

daughter. Their similar methodology implies that Carmilla’s mother is teaching her daughter the

means of seducing both men and women, suggesting that Le Fanu primarily understands mother-

daughter relationships to be the means of passing knowledge between women. Though this

particular relationship is a threatening one, Le Fanu does not present all mother-daughter
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relationships as inherently evil. In fact, such relationships are also the means of passing

knowledge of the supernatural between women, and the early loss of her mother is a key part of

Laura’s dangerous ignorance.

The potential power of relationships with other women is made apparent by Laura’s

permanent transformation after her friendship with Carmilla. Signorotti suggests that Carmilla

“marks the growing concern about the power of female homosocial relationships in the

nineteenth century” (610), although even here, that power is not always negative. A decade after

the events of Carmilla, Laura is still affected by her relationship with Carmilla. She concludes

her letter with a quote from vampire hunter Vordenburg, who notes that one sign of a vampire is

that the touch of the vampire’s hand “is not confined to its grasp; it leaves a numbness in the

limb it seizes, which is slowly, if ever, recovered from” (82). Laura offers no direct commentary

on this quote, but its placement in the second to last paragraph of the entire narrative implies that

despite her isolation from others after Carmilla, Laura recognizes that she has still not recovered

from her influence. She concludes her narrative with the observation that “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” (83). Her

confession suggests a combination of dread and longing for her lost companion, even a decade

after Carmilla’s death; while her possible devotion to her friend even so many years later is

potentially touching, it also reveals the extent of Carmilla’s influence over Laura.

Le Fanu repeatedly explores the threat posed by isolation, especially the emotional

isolation of young women, throughout the narrative. From the beginning, narrator Laura

establishes herself as “solitary” and “lonely” (3, 18), despite the companionship of her
 66

governesses Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine. They are comforting figures

but not, she suggests, the same as female peers. The story is set in motion by news of the death

of Bertha Rheinfeldt, ward of Laura’s father’s friend General Spielsdorf, who was meant to come

and stay with Laura and her father. The absence of this female companion leaves a vacuum for

Carmilla to fill, and indeed, Laura and her father learn of Bertha’s death the same evening in

which Carmilla’s carriage crashes beside their house. Isolation from relationships with other

women, the text suggests, leaves women unhappy and unfulfilled.

To a large extent, too, the absence of significant feminine influences in Laura’s life,

especially the loss of her mother, reinforces Le Fanu’s cautious acknowledgement of the

importance of female community. Veeder argues, “Nothing contributes more to Laura’s sense of

isolation—and thus her penchant for repression—than her separation from a woman” (206),

specifically her mother. It is partially due to the lack of a maternal presence that Laura is left

alone as a child in her nursery, a situation that allows Carmilla to crawl into bed with her. She

also has no one to listen to her fears, since both her father and her nursemaids dismiss her story.

Carmilla’s role, then, is not merely that of a companion or a lover, but is also that of a mother

figure. She fills a vacuum, suggesting that women need and desperately crave female role models

and companions.

The bond between Carmilla and Laura is ambiguous, and is characterized as both erotic

and motherly. Their first encounter occurs when Laura is a child in bed, where Carmilla

approaches her and bites Laura’s chest (4), a moment that mirrors Carmilla later feeding upon

the oblivious adult Laura while she sleeps. Laura describes the attack as feeling like “two large

needles” piercing “an inch or two apart, deep into [her] breast” (39). Many critics have noted the

seeming contradiction between Laura’s description of the bite and a later scene, in which the
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doctor examines Laura and finds a single “small blue spot, about the size of the tip of [Laura’s]

little finger,” located “only an inch or two below the edge of [her] collar” (51).11 The change is

less significant, though, than the wording, since the use of the word “breast” seems to be

specifically meant to evoke both motherhood and eroticism.

The focus on the motherly aspects of the women’s relationship does not, of course,

diminish their relationship’s clearly romantic overtones. Some critics have even suggested that

the relationship between Laura and Carmilla is primarily homoerotic rather than motherly; for

example, Signorotti argues, “The homoerotic overtones of the ensuing attack on Laura’s breast

eclipse the initial mother/child dynamic and establish the nature of the two women’s ensuing

relationship,” suggesting that “Laura’s and Carmilla’s female alliances result in a rejection not

only of marriage but of motherhood as well . . . Their transgressive relationship disrupts the laws

of procreation necessary to maintain social order” (618). Similarly, James Twitchell writes,

“Carmilla . . . is the story of a lesbian entanglement, a story of the sterile love of homosexuality

expressed through the analogy of vampirism” (129). However, even if Carmilla and Laura’s

relationship is interpreted as erotic rather than romantic, Carmilla taking the place of Laura’s

absent mother is a key aspect of their relationship, since it allows her to teach and mold Laura.

Although impregnation is obviously not an issue, Laura and Carmilla’s relationship is

also hardly “sterile” in terms of potential progeny, since by their very nature, vampires are driven

by a need to procreate. The creation of new vampires is an essential part of their danger to

patriarchal society and is directly related to their bite. Even General Spielsdorf says that “It is the

nature of vampires to increase and multiply, but according to an ascertained and ghostly law”

(82). This desire to “increase and multiply” seems to specifically be a part of Carmilla’s plan: in

11
See Signorotti 612 and Twitchell 130
 68

one of her early conversations with Laura, Carmilla says that “as I draw near to you, you, in your

turn will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love” (22). Part of

her purpose, it seems, is specifically to change Laura into a being like herself, one who craves

intimacy but is doomed to destroy those she loves. In addition to their thirst for blood, all of the

vampires in Carmilla also desire companionship, a craving that they share with all of the female

characters in the story. This connection between women and vampires further associates women

with the supernatural and also connects vampires and motherhood. The most significant power

either vampires or women possess, the text suggests, is the ability to recreate themselves through

their daughters. The tragedy is that neither vampires nor mothers survive that act of creation in

this text, leaving women companionless and unable to fully exchange feminine knowledge.

It is possible, as many critics have pointed out, that Laura is actually in the process of

becoming a vampire already, especially since the added frame narrative to the story says that she

has died since writing her letter.12 Whether or not Carmilla is Laura’s physical vampire mother,

though, she is certainly responsible for transforming Laura from a passively curious girl to the

haunted, knowing woman she becomes by the end of the novel. Heller suggests that Carmilla

spawns new ideas, rather than new vampires: “That lesbianism is a form of nonprocreative

sexuality would render it obnoxious to proponents of domestic ideology, and yet, in ‘Carmilla,’

female homoeroticism does represent one type of propogation . . . lesbianism in Le Fanu’s tale

sets in motion a kind of mental or intellectual parthenogenesis whereby one woman’s knowledge

spawns another’s” (88). Although lesbianism’s close connection to vampirism in this case

actually does connect it to reproduction, the suggestion that Laura has undergone a mental

change is supported by Laura’s quiet, morbid reflections at the end of the novel. Senf similarly

12
See Signorotti 618 and Senf, “Women and Power” 29
 69

argues that Carmilla is molding Laura into a being like herself: “Acting as a surrogate mother,

Carmilla seems to be teaching Laura to be exactly like her . . . for Laura becomes more and more

languid as Carmilla’s visits increase” (“Women and Power” 30). Senf concludes that Le Fanu

“uses the relationship between vampire and victim, mother and child to reveal how women learn

to become languid and ornamental parasites” (“Women and Power” 30). While Carmilla’s death

does include elements of the deaths of the vampires of Dracula, especially the idea of staking

and beheading her in what is perhaps a symbolic corrective rape, it also focuses on the removal

of Carmilla’s head as the site of knowledge. Heller writes, “in light of the tale’s thematics of

female knowledge, it is also telling that Carmilla is decapitated, and that her head, site of

knowledge and voice, is struck off” (90). Her death also represents the end of Laura’s emotional

and intellectual development, since after this point, she loses her agency and much of the

emotion she displays earlier in the novel. The beheading of Carmilla, then, is an act that once

more makes women’s knowledge forbidden. By presenting the scene as troubling rather than

heroic, Le Fanu once again questions the stereotypical patriarchal tendency to control women’s

knowledge.

Although Carmilla acts as Laura’s metaphorical mother in several respects, though, their

relationship is undeniably romantic, if not necessarily sexual. Despite the first-person narration,

Laura’s emotions towards Carmilla are never entirely clear. It is possible that Laura, a sheltered

woman in the mid-1900s, simply does not understand Carmilla’s embraces and outbursts of

emotions to be anything more than the romantic friendships that, as Lillian Faderman notes in

Surpassing the Love of Men, were fairly typical relationships between women in the 19th century.

