Simile: Lullaby
Laura describes the effect that Carmilla’s voice has upon her on those occasions when the strange woman feels compelled to draw her into an embrace, softly kiss her cheek, and speak in agitated language. These infrequent embraces have the effect of making Laura want to draw back and away in discomfort, but Carmilla's soothing murmur instantaneously transforms Laura: "her murmured words sounded like a lullaby in my ear, and soothed my resistance into a trance" (16). The comparison to a lullaby, which has a maternal allusion, suggests that Carmilla uses very subtle mechanisms to control Laura that nonetheless have very powerful outcomes.
Simile: The Vampire's Bite
The simile of the bites as "two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment" (3) is the common, repetitive motif Laura uses as a way of describing the attack of the vampire. No less than four different times at four different points in the story does Laura use the smile of needles piercing flesh to make concrete the effect of being bitten; it is extremely painful to imagine, which underscores how odd it is that there are no marks left behind.
Simile: A Lover's Ardor
Laura describes the intensity of emotion which would sometimes overcome Carmilla when she finally managed to come out of that trance-like state her whispered murmurs would send her into: "it was like the ardor of a lover; it embarrassed me" (17). This simile was perhaps the most shocking comparison to be found in the entire novel for Victorian readers, for the author is "guilty" of trespassing an unwritten convention of the time by explicitly calling attention to the Sapphic nature of Carmilla and Laura's relationship. Such language was typically reserved only for descriptions of heterosexual passion.
Simile: Carmilla's Moods
Laura finds some of Carmilla's personality traits and behaviors odd, and notably describes the few times she gets angry. The first is when she becomes upset about the peasants and their hymn and funeral, and results in Carmilla's physical discomfort and obvious anger. Laura notes, "Both passed away like a summer cloud" (18), which indicates that Carmilla is given to strange and dramatic moods that appear for a very insignificant cause and then vanish almost immediately.
Metaphor: Girls
Carmilla presents an odd metaphor to Laura after Carmilla says she is not afraid to die and it would be glorious to die with a lover: "Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see—each with their peculiar propensities, necessities, and structure" (21). Here she is suggesting that the natural maturation for a girl is death, using Darwin ingeniously to critique the notion of the vampire as a negative development.
