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guardians_song) wrote2013-08-19 02:33 am
Let's Read: Carmilla [Chapter 6]
Alternatively: Heeeere, pussy, pussy, pussy!
Our Heroines arrive inside and settle down to conversation with Laura's father, who is getting a little concerned at the lack of word from Carmilla's mother. He asks her if she has any idea where a letter might reach her...
“I cannot tell,” she answered ambiguously, “but I have been thinking of leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage to-morrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not yet tell you.”
Again, I'll remind you that this takes place after the incident under the moonlight with Laura, and that Carmilla said that it might be the last night they saw the moonlight together. As such, she's likely serious (else, why make that strange comment about it possibly being the last time?), and it's likely set off by Laura jerking away during their conversation.
Damn tsunderes!
To Laura's "great relief", her father refuses and tells her that they'd both miss her too much and that they don't think it safe to travel with all these girls coming down with a case of Dead.
“Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality,” she answered, smiling bashfully. “You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful chateau, under your care, and in the society of your dear daughter.”
'The society of your dear daughter'. Is THAT what it's called these days?
To pull myself out of shipper-mode for a moment - I'm strangely reminded of the myths that require vampires to be invited into a house before they can enter. And Carmilla knows her "mother"'s vampire hideout, apparently. I'm doing a Let's Read rather than an entry on ship_manifesto, so I should point these little details out...
The conversation ends, and Laura and Carmilla exit.
I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and chatted with her while she was preparing for bed.
As usual? *raises eyebrows* Hm. That's interesting. (Yes, I know, they're just adolescent girls chatting in their bedrooms, but all the subtext makes one read even innocuous things a bit askance.)
It is now Laura's turn for insecurity, since I suppose the author was worried the audience might begin to doubt the ship if Laura went too much more tsun.
She turned round smiling, but made no answer, only continued to smile on me.
“You won’t answer that?” I said. “You can’t answer pleasantly; I ought not to have asked you.”
Do you think, Laura, that you will ever come fully out of the closet?
(It also gives Laura room to be 'confused' about Carmilla's behavior, in that Carmilla's apparently keeping such immense secrets from her that she SOMEHOWTM could have an explanation for her outbursts of affection aside from the bloody obvious. And indeed, we get such an 'explanation' in the end with it all being waved off as vampiric hunger.)
Carmilla responds in an interesting manner:
“You were quite right to ask me that, or anything. You do not know how dear you are to me, or you could not think any confidence too great to look for. But I am under vows, no nun half so awfully, and I dare not tell my story yet, even to you. The time is very near when you shall know everything. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me and still come with me, hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.”
As I've pointed out, Carmilla does admit Laura has a right to be unhappy/displeased - utterly unlike Edward - but she is bound by her own nature. Given the later revelation that she was bound only to use anagrams of her original name, I suppose she was also bound to not reveal her vampiric state.
...And as I've said, this is Lesbian Twilight, with Edward's emotional turmoil over turning Bella replaced by Carmilla's emotional turmoil over being unable to reveal all to Laura. On that note, her very selfishness is what appeals: she wants Laura and is consumed by the overpowering desire to have her, whereas Edward is consumed by the overpowering desire... not to have Bella. It would be very interesting in the hands of a better writer, but it's not exactly romantic. Consider that Meyer had to brainwipe Edward's previously-established characterization to give him the Breaking Dawn happy ending - it's such a screeching 180 for him to suddenly be so much happier about having Vampire!Bella that even the diehard shippers noticed. Carmilla/Laura happy endgame, in contrast, would require only that Laura reciprocates. ...It doesn't happen, but that's what Fix-Fic is for. (It's not fanfic if the copyright has run out! >:D)
This is also the paragraph that, to me, makes it very clear that Carmilla intends to haul Laura along for the ride, and that the feeding is with an aim towards Laura becoming a vampire. One doesn't care whether one's FOOD is indifferent to one, after all. And it seems that Carmilla is well-versed in the phrase 'The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference'.
(It also sounds like she's a bit tetchy after being cockblocked... What would be the femmeslash equivalent of "cockblock"? Breastarrest? Boobmove? **ntpunt? Vulvapulverize? I sincerely don't know.)
