Carmilla

Laura is a young woman of nineteen during the events that she narrates, though there is an “interval of more than ten years” (31) between her documentation of these events and the events themselves, Also, earlier in her account she says that the interval is eight years (7). The reader finds in the preface that Laura has died of some unknown cause by the time of the publication of her account. Physically, she is “a beautiful young lady, with golden hair and large blue eyes,” according to Carmilla, with whom she has a mutual attraction. Laura describes herself as “spoiled” (8) and lives with her father and a few servants in a secluded castle, or “schloss,” in Styria. Her mother is long dead. Laura is lonely and expresses longing for the companionship of other girls her age, which is granted with the arrival of Carmilla, who appears to be about the same age as Laura. The formative moment of Laura’s life happened when she was around six, when Carmilla, or an apparition of Carmilla, appeared in her nursery at night and bit her on the chest with her fangs. This encounter produced a “terrible impression” on her mind (8), and the scenes of the encounter “shand out vivid as the isolated pictures of the phantasmagoria surrounded by darkness” (11).