Unnameable desires in Le Faru's carmilla

Abstract

In his 1872 vampire novella Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu encodes forbidden passions through the use of names. Written at a time when same-sex relations were punishable by imprisonment, Carmilla's naming and wordplay suggest the Sapphic seductions between a female vampire and her unwitting descendant without being dangerously explicit. In every incarnation over the centuries, Carmilla must adopt an anagrammatical variation of her original name, each of which carries its own host of interpretations hinting at the forbidden same-sex desires in the text. Ultimately, however, Le Fanu had to conform to the conventions of his time and has a posse of men solve the riddle of Carmilla's name and her demonic desires. By the novella's end, Carmilla's derivations are decipherable, her history traceable, and her fate reduced to a patriarchal paronomasia. Copyright 2007 by The American Name Society.