Carmilla

“I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen the correspondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so clever and careful as his informant seems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I found that she had died in the interval.” 

The novel is purported to be an autobiographical record written by a woman named Laura.This record has been obtained from the mysterious Doctor Hesselius (who is not to be found in Laura’s story) by the writer of the prologue, who does not identify himself. Thus, the nature of the narrative is partially obscured by the uncertainty of who may be the actual narrator of the story, an uncertainty enhanced by the fact that Laura is said to be dead, and therefore can no longer be consulted as to the veracity of her record. 

“My gouvernantes had just so much control over me as you might conjecture such sage persons would have in the case of a rather spoiled girl, whose only parent allowed her pretty nearly her own way in everything.” 

Here we learn that Laura, by her own admission, is “spoiled.” One may wonder if a woman who got her “own way in everything” might be prone to exaggeration—or even complete fabrication—since she has rarely been held accountable for her actions. The passage also reveals that Madame and Mademoiselle are impotent as authority figures to Laura.

“She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly.” 

This is the moment in which Laura is first bitten by Carmilla, though it is unclear whether it happened in a dream or in real life. Since Laura is a child here, the timeline of her vampiric infection would not line up with the other cases of vampirism in the novella, which last only a couple of weeks at most.