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Unnameable Desires in Le Fanu's Carmilla

2007; University Library System, University of Pittsburgh; Volume: 55; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1179/nam.2007.55.1.37

1756-2279

Amy Leal,

Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research

AbstractIn his 1872 vampire novella Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu encodes forbidden passions through the use of names. Written at a time when samesex relations were punishable by imprisonment, Carmilla's naming and wordplay suggest the Sapphic seductions between a female vampire and her unwitting descendant without being dangerously explicit. In every incarnation over the centuries, Carmilla must adopt an anagrammatical variation of her original name, each of which carries its own host of interpretations hinting at the forbidden same-sex desires in the text. Ultimately, however, Le Fanu had to conform to the conventions of his time and has a posse of men solve the riddle of Carmilla's name and her demonic desires. By the novella's end, Carmilla's derivations are decipherable, her history traceable, and her fate reduced to a patriarchal paronomasia.