According to Faderman, these romantic friendships were often “passionate” (141), leading to

love letters, embracing, bed-sharing, and declarations of love. She notes that because “it was
 70

generally inconceivable to society that an otherwise respectable woman could choose to

participate in a sexual activity that had at its goal neither procreation nor pleasing a husband,”

and because “there was seemingly no possibility that women would want to make love together,”

women were “permitted a latitude of affectionate expression and demonstration” that had

decreased by the time of the 20th century (152). However, Laura’s reactions suggest that she

does see a distinction between a typical passionate romantic friendship and her own relationship

with Carmilla. She repeatedly expresses her embarrassment and discomfort with Carmilla’s

“strange paroxysms of languid adoration” (42), and at one point, she even wonders whether

Carmilla might be a boy who has disguised himself to win Laura’s love (23). To some extent,

then, Laura is aware that Carmilla’s affection has moved beyond the socially acceptable limits

even for 19th century standards for romantic friendships and is, consciously or unconsciously,

censoring her own reactions to Carmilla’s advances in her narration. Heller notes, “The extent of

Laura’s vacuousness . . . constitutes the most ideologically charged and contested terrain in the

narrative” (85), and the ambiguity of her responses to Carmilla is closely tied to Le Fanu’s

treatment of female relationships. Carmilla is charming and attractive despite her unorthodox

attitude towards Laura, but Laura still finds her actions disturbing.

The depictions of the relationships between Carmilla and Laura and between Carmilla

and Bertha further indicate that both are meant to be read as intensely romantic, even beyond the

passionate romantic friendships that were, for the most part, socially accepted by 19th century

social standards. The General explicitly blames Carmilla’s “accursed passion” for his ward

Bertha’s death (7), later noting that the two girls were “taken with [one] another at first sight”

and that Carmilla herself “seemed quite to have lost her heart to [Bertha]” (60). Carmilla and

Laura are similarly attracted to each other immediately, though Laura’s attraction is, again,
 71

tinged with an inexplicable repulsion. Later, Laura learns from Baron Vordenburg that vampires

as a rule are “prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of

love, by particular persons,” and in such cases the vampires begin an “artful courtship” with their

intended victims, from whom the vampire “seems to yearn for something like sympathy and

consent” (81). Such bonds, it seems, are natural for vampires. The fact that only female vampires

play a role in this novel again suggests that women need similar companionship. While the

relationship between Laura and Carmilla does put Laura in danger, at least from the men’s

perspective, their relationship is treated as natural. The mostly sympathetic treatment of their

romantic friendship suggests that far from condemning women’s communities, Le Fanu is

suggesting that such communities are inevitable, especially when women are isolated, like Laura,

from other healthy, fulfilling relationships.

It is possible, of course, to view their relationship as representative of a particularly

forward-thinking mindset on Le Fanu’s behalf. Signorotti, for example, calls the story “Le

Fanu’s portrayal of female empowerment” (619). She argues, “Le Fanu refrains from heavy

handed moralizing, leaving open the possibility that Laura’s and Carmilla’s vampiric relationship

is sexually liberating and for them highly desirable” (611). Veeder similarly claims that Laura

“feels sexual attraction so strongly that she becomes at times the aggressor” (207), most notably

when she makes the first move to hold Carmilla’s hand during their first encounter and, later,

when she enthusiastically embraces and kisses Carmilla after she returns from a brief

disappearance (207). However, while it is tempting to read their relationship as a mutually

passionate one, it is impossible to ignore the fact that their relationship is as often marked by

repulsion or even disgust as it is attraction. Laura repeatedly insists that she is “embarrassed” by

Carmilla’s exuberant embraces (23), and even in their initial meeting, Laura says that she “did
 72

feel, as [Carmilla] said, ‘drawn towards her,’ but there was also something of repulsion. In this

ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed” (19). A similar

confusion of emotions characterizes all of their encounters. Laura’s consistent discomfort with

Carmilla’s sexually charged kisses and embraces reveal that the relationship is certainly not an

idyllic, sexually liberated one; while it might be inevitable, theirs is certainly not a model for an

ideal relationship between two women.

The fact that the vampiric aspect of their relationship is not consensual also means that

the relationship is only empowering for Carmilla, since even though Laura is attracted to

Carmilla, she does not show that she is consciously aware of her nighttime visits. Some critics

have read Laura’s undeniable attraction to Carmilla as condemning. Heller, for example, writes,

“the would-be victim’s narrative reveals an ambivalent, but still pronounced, awareness of her

attraction to the woman who tries to kill her. That Laura does not fit the most obvious role

available to her, and which she tries to write for herself—that of innocent or ignorant victim—

transforms the angel in the house into yet another ‘vampire,’ or knowing accomplice in sexual

crime” (79). This interpretation of Laura as Carmilla’s accomplice does appear in at least one

adaptation of the work. However, such a reading ignores the fact that Laura is not aware of

Carmilla’s vampiric attacks. While she might be attracted to Carmilla, she does, to some extent,

resist even her daylight embraces, and Laura seems to be entirely ignorant to the “sexual crime,”

whether it consists of literal sexual acts or the symbolically sexual vampire bites. Senf argues

that in fact, Carmilla emphasizes that women are neither “the angels often portrayed in

sentimental Victorian fiction, household management manuals, and periodical literature nor the

devils of earlier Gothic novels or sensation novels” (“Women and Power” 25). Instead, she says,
 73

the novel “demonstrates that women’s lives are complex and varied. Sometimes victims of

outright exploitation, women are also powerful victimizers as well” (“Women and Power” 25).

A large part of Carmilla’s power over other women is also based upon social class. While

she forms intimate relationships with Laura and Bertha, two women from the upper class, she is

simultaneously slaughtering local peasant women. Senf argues that the women in Carmilla can

be separated into two groups, the potentially powerful and the powerless, the second of which

“includes young peasant women who are simply food for Carmilla; Laura’s two governesses,

gentlewomen apparently down on their luck; and Laura . . . All are victims or potential victims”

(“Women and Power” 27). However, I would argue that the powerless group could be further

divided, since vampires either ignore or obsess over any women from the higher social classes,

including Laura and her two governesses, leaving the women in the lower classes as mere prey.

In fact, while Laura is Carmilla’s victim, as an aristocratic woman she does have the potential for

power over others, especially those of the working class. The peasant women, however, are

virtually entirely powerless, and Carmilla kills them quickly and remorselessly. Despite

Carmilla’s predation upon local peasant women, too, there is no notable increase in the vampire

population in the neighborhood, which might suggest either that the lower classes are not capable

of becoming vampires, or that preying upon peasants and members of other social classes is an

intrinsic part of the aristocracy. In the context of women’s relationships, Le Fanu also seems to

be suggesting that only relationships between women of similar social status can be meaningful.

Though those relationships between aristocratic women are beneficial for themselves, one of the

consequences of such relationships is that they harm women in lower classes. The implicit

connection between aristocracy and vampirism suggests that power is necessarily predatory,
 74

whether that power is that of the aristocrat over the peasant, the vampire over the human woman,

or even the older men over young women.

Le Fanu clearly distinguishes between the upper-class women Carmilla falls in love with

and the lower-class women she preys upon; however, it is possible that the intensity of her

relationships with upper-class women is less the result of class than it is a mere lack of intimacy.

Only those women Carmilla befriends turn into vampires, which might suggest that it is intimacy

itself that leads to vampirism. It could also indicate that people can only form significant bonds

between others with similar social standings. Regardless, there is a clear connection between

class, vampirism, and, to some extent, intimacy, suggesting that women must be equals in their

relationships with other women to avoid violence and exploitation.

