THE NARROWNESS BETWEEN IRISH GOTHIC, NATIONAL IRISH IDENTITY AND THE

WILLINGNESS TO SEPARATE FROM THE PAST AND ACCEPT MODERNITY. AN

OUTLOOK THROUGH “CARMILLA” BY SHERIDAN LE FANU AND “DRACULA” BY
BRAM STOKER

Estudiante:
Ilaria Cocino

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Literatura Irlandesa 2019/2020 – Ensayo de Examen
(GRUPO 1)
“Irishness” is a concept developed by a variety of Irish authors by means of different literary
genres. To be more specific, a genre that encapsulates this new idea of nationalism and identity is,
surprisingly enough, Gothic. As Laura Merritt points out, “The Gothic is [...] a shadowy space that
encompasses the Irish experience; enabling the expression of both the horrors of colonizer’s guilt
and the colonized’s oppression.” (Merritt, III).
The very first novels of Irish tradition do not exhibit a realistic tendency: in fact, the authors’ aim is
to talk about fantastic topics. By doing so, they remain faithful to their Irish roots, leaving
metropolis and the course of history apart. Focusing on extemporal settings, characters and plots
that usually convey the influence of Irish culture and folklore, they try to escape from an oppressive
reality due to the political situation of the motherland, oppressed by British colonialism until the
20th century and the paralysis of people living there.
Among these authors, fascinated by the supernatural, there are Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram
Stoker, who used the figure of the vampire “not only to allegorize their struggles with Anglo-Irish
identity, but also to show how that figure represents native Irish rebellion and its destruction and
also how it emphasizes the importance of Catholicism in Ireland” (Merritt, III). They are two of the
most famous representatives of the so called ‘Protestant Gothic’ (“the literary expression of a socio-
political caste that is haunted by the past and the beleaguered in the present” (Kelleher, 472)),
strictly related to the Anglo-Irish society. These novels want to give a “carefully negotiated analysis
of the contemporary land agitation” (Kelleher, 480).
My objective is to analyse the incidence of the arrival of modernity on both Le Fanu’s and Stoker’s
work, and their conception of National Irishness, which is strictly connected with the will to leave
the past apart, since it conveys strictness, rigidity and a narrow-minded view of reality. They both
realise their intentions through the metaphoric use of fantasy.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was born in Dublin and graduated at Trinity College. Le Fanu started a
professional career as a journalist, writer of fiction and newspaper proprietor. He was involved in
national politics and was Tory in his orientation; he failed in 1852 to “secure a parliamentary
nomination saw his withdrawal from national politics. In his later life he was increasingly reclusive,
known as the ‘The Invisible Prince’, but his influence continued as the proprietor of newspapers,
including the Warden and the Dublin Evening Mail, and most notably as editor and proprietor of the
Dublin University Magazine from 1861 to 1869.” (Kelleher, 469).
His latest volume of short fiction is In a Glass Darkly, which contains “Carmilla” and four other
stories. “Carmilla” is a vampire story that presents some similarities with John Polidori’s The
Vampyre (1819). The story is narrated by the point of view of Laura, a girl living in the countryside
of West Ireland with her father and their servants; her mother died when she was very young and
was an ascendant of a noble family in Styria. She is spending a quiet existence in the countryside
without looking at her English origins when she suddenly meets Carmilla, that has an accident in
her cab; when they find her, Carmilla seems almost dead, but then they realise with joy that she is
alive. The story is centred on the relationship between Laura and Carmilla, which gets deeper and
deeper and immediately makes the reader think of it as a lesbian relationship. Moreover, this
relationship has some components that lids to the incest: in fact, in the end the reader learns that
Carmilla belongs to the extinct aristocratic Karnstein Family, too, and she reappears to take her
inheritance back.

