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Carmilla & The Haunted Baronet
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221 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published January 1, 1970
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About the author
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
1,365 books1,385 followersJoseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. M.R. James described Le Fanu as "absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories". Three of his best-known works are Uncle Silas, Carmilla and The House by the Churchyard.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 6, 2010
This is a small paperback with the shorter "Carmilla" and the longer novella "The Haunted Baronet" (which is similar to an earlier Le Fanu story, "The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardaugh", which was a reworking of an even earlier piece, "Sir Dominick's Bargain"). You have to love old paperbacks from the 70's with cigarette ads inserted at the halfway point.
What could be said about "Carmilla" that hasn't already been said? Not much. It's a classic vampire tale in which there is nary a bat to be seen (Carmilla's chosen form is something like a huge cat) and which introduces the sub-strain of (predatory) lesbianism into vampire fiction. It's been adapted quite a bit (those saucy Hammer films, for examples, and an interesting version set in the Civil War South that had Meg Tilly in it and was shown on some cable series in 1990 - I remember that one very well) I've read it before and liked it, but hey, it's a classic, so I re-read it. The story is basically very simple - due to an accident and supposed "dire need", a family in Styria plays host to a mysterious young girl named Carmilla who has some odd habits but becomes the bosom companion of young Laura. Meanwhile, people in the nearby isolated village start dying and a family friend turns up later up to tell them his young female ward had died but a few months before, after he too took in a mysterious girl due to a similar "dire circumstance".
Things I noted - the pacing is nicely langorous, which fits the mood and the progression of the "illness" as Carmilla works her way into the household and lassitude overtakes Laura. I'd forgotten that Laura had a singular nightmarish meeting with Carmilla when she was a child of six, and how there is a deliberate "mirroring" that occurs within the text between Carmilla and Laura (including Carmilla claiming similar nightmares/attacks ). There are also some moments that border on the humorous - the hunchback traveller offering to file down Carmilla's tooth, and Carmilla proudly buying one of the hunchback's charms that are supposed to ward off the "oupire". I also laughed at Laura's momentary musing, when faced with Carmilla's quite ardent professions of love, that perhaps the mysterious girl was really a boy dressed to hide his sex and secreted into the household on a mission to romance her (Laura had been reading too many Gothic novels, no doubt). It's also interesting that Carmilla, a supernatural creature in the end, is the one who ardently argues for a scientific explanation and against superstition (what better way to hide, I guess). I also liked that the mysterious "older lady" that places Carmilla in households (or her retinue, for that matter) is never really explained - the way she works over General Spielsdorf at the masked ball, making the same arguments she will make later, made me think of cuckoo birds that hide their eggs in nests to be raised by other birds. The ending may seem a bit anticlimactic to modern readers, it's true, but the moment when Carmilla catches and holds the General's sword thrust with her dainty hand, warding off the killing blow before disappearing, is pretty damn cool!
"The Haunted Baronet" is interesting. It's set in the rural countryside (England, I suppose, although it could easily be Ireland or Scotland, for all I know) and is very Gothic in tone. In the small village of Golden Friars (a setting Le Fanu used more than once, seemingly) the wastrel Baronet, son of the wealthy landlord family, returns from Europe with an assistant who he mistreats but who, legend has it, is actually part of the family bloodline due to a dalliance by the Baronet's grandfather 100 years ago that ended in a drowning in the local lake. The Baronet is an arrogant, brooding, moody sort (in the Heathcliff mode) and financially down on his luck. There are ghostly figures sighted in the lake, portentous dreams threaded throughout and, after a drowning and an impossible resurrection that leads to an altered personality in one character, the Baronet finds himself offered a deal deep in the woods by some mysterious figures who will supply financial stakes and predictions on winners in local races. But the Baronet's deal, as always in tales like this, eventually becomes a debt that must be paid.
If you like later period Gothic, this is probably a solid read for you (although it's debatable if you could call it a "romance" in the sense we mean now - there is some "love and marrying" later, and a quite touching farewell, but it's not the dominant theme). I started in excited, by the middle felt it was paced oddly and wondered where it was going, but found myself enjoying the wrap-up, even if, admittedly, like "Carmilla", the ending itself may be found a bit anti-climactic by modern readers. There is lots of local color, landscape descriptions, comical locals (including a drunken country doctor and doting old housemaid) and occasionally some impenetrable dialect - try this on for size:
"He's been some time in ill fettle, though he was never frowzy, not he, but always kind and dooce, and canty once like anither; and he asked me to tak the boat across the lake at once to the Clough o' Cloostedd at t'other side. The woman took the pet, and wodn't hear o't; and, 'Dall me, if I go to-night' quoth I. But he would not be put off so, not he; and dingdrive he went to it, cryin' and putrein' ye'd a-said, poor fellow, he was wrang i' his garrets a'most."
Thankfully, that's only occasional.
The Baronet himself is ostensibly our main character - and he's an odd choice, as he is unlikable (he has to be, pretty much) but not out-and-out evil or anything (he's actually even kind of funny when he's being sarcastic with the local yokels, early on). He is, as they say in the book, "a very disagreeable man", sour and dour.
The weird or fantastic elements are not particularly striking, but accrue power over time with subtlety. The Baronet's initial meeting with his mysterious benefactors in the woods is nicely done, combining elements of folklore, ghostly implications and faerie trappings (wild, erratic actions like dicing and drinking, alternatively welcoming and threatening) - and Le Fanu wisely never spells anything out specifically (but keep track of the exotic birds introduced into the woods by the divested family - the Macaw, the Kite and the Jay). Much later, there is a very frightening portentous dream (there are really no other kinds in this story) with some nightmarish images.