Despite the fact that Carmilla is a vampiric predator, especially in regard to the lower

classes, she remains mostly sympathetic, especially since the text suggests that she herself is also

a victim. She implies that she was turned into a vampire after she was “all but assassinated” in

her bed after she was wounded in her breast, presumably by the vampire who turned her. Like

Laura, Carmilla was nearly killed because of “a cruel love—strange love . . . Love will have its

sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood” (38). That Laura is aware of the similarities between them

is clear by the end of the novel, when, as Veeder claims, Laura’s descriptions of Carmilla

suggest that she is allied firmly with Carmilla rather than the vampire hunters (Veeder 207),

especially with her emphasis on Carmilla’s “tiny” stature compared to that of the “grotesque”

features of Baron Vordenberg and General Spielsdorf (Le Fanu 75, 81). Veeder argues that

Carmilla is made more sympathetic, too, by her connection with the tragic figure of Cleopatra

(212), who is displayed on a tapestry in Carmilla’s bedroom. He suggests that Carmilla’s “plight

of vulnerable isolation, the plight of us all, is dramatized movingly at the end of the penultimate
 75

chapter. Laura's father and his men pierce the cocoon of Carmilla's coffin and kill the young

woman who is sleeping, appropriately, alone” (216). According to the text, then, despite her

undeniably predatory behavior towards other women, Carmilla is still meant to be sympathetic

and appealing, remaining a tragic figure despite predatory behavior.

Carmilla is also a Karnstein, meaning that she and Laura are related through Laura’s

mother, a “Styrian woman” from the same Karnstein line. Their familial relationship suggests

that the women in their family in particular have a long history of such relationships. Marilyn

Brock, who convincingly argues that vampires in both Carmilla and Dracula represent English

fears of reverse-colonization, argues that “The foreign blood of [Laura’s] mother,” a Styrian

woman married to Laura’s English father, “may cause [Laura] to be more vulnerable to

Carmilla’s advances, suggesting the fear of reverse-colonization is a response to the English

living among the colonized and losing their potency in the process” (124). While colonial

anxieties might certainly be playing a role in the text, it is equally significant that the familial

connection between Carmilla, Laura, and both of their mothers ultimately makes them all victims

of a generational problem. Senf argues that by “constructing a partial genealogy of Laura’s

family, one that includes only the female line, Le Fanu suggests that other women have been

similarly victimized” (“Women and Power” 28), noting that this “genealogy of victims” extends

beyond Laura’s mother to Carmilla herself. “These references,” writes Senf, “suggest that others

may hold the same kind of power over Carmilla that she holds over Laura” (“Women and

Power” 28). Though it is unclear whether Carmilla’s “mother” is her physical birth mother or,

more likely, is the woman who initially turned her into a vampire, she, too, is part of Senf’s

“genealogy of victims.” The implication is that Laura and Carmilla are both members of a long
 76

line of Karnstein women who are attacked by vampires, which ultimately makes all of these

women potentially tragic figures.

Le Fanu’s novella is ultimately critical of many of the social structures of the 19th

century, especially in regard to gender. Systems of chivalry in particular, he suggests, infantilize

women and make men ineffective, to everyone’s detriment. Through his depiction of Laura and

Carmilla, he advances the argument that women should not be excluded from processes of

knowledge, especially when that knowledge affects them. Le Fanu seems to conclude that

communities are most effective when they include both men and women, and relationships

between women are both necessary and inevitable. His novel, then, is one that emphasizes the

sharing of knowledge between women, especially through motherly and romantic relationships.
 77

“the roommate from Hell”:

Adaptations of Carmilla

Though never quite as popular as Dracula, Carmilla has had its share of film adaptations

in the decades since its publication. Recently, Carmilla has been more popular than ever, and

three different adaptations were released in 2014-2015 alone. All three films are set in the 20th or

21st century, as opposed to Dracula, which is most often presented as a period piece. The

updated setting means that it is easier for these films to explore 21st century mindsets towards

women, especially villainous ones. Fairly sympathetic even in Le Fanu’s original text, Carmilla

is never the antagonist in these adaptations. Even when she does pose a threat to Laura or other

women, Carmilla consistently represents defiance against traditional social values, an attitude

that many of the films treat sympathetically. Carmilla’s heroism, her relationship with Laura, and

increased access to her point of view all make her more sympathetic. Comparing Carmilla to the

films’ antagonists, all of whom are authority figures who represent an oppressive patriarchal

power structure, makes the vampire appear even more likeable. Although she is more heroic than

her novel counterpart, Carmilla still demonstrates some of the same negative characteristics of a

typical villainous female vampire, especially in her clothing choices and promiscuity, both of

which are still visual shorthand for immorality in women. Still, she remains one of the most

sympathetic vampire women in western media, especially when compared to the vampire women

of Dracula.

In all three adaptations, Carmilla regularly defies patriarchal systems, and while the

filmmakers themselves do not present her as villainous for doing so, other characters in the films,

especially the antagonists, are infuriated by her defiance. Holte writes, “In many of the
 78

representations of the female vampire in the twentieth century what is denied women by the

culture—authority, independence, sexuality—will be emphasized” (“Not All Fangs” 169). These

21st century women are similarly denied authority, independence, and control of their sexuality,

but the films and filmmakers themselves are more sympathetic to their plight. Instead, the real

antagonists of all three adaptations, and the ones who consistently see Carmilla as the villain, are

the representatives of those patriarchal systems. Carmilla’s continued defiance of these

oppressive power structures is often presented as admirable, as is her insistence that Laura join

her in rebellion.

The Laura of these adaptations is especially in need of Carmilla’s assistance because, like

the protagonist of Le Fanu’s novel, she often has little control over her own life. Where Le

Fanu’s Laura is lonely, but otherwise mostly content with her life before Carmilla, in two of the

films she is notably depressed and anxious even before Carmilla arrives, a pain she expresses

through self-harm. An increasingly well-known signifier of depression and anxiety, self-harm is

most frequently reported in teenage girls and is highly gendered in the public mind.13 Some

studies have actually found a connection between self-harm and sexuality: in a 2011 study

published by the Journal of American College Health, for example, Janis Whitlock et al. found

“nonheterosexual women [to be] at much greater risk for NSSI [non-suicidal self injury] when

compared to heterosexual women,” though they note that homophobia, not sexuality itself, is

most commonly cited as the cause of emotional distress (695). Janis et al. also noted that in

general, women tend to harm to regulate their emotional states (696). The fact that Laura is

already self-harming even before Carmilla’s appearance in either of the films suggests that she is

13
Though more young women than young men admit to and are treated for self-harm, many
experts have suggested that self-injurious behavior is underreported, not underrepresented, in
teenage boys. See Stephanie, Thornton, “Dispelling Common Myths Surrounding Self-Harm”
(2015).
 79

already struggling with depression and feeling a lack of control over her surroundings and home

life, and harms herself in order to feel more control over her emotional reactions. The two films

in which Laura self-harms, The Unwanted and Styria, also take place in particularly homophobic

settings. Though Laura has not fully explored her attraction to women before Carmilla’s arrival

in either film, it still seems likely that internalized homophobia is at least partially responsible for

some of her emotional distress.

Though more sympathetic in all adaptations, Carmilla is still frequently a morally

ambiguous figure. In Styria (2015; also released as Angels of Darkness in the United States),

directed by Mark Devendorf and Mauricio Chernovetzky, Carmilla is transformed from a

traditional blood-drinking vampire into a runaway orphan who kills herself halfway through the

film. For the rest of the movie, Carmilla appears to Lara Hill and the other girls of a nearby town

and attempts to drive them to suicide. Of the three adaptations, this film best fits the genre of

classical horror, which, argues Holt, “is close to tragedy, and in a work of classic horror, there

are elements of both pity and fear, pity for the vampire’s situation but fear of his menace”

(Dracula in the Dark 84). This combination of fear and pity is especially evident in Styria. This

version of Carmilla is one of the most frightening, both because her ability to manifest after

death is unexplained and because her motivations are largely inexplicable. It is never entirely

clear whether she wants the other women to kill themselves because she believes they will find

liberation through death, or whether she is serving some unknown evil figure. As in Le Fanu’s

novel, the story is told from Lara’s perspective, and though she is even more sympathetic to

Carmilla than her book counterpart, the fact that Carmilla never fully explains herself makes her

actions before and after her death mysterious and horrifying. To many of the characters in the
 80

film, especially the villagers who lose their nieces and daughters, Carmilla is understandably

villainous.

