Speculative Fiction and Black Lesbians

Abstract

W H H EN IRISH WRITER Sheridan Le Fanu published his vampire story Carmilla in 1871, he could hardly have known he had created a classic lesbian tale in the genre of speculative fiction. In fact, neither the word lesbian nor the term speculative fiction was likely to have crossed his mind. As Dennis Altman discusses very articulately in his book The Homosexualization of America, the realization of a lesbian (or gay) group identity occurred historically only in the presence of a complex set of circumstances. The social upheaval of war, the development of technology, and the creation of municipal centers all helped to create the possibility of a lesbian or gay identity, as differentiated from individual homosexual acts. Altman suggests that such self-definition was only possible under the particular social formations of urbanization and industrialization (1982, 48). In his drawing room Le Fanu might have used any one of several Victorian terms for women who love women-Sapphists and inverts among them. But it is more likely he used none at all when in decent company or when thinking of the central relationship of Carmilla. The story is about an isolated young girl who becomes enchanted by another girl, one who visits the first girl in her dreams and who turns out to be a vampire. The affection between the two is passionate and loyal until the vampire's destruction. Carmilla seamlessly weaves together the poignancy of the relationship between adolescent girls and the mythology of vampires. The obsessive nature of youthful passion seems naturally wedded to the grand passions of an immortal. The phrase speculative fiction is used here to encompass the broad range of writing that includes science fiction and fantasy. Speculative fiction writers are as varied as writers in any genre: H. G. Wells, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Guy de Maupassant, Ursula Le Guin, and Edgar Allan Poe are a few. But what is essential is that all such writers speculate a