Short Story Carmilla

Reading Assignment: Sexuality in Carmilla
Le Fanu’s story of Carmilla has been adapted as a web series, in which the setting is modern day society at a college campus. Laura remains the narrator of the thirty-six-episode season, where she records all events from her dorm room as part of her journalism class. The web series stays loyal to having Carmilla remain the female vampire in the story, while also implying other female romantic relationships. In the short story Le Fanu’s choice of a female vampire alters the way in which the audience reads the relationship between Carmilla and Laura, particularly because there is a romantic and sensual relationship that develops between these characters. The relationship between two women during Le Fanu’s time implies the confined gender roles that had been situated within his society, and the threat that female sexuality imposed. Whereas the adaptation normalizes the sexual and romantic relationship between women because modern society is more accepting of homosexuality. The theme of female desire in the short story emphasizes the fears of violating social norms of conformity as a woman, whereas the web series uses female desire to emphasize the power women have in modern society.
In the short story female desire is linked to the opinions of
Female desire in Le Fanu’s short story is understood as demonstrating the confined gender roles at the time. In the short story Carmilla represented vampirism and female desire through the way she seduced her female victims, both ideas were portrayed as threatening to society. The adaptation’s version of Carmilla demonstrates how the theme of female desire represents more accepting social values and attitudes in modern society. The web series promotes and embraces independent women and female desire, whereas the short story seeks to suppress it through the death of