Devendorf and Chernovetzky also make her character appear sympathetic, however,

especially in her motivation for suicide. Twitchell notes that in Eastern folklore, vampires were

traditionally connected with suicide, a sin that supposedly gave the devil control of a person’s

soul (8-9). Here, though, Carmilla cuts her own throat as an act of defiance against General

Spiegel, a powerful man in the nearby village who rapes, blackmails, and intimidates every

woman who appears in the film. After an altercation in which she struggles against his forcible

kissing, Carmilla grabs a piece of broken glass and defiantly cuts her own throat, smiling at him

as she dies. Many of the camera angles are from her point of view looking up at the General as

she tries to escape him, emphasizing her helplessness and his menace; however, her death is also

clearly painful, and her smile fades as she falls and shudders. The General silently leaves

Carmilla’s crypt, leaving her to die alone in the near-darkness. Her desperate, painful death

makes her a pitiable figure, and the fact that she kills herself to escape rape suggests that her

suicide is a form of resistance to patriarchal control of her body. Her death is presented as a

moment of defiance and even empowerment, not defeat. Though she does convince other young

women to kill themselves, her arguments for suicide suggest that she sees herself as liberating

the other women from oppressive power structures symbolized by the General. Though her death

and the deaths of the other women are still horrific, this frame makes Carmilla less of a monster

than a heroic leader.

Carmilla is even more sympathetically positioned as an obvious liberator of young

women in The Unwanted (2014), an independent horror film directed by Bret Wood. In this

adaptation, Carmilla is only a villain in the mind of the film’s antagonist, Laura’s possessive
 81

father Troy Pickett. Even more protective than Laura’s father in Le Fanu’s original text, Troy

Pickett is violently possessive of Laura’s affection and knowledge, adamantly insisting that she

remain ignorant of the dangers presented by the supernatural. Carmilla has more narrative

control in this adaptation, and the film even prioritizes her point of view over Laura’s at several

points. The film begins with Carmilla’s perspective as she arrives in Laura’s small hometown,

and the first interaction between the two women, in which they speak through a screen door, is

shown from Carmilla’s point of view. Because so much of the film is told from Carmilla’s

perspective, she is much less mysterious than in other versions. Her motives are never unclear,

and without that source of ambiguity, Carmilla fully transforms into a protagonist in this

adaptation.

The change in point-of-view also means that the film lacks any suggestion that Carmilla

has ulterior motives in her relationship with Laura, leading to a much more positive depiction of

Laura and Carmilla’s relationship in this adaptation than in the original novel or in Styria.

Carmilla does drink Laura’s blood, but only after Laura offers it, making even the blood-drinking

aspect of their romance more consensual. Though Carmilla reluctantly accepts Laura’s blood, it

is unclear whether she drinks blood for nourishment, pleasure, or merely to please Laura, who is

reluctant to have sex without the involvement of blood or pain. In fact, Carmilla even insists that

they have sex without the blood, telling Laura, “We don’t need a knife. It doesn’t have to hurt.

No more blood. No more guilt. No more fear. No more pain . . . This is what love is supposed to

feel like.” Consistently, then, Carmilla is portrayed as a compassionate, caring lover rather than a

bloodthirsty vampire, making her one of the most sympathetic versions of the character.

Wood makes Carmilla even more sympathetic through her death at the hands of Troy

Pickett, who also murdered Carmilla’s mother Millarca and his wife Karen after discovering that
 82

the two were lovers. Both Millarca and Carmilla’s deaths are brutal. Troy’s murder of Millarca is

shown in an extremely violent flashback near the end of the movie. After he drags Millarca out

of Karen’s bed, Troy smothers Millarca with a plastic bag and then slowly beheads her with a

hunting knife, spraying Karen with her blood in the process. Carmilla’s death is equally

horrific—while she attempts to cut Laura free from the bed to which she has been tied, Troy

shoots her through the throat with a crossbow. The arrow protrudes from her open mouth for

several minutes of screen time, during which she bleeds and groans long enough for Laura to

find Troy’s gun and shoot him, though she does not mortally wound him. Troy finally stabs

Carmilla in the throat with the same hunting knife he used to kill her mother. The brutality of

these two deaths echoes the violent deaths of the vampire women in Dracula, and seems to stem

from similar motivations. Like Van Helsing and the vampire hunters, Troy feels justified in his

killing because he sees the women as a threat, both because they are potentially vampires and

because they attempt to free other women from his control. Unlike the adaptations of Dracula,

though, the filmmakers of Styria do not support this reasoning. Carmilla, already more

sympathetic and human than the vampire sisters, is made heroic by her refusal to abandon Laura

despite realizing that Troy is attempting to trap her. After Carmilla and Troy are both bleeding

on the floor, Troy mocks Carmilla’s pain before finally stabbing and killing her. His lack of

empathy, combined with repeated shots of Carmilla’s hallucinations of being comforted by her

mother, makes his actions seem entirely sadistic. These filmmakers present Carmilla’s death as a

murder, and are even less sympathetic to her killer than in the novel.

This version of Carmilla is regularly positioned as a protector of women against

patriarchal forces who want to rape or control their bodies. During the women’s first encounter,

Laura’s reluctance to leave the safety of her home as she peeks around the screen immediately
 83

provides her with a degree of vulnerability. Carmilla responds to that vulnerability by heroically

rescuing Laura from several men who want to harm her throughout the film, including a male

love interest who forces Laura to perform oral sex and Troy Pickett himself, who ties Laura to a

bed so that he can lure and murder Carmilla. As in Styria, the most significant threat to women’s

bodily autonomy is patriarchal authority and male violence, and again, Carmilla is the one who

attempts to rescue those other women. Though she is ultimately killed by Troy, her death

motivates Laura to finally leave home and her controlling father, a fact that further transforms

her from hero to martyr.

Carmilla is made sympathetic in a much less violent way in Carmilla (2014-present), an

episodic webseries developed by KindaTV and directed by Spencer Maybee. Carmilla is one of

the more recent additions to the developing genre of the literary webseries, a genre first

popularized by Pemberley Digital’s Lizzie Bennett Diaries (2012-2014), a 21st century retelling

of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.14 As is typical for the genre, characters in the webseries

are well-read and witty, and this particular adaptation relies on humor, especially sarcasm, rather

than horror. The series does feature moments of drama, though, and while events are

occasionally outrageous, the characters remain largely sympathetic.

In this adaptation, Laura Hollis is a college student at the fictional Silas University in

Styria, where unusual supernatural events regularly occur. Carmilla replaces Laura’s first

roommate, Betty Spielsdorf, when the latter mysteriously disappears, and Laura and her friends

eventually discover that Carmilla is responsible for the disappearances of Betty and several other

young women from the university. From the beginning, this version’s Carmilla is one of the most

14
For more notable examples of the genre, see Pemberley Digital’s Frankenstein, M.D. (an
adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) and Emma Approved (based on Jane Austen’s
Emma).
 84

likeable. Attractive, sarcastic, and self-assured, she initially annoys Laura by calling her

“sweetheart” and “cutie.” Despite Laura’s insistence that Carmilla is “the roommate from Hell,”

though, their growing affection for each other makes Carmilla increasingly sympathetic. The

webseries is supposedly filmed through Laura’s webcam, and each episode is filmed in a single

shot, usually with Laura sitting in front of the camera and speaking about her investigation into

the missing girls. In the background, though, Carmilla often moves around their dorm room, and

her occasional moments of kindness—bringing Laura a cup of hot chocolate, smirking at Laura’s

quips during ridiculous interviews—begin to establish her as a likable, engaging character even

before the vampire reveal in the 14th episode.

Even more than her treatment of Laura, though, Carmilla is made sympathetic in the

webseries because she is finally given the chance to tell her own side of the story. The webseries

is the only adaptation in which Laura controls the narrative as she did in the novel. Senf argues

that even in Le Fanu’s original novel, “the seemingly weak Laura has a significant kind of

power—that of telling other women about their condition . . . Thus, writing is a way of

demonstrating a new kind of power to manipulate people and events” (“Women and Power” 29).

While both Le Fanu’s Laura and the Laura of the webseries have control of the narrative, though,

the webseries’ Laura has more power than her 19th century counterpart. The webseries’ Laura

records, edits, and uploads each video, giving her even more control of the narrative than the

original Laura, and she even communicates with her audience (fictional and otherwise) by

addressing viewer questions. She also has modern technology to help her understand her

situation. Where Le Fanu’s Laura is largely ignorant of the existence of vampires, Laura Hollis is

extremely well-read, and her dialogue is filled with allusions to other popular vampire texts,

from Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Twilight. At one point, she even asks herself “What
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would Mina Harker do?” Laura then gives control of the narrative back to others, most notably

Carmilla, telling her, “If you want us to trust you, you have got to tell us your side of the story.”

