Revenant

In Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla," the concept of the revenant is not merely a ghostly apparition but a specific, corporeal being that returns from the dead to plague the living. The narrative grounds this supernatural phenomenon in the local folklore of Styria, where the term "revenant" is used by the woodman to describe the source of the village's troubles. He recounts that the village was "troubled by revenants, sir; several were tracked to their graves, there detected by the usual tests, and extinguished in the usual way, by decapitation, by the stake, and by burning." This establishes the revenant as a tangible threat, subject to a known and brutal method of eradication, distinct from the more ethereal specters of other traditions.

The Revenant as Vampire

The narrative explicitly equates the revenant with the vampire, a being whose existence is sustained by a "horrible lust for living blood." The vampire is described as leading an "amphibious existence," requiring "daily renewed slumber in the grave" to maintain its waking vigor. This dual nature—a corpse that rises nightly to feed—is the defining characteristic of the revenant in the story. The vampire's condition is not a state of simple undeath but a complex, parasitic existence that mimics life while being fundamentally dependent on the life force of others. The text emphasizes that the "deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenants, is a mere melodramatic fiction," and that they instead present "the appearance of healthy life" both in the grave and in human society, making them all the more insidious.

The Revenant's Behavior and Limitations

The revenant in "Carmilla" is not a mindless monster but a cunning predator with specific behaviors and limitations. It is "prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons," and will pursue its chosen victim with "inexhaustible patience and stratagem." This predatory courtship is a key feature, as the vampire "will husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure, and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship." The narrative also notes a peculiar constraint: the vampire Mircalla seemed "limited to a name which, if not her real one, should at least reproduce, without the omission or addition of a single letter, those, as we say, anagrammatically, which compose it." This anagrammatic constraint—evident in the names Carmilla and Millarca—suggests a supernatural rule governing the revenant's identity.

The Revenant's Origin and Destruction

The story provides a specific origin for the revenant, linking it to suicide. Baron Vordenburg explains that "a person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide, under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire." This specter then visits the living in their sleep, causing them to die and, "almost invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires." This cycle of infection is how the pestilence spreads. The destruction of a revenant follows a precise legal and ritualistic procedure. The body is exhumed, a sharp stake is driven through the heart, the head is struck off, and the remains are burned. The narrative describes the exhumation of Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, where her body, "though a hundred and fifty years had passed since her funeral, were tinted with the warmth of life," and the leaden coffin "floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed." The execution is a public, judicial act, with an Imperial Commission report documenting the proceedings, underscoring the revenant as a civic threat requiring official intervention.

The Revenant's Narrative and Thematic Significance

The revenant is the engine of the plot and the source of the story's horror. It is the entity that attacks Laura in her childhood, returns as the beautiful Carmilla, and ultimately drains the life from Bertha Rheinfeldt. The concept allows Le Fanu to explore themes of forbidden desire, the corruption of innocence, and the intrusion of the monstrous into the domestic sphere. The revenant's ability to mimic life and inspire a terrible, consuming love blurs the line between the natural and the supernatural, the erotic and the deadly. The narrative's conclusion, with Laura haunted by the memory of Carmilla—"sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend"—cements the revenant as a figure of enduring psychological terror, a memory that refuses to be laid to rest even after its physical destruction.