Summary
Chapter 7: Descending
The night is a terrible one for Laura and her terror seems to deepen over time. She does not tell her father though, not wanting to alarm him or have him laugh at her.
Sitting with Madame and Mademoiselle, Laura tells them of her concerns. Mademoiselle says that the lime tree walk outside Carmilla’s window is haunted because Martin, who was repairing a gate over there, saw a female figure walking down the avenue. She adds that Martin seemed very frightened. Laura says not to tell Carmilla because she will be too scared.
Carmilla comes down later and tells Laura that she was quite afraid last night because something was in her room. Thankfully, she adds, she had her charm. Laura tells her own story of the night before and Carmilla asks if she had her charm. Laura says no but gets it, and puts it on her pillow.
That night and the next she sleeps well, but a luxurious sense of “lassitude and melancholy” (28) overtakes her. Carmilla is pleased to hear it and shares that she thinks fevers or other maladies pass by and the charm will not let them in. She thinks they try the nerves to get to the brain but the antidote repels them. Laura privately is not sure about this.
Every morning Laura continues to wake with her strange languor and melancholy. She starts to feel like a different girl. She has dim thoughts of death, which have a sad but sweet tone. She says nothing to her father. Carmilla is more and more devoted to her, and, oddly, “she used to gloat on me with increasing ardor the more my strength and spirits waned” (29).
Laura does not know it yet but she is advancing in a strange illness. Earlier symptoms are fascinating, but they soon take on a terrible tinge and her whole life seems altered and perverted. She has vague and indecipherable sensations while she sleeps, as well as visions that leave her exhausted in the morning. When she wakes she thinks she has been somewhere dark and has spoken to people she cannot see. Sometimes she feels a hand on her cheek or a warm kiss. Laura feels strangled and convulses, and then falls unconscious.
This lasts for three weeks. Laura’s appearances alters and her father asks if she is well. She always reassures him, and indeed, she has no bodily issues. It is her imagination and nerves that suffer. She does not think it can be the “oupire” because she has had it for so long and the villagers spoke of death within a few days.
Carmilla complains of similar dreams and sensations but they are not as intense. Looking back, Laura wishes she’d thought to pray for aid, but her thoughts were numbed.
One night, Laura hears a sweet but terrible voice saying a warning from her mother about the assassin. A light springs up and shows Carmilla, drenched in blood at the foot of her bed. Laura screams and springs out of bed, worried for Carmilla. She rushes to her door and pounds on it. Mademoiselle and Madame join her but no answer comes.
Servants come running eventually, and Laura orders one to force the lock. Upon the door opening, they see that Carmilla is not there and nothing is disturbed.
Chapter 8: Search
Laura, Madame, and Mademoiselle calm down a bit. Mademoiselle suggests Carmilla may be hiding in fright, but they search the room thoroughly and she is still not there. Laura is utterly flummoxed as to how she could have gotten out with a locked door.
As dawn breaks, the whole household increases in alarm. There is no trace of Carmilla and Laura’s father is aghast that he will have to find a way to tell Carmilla's mother. Around one in the afternoon, Laura goes up to Carmilla’s room and finds her standing inside.
Laura gasps and runs to her, hugging and kissing her in ecstasy. She exclaims that they were all so worried and asks where she was. Carmilla replies that she had a very eerie night, for she woke up on the dressing room sofa with the doors unlocked, and has no memory of being moved.
By this time the others have come upstairs and lavish Carmilla with their cries of thankfulness for her return. Laura’s father paces the room and Carmilla looks at him with a sly glance. Laura’s father asks Carmilla to sit down and says he thinks that perhaps she walked in her sleep, and wonders if she thinks that may have happened? She admits she did as a child. Laura’s father smiles and says this must be it; he wishes “all mysteries were as easily and innocently explained as [Carmilla’s]” (33).
Carmilla looks languid and lovely as usual, and Laura’s father sighs that he wishes Laura was looking like herself as well.
Chapter 9: The Doctor
Carmilla refuses an attendant in her room so one sleeps outside the door. The night passes normally.
The next day, the doctor comes to see Laura. As she tells him her story, he grows more and more grave. He asks for Laura’s father to come in. The two of them confer seriously for a while and Madame and Laura burn with curiosity.
Laura’s father calls her over finally, and she is a bit alarmed. He asks her to tell Doctor Spielsberg about the sensation of two needles piercing her skin and if there is any soreness. She says no. The doctor asks her to point out where she was pierced and she says a little below her throat. He has her then tug down the cloth covering it just a bit and he and Laura’s father gasp. Laura asks what is going on, and the doctor points out the small blue spot.