I liked it. I don't know if I'd re-read it, but fans of Gothic tones should check it out.
What could be said about "Carmilla" that hasn't already been said? Not much. It's a classic vampire tale in which there is nary a bat to be seen (Carmilla's chosen form is something like a huge cat) and which introduces the sub-strain of (predatory) lesbianism into vampire fiction. It's been adapted quite a bit (those saucy Hammer films, for examples, and an interesting version set in the Civil War South that had Meg Tilly in it and was shown on some cable series in 1990 - I remember that one very well) I've read it before and liked it, but hey, it's a classic, so I re-read it. The story is basically very simple - due to an accident and supposed "dire need", a family in Styria plays host to a mysterious young girl named Carmilla who has some odd habits but becomes the bosom companion of young Laura. Meanwhile, people in the nearby isolated village start dying and a family friend turns up later up to tell them his young female ward had died but a few months before, after he too took in a mysterious girl due to a similar "dire circumstance".
Things I noted - the pacing is nicely langorous, which fits the mood and the progression of the "illness" as Carmilla works her way into the household and lassitude overtakes Laura. I'd forgotten that Laura had a singular nightmarish meeting with Carmilla when she was a child of six, and how there is a deliberate "mirroring" that occurs within the text between Carmilla and Laura (including Carmilla claiming similar nightmares/attacks ). There are also some moments that border on the humorous - the hunchback traveller offering to file down Carmilla's tooth, and Carmilla proudly buying one of the hunchback's charms that are supposed to ward off the "oupire". I also laughed at Laura's momentary musing, when faced with Carmilla's quite ardent professions of love, that perhaps the mysterious girl was really a boy dressed to hide his sex and secreted into the household on a mission to romance her (Laura had been reading too many Gothic novels, no doubt). It's also interesting that Carmilla, a supernatural creature in the end, is the one who ardently argues for a scientific explanation and against superstition (what better way to hide, I guess). I also liked that the mysterious "older lady" that places Carmilla in households (or her retinue, for that matter) is never really explained - the way she works over General Spielsdorf at the masked ball, making the same arguments she will make later, made me think of cuckoo birds that hide their eggs in nests to be raised by other birds. The ending may seem a bit anticlimactic to modern readers, it's true, but the moment when Carmilla catches and holds the General's sword thrust with her dainty hand, warding off the killing blow before disappearing, is pretty damn cool!
"The Haunted Baronet" is interesting. It's set in the rural countryside (England, I suppose, although it could easily be Ireland or Scotland, for all I know) and is very Gothic in tone. In the small village of Golden Friars (a setting Le Fanu used more than once, seemingly) the wastrel Baronet, son of the wealthy landlord family, returns from Europe with an assistant who he mistreats but who, legend has it, is actually part of the family bloodline due to a dalliance by the Baronet's grandfather 100 years ago that ended in a drowning in the local lake. The Baronet is an arrogant, brooding, moody sort (in the Heathcliff mode) and financially down on his luck. There are ghostly figures sighted in the lake, portentous dreams threaded throughout and, after a drowning and an impossible resurrection that leads to an altered personality in one character, the Baronet finds himself offered a deal deep in the woods by some mysterious figures who will supply financial stakes and predictions on winners in local races. But the Baronet's deal, as always in tales like this, eventually becomes a debt that must be paid.
If you like later period Gothic, this is probably a solid read for you (although it's debatable if you could call it a "romance" in the sense we mean now - there is some "love and marrying" later, and a quite touching farewell, but it's not the dominant theme). I started in excited, by the middle felt it was paced oddly and wondered where it was going, but found myself enjoying the wrap-up, even if, admittedly, like "Carmilla", the ending itself may be found a bit anti-climactic by modern readers. There is lots of local color, landscape descriptions, comical locals (including a drunken country doctor and doting old housemaid) and occasionally some impenetrable dialect - try this on for size:
"He's been some time in ill fettle, though he was never frowzy, not he, but always kind and dooce, and canty once like anither; and he asked me to tak the boat across the lake at once to the Clough o' Cloostedd at t'other side. The woman took the pet, and wodn't hear o't; and, 'Dall me, if I go to-night' quoth I. But he would not be put off so, not he; and dingdrive he went to it, cryin' and putrein' ye'd a-said, poor fellow, he was wrang i' his garrets a'most."
Thankfully, that's only occasional.
The Baronet himself is ostensibly our main character - and he's an odd choice, as he is unlikable (he has to be, pretty much) but not out-and-out evil or anything (he's actually even kind of funny when he's being sarcastic with the local yokels, early on). He is, as they say in the book, "a very disagreeable man", sour and dour.
The weird or fantastic elements are not particularly striking, but accrue power over time with subtlety. The Baronet's initial meeting with his mysterious benefactors in the woods is nicely done, combining elements of folklore, ghostly implications and faerie trappings (wild, erratic actions like dicing and drinking, alternatively welcoming and threatening) - and Le Fanu wisely never spells anything out specifically (but keep track of the exotic birds introduced into the woods by the divested family - the Macaw, the Kite and the Jay). Much later, there is a very frightening portentous dream (there are really no other kinds in this story) with some nightmarish images.
I liked it. I don't know if I'd re-read it, but fans of Gothic tones should check it out.
June 3, 2019
Love Carmilla. The Haunted Baronet was weird and disappointing.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews