26 May To Slay or Not to Slay?: Using Le Fanu’s Carmilla as a Critical Lens to Explore Repression in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, By Tamara Carnevale
Texts in the Gothic literary tradition often explore taboo subject matter, such as violence against women and same-sex desire, as a way to challenge and even sensationalize cultural anxieties, questioning and rejecting the status quo. Despite centuries between the Gothic’s peak and today, the Gothic remains a seemingly endless well for several schools of analysis in contemporary literary studies. One example is in the supernatural, a common allegory for landscapes of trauma, the mind, and systems of authority. In the case of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, an infamous Gothic tale of a lesbian vampire, focuses on female repression and agency, themes that manifests nearly one hundred years later in one of the most popular fantasy-horror television series to date: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003). Buffy pulls its titular character between two lives: that of a typical teenage girl pursuing ‘normalcy’ and that of the Slayer–– a rejuvenating call to violence for Buffy. These contrasting different worlds resonate with those in Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Le Fanu’s heroine, Laura, represents a tether to the ordinary world, and his titular vampire reflects Buffy’s more monstrous queered desires. Examining Buffy’s character alongside Le Fanu’s Gothic heroine and antagonist, the vampire tale’s legacy reflects the symbiotic connection between repression and female agency in the face of patriarchal systems.
Before delving into these texts, it is necessary to address and define the meanings and intentions behind the term “queer”. The colloquial definition of queer, referring to nonheteronormative sexuality and/or cisnormative gender, does apply to the character of Buffy, who has a same-sex relationship in the post-TV-show-canon comics, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight. However, since this information was not explicit throughout the TV series, particularly seasons one and five, which are the focus of this analysis, this essay will instead rely on an alternate definition of queer: “strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric.” (OED, “queer, adj”.), “differing in some way from what is usual or normal” (Merriam-Webster, “queer, adj.”), or to make something or someone exhibit traits and behaviours outside of the norm. Buffy’s desires throughout the series are queer because she often exists outside the hegemonic discourses around her, such as education, law and justice, and religion. Being the Slayer, a supernaturally-powered vigilante in a hidden world of magic and monsters, means that Buffy’s priorities and values differ from her normative peers’.
Buffy’s repression of her Slayer desires results from social institutions pressuring her to behave normatively. The series’ first episode begins with Buffy’s first day at school after she and her mother moved to Sunnydale for a fresh start. Already, this situation implies unfortunate circumstances that these two characters are attempting to move past; circumstances that are confirmed when Buffy’s mother, Joyce, tells her to “[t]ry not to get kicked out” as she drops her off at Sunnydale High (“Welcome to the Hellmouth” 00:04:50). Following this exchange, Buffy meets with the principal, who at first offers her “a clean slate”, tearing up her transcripts, but quickly becomes alarmed by the transcripts’ recorded incidents (00:06:08–00:06:56). Buffy attempts to defend herself, but ultimately refrains, as speaking up would require explaining the existence of vampires and her calling as the Slayer. These scenes quickly establish that Buffy’s major obstacle, which compels her to be ‘normal’ and reject her calling, is the issue of being understood and welcomed by normative culture. In a later scene, Buffy expresses this sentiment to Giles, asking him what a Watcher prepares a Slayer for: “[H]aving to spend all of my time fighting for my life and never getting to tell anyone because I might endanger them?” (00:19:10). The fear of misunderstanding, of an inability to be honest, forces Buffy to view Slaying as a communicative burden, mirroring the communicative issue Laura faces in Carmilla after being bitten as a child. Despite her subsequent and very real pain, horror, and anxiety, her father, among other adults, tells her that “[i]t was nothing but a dream…and could not hurt [her],” dismissing her experiences and causing Laura to doubt her own judgment (Le Fanu 8). As the story proceeds and Laura experiences more of the same harm, she believes her father “would laugh at [her] story” and not take her complaints seriously (Le Fanu 65). It is only near the end of the novel, when Laura is approaching her deathbed, that the authority figures in her life finally take notice of what she had been trying to tell them all along––a fate that could have been avoided had Laura not been dismissed into silencing herself. By choosing not to communicate their stressors to avoid ridicule, disbelief, or misunderstanding, both Laura and Buffy are repressed.
