Joseph Sheridan LeFanu's "Carmilla". The typical 19th century born criminal?

Contents

I) Introduction

II) Theories of Crime
1) The Classical Movement in Criminology
2) The Positivist Biological Movement in Criminology
a) The Born Criminal & the Degenerate
b) The Criminal Woman
c) The Prostitute
d) Lesbianism in the Victorian Age

III) Carmilla as the typical 19th-century criminal?

IV) Conclusion

V) Bibliography

I) Introduction

For centuries the myth of Vampirism has fascinated and scared people at the same time. This may be ascribed to the seductive, mysterious and dangerous nature of vampires as well as the uncertainty of their actual existence. As a matter of course, people are frightened by things they cannot define scientifically or by common sense. If they do really exist though, then what are vampires precisely? Are they supernatural creatures, monstruous animals, or simply evil and twisted criminals? People have always tried to explain wrongdoings of mankind in various different ways. In the Middle Ages the common believe was that evil forces led innocent people to commit crimes. However, during the Age of Enlightenment people began to break away from religious interpretation patterns of crime and address themselves to the task of explaining criminal behaviour with empirical facts. During the centuries after the Middle Ages several theories of criminal behaviour came into being. The classical criminologists defined criminal behaviour as a free choice of people, whereas positivist biologists were convinced of the fact that people are born with a criminal predisposition and could not affect that with their free will in any way.

This paper is dealing with one special example of vampirism, the lesbian vampire Carmilla, who seduces and kills innocent women with her „deadly eroticism“¹. Joseph Sheridan LeFanu (1814 -1873)² published this chilling vampire shortstory in 1872³, it was probably his most famous Gothic tale.

Chapter II of this paper is going to deal with the developement of the aforementioned two main criminalistic theories (the classical and the positivist theory of crime) and their principal statements, concentrating on the Criminal Woman, the Prostitute and the Lesbian.

In the next chapter the theories of the biological movement will be applied to LeFanu's shortstory about the vampire Carmilla, to determine whether she can be defined as a Born Criminal according to the Biologists of the 19th century. The term „born criminal“ was coined by Cesare Lombroso, when he discovered the features of the typical criminal man. In this paper, while examining whether Carmilla is a born criminal or not, the term will be used not only according to Lombroso's theory, but will also include some other opinions about criminal women, (criminal) features of the theory of degeneration and the reception of lesbianism in the Viktorian Age.

The last chapter provides a summary of the findings and the conclusion.

II) Theories of Crime

1) The Classical Movement in Criminology

During the Middle Ages people eludicated criminal behaviour with religious explanation patterns exclusively. They were used to blame God or the Devil and believed in whitches and other evil creatures.⁴ In general, criminal behaviour was said to be the product of supernatural forces, such as Satan. Criminals were possessed by these evil forces and therefore encouraged and seduced to commit crimes.⁵

However, people started to use empirical observations and evidence in criminal cases. The first theoretical approches arose as a result of the scientific, philosophical and political developements in the Age of Enlightenment in the late 18th and early 19th century⁶ with a group of scientists, who are known as the „classical criminologists“⁷ today. This movement was led by Cesare Beccaria in Pavia, Italien.⁸ The main statement of the classical theory is that people engage in crime when the pleasure they derive from it outweighs the pain and disadvantages associated with a possible punishment.⁹ This denotes that people are rational and autonomous human beings¹⁰, who choose to engange in crime and know exactly what they are doing, and why.

2) The Positivist Biological Movement in Criminology

With the upcoming of the positivist movement in the 18th century Criminology finally became an independent and established branch of science in the late 19th century. Positivism defines criminal behaviour as a result of uncontrollable circumstances in the world of the human being, not as a product of the human's freedom of will.¹¹

The Italian¹² positivist and bilogical school of criminology was founded¹³ by Cesare Lombroso. C. Lombroso was a Jewish physician and psychiatrist, born in 1836 in Verona.¹⁴ His theories, published in the first edition of the Criminal Man in 1876, attacked the „armchair theorizing“ of the classical criminologists and soon replaced classical theory as the dominant explanation of criminal behaviour.¹⁵ In the „Age of Reason, with its emphasis on logic and rationality - biological theories became a means of explaining irrational and immoderate behavior“¹⁶ by using positivist methods, that is drawing facts from natural laws by observation, empirical examination and induction.