Because Carmilla is given the chance to control the narrative and explain her actions

from her own perspective, she becomes one of the most sympathetic and compelling versions of

the character. She describes centuries of seducing young women on the orders of her evil mother,

the Dean of the university, even after she fell in love with one of them, a girl named “Ell” in

1872. The name and date suggest that “Ell” is actually the Laura of Le Fanu’s original story,

suggesting that the webseries is giving Carmilla the chance to tell her own side of the story. After

betraying her mother for Ell’s sake, Carmilla was punished with interment in a blood-filled

coffin for nearly a century, and, she explains, she is only following her mother’s orders now

because she fears similar punishment. Carmilla’s genuine love for Ell and, eventually, Laura,

makes her sympathetic, and her fear of her mother make her actions understandable. Because the

series has otherwise been largely humorous until Carmilla’s confession, the moment is made

even more impactful. More than any other adaptation, the webseries succeeds in giving both

women a voice by allowing them an unprecedented degree of control over the narrative.

That desire for control and independence, especially when compared to confinement and

voicelessness, is a major aspect of both women’s characters in all three adaptations. Before

Carmilla arrives in The Unwanted, Laura Pickett is powerless and silenced. In her introductory

scene, she speaks with Carmilla only until her father arrives, at which point she stops speaking

and steps back to hold the door open for him. This moment is juxtaposed with a later scene,

which occurs after she and Carmilla become sexually involved—when serving her father dinner,

Laura comments, “Just eat. I’m bushed, and I’m not looking forward to cleaning up the kitchen.

You could help out a little more around here, you know?” Troy looks shocked at the criticism,
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and stares at her place setting menacingly. Without Carmilla, Laura is unable to speak at all; after

her arrival and companionship, Laura gains the confidence to speak up and even criticize her

father. Laura Pickett is also repeatedly connected with confinement—the first shot of her is

through a screen door, and she spends a large amount of the final act of the film tied to a bed.

Laura confesses that she would “like to be out on [her] own,” but she is “terrified of being all by

[herself],” suggesting that she has little concept of community outside the family structure. When

Carmilla later suggests that they leave together, Laura repeatedly insists, “I can’t leave.” It is not

until Carmilla physically frees Laura from the bed only to be killed by Laura’s father that Laura

is able to leave, accompanied by triumphant music that indicates that the filmmakers intend for

her escape to be liberating. Laura’s triumphant exit following Carmilla’s death suggests that for

Laura, Carmilla represents freedom, especially from conservative, patriarchal forces that seek to

imprison and silence her.

The women in Styria are similarly confined and voiceless without Carmilla. Lara in

particular is regularly silenced before Carmilla’s appearance, and in fact does not speak at all

through the first several scenes. When she is finally asked a direct question, her father replies for

her. Her silent demeanor immediately falls away when she meets Carmilla, at which point she

laughs and jokes freely. Physically, Lara is repeatedly warned to stay inside the sanatorium, and

she obeys until Carmilla convinces her follow her outside. Carmilla represents freedom, but that

freedom is only accessible through sacrifice. In Le Fanu’s novel, Carmilla says, “Girls are

caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes” (31),

emphasizing that a transformation must occur before Laura can join her. In Styria, though,

Carmilla says, “Caterpillars become butterflies, one thousand times more beautiful. But when

butterflies die, they become something even more beautiful. Something so beautiful, most people
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can’t see them. They become like angels.” This line emphasizes this Carmilla’s fascination with

death, a fascination that she spreads to the other young women of Styria. Her obsession with

freedom through death is particularly fascinating in light of the vision of paradise she provides to

Lara. She tells her, “They’re terrified to think you have strength and power. That you can decide

for yourself. The world is full of hate and loneliness. We’re the lucky ones. We can escape it.”

Lara’s chance for “escape” appears near the end of the movie, when she sees a vision of Carmilla

standing in a golden room; behind her, couples of girls dance together, wearing brightly colored

dresses, coattails, and top hats. Carmilla says, “It’s not too late. You can join me. If you don’t,

you’ll always belong to their world. That man will take what is sacred in you. And you’ll be

alone . . . No one will love you like I do.” For Carmilla, death serves as both an escape from the

patriarchal society and an escape to a paradise that is seemingly filled only with other young

women. The world as she presents it to Lara is not made for women; the only escape from the

confines of society, she suggests, is death itself. This message is one that all of the young

women, from Lara and Carmilla to the peasant girls, seem to find compelling, and many of them

succumb to the temptation to join Carmilla in death. Rather than spreading an infection of

vampirism, Carmilla spreads the desire for liberation, making her particularly threatening to the

patriarchal authorities, including the General and the villagers, most of whom are men.

That both versions of Laura are desperate for control over their lives in Styria and The

Unwanted is emphasized by the fact that in both of these films, she regularly harms herself. In

The Unwanted, Laura Pickett connects her self-harm to her mother, telling Carmilla, “I’ve

always hated myself for the way I am. But now I realize it’s okay. It’s how she was. All along,

its how I was meant to be.” She then slices open her collarbone and coerces Carmilla into

drinking her blood. Carmilla, though, is not pleased with the cutting, and later insists that they
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have sex “without the knife.” After seeing the deeper scars on Laura’s thighs, Carmilla insists,

“No more cutting. Not me, not you.” Laura agrees, and for a few scenes, she seems to draw from

their relationship rather than self-harm for comfort. She is confident enough to leave her father to

prepare his meals by himself, and even begins to question his involvement in her mother’s death.

Laura does begin to harm herself again, though, after learning that her father is responsible for

Karen and Millarca’s deaths, suggesting that she falls back on causing herself pain when she

feels particularly unable to control her father and, by extension, her place in the patriarchal world

he has created. Her father’s reaction to her scars, which he sees when he bursts in on her in the

bath, is to assume that they are Carmilla’s fault, revealing that he, too, immediately connects

scars and blood with control. The fact that he cannot see that Laura is responsible for them

suggests that he is incapable of seeing Laura as capable of independence.

In Styria, Carmilla’s reaction to Lara’s self-harm emphasizes her reliance on pain and

death as a form of escaping the society in which she feels trapped. When Carmilla sees the scars

on Lara’s wrists, Carmilla kisses them, smilingly suggesting that “In the olden days, when

someone was sick, they went to a man who would bleed them with a razor. That would get rid of

the bad blood that made them ill. Maybe you just have some bad blood.” When Lara still looks

ashamed, Carmilla says, more seriously, “I understand that desire, to have control, power over

something. They try to possess us, break us. Those who don’t resist learn to live with the misery

for the rest of their broken lives.” Unlike her counterpart in The Unwanted, Carmilla

immediately understands that the self-harm is Lara’s way of gaining a sense of control over her

life. Rather than distress, she reacts with understanding, suggesting that she shares Lara’s

feelings of helplessness. Carmilla does not encourage Lara to stop hurting herself, but Lara also

does not seem to feel the urge to self-harm after she meets Carmilla. Carmilla, then, seems to
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represent Lara’s newfound sense of control over her life, a control that she eventually exercises

to reject Carmilla’s offer of eternal companionship.

Unlike her counterpart in the other two films, the webseries’ Carmilla is not responsible

for Laura’s defiance of authority or Laura’s independence, largely because Laura already

possesses those qualities. An amateur investigative journalist, Laura has no problems with

vocalizing her concerns to the entire student body through her blog. She is also more

independent than the other versions of Laura, and has actually left her father to go to college on

her own. She is only silenced when the school administration, led by Carmilla’s mother, the

Dean, begins to threaten her for speaking against them. Rather than encouraging Laura’s

outspokenness, Carmilla frequently advises that Laura stop filming and avoid angering the Dean.

Carmilla eventually makes a deal with the Dean that essentially trades Laura’s freedom for

Laura’s protection, since she swears that she will keep Laura out of the Dean’s way if she

promises not to harm her. Eventually, of course, Laura does convince Carmilla to help her fight,

and she ends up sacrificing herself to destroy her mother and save Laura. Still, if Carmilla’s

mother represents the patriarchy, the Carmilla of the webseries represents someone who has been

beaten down by it, not someone who is actively resisting.