In terms of queered desires, Buffy’s early appearances place her in a role similar to Laura’s. She simultaneously rejects, and is drawn to, Slaying. Laura, as a character, symbolizes the rocky foundations of repressed desires, “experienc[ing] a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable [and] mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust” (Le Fanu 37) when faced with Carmilla’s affection. She “wish[es] to extricate [her]self” from Carmilla’s embraces, yet Carmilla’s “murmured words … soothe [Laura’s] resistance” (35). As Michael Davis argues in “Gothic’s Enigmatic Signifier: The Case of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’”, Laura views Carmilla as both a “‘good’ and ‘bad’ object; desired and feared” (228), creating a paradoxical and complicated emotional effect (Le Fanu 37). This push and pull of desire and revulsion mirrors itself in Buffy’s outward rejection of the Slayer calling and her simultaneous unconscious fulfillment of that calling’s duties, best represented in episode one of the series in an exchange between Buffy and Giles:
BUFFY. It’s my first day. I was afraid that I was gonna be behind in all my classes, that I wouldn’t make any friends, that I would have last month’s hair. I didn’t think there’d be vampires on campus. And I don’t care.
GILES. Then why are you here?
BUFFY. To tell you that I don’t care, which I don’t, and have now told you, so…Bye. (“Welcome to the Hellmouth” 00:16:48–00:17:14)
Giles forces Buffy to confront her paradoxical behaviour by asking why she chose to express herself to him: if she truly did not care about Slaying, she would not have expended effort to express that to Giles. She could have very easily ignored the Slayer’s calling, as she had almost convinced Giles in an earlier scene that he was incorrect in assuming she was looking for an ancient text titled ‘Vampyr’ (00:11:53–00:12:25). She inadvertently accepts her calling by returning to Giles and confirming his assumption that she is the Slayer.
Carmilla and by extension Gothic literary vampires represent a similar calling to Buffy’s as a queered desire. Buffy’s compulsion to be the Slayer is queered because it is a status that sets her apart from the normative world, associating her with Slayers as an “Othered group” (Hughes 343). In the time between season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and season five of the series, Buffy grows into her role as the Slayer, embraces her calling, and finds a balance (albeit a precarious one) between her Slayer and normative desires. However, season five introduces a new conflict that pressures Buffy to repress her Slayer desires: she has begun hunting, actively and restlessly seeking out vampires to satiate her bloodlust. Carmilla then becomes a prototype of the Slayer, as her “lust for living blood”, particularly that of a “coveted victim”, “supplies the vigour of [her] waking existence” (Le Fanu 136). The “patriarchal restrictive figures” in Laura’s life see Carmilla “as ghostly, dangerous, and to be destroyed” (Auerbach, qtd. in Wisker 227), which allegorically situates the Gothic vampire as a “disrupt[ion of] polarized systems of thought” (Wisker 225). The vampire “undermines and disempowers Western logical tendencies to construct divisive, hierarchical, oppositional structures” (Wisker 225). Vampires are also inherently queered figures, as they “[destabilize] ‘the borders of life and death,’” threatening oppositional categorization underlying hegemonic systems (Case, qtd. in Wisker 233). As the Slayer, Buffy also initially serves the “patriarchal social order,” but is rejected and ostracized for “question[ing] the social forces…of the Watchers’ Council, the militaristic force of the Initiative, and…traditional religion” (Harbin 25). Both Carmilla and Buffy, then, pose threats to patriarchal systems by expressing agency and desire, and opposing normative systems of power. In Buffy’s case, however, her desires disrupt the status quo of her life, queering them within her own (already queered) social context.
