Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and John Paget’s Hungary and Transylvania: monstrosity, hybridity, and empires

This article examines how travel writing shaped cultural stereotypes, specifically focusing on how J.S. Le Fanu's Carmilla (1871–1872) portrays the Habsburg Empire. Le Fanu depicts Austria-Hungary as a chaotic, semi-barbaric state, mirroring views found in contemporary travelogues such as John Paget's Hungary and Transylvania (1839). The paper argues that Carmilla serves as a cautionary tale against cultural and racial hybridity. This narrative reflects the period's anxieties, shared by British travellers, regarding the empire's “faulty” policies and the internal instability caused by Hungarian and Slavic nationalisms. Ultimately, the novella manifests contemporary fears that such ethnic tensions posed a significant threat to the European geopolitical status quo.