Drawing on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution¹⁷ - who was the cousin of Francis Galton, a famous anthropologist and eugenist, and who invented a photography machine which would record the physiognonmic features of criminality and race¹⁸ - Lombroso argued that many criminals are primitive, „genetic throwbacks“¹⁹ in the midst of modern society. In 1862 he examined three thousand soldiers in order to find out more about the ethnic diversity of the Italian people and isolate the characteristics of this backwardness, the burden of atavism (from Latin atavus = ancestor; avus = grandfather).²⁰ C. Lombroso suspected the criminals to be of atavistic origin as their features were closely related to those of inferior primates, apes, negroes, birds of prey, snakes and other animals.²¹ This implies that their mentality and intelligence are also primitive and not adapted to the rules and expectations of modern society.²² It is this atavistic and primitive state that leads them to commit crimes.

a) The Born Criminal & the Degenerate

C. Lombroso's moment of key dicovery about the criminal took place in the winter of 1870. He had been trying to find out the anatomical features of criminals and examined the skull of the brigand Vilella using craniometry²³ when he saw the traces of the past:

„This was not merely an idea, but a revelation. At the sight of that skull, I seemed to see all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast plain under a flaming sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal - an atavistic being who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior animals. Thus were explained anatomically the enormous jaws, high cheek bones, prominent superciliary arches, solitary lines in the palms, extreme size of the orbits, handle-shaped ears found in criminals, savages and apes, insensibility to pain, extremely acute sight, tattooing, excessive idleness, love of orgies, and the irresponsible craving of evil for its own sake, the desire not only to extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its flesh and drink its blood.“²⁴

This discovery, and his many earlier examinations of criminals and non-criminals made it possible for him to make a list of traits to determine whether a person is one of these atavistic throwbacks or „born criminals“.²⁵ Some of these traits of this subspecies of men are:

1. deviation in the head size and shape
2. asymmetry of the face
3. eye defects and peculiarities
4. excessice diomensions of the jaw and cheek bones
5. ears of unusual size
6. fleshy, swollen and protruding lips
7. pouches in the cheeks like those of some animals
8. chin receding, or excessively long or short and flat, as in apes
9. abnormal dentition
10. abundance, variety and precocity of wrinkles
11. anomalies of the hair (characteristics of the opposite sex)
12.defects of the thorax, supernumerary nipples
13. inversion of sex characters in the pelvic organs
14. excessive length of arms ...²⁶

Rapists, for example, „nearly always have sparkling eyes, delicate features, and swollen lips“²⁷. In addition to that, throwbacks have sensory and functional peculiarities, including greater insensibility to pain and touch, a lack of moral sense, including an absence of reptance and remorse²⁸ and cannibalsitic instincts.²⁹ Born criminals are also said to be vengeful, impulsive and unconcearned with the welfare of other people.³⁰

A person with all the mentioned physical features would look like a stereotypical savage cavemen or an animal. C. Lombroso later recognized that not all criminals share these features and that disease, as well as environmental and social factors play an important role in the causation of crime, too. He developed the theory of degeneration.

