gothic fiction – R. Saint Claire

It was a read-a-thon challenge on BookTube, #HorrorMAYhem if you’re curious, that finally nudged me toward reading a classic story burning up my library shelf (and Kindle Fire) for years. Maybe I resisted reading Carmilla because I was under the delusion that I had read it before—that was actually Coleridge’s Christabel. So, during my yearly creative retreat at a lakeside cabin in the woods, I finally cracked open my vintage paperback copy and took a bite.

Carmilla, the 1872 novella written by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu, burst in my mouth like the wild red berries I’d indulged in during my morning hike—more bitter than sweet, but delicious.

Perhaps my resistance also had something to do with a belief that I needed a proper setting in which to absorb the story. After all, we live in a world of distractions that makes focusing on anything a challenge, let alone dense, Victorian prose. I had just completed Brian Keene’s The Conqueror Worms for Week One of the reading challenge, the assignment being supernatural creatures. After Keene’s gory gut punches, it took me a few paragraphs to adjust to Le Fanu’s writing style. Still, with only the music of birdsong—including a pair of owls outside my cabin—and soft breezes to accompany my reading, Carmilla stirred my blood in ways I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

Several adaptations, including a wonderfully cheesy Hammer film, have seized on the titillating “lesbian vampire” theme. Yes, the theme is there and it’s quite subtle (more Sappho than Sade), but my deep reading yielded so many more delights. For one thing, the setting could not be more Gothic. The story takes place in Styria, which a quick search on my phone informed me is part of Austria. Austria is a place I’ve always wanted to visit; my grandfather was born there, and I’ve only heard about its natural beauty and stunning architecture through stories and films. This setting is in the remote country, a lonely and primitive place, where English ex-pats can afford to live like kings and queens on modest yearly incomes. But the quiet beauty is haunted by the ghosts of an old aristocratic family, the Karnsteins, their lineage now reduced to mouldering tombs in a roofless church and an equally-desolate château which, in the thick of the forest, overlooks the silent ruins of the town.

The ancient estate (or schloss) the young heroine, Laura, and her father inhabit has a moat, a drawbridge, and so many rooms (replete with secret passages) that one’s screams in the middle of the night are undetected by other household members, as Laura discovers when at six years old she is attacked by a ghostly nocturnal visitor. This strangely beautiful lady-phantom kisses and caresses Laura in a way the motherless child finds comforting until she shocks her by penetrating her chest with two sharp needles. While Laura screams for her governess, the phantom disappears beneath the bed (a creepy image indeed). Later, she will return in the guise of a cat during her attacks.

Laura, now a young lady of eighteen at the time of the narrative, is still disturbed by the incident from her childhood. Will this strange apparition come back to haunt her? We know it will.

A dramatic opening scene sets the stage when young Laura, her father, and a few servants take a moonlit stroll and witness a carriage with footmen in full livery crash against a tree and overturn. The team of horses shied at the site of an ancient cross on the estate—someone remarks in a chilling bit of foreshadowing. A noblewoman dressed in black velvet, a turbaned woman within the carriage grinning derisively toward the ladies, and ugly, hang-dog looking grooms hint at the evil lurking beneath the gilded veneer.

In a rushed moment of chivalry, Laura’s father decides to let Carmilla, stunned in the carriage accident, remain at his estate until the mother can reclaim her in several months’ time. The plan is vague and not very well thought out, but Laura is happy to have a new friend even if the new friend is a bit…strange.

Carmilla is pale, languid, rarely eats except to nibble on some chocolate, and sleeps most of the day. She is also “abnormally” affectionate toward young Laura, caressing her and proclaiming her love with rapid breaths and a heaving bosom. Laura finds her young companion’s romantic expressions, like great beauty, both seductive and repulsive. Still, she’s inexplicably drawn to her.

Despite her sweetness and languor, Carmilla occasionally flames with the imperious indignation of a Countess Bathory. When a grotesque peddler shows up with some bizarre taxidermy of various animals stitched together and suggests grinding down Carmilla’s unusually sharp teeth, Carmilla retorts: “How dares that mountebank insult us so? Where is your father? I shall demand redress from him. My father would have had the wretch tied up to the pump, and flogged with a cart-whip, and burnt to the bones with the castle brands!”

I recognized in this early work of vampire fiction many subplots and characters recycled in every Gothic vampire story from Dracula to Dark Shadows and beyond, including midnight gallops, country doctor visits, superstitious common folk, misty graveyards, and even a Van Helsing character who shows up at the end with his “tool kit” to dispatch Carmilla, really the two-hundred year old Countess of Karnstein, with a stake through the heart followed by decapitation for good measure.

Glued to the page, I sucked down every word of this Gothic tale, and when I finished, my bosom heaved for more. In fact, I’d barely read the last line when I fired up my iPhone and listened to the audiobook while sitting by the lake, pretending I was in Villa Diodati. Like other favorite Gothic classics, Jane Eyre and Frankenstein among them, I will revisit this novella many times hence.

With my bloodlust for Carmilla unsated after two successive readings, I desperately searched for some film adaptations. Carmilla, a recent film written and directed by Emily Harris, is an atmospheric interpretation of how a sexually-repressed governess takes out her frustrations on the budding Sapphic romance between her teenage charge and her mysterious new friend. The film is pretty and meant to be poignant, but I yawned through most of it. I wanted more of Carmella’s fierceness, and I almost found it in The Vampire Lovers (1970), the first in a Hammer Film trilogy starring Peter Cushing. Here, you’ll find more boobs than blood. The late 60’s hairstyles and make-up had me giggling, but at least it stuck close to the original plot. I plan to watch the entire trilogy this weekend.

Perhaps a definitive adaptation is out there. I’ll continue to search. In the meantime, Carmilla will haunt my dreams most deliciously. Feeling refreshed from my cabin retreat, a sweet female cat showed up on my doorstep when I returned home. She purred and threaded through my legs when I petted her and has shown no intention of leaving.

I loved visiting my Aunt Rita when I was a kid. Her little brick house in Doylestown, PA was not only warm and cozy, it was also a few blocks away from a castle. Seriously, it’s called Font Hill, and here is a photo of it.

Widowed at a very young age, my Aunt Rita was a single mother who developed her talent for art, music, gardening, and pop psychology. She was also an avid reader. Every visit to her house was an exercise in art emersion and mind expansion. It was also the place where my much older teenage cousin kept a store of great rock albums, Mad Magazines, and underground comics, but that’s for a different blog topic.

One thing I loved to do whenever I visited her house was read from her seemingly never-ending stack of Gothic romance books. As a collector and reader of this brand of pulp fiction, I often wonder why the genre fell out of favor with readers. Or did it just evolve into Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer? I enjoy Twilight, but somehow, the Cullen’s high-tech Washington home does not manifest the same chills as Wuthering Heights or Manderley. Nor can their mountain-top vampy ball games compete with bareback rides through the moors. I still long for the girl running away from the castle.

It is generally agreed that the Gothic literature genre began with Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto. From there, the blackened vine wove its way through Ann Radcliffe and the Brontes. But what we know as modern Gothic romance probably began with Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca.

The distressed heroine is so meek she isn’t even named in the novel, and yet her goodness wins out against the “ghost” of wealthy Maxim DeWinter’s beautiful and accomplished former wife. The sweeping English estate, Manderly, is as much of a character as any other.

Recently, while preparing to write in the classic Gothic romance genre, I consulted a book written by Dean Koontz about the craft of genre writing. The book came out in the mid-70s, so much of it was outdated, like what is the ideal typing paper to purchase. But I took to heart his advice about not veering too far from the expected tropes. These include the virginal young governess type who arrives at the estate to fulfill some job. She is often an ophan, impoverished, but dignified and smart. Her status at the estate is far below the owner, but one step or more above the domestic staff which usually includes a hostile housekeeper. Mrs. Danvers exemplifies the trope perfectly. The lord of the manor is the Byronic hero personified. He is remote but charming. His reputation is stained from some past indiscretion. He is the subject of local gossip. The nearby village of “common folk” is often featured as a homey contrast to the corrupting influence of the grand estate. As our heroine attempts to perform her job, creepy supernatural events cause her to question her dashing but dangerous employer and inadvertently lead her into his arms.

In his chapter on Gothic romance, Koontz stressed that the “love scenes” should never go past gentle kisses and brief caresses and that the heroine should not be the “women’s lib type” because she will turn off readers. Interesting.

Perhaps the best primer in Gothic romance comes from the TV sensation Dark Shadows. Even before Barnabas Collins makes an appearance, young governess Victoria Winters grapples with the strange events at Collinwood, and soaks up some local color at the Blue Whale. I collect and read the accompanying books written by Marilyn Ross (W.E.D. Ross, the prolific genre writer) and they follow Koontz’s checklist to a T.

Did the Gothic romance genre evolve into domestic noir such as Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train as the article listed below suggests? Possibly.

The 2020 release of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Morena-Garcia offered high hopes for a return of the genre. Although the book was well-received, I found it lackluster. By making the heroine a “strong female character ” who pushes back against the patriarchy instead of focusing on her vulnerability and inner strength to overcome the doom-filled environment, the author missed the mark. In that respect, I think Koontz was right.

I attempted in my own way, to meet the criteria of the genre in my recently completed Gothic romance novella, Ravenscroft Hall. Read if for free on Wattpad.