It may interest you to know that Carmilla is listed as a Yandere on TV Tropes. This is probably the speech that makes her qualify. (That said, I'll leave out all the high-brow debate about what Real Love is and such, because it tends to wind up teeth-grindingly sanctimonious. We shall thus talk about actualizing one's validation through interpersonal communication or whatnot someplace else.)
Since we're not talking about Real Love, however, I can note that Carmilla is an interesting hyperconstruction of possessive love - as an unrepentant predator, she literally plans to prey upon Laura, separate her from all other mortals, and make her hers for eternity. She is not half-assing it, as Edward does - remember that he only figuratively preys upon Bella (on the level of a mortal stalker), has a family all set up for her on the other side, and is quite wishy-washy about imposing his will upon her. Carmilla outright admits that Laura can love her or hate her, but will still come with her.
In both cases, the romance is strangely prevented from becoming a tale of unconditional horror and stalking by the human protagonist's... lack of lack of consent. Bella openly desires Edward's predatory nature - more than he does himself, in fact. Laura, while not actually consenting, demonstrates that she has a right of refusal, and therefore adds ambiguity to those situations in which she doesn't exercise it. As such, neither story is the tale of a victimized girl being taken advantage of by a much older and wiser predator, but rather a hyperconstruction of being the target of overpowering possessiveness through no fault of one's own. To "die, sweetly die" into the life of one's would-be possessor...
Mind, what appeals to me isn't the thought of being in Laura's place; it's that Laura, on some level, wants this.
...Not right now, though, as it's time to do the tsundere-warp agaaaaain:
“Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild nonsense again,” I said hastily.
“Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies; for your sake I’ll talk like a sage. Were you ever at a ball?”
Awww. (Though it's marvelous how Carmilla even manages to make the "talk[ing] like a sage" flirty.) This goes further towards my comment that Carmilla is willing to go out of her way for Laura, and shows more of the self-depreciating side of her character that appeared after she was essentially rejected under the moonlight. ...I like it. It almost shows more than all the grandiose declarations of passion do.
It's interesting to note that Carmilla's sudden willingness to talk soberly occurs when she's planning to make her move that night. The time for flirting is done; now is the time to strike.
Actually, oddly enough, this scene is the closest Carmilla comes to honesty regarding her origins. She says that she foggily remembers it, but most importantly remembers that she was "all but assassinated in [her] bed", wounded on her breast, and "never was the same since". This, incidentally, is about to happen to Laura...
In answer to Laura's question of whether she was near dying, she answers:
“Yes, very—a cruel love—strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood. Let us go to sleep now; I feel so lazy. How can I get up just now and lock my door?”
Given that it seemed to happen all at once, that "cruel love" seems to have not been reciprocated, since Carmillaverse vampires draw out the feeding when they're actually attached to someone. It's interesting that she characterizes it as "love", but that would tie into the overall sadomasochistic depiction of love in Carmilla - it cuts, it bleeds, it consumes, it kills. It is selfish and cruel. It is very near to death, and like any dark god, it demands sacrifice. ...Yet it is also "raptur[ous]".
Regardless, this speech apparently impresses Laura enough that the narration slides into one of her not-very-well-repressed moments:
I bid her good night, and crept from the room with an uncomfortable sensation.
So Laura pays a great deal of attention to her friend's appearance, apparently watches her friend's gaze follow her around the room, and gives some thought to trying to decipher her friend's shy little smile... and "cre[eps] from the room" with an uncomfortable sensation.
Would this sensation happen to resemble butterflies in the stomach, by any chance?
Laura, possibly trying to get her mind off the subject, chooses now to bring up Carmilla (excuse me, "our pretty guest") never saying her prayers. She also comments rather snarkily that If I had known the world better, this particular neglect or antipathy [towards religion] would not have so much surprised me." Yep, a physically-mediocre atheistic/agnostic young woman who sleeps in all day, is equally liable to fall into fits of melancholy or of wild fangirling, and, while not being in any explicitly-stated romance, has an unusually strong relationship with a close friend... Carmilla's just the average denizen of fandom. :P
And now for something rather different as we head into the vampiric section of the book, where the symbolism picks up in force once more and brings the old hilarity with it.
