The Psychology of Manipulation: Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla as the Archetypal Concept of the Predator – Victim Relationship in Contemporary Culture

Abstract

Carmilla (1872) is a cult Gothic work, an unorthodox example of Victorian prose written by the distinguished Irish ghost story writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873). In this novella, the author uses the archetypal motif of female vampirism that opposes the patriarchal concept of logic and meaning. A seemingly unusual set of circumstances in the life of the young heroine, Laura, will bring her to the very edge of a silent and imperceptible death, while the events that follow lead her to recount her experience many years later, telling a story much older than herself, both eerie and timeless. In Carmilla, the author confronts us with actions driven by passionate love, the echo of which will stretch through time, alongside the heroine’s unusual dreams and nightmares, but also with elegant social conventions and settings, such as balls, where danger takes its most seductive form.  

At the level of psychoanalytic, gender and cultural premises, and in the context of predator–victim dynamics, the paper aims to present the psychology of manipulation in contemporary culture. Thus, we place Carmilla within the broader framework of cultural studies through the interpretation of emotional/energetic manipulation, a phenomenon that continues to shape the modern dynamics of interpersonal relations. In this timeless story, the latent theme of homosexuality (specifically, female) further enriches Le Fanu’s idea, inviting a multi-layered new interpretation. The seductive and omnipresent vampire Carmilla becomes a fantastic allegory of the modern condition, where the ending’s final ambivalence paves the way for perpetual renewal—because manipulation never dies. There is something Gothic in the modern paradigm of manipulation, i.e. of what contemporary psychoanalysis defines as Cluster B personality disorders. They involve narcissistic and antisocial, as well as histrionic and borderline personality disorders. What all these disorders have in common are manipulative patterns of behavior (dramatization). As a ubiquitous phenomenon and a rising tendency, manipulation is becoming a distinctive feature of the modern era. In this paper, we look at the phenomenon through the metaphor of the predator-victim relationship. The controversial theme and ambiguity of Carmilla’s interpretation provide a compelling example of the overlap among the mentioned disorders, providing deeper insight into the complexity of human nature and ambiguity of identity.

The past as a frame of reference, combined with Gothic premises, paradoxically sharpens our understanding of manipulation as a contemporary phenomenon, making it more real and more tragic at the same time. Where will the predatory ways of our age lead us? The past placed in a causal relation with the present acquires a wider frame of reference and imposes the question of boundaries. Literary boundaries – Is Carmilla a Victorian classic or a postmodern feminist Gothic? And the wider, cultural ones – Where do the boundaries of contemporary identity lie?