Vampirism and Sexuality
Even more so than Count Dracula, the story of Carmilla explores the act of sucking blood from a human being as an act fraught with dark sexuality. It is suggested quite strongly that Carmilla not only enjoys an almost orgasmic reaction to sucking blood, but also is erotically drawn to the other major character in the tale, a young woman named Laura. The exploration of lesbian attraction is not lurid or explicit by any means, but also not veiled to such a degree that contemporary readers would miss it. As a result, the story was considered rather scandalous in its day.
Anti-Aristocracy
Although Carmilla is a very compelling character, she is ultimately put to death in order to protect society; thus, it is commonly accepted that she is seen as the villain of the story. If this view is accepted at face value, then a recurring motif that must be embraced is a strong expression of distaste toward the aristocracy, or at the very least, toward those expressing support for aristocratic ideals. Carmilla routinely voices harsh judgments and an utter absence of empathy toward the poor while fashioning herself as better than most due to her own aristocratic blood.
Anti-Patriarchy
Carmilla defies almost every aspect of the patriarchy. She is a powerful woman who reigns for over one hundred years. She cares nothing for title, ancestry, and patrimony. Her sexuality is unrestrained and cannot result in marriage, childbearing, and propagation of the family line. She turns the putative positives of patriarchy on their head, showing how chivalry, oversight, and control are easily exploitable and/or completely ineffectual.
The Desire for the Maternal
Laura is a lonely young woman who earnestly desires a mother, and some critics see her relationship with Carmilla as suggestive of the maternal (which explains why Laura is so readily and immediately drawn to her). Laura establishes a nourishing, nurturing, but ultimately annihilating relationship with Carmilla. As critic Jim Hansen suggests, the maternal that Carmilla represents is abject, as it is from a "diseased" heritage depicted as repugnant and atrocious. Carmilla is the materfamilias of a weak, corrupted maternal line. Laura has to be "rescued" from this mother-figure and her mother's ancestral line.
Dissolving Boundaries
Carmilla poses numerous problems to the patriarchal, heterosexual Victorian world in which the tale is set, but she represents a disturbing dissolution of boundaries of selfhood. She rapturously claims she and Laura are "one" and live in each other; indeed, the very act of vampirism is ingesting the blood of another while simultaneously turning that host into the same sort of creature. As the backbone of Victorian society, the tightly-drawn and immutable self could not be threatened; this is why Carmilla and her fungible, slippage-prone "self" has to be destroyed.
Female Alliances
Regardless of Carmilla's status as a blood-drinking vampire, she is a powerful female figure who forms alliances with other females. These young women do not need men—they do not need them for sex, for companionship, for assistance, or for validation. In these relationships, their own pleasure is paramount, and such an exchange is liberating. Within such relationships desire, autonomy, and freedom are upheld while patriarchal control is elided.
Male Ineffectualness
For most of the novella, Le Fanu's men are hapless. They cannot figure out what is going on in their region and how to stop it. They consult (male) doctors who mostly scoff and hypothesize without doing anything concrete to stem the "disease." They cannot see what is going in underneath their very noses in terms of their dependents' sexual behavior. They are precluded from using women in the traditional mode of exchange, for these women are engaged in homosexual alliances and are no longer goods to be exchanged in a patriarchal, capitalist world. Finally, they welcome a menace into their very homes because they are swayed by good looks and their sex's call to chivalry and magnanimity. It is no wonder once they are finally able to assert their authority, they go above and beyond in doing so.
