Carmilla (Annotated)
()
About this ebook
We had annotated this book by adding a handy summary at the end of this book in red fonts. The Summary consists of 55% to 60% of the original book. You can navigate easily to any chapter or to the main summary with the help of a table of contents.
The description of the book is written as follows Laura, the teenage protagonist, narrates, beginning with her childhood in a "picturesque and solitary" castle amid an extensive forest in Styria, where she lives with her father, a wealthy English widower retired from service to the Austrian Empire. When she was six, Laura had a vision of a very beautiful visitor in her bedchamber. She later claims to have been punctured in her breast, although no wound was found. Twelve years later, Laura and her father are admiring the sunset in front of the castle when her father tells her of a letter from his friend, General Spielsdorf. The General was supposed to bring his niece, Bertha Rheinfeldt, to visit the two, but the niece suddenly died under mysterious circumstances. The General ambiguously concludes that he will discuss the circumstances in detail when they meet later. Laura, saddened by the loss of a potential friend, longs for a companion. A carriage accident outside Laura's home unexpectedly brings a girl of Laura's age into the family's care. Her name is Carmilla. Both girls instantly recognize the other from the "dream" they both had when they were young. Carmilla appears injured after her carriage accident, but her mysterious mother informs Laura's father that her journey is urgent and cannot be delayed. She arranges to leave her daughter with Laura and her father until she can return in three months. Before she leaves, she sternly notes that her daughter will not disclose any information whatsoever about her family, past, or herself and that Carmilla is of sound mind. Laura comments that this information seems needless to say, and her father laughs it off. Carmilla and Laura grow to be very close friends, but occasionally Carmilla's mood abruptly changes. She sometimes makes romantic advances towards Laura. Carmilla refuses to tell anything about herself, despite questioning by Laura. Her secrecy is not the only mysterious thing about Carmilla; she never joins the household in its prayers, she sleeps much of the day, and she seems to sleepwalk outside at night. Meanwhile, young women and girls in the nearby towns have begun dying from an unknown malady. When the funeral procession of one such victim passes by the two girls, Laura joins in the funeral hymn. Carmilla bursts out in rage and scolds Laura, complaining that the hymn hurts her ears. When a shipment of restored heirloom paintings arrives, Laura finds a portrait of her ancestor, Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, dated 1698. The portrait resembles Carmilla exactly, down to the mole on her neck. Carmilla suggests that she might be descended from the Karnsteins even though the family died out centuries before. During Carmilla's stay, Laura has nightmares of a large cat-like beast entering her room. The beast springs onto the bed and Laura feels something like two needles, an inch or two apart, darting deep into her breast. The beast then takes the form of a female figure and disappears through the door without opening it. In another nightmare, Laura hears a voice say, "Your mother warns you to beware of the assassin," and a sudden light reveals Carmilla standing at the foot of her bed, her nightdress drenched in blood. Laura's health declines and her father has a doctor examine her. He finds a small blue spot, an inch or two below her collar, where the creature in her dream bit her, and speaks privately with her father, only asking that Laura never be unattended.
Read more from Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
CARMILLA (Gothic Classic): Featuring First Female Vampire - Mysterious and Compelling Tale that Influenced Bram Stoker's Dracula Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gothic Novel Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Carmilla: A Critical Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGothic Classics: 60+ Books in One Volume Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCarmilla Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Familiar Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe House by the Church-Yard Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/530 Occult & Supernatural masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCheckmate Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mr. Justice Harbottle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn a Glass Darkly, v. 1/3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Big Book of Christmas Mysteries: What the Shepherd Saw, The Mystery of Room Five, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle... Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCarmilla Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In a Glass Darkly, v. 3/3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Stable for Nightmares; or, Weird Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Carmilla Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings60 Gothic Classics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Purcell Papers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGuy Deverell - Volume I Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Ultimate Gothic Horror Collection: Novels and Stories from Edgar Allan Poe; Bram Stoker, Henry James, Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde; and more. Illustrated: Frankenstein; Dracula; Jekyll and Hyde; Carmilla; The Fall of the House of Usher; The Turn of the Screw; The Picture of Dorian Gray, and more Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Carmilla (Annotated)
Related ebooks
Heiresses of Russ 2012: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gale Researcher Guide for: Postconfessional Poetry and the Evolution of the Lyric "I" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Anatomical Venus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlice In Plunderland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJust the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler, 1951-1991, Revised Anniversary Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dead Queen of Bohemia: New & Collected Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Door and Other Uncanny Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Suit of Nettles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Susan Stewart's "The Forest" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlaces of Tenderness and Heat: The Queer Milieu of Fin-de-Siècle St. Petersburg Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Shadow Within: Evil in Fantasy and Science Fiction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWar Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's "Cutting the Sun" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Devoted Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummer of the Elder Tree Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBram Stoker. Not only Dracula. Short stories analysis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMagpie's Ladder Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGeography of the Forehead Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTannery Bay: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Law of the Looking Glass: Cinema in Poland, 1896–1939 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ghost of Hexes Past: Witches of Moondale, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsApex Magazine Issue 125: Apex Magazine, #125 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUpside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArtists in the Audience: Cults, Camp, and American Film Criticism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Taste of Winter Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dark Issue 74: The Dark, #74 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQueering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age: A Rhetorical Education Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLAS HURDES: A Film By Luis Bunuel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeasts of the Forest: Denizens of the Dark Woods Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQueer Imaginings: On Writing and Cinematic Friendship Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Horror Fiction For You
Pretty Girls: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Watchers: a spine-chilling Gothic horror novel now adapted into a major motion picture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Misery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Am Legend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Needful Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Short Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Different Seasons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hidden Pictures: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Holly Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Good Indians Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Troop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pet Sematary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Best Friend's Exorcism: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brother Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Revival: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Whisper Man: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Have Always Lived in the Castle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hollow Places: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Kind Worth Killing: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Quiet on the Western Front Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5H. P. Lovecraft Complete Collection Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outsider: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Skeleton Crew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Carmilla (Annotated)
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Carmilla (Annotated) - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Carmilla (Annotated)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
About Le Fanu:
Sheridan Le Fanu was born at No. 45 Lower Dominick Steet, Dublin, into a literary family of Huguenot origins. Both his grandmother Alicia Sheridan Le Fanu and his great-uncle Richard Brinsley Sheridan were playwrights. His niece Rhoda Broughton would become a very successful novelist. Within a year of his birth his family moved to the Royal Hibernian Military School in Phoenix Park, where his father, an Anglican clergyman, was the chaplain of the establishment. Phoenix Park and the adjacent village and parish church of Chapelizod were to feature in Le Fanu's later stories. Le Fanu studied law at Trinity College in Dublin, where he was elected Auditor of the College Historical Society. He was called to the bar in 1839, but he never practised and soon abandoned law for journalism. In 1838 he began contributing stories to the Dublin University Magazine, including his first ghost story, entitled A Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter
(1839). He became owner of several newspapers from 1840, including the Dublin Evening Mail and the Warder. In 1844 Le Fanu married Susanna Bennett, the daughter of a leading Dublin barrister. In 1847 he supported John Mitchell and Thomas Meagher in their campaign against the indifference of the Government to the Irish Famine. His support cost him the nomination as Tory MP for County Carlow in 1852. His personal life also became difficult at this time, as his wife Susanna suffered from increasing neurotic symptoms. She died in 1858 in unclear circumstances, and anguished excerpts from Le Fanu's diaries suggest that he felt guilt as well as loss. However, it was only after her death that, becoming something of a recluse, he devoted himself full time to writing. In 1861 he became the editor and proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine and he began exploiting double exposure: serializing in the Dublin University Magazine and then revising for the English market. The House by the Churchyard and Wylder's Hand were both published in this way. After the lukewarm reviews of the former novel, set in the Phoenix Park area of Dublin, Le Fanu signed a contract with Richard Bentley, his London publisher, which specified that future novels be stories of an English subject and of modern times
, a step Bentley thought necessary in order for Le Fanu to satisfy the English audience. Le Fanu succeeded in this aim in 1864, with the publication of Uncle Silas, which he set in Derbyshire. In his very last short stories, however, Le Fanu returned to Irish folklore as an inspiration and encouraged his friend Patrick Kennedy to contribute folklore to the D.U.M. Le Fanu died in his native Dublin on February 7, 1873. Today there is a road in Ballyfermot, near his childhood home in south-west Dublin, named after him. Source: Wikipedia
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1 An Early Fright
Chapter 2 A Guest
Chapter 3 We Compare Notes
Chapter 4 Her Habits -- A Saunter
Chapter 5 A Wonderful Likeness
Chapter 6 A Very Strange Agony
Chapter 7 Descending
Chapter 8 Search
Chapter 9 The Doctor
Chapter 10 Bereaved
Chapter 11 The Story
Chapter 12 A Petition
Chapter 13 The Woodman
Chapter 14 The Meeting
Chapter 15 Ordeal and Execution
Chapter 16 Conclusion
Main Summary
Prologue
Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a reference to his Essay on the strange subject which the MS. illuminates.
This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that extraordinary man's collected papers.