„The degenerate was a product of diseased ancestral elements which ceased to evolve progressively and give evidence of the process of devolution, so that pathological individuals manifest rudimentary physical and menatl attributes of primitive man.“³¹

He argued that there were several different types of criminals, forming a scale leading from the born criminal to the normal individual, with the „born criminal“ making up only one third of all criminals. However, they are the most important type because their crimes are especially monstrous. The other types of criminals were minor offenders, occasional and habitual criminals.³²

b) The Criminal Woman

Joseph Sharidan Le Fanu's „`Carmilla´ demonstrates that women's lives are complex and varied. Sometimes victims of outright exploitation, woman are also powerful victimizers as well.“³³ Lombroso states that women are naturally „biologically, intellectually, and emotionally inferior to men. [Since women are on a lower evolutionary ladder and more atavistic than men, they should be more criminal by nature.] That there are fewer female than male born criminals [though] is simply another sign of women's atavism - here too they fall behind men.“³⁴

Besides, female crime is more horrible and cruel than male. It is not sufficient to murder the enemy, women want to see them suffer and enjoy their death. They commit crimes for the sake of the crime.³⁵ Women tend to perpetrate a greater variety of different crimes as well, e.g. prostitution, fraud, theft, incest, fire-raising, poisoning, murder and a lot more.³⁶ If a certain degree of intelligence is existing, womens' crimes have the tendency to be planned and performed in a very complicated and dissipated manner, as to compensate the lack of bodily strength.³⁷ Afterwards women deny their wrongdoings very consistently. Never would they admit them and so they keep on lying inconsiderately, even though all evidence proofs their guilt.³⁸

C. Lombroso authored some books about the female criminal, like The Female Offender and Criminal Woman. He describes women as extremely jealous, irritable, vindictive and unforgiving creatures without any sense of morality or empathy.³⁹ Women are also said to be acquisitive and greedy.⁴⁰

According to C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero, criminal women have an

[...]

¹ GRUDIN 1987, p.53.

² BOMARITO, p. 16

³ BOMARITO, p.22

⁴ Cf. MEIER 2005, p.14.

⁵ Cf. CULLEN 2011, p.21.

⁶ Cf. MEIER 2005, p.14.

⁷ CULLEN 2011, p. 21.

⁸ Cf. PICK, 1989, p. 112.

⁹ Cf. CULLEN 2011, p.23.

¹⁰ Cf. MEIER 2005, p.15.

¹¹ Cf. MEIER 2005, p. 16.

¹² The French positivist School of criminology sees societal reasons in criminal behaviour. See in MEIER, 2005, p.17. This paper concentrates on the Italian, biological theories of crime.

¹³ C. Lombroso might have some of his ideas from British forerunners, e.g. H. Mathew, J. Binny or J.B. Thompson, who have already talked about a criminal and degenerate type of man, Vgl. RAFTER, p. 67 However, Lombroso was the one to create criminology as a science, using empirical methods and publishing several books about it.

¹⁴ Cf. RAFTER, p. 65

¹⁵ Cf. CULLEN 2011, p.21f

¹⁶ RAFTER p.14.

¹⁷ Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) was published at the beginning of Lombroso's professional career. The Descent of Man appeared in 1871, and the Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals in 1872. See MANNHEIM 1960, p.179.

¹⁸ Cf. PICK 1989, p. 165.

¹⁹ CULLEN, 2011, p.21.

²⁰ MANNHEIM, p. 183.

²¹ Cf. CULLEN, p.30.

²² Cf. MANNHEIM, p. 183.

²³ Cf RAFTER, p. 68

²⁴ PICK 1989, p. 122

²⁵ CULLEN, p. 24.

²⁶ Cf. MANNHEIM 1960, p.186.

²⁷ RAFTER, p. 69

²⁸ Cf. MANNHEIM 1960, p.187.

²⁹ Cf. MANNHEIM 1960, p.184.

³⁰ Cf. CULLEN 2011, p.32.

³¹ MANNHEIM 1960, p. 183.

³² Cf. CULLEN 2011, p. 24, 30f

³³ KLEMENS, p. 156

³⁴ RAFTER, p. 71

³⁵ Cf. LOMBROSO & FERRERO, p. 410

³⁶ Cf. LOMBROSO & FERRERO, p. 409

³⁷ Cf. LOMBROSO & FERRERO, p. 436-439

³⁸ Cf. LOMBROSO & FERRERO, p. 440

³⁹ Cf. LOMBROSO & FERRERO, p. 412

⁴⁰ Cf. LOMBROSO & FERRERO, p. 424