In all three films, Carmilla confirms the importance of knowledge as providing protection

and power, functioning in opposition to the authorities who keep Laura ignorant for her own

protection. As in the original novel, Laura’s father in The Unwanted and Styria actively works

against Laura’s access to knowledge, especially in regard to her mother. In The Unwanted, of

course, Troy Pickett wants to prevent Laura from discovering that he is responsible for her

mother’s death. He does so, though, by repeatedly suggesting that “sometimes it’s best not to

know something,” a quote that reflects the mindset of all versions of Laura’s father. As soon as
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Carmilla arrives, though, Laura’s newfound confidence leads her to learn the truth. For Laura

Pickett, then, Carmilla represents freedom from her father’s control as well as freedom from

ignorance.

The authority figures against which Carmilla and Laura rebel in all three of these films

are closely connected with brutality, abuse, and rape, suggesting that the women are really

rebelling against violence and control of women’s bodies. Styria’s General Spiegel is the most

obvious example of the worst aspects of the patriarchal figure, since he uses his authority in

Styria to abuse and molest nearly every woman who appears onscreen. Even Miss Pasztor,

Lara’s governess, is shown buttoning up her blouse in the backseat of the General’s car one

morning, dirty and stained with blood. He tells her to “be more polite, for your niece’s sake.”

Though the nature of the General’s influence over Miss Pasztor’s niece Lida is unclear, the fact

that Lida is the first young woman to commit suicide at Carmilla’s urging suggests that she, too,

feels trapped and threatened by his advances. Carmilla tells Lara, “There are only two types of

men: fools, and beasts. Your father is just a fool.” Unlike Dr. Hill, the General is a beast and “A

cannibal. He devours his own and no one does anything to stop him.” No one, that is, until Lara

and Carmilla, who convince the village girls to join them in their rebellion against authority,

especially his.

The General repeatedly attempts to frame himself as a benevolent patriarchal figure,

suggesting that the filmmakers are commenting on the fact that patriarchal rhetoric rarely

addresses the violent reality that it inscribes. In an early conversation with Lara and Dr. Hill, the

General says, “It is the duty of the patriarch to ensure the guidance of our young women. One

cannot let the devil take root in these lovely creatures. They need a firm hand to be tamed.

Protected.” His explicitly connection between “protecting” and controlling women indicates that
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the filmmakers see little difference between the two. When he stalks Carmilla in the crypt, he

says, “I’ll find you a proper place—a home. Home. Beautiful clothes, good food…In Styria, we

take care of each other.” This seemingly comforting speech is undermined by the ominous music

that swells as he removes his coat and approach Carmilla’s hiding place. His words also provide

a voiceover for Dr. Hill’s examination of a strange mural in one of the rooms in the sanatorium.

The camera focuses on particular portion of the mural in which a giant bearded man is eating a

naked woman. The quick shifts between the General and the frightening mural make him even

more horrifying and confirm that is the “cannibal” Carmilla mentioned earlier. Though he does

not intend to physically eat her, of course, the implication is that he wants to steal her selfhood

and her independence to make himself feel more powerful. His actions make Carmilla’s suicide a

means of resistance, especially since she is then free to convince many more girls to join her far

from the General’s influence.

Carmilla’s suicide provides her with an unexpected source of power against the General.

Faced with a mass suicide, he reacts by shooting “the infected,” revealing that he is, to some

degree, aware that without access to vulnerable victims, he is essentially powerless. The young

women have not been “infected” with vampirism, since the traditional blood-drinking vampires

do not appear in this adaptation. Instead, Carmilla has infected the young women of the village

with a desire to defy social values altogether—while some of them do kill themselves, many

others behave erratically and begin to wildly run from their homes, remove their clothes, and

even drink each other’s blood. In her discussion of Le Fanu’s text, Heller says, “In ‘Carmilla,’

sexual knowledge is an important aspect of the story of hysterical contagion whereby one

hysterical girl infects, and creates, another” (79). Here, the hysteria is spread not through sex, but

through death and the promise of female community. Carmilla, who claims that all men are
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either “fools or beasts,” drinks to “a world of neither fools nor beasts,” suggesting that she can

only envision women’s liberation existing in a world that is free patriarchal standards. The

paradise she shows Lara, in which girls in dresses and top hats dance with each other in a golden

light, reflects that desire.

Though Carmilla’s escape is framed as empowering her, it is Lara who harnesses the

women’s combined knowledge and fury to destroy the General. Lara’s father, Dr. Hill, actively

prevents her from learning that her mother was from Styria and that she had an emotional

breakdown, eventually leading her to kill herself, once again connecting patriarchal authority

figures with dangerous repression of knowledge. As in The Unwanted, Carmilla does not bring

any new information to Lara; however, her presence gives Lara the confidence to begin asking

the questions that lead to her discovery that her mother was another of General Spiegel’s victims.

It is that piece of information that finally gives Lara the confidence to fight back against the

General, and she tears off his ear with her teeth before summoning Carmilla’s horde of enraged

women to kill him. It is unsurprising, then, that the patriarchal authorities have been attempting

to restrict Lara’s access to information about her mother, the history of the sanatorium, and even

the General himself. The moment she gains insight into the General’s history and recognizes him

as a serial rapist, she is able to stop him by freeing the spirits of the other women who have

committed suicide, most of whom, it is implied, were also his victims. This film stresses the fact

that women’s power lies in their ability to share information with each other; when they work

together, they are able to use that knowledge to destroy even the most hated symbols of

patriarchal abuse.

Like the General, The Unwanted’s Troy Pickett is also dedicated to maintaining

traditional values and appearances. He expects Laura to cook and clean for him regularly, and
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part of the reason he dislikes Millarca’s influence on her mother even before their affair is that

she left him alone to care for Laura. He is especially indignant that Karen abandoned his bed and

began sleeping in the upstairs bedroom after meeting Millarca. He tells Laura that he “didn’t

know what else to do but to let her,” saying, “I tried to tolerate it. I pretty much put up with

anything to make your mama happy. I mean I—I loved her that much.” However, a later

flashback shows that Troy certainly made his resentment known: he regularly spied on them

from his truck, and in one scene he bangs on her door in the middle of the night to complain that

Karen “didn’t say goodnight to [him].” His dedication to the appearance of traditional values

becomes particularly disturbing after he kills Millarca and gains control over Karen once more.

He tells Laura that in an effort to “keep [Karen] from spreading the evil to anyone else,” he “kept

her under a tight rein.” Though he does not elaborate, his explanation is overlaid with a flashback

to a dinner scene in which Troy blesses the food as he, Laura, and Karen eat together at the

dining table. The seemingly normal scene is made horrifying when Karen raises her arms to eat,

revealing that her arms are tied to the chair with just enough slack to allow her to eat with them.

This frightening dedication to traditional values on the part of the representative of the patriarchy

allows Wood to portray such figures as generating true horror.

Where the General is solely focused on the control and abuse of women’s bodies, Troy is

also dedicated to controlling women’s sexualities. Though he claims that he killed Millarca

because she was drinking Karen’s blood and he feared that his family, especially Laura, would

be “infected,” his description of Karen’s relationship with Millarca is largely rooted in a mixture

of homophobia and possessiveness. When first describing Millarca to Laura, Troy says, “Your

mama was a fine Christian woman. This Millarca, she—she wasn’t worth shootin’. I figured her

for some kind of a gypsy, but your mama swore she wasn’t. The way she dressed, the way she
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acted, the way she put all kinds of ideas in your mama’s head . . . Like she was wonderful and

beautiful.” His voice overlays a flashback in which the two women are laughing and whispering

to each other as Millarca flirtatiously adjusts Karen’s collar, all while Troy glowers from the

doorway. The real problem, he says, is that Millarca convinced Karen that “she was too good to

be livin’ out in the sticks…and she should run away with her, leave [Troy and Laura] behind.”

However, while his argument in itself would explain his jealousy, Wood consistently shows Troy

lurking in the background while the camera lingers on intimate touches and looks between the

two women, implying that Troy’s real problem with their relationship is that it is romantic. His

distaste with Karen’s newfound confidence that she is “wonderful and beautiful” is also

revealing, both because it demonstrates his possessiveness, since he does not want her to feel that

she has the option of leaving, and because he is disturbed that someone else is complimenting his

wife.

Troy’s reactions to the two relationships allow the filmmakers to explicitly connect

violence with homophobia. Troy is most agitated when he is reminded of the intimacy between

the women. As Carmilla learns from a police report, upon breaking into Millarca’s trailer while

she and Karen were having sex, Troy began beating them both with his belt and then attempted

to run down Millarca in his truck. When he and Laura discuss the incident, she refers to Millarca

as Karen’s “girlfriend.” Troy turns and strikes Laura, the first time he physically hurts her in the

film. Though much of his distaste with Karen and Millarca’s relationship is due to his

possessiveness and his disgust with the blood aspect, the fact that they are two women together is

something he apparently finds particularly distasteful.

