Headscratchers / Carmilla

• When is the main story set? Most reviews assume that the line about the events taking place "eight years prior" refers to before 1872, the date of publication, which takes us back to the 1860s, but the text doesn't quite support that reading. Apart from vague references to fashion (the doctor who comes to see Laura when she's six is referred to as being 'powdered', a trend that ended early in the 19th century) there are only two main dates we can fix in the text.

• One comes from General Spielsdorf's recollection of the masked ball where his ward Bertha first met Carmilla/Mircalla/Marcilla. It is stated to be a magnificent affair held in honour of Grand Duke Charles of Austria, who died in 1847 aged 75. In addition, the Grand Duke is stated to have stayed up until almost dawn dancing, which is why virtually all the guests stayed. That's not exactly the behaviour of an elderly man, is it? If Grand Duke Charles is a younger man, the events of the novel could have taken place in the 1830s, perhaps even the 1820s. In fact, it could have taken place at any point after the Napoleonic Wars (no war is mentioned as taking place).

• Except, Laura states that Mircalla Karnstein was buried 150 years ago. If the 1698 portrait of her they inherited from Laura's Karnstein-descended mother was painted close to her death-date, that would mean the story would take place in the late 1840s, and Grand Duke Michael was just a very sprightly fellow indeed for a 75 year old. If the events did take place in 1846/7, then Laura's interview with Doctor Hesselius must have taken place around 1854/5 or 1855/6.

• Though, of course, that assumes that the 1698 portrait of Mircalla is of her as a living girl. Thinking about it, that's not necessarily the case, is it? She could have lived and died way before that and been painted as a vampire. Given what General Spielsberg says about the reputation of the Karnsteins it's quite possible that a later member of the family commissioned the painting of his beautiful ancestor. OTOH, since Laura evidently believes that the painting is of a living Mircalla/Carmilla, her dating of 150 years post death would mean that she's calculating from the date of the portrait, so the events have to be taking place in the late 1840s. In which case we're right back to Grand Duke Michael being a powerhouse of elderly funk like an early-Victorian Tom Jones.

• Baron Vordenberg's account of his ancestor's history with the Karnsteins basically screams Unreliable Narrator.

• His ancestor claims to have been a favoured lover of Mircalla Karnstein. That's not exactly in line with what we know from the story about Mircalla's romantic inclinations. It may have been that he was a friend, even a potential or proposed suitor, but lover? Not likely at all, except in the sense of 'someone who loved her'.

• The story of his return to Styria is just bizarre. He arrives immediately after an official purge of the vampires who had half depopulated the village, only to find that the authorities didn't get everyone. Mircalla was the only vampire whose resting place wasn't within the local churchyard, but rather the exclusive - and socially inviolate - chapel of the ruling Karnsteins, which is why her tomb wasn't disturbed. His main concerns are that she might be dishonoured if the authorities return and exhume her grave, and even worse than that, if she's killed as a vampire her soul will suffer some kind of undefined fate worse than Hell. So (and this is the unbelievable bit) he somehow convinces the head of House Karnstein to let him spirit away Mircalla's body, but instead of actually doing this, he choses to reinter her in a wall of the Karnstein family crypt, behind a stone plaque that he has embossed with her name and family crest. That... that makes no sense whatsoever.

• Also, the later Baron Vordenburg reveals that his ancestor returned to Styria specifically to hide Countess Mircalla's body as he thought it was only a matter of time before someone else figured out she'd been the victim of a vampire. He coincidentally arrives just after the authorities have unearthed and exterminated lots of vampires from the graveyard, but apparently they didn't exhume all of the graves, because former Baron Vordenburg identifies a final vampire by watching from the chapel tower to spot which grave it comes out of, steals its grave shroud, taunts it into coming after him and then chops its head off. Leaving aside the coincidence (coincidences abound in this type of literature) of his arrival, it's odd that the authorities didn't find this last vampire themselves, and even odder that vampire attacks in the area ceased even though Mircalla was still buried in the same chapel. Why did she stop rising from the grave to feed on locals?

• The description of vampiric sleeping habits given in the sections with the two Baron Vordenburgs don't seem to match up with Carmilla's own behaviour.

• It states that vampires need to sleep in their own tombs to maintain their Undead 'life' (the blood is to maintain unnatural youth and energy) and one vampire (the one Baron Vordenburg observes leaving the graveyard) can't rest again without its burial-shroud. But Carmilla, a) doesn't have a burial shroud, and b) certainly wasn't buried in the dresses she wears while living with the Spielsdorfs and Laura's family. In addition, while it's theoretically possible she could, maybe, make it to her tomb and back again while staying with Laura, the Spielsdorf estate is 17 miles away! I know die todten reiten schnell and all that, but that's a hell of a round-trip to take between dawn and 1pm every single day.