“Carmilla” by Sheridan Le Fanu [Femdom Book Review]

As you probably noticed, for the last few weeks I have been focusing on autumnal or spooky stories in keeping with the season. This one isn’t a romance, rather a horror story about a young woman who realizes her best friend is actually a predatory monster, published way back in 1872. Most people already know Carmilla as a precursor to Dracula (published 20 years later), and credit it with establishing the idea of a vampire in popular fiction. It is also known for being extremely sapphic. That latter part is not subtext, but explicit text. Carmilla is extremely and intentionally gay. Since Dracula has such strong femdom elements woven into it, as well as a refreshingly feminist theme (which unfortunately later adaptations choose to discard), I wanted to see if this was Stoker’s idea or if it’s an inherent part of the Vampire mythos. Was Carmilla not just the original vampire, but the original vamp? While one could expect things to eventually go poorly for the monster by default, I was…