Theme Of Displacement In Carmilla By Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

The emergence of a distinct Irish gothic literary genre is often claimed to have stemmed from Irish Protestant social and political anxieties. Killeen cites Foster’s argument that “there is an intrinsic connection between a growing sense of Irish Anglican political and social displacement and a turn to writing gothic fiction” (Killeen 2014, 47). This theme of displacement can be examined in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and by exploring the text whilst also taking into account the context of the time we can reveal Le Fanu’s use of displacing the events of nineteenth century Ireland and instead replacing them with an eastern European vampire tale in order to portray the political events of the time through forms of “displacement and projection”

Similarly, Carmilla is caught in between the states of living and dead, “the features, though a hundred and fifty years had passed since her funeral, were tinted with the warmth of life” (Le Fanu, 92). This reoccurring theme of emotional, physical and mental limbo could be another example of Le Fanu’s use of displacement regarding the state of ‘in between’ felt by many Irish Protestants at the time. This Anglo-Irish aristocracy felt both in between Irish and English with regards to national identity and also felt caught in between the transition of changing times which brought with it an increase of power for Irish Catholics such as in municipal government (Killeen 2014 , 47), causing unease for the Anglo-Irish

This may be reflective of violent attacks carried out by Irish nationalists during the Fenian rising of 1867 and the increasing level of agrarian unrest and riots that followed the foundation of the Irish National Land League (Clark, 420) and so here there may be further evidence for Le Fanu’s use of the theme of displacement.

Killeen argues that Carmilla’s inability to walk far without feeling weak is Le Fanu’s displacement of the Irish Famine and suggests that Carmilla is a continuation of a tendency to portray the Irish Famine through the images of starving and weakened women (Killeen, 108). This suggestion that Carmilla symbolises a Catholic Irish population haunted by the famine is further implied if we take in to account the fact that Carmilla never seems to eat in the novel; “she would then take one cup of chocolate, but eat nothing” (Le Fanu, 31).

The reoccurring motif of dreams, nightmares and visions could also arguably be Le Fanu’s incorporatin of the theme of displacement in the novel. The use of dreams “collapses distinction between reality and fantasy” (Hansen, 53) and Carmilla’s appearance in Laura’s dreams implies a reference to Irish Nationalist ideology lulling the Irish people “in to dreams of Nationalist independence from England” (Robinson,