The webseries has no corresponding male counterpart in Laura Hollis’s father, who never

physically appears onscreen. Laura does frequently mention that he is overprotective, though she
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also notes that she misses him on a few occasions. In this adaptation, however, he has apparently

supplemented his extreme paranoia by teaching Laura practical life skills and providing her with

the tools she needs to protect herself. When she is attacked by a vampire, she promptly punches

him in the throat, much to Carmilla’s amusement. Laura explains, “My father is a raging

paranoid. You think he sends me day-of-the-week bear spray but didn’t sign me up for Krav

Maga at age eight?” Although the vampire does eventually overpower Laura, the brief moment

reveals a significant difference in her characterization—when her father, the most significant

male figure in her life, actually prepares her rather than protecting her for life away from him,

Laura is confident and much more capable of actually protecting herself from harm.

Instead, Carmilla’s mother, the Dean of the university, serves as the webseries’

antagonist as well as its representative of harmful patriarchal values. Laura and her friends learn

that the Dean has been sacrificing five girls to an ancient monster every twenty years for

centuries. She specifically chooses virgin girls because, she says, “it’s traditional. Besides, the

world’s just gonna grind them up anyway, so it’s almost a mercy.” The implication is that she is

fully aware of the problematic traditional values, but has accepted them so as to use them to her

advantage. Like Carmilla’s mother in Le Fanu’s work, the Dean attempts to use those traditional

values against men: when Laura’s friend Kirsch expresses his desire to help Laura, the Dean

says, “I do so enjoy chivalry,” directly echoing her book counterpart’s strategy of using kind

men’s willingness to help women against them. Like the two villainous men in the other films,

the Dean uses ancient systems of patriarchy to her benefit, though unlike them, she is willing to

adapt her strategies to new circumstances when necessary. Of the three antagonists, the Dean is

the most effective, managing to survive and continue causing chaos even after her apparent

death. Her effectiveness is due to her ability to manipulate systems rather than becoming
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mindlessly dedicated to them. Rather than demanding that the world conform to her ideals, the

Dean uses the hierarchical systems of the world to her advantage, making her more effective than

any of the men, and certainly more so than Carmilla herself.

Although Carmilla is not treated as villainous in any of the three films, she is rarely

entirely heroic, either. At her most monstrous, she demonstrates many of the same qualities as

the typical villainous female vampires. In Styria, even before she commits suicide to escape the

General’s influence, Carmilla is obviously not operating within the same system of values as

everyone else—for example, after guiding Lara to a clearing in the woods, she abandons Lara

while she sleeps, leaving her to find her way home alone in an uninhabited part of the forest of a

foreign country. When Lara confronts her, saying, “People don’t do that to each other. It’s not

right,” Carmilla distracts her with alcohol, refusing to apologize or recognize the problem. In the

webseries, Carmilla blatantly tells Laura that she has little time for heroics or saving people.

Though she has been attempting to rescue young women from her mother for decades, she is

doing so largely for revenge rather than for the women’s own sakes. At one point after Carmilla

has agreed to help Laura and her friends fight the Dean, Laura begins, “I mean, I know that

you’re not just doing it for me, but seriously—” and Carmilla interrupts, saying, “Don’t be an

idiot. Of course I’m doing it for you.” Her repeated insistence that she is not, in fact, interested in

saving people or otherwise helping make the world a better place is emphasized by her behavior

in the second season, when Carmilla begins unapologetically killing innocent students after she

and Laura break up. Though she does want to make Laura happy, Carmilla is explicitly

uninterested in redemption. In this disinterest in redemption or morality, she reflects her

counterparts in Dracula, who neither desire nor receive redemption, at least in the films.
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Carmilla’s villainy is also reflected in her clothing and her sensuality, which increases in

those adaptations in which she is more amoral. In The Unwanted, Carmilla is heroic rather than

villainous, and her clothing is oversized and threadbare—in several places, her pants are held

together with duct tape. Her outfit is not sexual, and it also eliminates Carmilla’s connection to

the aristocracy, which fits with Wood’s project of depicting her sympathetically. During a later

scene, Carmilla is topless, which does suggest that Wood wants to depict her sexually; still,

Carmilla never uses that sexuality to manipulate Laura or anyone else. Though Carmilla does

attempt to convince Laura to leave with her, she makes no attempt to manipulate her into doing

so, and she is consistently respectful of Laura’s boundaries.

In Styria, Carmilla is more monstrous, and her manipulation is more sexual than that of

her counterpart in The Unwanted. She regularly undresses while facing Lara, who each time

looks embarrassed and turns away while Carmilla smirks. After her death, Carmilla appears in

long white dresses with her hair brushed and pulled back from her face, clean and neat for the

first time in the film. Her appearance seems designed to attract Lara and the other girls to her

paradise of womanhood, but her clothing is never revealing. She does, though, attempt to seduce

Laura near the end of the film, when she leans down to kiss her as Lara relaxes in a hot spring.

Lara initially turns her face away, self-consciously laughing that Carmilla should be careful,

since Lara has been sick. When Carmilla is not deterred, Lara kisses her back, then draws back

and turns her head away, looking uncomfortable while Carmilla continues to kiss her neck.

Though the moment is not as sexual as the scene between Jonathan and the vampire sisters in

any of the film adaptations of Dracula, it still reinforces the connection between promiscuous

female vampires and sexual manipulation.

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Though likable, Carmilla is less heroic in the webseries than in the other adaptations, and

she also dresses more sexually and acts more promiscuously. Where the other two versions of

Carmilla dressed in form-concealing dresses and ill-fitting cargo pants, this Carmilla regularly

wears leather pants and black corsets that reveal her cleavage and midriff. These outfits are

specifically designed to attract other women, and she is largely successful, as Laura notes that

Carmilla stays “up all night with some girl from [her] anthropology class.” Laura also finds

Carmilla’s outfits appealing, and she occasionally comments on them to her webcam and to

Carmilla herself. Carmilla uses her sensuality to her advantage, using what one character refers

to as her “seduction eyes” to distract Laura from her vampiric tendencies. Although others’

reactions to Carmilla’s sexual attire and behavior suggest that her blatant sexuality is meant to be

humorous, the fact that the most villainous depiction of Carmilla is also the one most obviously

connected with sensuality suggests that sensuality in female characters is still shorthand for

villainy.

Ultimately, the Carmilla presented in each of these adaptations is remarkably complex,

ranging from a sympathetic femme fatal to an innocent victim of the patriarchy. The variety in

her characterization suggests that Le Fanu’s Carmilla remains a compelling, contested character

even in the 21st century, and the fact that so many adaptations have been released recently

suggests that Laura and Carmilla’s romance is relevant even today. All of these films portray

Carmilla in a sympathetic light, especially when she is compared to the true antagonists of the

films, who often represent patriarchal values that she must help Laura to defy. By transforming

Carmilla into a sympathetic figure defying those values, all three films emphasize that such value

systems are damaging and outdated, especially in regard to Laura. However, none of the films

firmly sides with Carmilla, and only in the webseries does she live; furthermore, her portrayal as
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monstrous, despite the lack of vampiric traits, suggests that women who do not fit social

standards are still treated as villainous, even by those films that otherwise support her. While she

is more appealing in these recent adaptations, the female vampire is still treated as Other. Even

so, her exposure of patriarchal trends and her liberation of young women makes her a newly

compelling character.
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Conclusion

From Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Anne Rice’s Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles) to

Stephanie Meyers’ Edward Cullen (Twilight), male vampires have largely overshadowed

vampire women in public consciousness. Still, vampire women have maintained a shadowy but

significant presence in film and literature since the 18th and 19th centuries. Vampire women

partially owe their ongoing existence to their function as symbols of the erotic: as forbidden but

extremely attractive women, they are uniquely situated to titillate and attract audiences.

However, like all vampires and monsters in general, they also reflect anxieties about gender and

sexuality. Studying these villainous female characters, both in their original incarnations as well

as in recent adaptations, reveals that the female vampires remain fixed as warnings against

female autonomy. Punished for the moral ambiguity that is applauded in their male counterparts,

vampire women are still marked with the same tropes —overt and aggressive sexuality,

bloodthirstiness, and a violent death—that are found in those early 19th century texts. While

recent female vampires may be depicted more sympathetically, these female vampires still must

endure derision and fear and even, in some cases, violent deaths.