The premiere episode of Buffy’s fifth season, titled “Buffy vs. Dracula”, draws parallels between Buffy’s compulsive hunting as the Slayer and those hunting as vampires— a new point of comparison with Carmilla. Throughout the episode, Buffy asserts that her eagerness to patrol is a result of her duty as the Slayer, saying “I kinda have to get out on patrol…vamps don’t really care what time it is” (“Buffy vs. Dracula” 00:06:56). However, when the mythical Dracula arrives in Sunnydale, he emphasizes a more taboo perception of Buffy’s Slaying:
DRACULA. Very impressive hunt. Such power.
BUFFY. That was no hunt. That was just another day on the job. Care to step up for some overtime?
DRA. We’re not going to fight.
BUF. Do you know what a Slayer is?
DRA. Do you? …. You are known throughout the world …. I came to meet the renowned killer.
BUF. Yeah, I prefer the term Slayer. You know, killer just sounds so …. I’m the good guy, remember?
DRA. Perhaps, but your power is rooted in darkness. You must feel it.
BUF. No. You know what I feel? Bored. (“Buffy vs. Dracula” 00:08:12-00:10:40)
Dracula’s comparison of Slaying––which Buffy and her social group view as a wholly altruistic vocation––to killing, paints Buffy’s eagerness to Slay as socially unacceptable, especially since the Slayer is meant to oppose vampire-kind. The illicit nature of Buffy’s hunting is further reinforced by its necessary secrecy. In the episode’s opening scene, Buffy sneaks out of bed to go hunting and returns before her boyfriend, Riley, wakes. Buffy’s burgeoning bloodlust positions her once again as Othered, despite overcoming the initial social pressures that drove her to repress her Slayer desires. By season five, her Slayer desires are normal to her social group—with the caveat that she is a Slayer to protect others first, and her own personal desires come second to her vocation. This conflict demonstrates how the hegemonies Othering Buffy still exercise control over her agency. Her initial fears of being misunderstood and judged have weaselled their way back into her psyche, and in order to free herself, she must re-evaluate what it means to be a Slayer, to be monstrous, and to be Other.
The repression of queered desires plays a major role in the lives of both Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s heroines. Within the confines of hegemonic authorities, Laura’s repression of her fears lay the groundwork for Buffy’s rejection of her Slayer vocation, while Carmilla’s vampiric Otherness further establishes Buffy’s need for repression through the development and queering of her desires. In this way, the Gothic literary tradition of challenging the status quo through supernatural allegory carries into contemporary media and distills itself in Buffy’s exploration of the Other.
Works Cited
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight, no. 12, written by Drew Goddard, drawn by George Jeanty, with cover art by Jun Foster, Dark Horse Comics, 2008.
“Buffy vs Dracula.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon, written by Marti Noxon, directed by David Solomon, season 5, episode 1, Mutant Enemy, 2000. DisneyPlus, https://www.disneyplus.com/play/ea5c254c-c86e-4370-bc21-8326573ae22c.
Davis, Michael. “Gothic’s Enigmatic Signifier: The Case of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla.’” Gothic Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2004, pp. 223–35, https://doi.org/10.7227/GS.6.2.5.
Harbin, Leigh. “‘You Know You Wanna Dance’: Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Contemporary Gothic Heroine.” Studies in the Humanities (Indiana), vol. 33, no. 1, 2005, pp. 22-37.
Hughes, William. “Sexuality and the Twentieth-Century Vampire.” A Companion to American Gothic, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2013, pp. 340-52, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118608395.ch27.
Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan. Carmilla, 1872. Edited by Carmen Maria Machado, Lanternfish Press, 2019.
“Queer, Adj. (1), Sense 1.a.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, December 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1082843456.
“Queer.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/queer. Accessed 15 Feb. 2026.
“Welcome to the Hellmouth.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon, written by Matt Kiene and Joe Reinkemeyer, directed by Charles Martin Smith and Joss Whedon, season 1, episode 1, Mutant Enemy, 1997. DisneyPlus, https://www.disneyplus.com/play/ec4c4b69-41f5-4595-8e00-4cdda6810c62.
Wisker, Gina. “Love Bites: Contemporary Women’s Vampire Fictions.” A New Companion to the Gothic, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2012, pp. 224-38, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444354959.ch16.