As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest the laity,
I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, in nothing; and after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstain from presenting any précis of the learned Doctor's reasoning, or extract from his statement on a subject which he describes as involving, not improbably, some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its intermediates.
I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen the correspondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so clever and careful as his informant seems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I found that she had died in the interval.
She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative which she communicates in the following pages, with, so far as I can pronounce, such conscientious particularity.
Chapter 1 An Early Fright
In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.
My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and his patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain.
Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of water lilies.
Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel.
The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road over a stream that winds in deep shadow through the wood. I have said that this is a very lonely place. Judge whether I say truth. Looking from the hall door towards the road, the forest in which our castle stands extends fifteen miles to the right, and twelve to the left. The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the left. The nearest inhabited schloss of any historic associations, is that of old General Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away to the right.
I have said "the nearest inhabited village," because there is, only three miles westward, that is to say in the direction of General Spielsdorf's schloss, a ruined village, with its quaint little church, now roofless, in the aisle of which are the moldering tombs of the proud family of Karnstein, now extinct, who once owned the equally desolate chateau which, in the thick of the forest, overlooks the silent ruins of the town.
Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time.
I must tell you now, how very small is the party who constitute the inhabitants of our castle. I don't include servants, or those dependents who occupy rooms in the buildings attached to the schloss. Listen, and wonder! My father, who is the kindest man on earth, but growing old; and I, at the date of my story, only nineteen. Eight years have passed since then.
I and my father constituted the family at the schloss. My mother, a Styrian lady, died in my infancy, but I had a good-natured governess, who had been with me from, I might almost say, my infancy. I could not remember the time when her fat, benignant face was not a familiar picture in my memory.
This was Madame Perrodon, a native of Berne, whose care and good nature now in part supplied to me the loss of my mother, whom I do not even remember, so early I lost her. She made a third at our little dinner party. There was a fourth, Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, a lady such as you term, I believe, a finishing governess.
She spoke French and German, Madame Perrodon French and broken English, to which my father and I added English, which, partly to prevent its becoming a lost language among us, and partly from patriotic motives, we spoke every day. The consequence was a Babel, at which strangers used to laugh, and which I shall make no attempt to reproduce in this narrative. And there were two or three young lady friends besides, pretty nearly of my own age, who were occasional visitors, for longer or shorter terms; and these visits I sometimes returned.
These were our regular social resources; but of course there were chance visits from neighbors
of only five or six leagues distance. My life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I can assure you.
My gouvernantes had just so much control over me as you might conjecture such sage persons would have in the case of a rather spoiled girl, whose only parent allowed her pretty nearly her own way in everything.
The first occurrence in my existence, which produced a terrible impression upon my mind, which, in fact, never has been effaced, was one of the very earliest incidents of my life which I can recollect. Some people will think it so trifling that it should not be recorded here. You will see, however, by-and-by, why I mention it. The nursery, as it was called, though I had it all to myself, was a large room in the upper story of the castle, with a steep oak roof. I can't have been more than six years old, when one night I awoke, and looking round the room from my bed, failed to see the nursery maid. Neither was my nurse there; and I thought myself alone. I was not frightened, for I was one of those happy 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 cracks suddenly, or the flicker of an expiring candle makes the shadow of a bedpost dance upon the wall, nearer to our faces. I was vexed and insulted at finding myself, as I conceived, neglected, and I began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty bout of roaring; when to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young lady who was kneeling, with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hid herself under the bed.
I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all my might and main. Nurse, nursery maid, housekeeper, all came running in, and hearing my story, they made light of it, soothing me all they could meanwhile. But, child as I was, I could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwonted look of anxiety, and I saw them look under the bed, and about the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards; and the housekeeper whispered to the nurse: "Lay your hand along that hollow in the bed; someone did lie there, so sure as you did not; the place is still warm."
I remember the nursery maid petting me, and all three examining my chest, where I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing that there was no sign visible that any such thing had happened to me.
The housekeeper and the two other servants who were in charge of the nursery, remained sitting up all night; and from that time a servant always sat up in the nursery until I was about fourteen.
I was very nervous for a long time after this. A doctor was called in, he was pallid and elderly. How well I remember his long saturnine face, slightly pitted with smallpox, and his chestnut wig. For a good while, every second day, he came and gave me medicine, which of course I hated.
The morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of terror, and could not bear to be left alone, daylight though it was, for a moment.
I remember my father coming up and standing at the bedside, and talking cheerfully, and asking the nurse a number of questions, and laughing very heartily at one of the answers; and patting me on the shoulder, and kissing me, and telling me not to be frightened, that it was nothing but a dream and could not hurt me.
But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was not a dream; and I was