Vampire women remain worth studying because each of their incarnations provides a

glimpse of cultural attitudes toward women and sexuality. In the 19th century texts, vampire

women are closely connected with social standards that demand submission and domesticity

from women. In those earlier novels, vampire women are often fearsome and powerful, but they

never fully act on that power to rebel against the systems that confine them. Though they do

threaten men, they never actually feed upon them, instead choosing to prey upon children and

other women. Though both Carmilla and Dracula are anxious that women might gain power

over men, none of the vampire women even attempt to gain that type of control in the novels.
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These 19th century texts never allow their female vampires to threaten patriarchal society

directly, and even the possibility that they might do so is enough to justify their murders. These

source texts have provided filmmakers with material to be more explicit in their depiction of

female power in the 20th and 21st centuries. Analyzing the source texts and then representative

adaptations shows the ways that the films can be read as commentary on the novels.

Recent filmmakers seem to be particularly aware of the potential cultural significance of

the vampire women in Carmilla. Carmilla has been adapted far less frequently than Dracula,

especially in the United States, until the three adaptations of the past few years. As same-sex

relationships become more visible in the media, filmmakers seem eager to explore the

implications of the romance between Laura and Carmilla in a setting that actually allows them to

be intimate together. While filmmakers in the 21st century are primarily interested in exploring

the homoerotic undertones of the narrative, though, they also explore the ways in which young

women deal with oppressive patriarchal power structures. Where adaptations of Dracula still

wholly side with the men who represent traditional powers, adaptations of Carmilla present her

as a victim of those authorities. Through Carmilla, filmmakers who see her as a representing a

victim of the patriarchy are able to explore her relationships with Laura within a 20th and 21st

century context.

In general, adaptations in mass media have made all of the vampire women of recent

adaptations more sympathetic. When the protagonists of the first-person narratives of the 19th

century describe them, vampires are mysterious, irrational monsters. These narrators, especially

Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing, find the women frightening and unknowable. In the 20th and

21st century films, though, the vampire women are less mysterious and more sympathetic,

especially in those films in which they play larger roles with speaking parts. The webseries, a
 102

newer genre, offers a comparatively intimate insight into the vampire woman. The camera never

moves, watching Carmilla as she goes about her daily life reading books, taking naps, and

drinking blood out of a coffee mug, and since we only see her in her dorm room, she is largely

domesticated. The medium makes her more human and thus more likeable. As the figure of the

vampire woman becomes less enigmatic and remote, she becomes more sympathetic, a

development which recent filmmakers have used to transform her into a more complex figure.

Despite this increased sympathy on the parts of the filmmakers, the vampire women in

recent adaptations are still largely excluded from the power systems that ensnare them. Though

they remain isolated, these women are no longer passive victims; they are angry, and that anger

is especially reflected in their attitude towards authority figures, especially men. The adaptations

offer two different potential responses: the vampire women either attempt to help other women

escape, or they become obsessed with appeasing those male figures. The women of Dracula, for

example, no longer find meaning in their relationships with each other, and are instead more

focused on gaining Dracula’s approval. Carmilla, meanwhile, attempts to rescue Laura and

escape patriarchal authority figures like the General, the Dean, and Laura’s father. Neither of

these approaches is particularly successful, though, since the women in recent adaptations are

doomed to even more violent deaths than their 19th century counterparts. Filmmakers and

audiences might represent the women more sympathetically; however, the treatment of these

vampire women suggests that that surface of sympathy covers deep-rooted anxieties towards

women who present an alternative to traditional patriarchal social structures.

This anxiety towards women who rebel against social standards is especially apparent in

the ways that filmmakers still use the same visual shorthand to distinguish between the vampire

women and their human counterparts. Revealing clothing is still closely connected to moral
 103

ambiguity, as is sexual promiscuity. In general, the act of having sex is nearly always fatal,

especially when it involves two women: The Unwanted features the most explicit sex scene, and

it is also the adaptation in which Carmilla dies the most violent death. The increased violence of

her death, which occurs at the hand of a disapproving patriarchal figure, is also reminiscent of

the media’s tendency to kill lesbian characters soon after they consummate their relationships.

Even in this film, which attempts to entirely condemn homophobia, the filmmakers have not

entirely avoided common homophobic tropes. By contrast, Carmilla survives in the webseries,

which is the only adaptation in which she does not even kiss Laura until the last few moments of

the series. Similarly, regardless of the other changes the filmmakers make as they adapt, they still

do not allow the defiant women to live. As in the original novel, all of the vampire women in

adaptations of Dracula die, and characters and filmmakers alike are even more indifferent to

their suffering. In some adaptations, the vampire women’s deaths are even treated humorously,

suggesting an ongoing cultural callousness towards violence against women. The sole exception

is the webseries’ Carmilla, who seemingly dies in a heroic leap off camera only to return in the

season finale for a reunion and a kiss with Laura. With that single exception, though, the women

face pain and brutality in life and are rewarded with vicious, violent deaths. Film adaptations of

Carmilla, at least, generally attempt to question traditional depictions of villainous women;

however, even they utilize tropes and imagery that occasionally reinforces those depictions

instead.

Those deaths remain brutal even in those adaptations in which the filmmakers seem

otherwise sympathetic towards the women’s situation. In both The Unwanted and Styria, the

camera gratuitously focuses on the spurting blood and the horrified look on Carmilla’s face as

she dies. The brutality of these deaths is particularly startling because they seem to be intended
 104

to be moments of empowerment and triumph. Carmilla’s death seems to be meant to be a

triumphant moment of defiance and escape, especially since her sacrifice seemingly liberates

other women from patriarchal authority figures. However, regardless of the significance of her

death, Carmilla still dies even more violently than in the original adaptation. Her death in both

adaptations is also ultimately a fairly meaningless gesture on a large scale, since despite her

challenging of abusive authorities, those power structures remain in place—Laura’s father and

the Dean survive in The Unwanted and the webseries, and while the General dies in Styria, the

village men who put him in power remain in charge. Even when she is presented as a martyr for

social change, Carmilla is treated brutally by both the representatives of those power structures

and by the filmmakers themselves. The brutality of the vampire women’s deaths is particularly

noticeable when compared to Dracula’s. His death is nearly always treated sympathetically: he is

quickly dispatched by the woman he loves in two of the films, and the camera cuts away just as

he dies. The women do not receive the same respect. No matter how sympathetic the film is to

Carmilla’s struggles, it still revels in her death in a way that it does not for Dracula.

While the filmmakers might be attempting to use these scenes to expose the horrors of

misogyny and homophobia, such a reading is undermined by the fact that violence against

women, especially lesbians, is already staggeringly commonplace in popular culture.15 While the

vampire women’s deaths are horrific, they are no more brutal than women’s deaths in numerous

other films, especially in the horror genre. Within the context of popular culture as a whole, to

truly expose the horrors of our culture’s misogyny and homophobia, the films would have to

allow the women to survive.

15
For more discussion of this trope, see Bethonie Butler, “TV Keeps Killing Off Lesbian
Characters.”
 105

To some extent, recent adaptations of these vampire films are increasingly positive in

their depictions of women—nearly all of the women are more complex characters than in Stoker

or Le Fanu’s novels, especially the protagonists, and the filmmakers often use the vampire

women to question traditional patriarchal values. However, their attempts to produce films that

question those values are undermined by their treatment of those women: overt sexuality is still

treated as a signal that a woman is at least morally ambiguous, if not evil, for example, and any

sexual activity is almost always closely followed by death. The treatment of villainous women in

general can act as a useful cultural barometer, revealing the extent to which women are still held

to traditional gender roles. These films reveal an increasing acceptance of women’s refusal to

meet those traditional standards. They also, though, suggest that even the most seemingly-

progressive attitudes towards women are still undermined by subconscious biases against

women. The fact that several of the films are specifically attempting to depict the problems with

patriarchal standards, though, is hopeful, as are the increasingly positive depictions of

relationships between women, whether romantic or otherwise. Despite the problems in their most

recent depictions in these adaptations, the fact that filmmakers are still invested in characterizing

them as complex and nuanced people implies an increasingly positive attitude towards women,

especially those women who do not fit the cultural standards for femininity.
 106

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