Carmilla - Discussion 2 (Ch 5-9)

By goose-wind

Hi everyone! Here’s the second discussion for Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu. We’re doing chapters 5-9 today. I’ve got a few questions below, but obviously feel free to add your own thoughts / questions too. The next discussion is set for Oct 13 for Ch 10-End. You can find the full schedule here. If you want to talk about later parts before then, please use the marginalia. --- Summary ​ Chapter 5 A picture cleaner shows up at the schloss and brings up a portrait of Countess Mircalla Karnstein from 1698, who looks exactly like Carmilla (and the name is basically an anagram). Laura’s name finally gets revealed too! She really likes the portrait and wants it in her room. Carmilla and Laura go for a walk and Carmilla says she loves her again. Carmilla gets a little sick for a moment, but then seems fine again pretty quickly. ​ Chapter 6 Laura’s father asks Carmilla if she’s heard from her mother, and she says no. Carmilla says maybe she should leave, but Laura’s father tells her to stay. Later Laura walks Carmilla to her room, and Carmilla tells her about going to a ball for the first time and being wounded in the chest and “almost murdered” in bed. She calls it a weird kind of love that would have cost her life. That night Laura dreams about a dirty black animal attacking her in bed, and then she feels a sharp pain like two big needles going into her breast. She wakes up screaming and sees someone by her bed, and the figure slowly leaves the room through the locked door. When Laura checks, the door is still locked. ​ Chapter 7 Laura tells Madame and Mademoiselle what happened, and they say the long lime tree path behind Carmilla’s window is haunted and people have seen the same woman figure walking there. Carmilla comes downstairs and says she dreamed about something black coming near her bed and then waking up to a dark figure by the fireplace. The figure went away after she used her charm. Laura tells her what she saw, and Carmilla says she should use her charm too. Over the next few nights Laura gets weaker and weaker, with this heavy tired feeling. She starts thinking about death, and weirdly it doesn’t really bother her. She also has these strange dreams where she hears voices and feels touches that turn into choking. She’s getting pale and her eyes are changing, and for some reason she won’t say she’s sick or tell anyone what’s going on. One night she dreams she hears “Your mother warns you to beware of the assassin” and sees Carmilla at the foot of her bed covered in blood. She wakes everyone up because she thinks something happened to Carmilla, but Carmilla isn’t in her room. ​ Chapter 8 Laura, Madame, Mademoiselle and the servants search everywhere for Carmilla, but she’s nowhere. She comes back the next day at one in the afternoon and doesn’t seem to remember anything from the night before except waking up in the dressing room instead of her bed. Laura’s father decides Carmilla must have been sleepwalking, since she used to do that as a kid. ​ Chapter 9 Laura’s father is worried about her, so he calls a doctor. The doctor hears her symptoms and looks pretty serious about it. He talks with Laura’s father, but they don’t tell Laura what’s going on. They send for Madame and tell her to stay with Laura all the time. Laura’s father says he’s going to Karnstein and asks Laura and Madame to come with him, with Carmilla and Mademoiselle to follow later. Then they run into the General on the way, and that’s where it stops.