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Welcome to Celebrate Poe - This is episode 344 - Leaving Me Trembling

Hope you are doing well, and I will just jump right into it -

One of the most explicit passages in Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla that hints at lesbian desire, within the constraints of Victorian Gothic literature, is as follows:

"Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardor of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, 'You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.' Then she has thrown herself back in her chair, with her small hands over her eyes, leaving me trembling”.  

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