Laura has picked up Carmilla's habit of locking her bedroom door and searching her room for intruders - She's begun to pick up little habits from her girlfriend, isn't that adorable? *ahem* Excuse me, that is to say: "The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them." She also has a candle lit, as it's an old habit of hers dating back to that one nightmare when she was six. So she should be safe...
So now Laura has indirectly called Carmilla a dream. Come to think of it, in a hilariously literal sense, she is the woman of Laura's dreams...
I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony.
But was it tender?
In this "dream", Laura is both asleep and fully conscious of what's going on around her... I realize that this may be sleep paralysis, but it's really an interesting metaphor for how she behaves in her relationship with Carmilla. She's utterly oblivious and passive, but simultaneously 'awake' enough to feel some "strange tumultuous excitement" along with her abhorrence.
A giant black cat, about four to five feet long, is restlessly moving back and forth across the carpet nearby the foot of her bed. As it paces, the room grows darker and darker, culminating in her only being able to see its eyes as it springs upon the bed and sinks two fangs "deep into [her] breast". She awakes with a scream to find the room lighted by the candle and a dark-gowned female figure, its hair down around its shoulders, standing stock-still at the foot of her bed, who then teleports to the door and passes out.
Laura regains the power of movement
Now, you may wonder why I'm describing these events with such deadpan narration. It is so that I can objectively explain the following to you.
This giant cat has just leapt into bed with her and penetrated her "breast" (by which I think it means the book means 'chest'), causing her "stinging pain" and making her bleed. This takes behind a locked door, after the cat has awaited the proper time with great "restlessness", and with the candle (magically) blotted out. And we, of course, know this cat was actually Carmilla.
Do you see?
In the privacy of her maiden's bower, within her very untouched bed, our dear Laura has just had her virginity symbolically ripped from her by an enormous black-haired PUSSY.
Ladies and gentlemen, CARMILLA!
.
.
.
Okay. Tragically, that pun doesn't actually work, because "pussy" doesn't seem to have been slang for that organ at the time this book was published. But the fact that it happened at all is a testament to this book's cracked reality.
And regardless of whether the "pussy" joke works*, this chapter does end with Carmilla metaphorically deflowering Laura. Interestingly enough, it's not depicted as a pleasurable assault in the manner of later nighttime visitations - this is definitely the cliched painful-deflowerment scene, containing no pleasure, no foreplay, and no romance.
...That said, since Carmilla is then outright cast in the male role, I have to wonder if this is supposed to be just metaphorical deflowerment or the metaphorical wedding night. The groom paces restlessly at the foot of the bed, then springs onto it and takes his bride's virginity, emotionally departing immediately once the consummation is done...
That may be reading too much into it, since I'm fairly sure the vampirism is supposed to be the true 'marriage', with Laura's chasity thus saved by Carmilla being executed before that can take place. These nighttime visitations should then be merely lover's visits/seductions, leading up to the 'climax' with the two being formally 'wedded' for eternity.
It's uncomfortable to figure out how this works in light of the earlier episode when Laura was six, but as best I can hash it into something without implications of pedophilia, the difference is that Carmilla has quite different intents then and now - once to feed, now to wed - and that Carmilla intends to play for keeps, rather than running off when Laura wakes and not darkening her door for over a decade. Still a bit weird, but it works for me.
We may also take mild interest in the symbolism of the progression of Laura's interactions with Carmilla: first the friendly but ambiguous strolls by the light of the afternoon, then an abortive discussion of "great romance" under the moonlight, then a promise of coming union at nighttime, and now, with sleep shrouding all others at the schloss, outright consummation behind locked doors. And so the relationship darkens and grows in seriousness, leading Laura into corruption and down the road to [prevented] damnation, eh?
*And this is the one time I regret not being more vulgar. I am missing out on hordes of "Laura gets some pussy", "Carmilla is one restless pussy", and "Once you're a vampire, Laura, will you let Carmilla stroke your pussy?" jokes that I could make if I was more comfortable with that word, for which I sincerely apologize to the audience...
Next up is Chapter 7, wherein Laura dies many little deaths. One might wonder exactly how the vampire-turning process works...
