Vampirism In Le Fanu's Carmilla

Throughout many years, literature has been a way for authors to show certain topics that are not widely talked about, whether they were controversial ideas that led to debates, or just subdue topics. Often times authors might use literature to show transgressions in a society that most would disapprove of or sometimes literature is used to show the social constructs of a society. In the Victorian Gothic Era, many authors such as Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu displayed homosexuality through theme of horror. In the ways how supernatural beings do not fit within societal norms allow them to be a representation for homosexuality. In Le Fanu’s novel Carmilla, in the ways how the female vampire Carmilla is outcasted is a representation of homosexual oppression.

Sexuality is known be a fluid idea to which sexuality is defined differently for everyone. The idea of having sex for sexual pleasure is commonplace within modern literature, but it was not always like that. Sex was mostly referred to as sexual intercoarse between a married couple in the hopes that one would produce a child, until later years when the idea of sexual attraction was created. The 1909 Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines homosexuality as a medical term meaning “morbid sexual passion for one of the same sex.” This definition of homosexuality implicates how the idea of homosexuality was viewed as abnormal disease based on the implications how same sex couples cannot procreate. The concept of homosexuality was looked down upon because it was interpreted as sexual pleasure, rather than procreation. Heterosexuality was viewed in the same light, but not as much since most married couples consist of a male and female figure. People were used to understanding the idea of sex in the terms of sexual reproduction, so when people found out that sex can be used for sexual pleasure, they may have been uncomfortable with that fact of a society that moving from traditional family structures to a more modernized society. In the Victorian Gothic Era, homosexuality as well as