Doctor Spielsberg turns to Laura’s father, who is pale, and says not to worry, for Laura will start feeling better soon. He calls Madame over, and says she must not let Laura be alone for even one minute anymore. Madame agrees.
Laura’s father asks the doctor if he might look at Carmilla as well, for she has a lesser version of what Laura has. He explains that she will be down later, and hopes the doctor will lunch with them. The doctor says he will return for that.
Laura watches out the window as her father walks Doctor Spielsberg out. He mounts his horse and leaves. At the same time, the post arrives. Within a half hour Laura’s father comes to see her with a letter from General Spielsdorf, saying he is delayed but should be there soon.
Laura can tell her father is troubled, so she asks him if the doctor thinks she is very ill. He says no, and that if the right steps are taken she will completely recover. He only wishes General Spielsdorf was coming at a different time. Laura presses for more information as to what she has, but her father will not tell her.
Laura’s father leaves, then comes back in a moment later to tell her he is going to Karnstein to see the priest and she and Madame ought to come. Carmilla could follow with Mademoiselle when she comes down.
Around noon they depart and take the sylvan road to Karnstein. It is a pleasant and peaceful scene. To their surprise, they encounter the General. He joins their carriage and sends his horse along to the schloss.
Analysis
In this section Laura begins to exhibit the symptoms of her gradual decline. She is exhausted and weak, filled with strange sensations and cognizant of dreams she can barely remember. She feels the piercing of “needles” and strangulation, and hears an ominous warning from her mother regarding “the assassin.” The reader, if not Laura, can see that Carmilla is behaving more and more strangely, growing stronger as Laura grows weaker, disappearing from her room, and lying about where she has been. Angelica Michelis notes that at this stage “there seems to be an exchange of personality, Laura starts to resemble Carmilla more and more whereas the latter appears to turn into Laura.” This is part of the novella’s motif of doubling and repetition, a common element of Gothic literature.
Laura chooses not to tell her father what is going on with her but he can tell something is off and calls the doctor. The doctor suggests to Laura’s father that she is being menaced by a vampire, but leaves the schloss and nothing seems to come of his visit. Then, the General arrives at the end of this section, which is for Laura, as Gabriella Jönssen notes, “a re-immersion… into a patriarchal narrative frame; he is the first of the ‘male experts’ that are subsequently lined up to ‘explicate’ vampirism.” What is happening/happened to the women of the region, including Laura and Bertha, is outside male control and thus something such men desperately endeavor to get a handle on.
Jönssen explains that this relationship between Laura and Carmilla, which has aspects of traditional friendship, echoes of the mother-daughter connection, and lesbianism, “poses as great a threat to the patriarchal order as the vampirism in itself.” Elizabeth Signorotti sees the girls’ relationship as their usurping of male authority and excluding “male participation in the exchange of women.” Carmilla and Laura do not engage in sexual relations with men, meaning they will not reproduce. If Carmilla turns Laura into a vampire, then she will be completely and forever outside the patriarchal system as well as perpetuate such a model of lesbian sex and lack of propagation. Writing in the Victorian era in which feminists, lesbians, and the female body as a whole were demonized, Le Fanu’s novella “defies the established patriarchal systems.” The lesbian relationship between Carmilla and Laura is “sexually liberating and for them highly desirable.” The men in their world are pushed to the sidelines, unable to “exchange women” (Laura’s father rues that the General is coming around while she is ill and unlike herself, as he cannot offer her up as an enticing prospect), and befuddled by this female malady sweeping their region.
Carmilla poses a problem due to this precluding of exchange, the awakening of Laura’s sexuality, and other forms of patriarchal defiance. She has a “bad mother” who facilitates her daughter’s predations. She, as stated, will not marry and cannot reproduce and wants the same for Laura. Additionally, Signorotti writes, her “refusal to bear her ‘ancestral name’ is just one example of her refusal to be subsumed by the patriarchy. She is less interested in sharing with Laura her lineage—a primary concern in male systems of exchange—than her sexuality.” She also does not appear to worship the Christian God, traditionally seen as male, and instead worships Mother Nature.
All of these reasons make Carmilla problematic, yet for so long the males in the story “are as ineffectual in their attempts to protect women as they are in their attempts to control information about them.” The classic, much-heralded “manly protectiveness” fails, for both General Spielsdorf and Laura’s father think they are being chivalrous and honoring to their gender by ignoring their misgivings and inviting Millarca/Carmilla into their homes, but instead are opening up the protected, insulated domestic sphere to the very danger they pride themselves on keeping out.
