Deception and manipulation in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla

Abstract

Gothic literature has the study and exploration of the human mind as one of its main themes. The novel Carmilla (1872), from the Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, tackles in its narrative the artful and seductive hunt of the vampire Carmilla towards the young Laura. The objective of this study is to analyze how the character of Carmilla deceives and manipulates her victims using psychological and supernatural ways. To conduct this analysis the author relies on the theoretical framework of Botting (2013), MacAndrew (1979) and Punter (2013) about the definitions of the Gothic genre and its implications, as well as basing the notions of deceit and manipulation in Galasiński’s (2000), and Coons and Weber’s (2014) studies. The author concludes that Carmilla deceives and manipulates her victims through the use of psychological means such as lies and evasion, and also through her vampiric and supernatural powers of illusion.