Listened to Dramatisation of ‘Carmilla’ on Radio 4 Extra tonight whilst the wind howled outside and I grappled with my piles of marking…..love the ending of the story and the trope of the portrait and masked ball….the early illustrations are of interest too as they are quite provocative for the 1870s…..I have a Valancourt books edition which has a very lively intro and interesting appendices. After this I reached it off the shelf and turned to the final pages..
‘to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to my memory with ambiguous alternations – sometimes the playful, languid beautiful girl, sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church, and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door’ (p. 85).