Bram Stoker was another great Anglo-Irish author. He was born near Dublin in 1840 and graduated
in Mathematics at Trinity College in Dublin; he later started to write for The Evening Mail as a
journalist and a critic. He was probably influenced by his illness, that almost took him to death:
because of this, Stoker’s literary production always presents death as a pivotal topic.
Dracula is considered his masterpiece and, according to Scott Brewster, it is ‘the paradigmatic
Gothic text’ (Brewster, 287). The novel was published in 1897 and it took him about seven years to
complete it, since he made numerous changes ongoing. His notes and commentaries have been
analysed by different critics, and they represent a source for a better understanding of how Stoker
managed to work on the figure of the vampire and to translate it into the one we still have
nowadays.
The novel is a set of letters, articles, reports and pages of the characters’ diaries in which they told
the story of Dracula by their points of view. He is a stranger that comes to England after a sort of
trial with Jonathan Harker, a lawyer who has to go abroad and see him in Transylvania in order to
teach him English: in fact, Dracula’s aim is to go to England, since he bought a land there. Through
the different focalisations of the protagonists, there is a crescendo in their fears, since they firstly
look at him as a stranger and a fascinating person, and secondly as a source of terror, because they
learn he wants to conquer England with the help of an armada built up with all the people he could
bite and convert to vampirism.
The figure of Dracula was developed looking at a story told by a Hungarian professor whose name
was Arminius Vambéry: he met Stoker in 1890, seven years before the drafting of the novel. It was
about the legend of Dracula, so Vlad III Prince of Walachia, who lived during the 15th century and
is told to be a very cruel and terrifying ruler.
In both the literary examples I took as a proof of this will of change and development, there is the
willingness of the authors to subvert the previously described vampire in Irish folklore: they are, in
fact, beautiful and sources of fascination and attraction, while it is usually seen as a monster. This
tradition of subversion was started by John Polidori in his The Vampyre. Because of this new vision,
it is worse to see the that, under that beauty, there is terror. Nevertheless, there is a paradox in the
perception of the vampire: people change their thoughts and feelings as the story develops.
In Carmilla, Laura is profoundly attracted but also disgusted by Carmilla: on the one hand, in fact,
she is beautiful and embodies all the characteristics people usually link to a princess of a tale, such
as beauty, sophistication of manners or a beautiful voice: “She was what is called a fine looking
woman for her time of life, and must have been awesome [...]” (Le Fanu, 16); “Her murmured
words sounded like a lullaby in my ear [...]” (Le Fanu, 29). On the other hand, Laura feels a bit
frightened by her: “I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and
anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. [...]” (Le Fanu, 29).
Pole apart, in Dracula the frightening perception of the vampire is clear from the beginning, but
only through Jonathan Harker’s perspective: in fact, he writes that “His face was a strong- a very
strong aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; [...] The general
effect was one of extraordinary pallor” (Stoker, 21). He describes him in two pages dated 5 th may.
Later on, Dracula reappears described by Mina Harker’s point of view in a similar way: “He was a
very pale, and his eyes seemed bulging out [...]” (Stoker, 207), but then she adds: “His face was not
a good face: it was hard, and cruel, and sensual” (Stoker, 207), meaning that this figure embodies
both surprise and astonishment, since Jonathan is said to be “so fierce and nasty” (Stoker, 207).

The past, as the vampire in both the literary references, in my opinion, presents a double identity: on
the one hand, it is what formed you as a person, talking about code of behaviour, traditions and
religion. On the other hand, it overbearingly wants to come back and remind you that you will never
get rid of it, as it could be understood through the figures of Carmilla and Dracula.
In Carmilla, England is both a source of fascination, because Laura has never seen it, living in the
countryside, that took her to feel lonely and isolated from civilisation, embodied by England itself,
showing a desire to retain an English identity that, in some way, is also a connection with the fact
that England as an Empire has the control over foreign lands (the colonizer that still influences the
colonized). In this case, the vampire represented by Carmilla is the one that only wants his
possessions back, so the Irish part of identity. Irish people want their properties back and, in this
sense, Carmilla represents Irish people who want to go against Britain and the British Empire
(represented by Laura and her family, even if they are gradually losing their traditions) to obtain
what they lost in the past and separate from it. That’s why this figure is a sort of incarnation of
nationalism.
In Dracula, England is considered as a sort of salvation and civilisation by Jonathan Harker while
he is in Transylvania, too. On the contrary, while Jonathan is teaching him English intonation,
Dracula says: “We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your
ways” (Stoker, 25). As Senf writes, “Harker sees Dracula not only as racially and culturally other
but as representing a different way of life, an embodiment of the past. Not only does he live in a
castle, he identifies himself as a hunter and a warrior” (Senf, 63). This is an inheritance of the past,
and Patrick Brantlinger says that Dracula is “an increasing emphasis on and anxiety about the
British Empire” (Brantlinger, 153-167). The paradox is created by Van Helsing: in fact, it is him,
the only one who is not English, that saves everybody in the end, understanding the solution to their
big issue. That’s why there could be seen a double point of view of Stoker’s Anglo-Irish
ascendancy: in fact, the author seems both appreciating England as a nation and the foreign
countries which could improve it, as a sort of anti-nationalism. Dracula, in this sense, is the invader,
instead: trying to conquer England, he is the one who has to be defeated, since he represents “the
other”. In this case, Stoker does not refer to Irish nationalism, but to his English part of identity:
according to Foster, it is “the invasion by the swarthy races that were on the move, and assumed to
be hostile and alien” (Foster, 128), differently from Carmilla’s invasion.

