Le Fanu: Relationship Between Carmilla And Laura

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Le Fanu uses the relationship between Carmilla and Laura to express that women have a powerful and threatening force of sexuality. Throughout the story, Carmilla manipulates Laura’s emotions by acting erotic, compelling and mysterious. Carmilla exerts a sexual force over Laura that is inexplicable and uncontrollable, which makes it extremely threatening to Laura. Carmilla’s sexual power gives her the power to attract Laura in an unfathomable way, making Laura experience both feelings of attraction and feelings of panic. Not knowing what will happen each night and not being able to explain the feelings she is feeling gives Laura a sense of anxiety throughout the book. From the moment they first encounter each other, when Carmilla came to Laura in a dream in her childhood, Laura thinks of Carmilla as a …show more content…

Although Laura is very aware of her emotions, she has little power over them, because Carmilla exerts a sexual force over Laura that she cannot control. Laura’s feeling of not being in control stems from the fact that many of her encounters with Carmilla occur while she is sleeping, where Laura is unaware of what is going on. She feels pain, stabbing, and haunting images, and Laura cannot explain these dreams. After experiencing many of these “dreams”, or the threatening nighttime encounters with Carmilla, Laura starts to lock her bedroom door and leave the light on while she sleeps in attempt to protect herself from these occurrences. “But my dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.” (Le Fanu 260) Just after Laura has taken these precautions, she experiences a “dream” full of stabbing feelings in her breast and female figures. Laura is aware that this sexual threat comes into her room that is more powerful than the measures she uses to protect

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