Before Dracula, There Was Carmilla: Why the First Vampire Was a Woman

When most people think of vampires, one name dominates the imagination: Dracula.

But decades before Bram Stoker’s famous count ever opened his coffin, a very different creature haunted the pages of Gothic fiction — Carmilla, the first modern vampire and one of literature’s most subversive women.

Published in 1872, Carmilla predates Dracula by twenty-six years and reshaped the entire genre. Yet for more than a century, readers have forgotten that the original vampire of English literature wasn’t male, aristocratic, or Transylvanian.

She was a woman.
And she was dangerous in all the ways women weren’t supposed to be.

The Female Vampire Came First

In folklore, the earliest vampires were mostly female or genderless, shaped not by aristocratic decadence but by cultural fears of the female body:

• women who bled without dying,
• women whose desire defied control,
• women who lived outside the boundaries of obedience.

Anthropology tells us that menstrual blood — source of life — was once considered so powerful and unpredictable that it became a symbol of impurity and danger. In many regions, women were believed capable of “draining vitality” simply by existing outside prescribed roles.

Is it any wonder that the first vampires looked a lot like them?

Carmilla: The Vampire Who Desired

What makes Carmilla revolutionary even today is that her monstrosity isn't rooted in violence — it’s rooted in desire.

She wants.
She chooses.
She seduces.

Her hunger is emotional, physical, and spiritual.
And for Victorian society, that was far more threatening than fangs.

Did Carmilla Influence Dracula? Yes.

Bram Stoker studied Sheridan Le Fanu’s writing carefully while shaping Dracula, and scholars widely acknowledge Carmilla as one of his major influences. While Stoker built a patriarchal nightmare, Le Fanu created something far more subversive: a vampire who was not only a woman, but a lover.

Without Carmilla, Dracula would be a different creature entirely.

The Wild Feminine Returns

Today, as readers rediscover the archetypal feminine — the kind Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes about in Women Who Run With the Wolves — Carmilla stands taller than ever.

She isn’t just a feminist icon.
She is older than that.
More instinctive.
More lunar.
More dangerous.

She represents the feminine that patriarchal culture feared…
and that modern culture is hungry to reclaim.

A New Edition for a New Generation

My special edition of Carmilla brings the original novella back into the light — paired with my exclusive essay:
She Who Came Before Dracula: The First Vampire Was a Woman

In it, I explore:

• the true origins of the female vampire,
• why she was demonized,
• the myths that shaped her (Lilith, Lamia, Kali),
• the real purpose of the stake (spoiler: to pin bodies down),
• and how Carmilla survives as a symbol of the wild feminine.

If you’ve ever been told you were “too much,”
“too intense,”
or “too hungry,”
Carmilla is for you.