The vampire itself could be a metaphor of the past that wants to “conquer” the present taking
possession of people, a symbiosis on them that will led to the defeat of the present. A vampire, in
order to survive, must bite other people and conquer them, in a sense. That’s why they may
symbolise a past trying to obtain repercussions on the present and to suffocate it.
It is Laura’s dead mother, however, who advises her to pay attention to a murderer: “«Your mother
warns you to beware of the assassin». At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw
Carmilla, standing, near the foot of my bed, in her white-night dress, bathed, from her chin to her
feet, in one great stain of blood.” (Le Fanu, 52). In this case, there is a huge ambiguity: the reader is
persuaded to believe that Laura is referring to Carmilla in her speech, while it is a clear reference to
the father and the patriarchal authority in Irish society, instead: he is the symbolic order of society,
which is connected with the society divided into classes that should develop and that still focuses on
classes without paying attention to the individual.
As Carol A. Senf points out, “Beginning with Stoker’s narration, it explores what frightened Stoker
and his contemporaries. Their enthusiasm for conquering new lands and people was undermined by
the fear that conquered people might retaliate. Aware that women sought economic, political and
sexual equality resulted in fear that equality would transform women into monsters, and Stoker’s
contemporaries also feared other changes in gender roles” (Senf, 56), which is a perfect explanation
of the influence played by politics and the strength of the changes in sexuality, for example.
Another key issue is the role of science: it is by means of science, in fact, that professor Van
Helsing is able to defeat Dracula (Foster, 128). Dracula is the murderer, in this case.

Gothic played a central role in both Le Fanu and Stoker. Their aim was to explain their ideas about
a society that had to change because of its excessive number of links with the past, that has to be put
apart to obtain independence or to fight against the new armies.
In this sense, the figure of the vampire is very important. The fact that a creature is almost immortal
and can see the succession of events through centuries without showing any sort of changes in his
behaviour is a clear metaphor of Ireland: time passes, but people are focused on obsolete issues
without accepting new things that could modify the present, such as science and its progress, talking
about Van Helsing in Dracula, who is able to kill the danger embodied by Dracula himself, or the
fact that the past is deadly and lethal, because it is a sort of killer, such as Laura’s father in
Carmilla, a symbol of a patriarchal society that is over the hill because of the new advent of
women, while Carmilla simply is the representation of a nation that wants to get rid of ancient
topics coming back to obtain a physical and a mental independence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brantlinger, Patrick. ‘Imperial Gothic’, in Anna Powell and Andrew Smith (eds), Teaching the
Gothic (NewYork: PalgraveMacmillan,2006), pp.153–67.
Brewster, Scott. ‘Seeing things: Gothic and the madness of interpretation’, in David Punter (ed.), A
Companion to the Gothic (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), pp. 281–92
Foster, John Wilson. “The Irish Renaissance, 1890-1940: prose in English” in Margaret Kelleher
and Philip O’Leary, The Cambridge History of Irish Literature, Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), pp 113-180
Le Fanu, Sheridan. Carmilla. A critical edition edited and with an introduction by Cathleen
Costello-Sullivan.
McCormack, W. J.. Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980; 2nd
edn, Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1991), p. 253.
Merritt, Laura. “The Dead Travel Fast”: The Gothic Politics of Irish Literature. A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Wake Forest University Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Winston-
Salem, North Carolina, May 2012)
Senf, Carol A. Bram Stoker (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2010)
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. London: Collins Classics, 2011.