Gothic Auntie

Literature, folklore, and history

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  • Tea for Too Many; Drink Pairings for “The Moth Diaries” and it’s Leads

    Tea for Too Many; Drink Pairings for “The Moth Diaries” and it’s Leads

    Teenagers make ideal gothic protagonists. The intense emotions and confusing desires of adolescence align so well with the genres’ themes that the narrative practically drives itself, something Rachel Klein uses to full effect in her epistolary vampire novel The Moth Diaries.

    Set in a girls boarding school, dealing with issues from class to abuses of power, and providing the audience with a reading list that’s woven into the plot, The Moth Diaries was dark academia before we’d even defined the genre; and it remains a mystery to me that it’s not held up as one of it’s foundational texts. Because I love this book I’ve decided to create some hot drink pairings that attempt capture the experience of reading it, and hopefully encourage more people to give it a try.

    The Novel Herself — Medium Roast Black Coffee

    Told through journal entries, The Moth Diaries follows a 16 year old girl at an elite boarding school, grieving and preyed upon, as she watches her beloved room mate get sicker and sicker. Lucy’s illness develops as she draws away from the protagonist and closer to their mysterious new classmate, someone our unnamed diarist should be drawn to as a friend but sees as a rival in every sense. The insular world the girls inhabit is a repressive one, homosocial yet homophobic, with the misogyny and disregard for mental health typical of the 1970’s setting. All of this combines to lead the protagonist and her friends into a very dark, dangerous place that leaves everyone, reader included, questioning reality in the aftermath.

    Most of the girls, including our protagonist, idealise the literature and cigarettes lifestyle associated with countercultural thinkers and French literary circles, making black coffee the obvious choice. Beyond character aesthetics black coffee also aligns well with the experience of reading the novel; dark, rich, stimulating but bitter, enjoyable but not exactly pleasant. There’s no joy or comfort in this book, but that’s also not why you’ve chosen to read it.

    The Diarist — Strong, Dark Roast Black Coffee

    The diarist’s drink is also black coffee, partly because she’s fully committed to that intellectual aesthetic and partly because it reflects her emotional state. The diarist is deeply depressed, to the point that she’s internalised that depression as part of her personality, and the bitterness of the dark roast coffee uncut by cream or sugar reflects that. The jittery feeling very strong coffee can induce mirrors the sleeplessness and anxiety she’s feeling as the events unfold in a safely muted form that enhances immersion as you’re reading.

    Lucy — Vanilla and Chamomile with Honey

    Unlike most of her friends Lucy isn’t particularly interested in emulating 19th century French authors and philosophers, she’s much more rooted in the now, in interpersonal relationships and life outside of academia. She’s also a warm, comforting presence in the diarist’s life until she loses her, a person who feels like golden sunlight and ease until it all goes wrong. Her tea is a caffeine free vanilla and chamomile with some honey added for sweetness, both because sweetness, relaxation, and pleasure are qualities tied to her and because chamomile is a sleep aid, reflecting her fate as the novel progresses.

    Ernessa — Early Grey, Black, no Sugar

    The diarist’s foil, Lucy’s love, possible vampire. Ernessa has a classic, elegant, timeless quality that Earl Grey embodies. The faint bitterness of it drunk black, the caffeine boost from the black tea leaves, and the perfumed edge from the citrus peel, something that can feel unsettling when unfamiliar, all capture her essence, the feel of her presence in the diarist’s world. It’s a type of historic elegance and poise the diarist envies, while uncomfortable and unsettled by it at the same time, and the more delicate effects of the tea compared to the protagonists coffee reflects her sense of inadequacy when compared to Ernessa.

  • Gothic Heroines as College Roommates

    Gothic Heroines as College Roommates

    Most gothic heroines would have a much better time of it in the present, but whether they’d have a similarly positive effect on the people around them is another matter entirely.

    Catherine Earnshaw

    You can’t tell if that boy’s her brother or her lover, troublingly you’re starting to suspect that the answer might be both, but whatever this toxic drama is that’s playing out between them you’re a little worried that somebody’s going to wind up dead before the end of semester.

    On the other hand you did hear that if a student dies all their classmates automatically pass the year, so maybe you’re starting to root for it. It’s certainly hard enough to get any studying done when you’re constantly being sexiled by these two, and if you hear him screaming her name under the window one more time at night you’re going to drop a brick on his head.

    Christine Daaé

    At first you thought rooming with another music student would be nice. You could practice together, help each other prep for auditions, have someone around who’d get it instead of asking you how you thought you were ever going to get a real job with a degree like that. Sure she was always talking about angels, but you just thought she was religious, and that maybe there was a bit of a language barrier which was why it always sounded kind of weird (you don’t know what she was trying to say but there’s no way she meant that her guardian angel was literally in the walls).

    Then you got cast as the lead in the summer musical and she ended up as your understudy. She wasn’t even mean about it! She genuinely seemed excited for you, right up until the freak accident with the stage light that broke your leg. You can’t prove that it was her, and her look of shocked terror when the incident happened proves she’s a significantly better actress than you’d thought, but still, you’re definitely transferring across the country next year.

    Jane Eyre

    Possibly the perfect room mate, at least on paper, Jane is hard working, helpful, and always keeps her half of the room neat. Very neat. Extremely neat. You suspect she’s about ten seconds away from going postal, or handing the RA a neatly handwritten little book containing all the infractions you and your floor mates have gotten away with so far. Maybe that’s unfair, as far as you know she hasn’t snitched on anyone yet (and to be fair, there’s a lot she could snitch on), but her fiery eyed speeches on morality are down right unsettling and absolutely kill the vibe. You’d rather have her as a friend than an enemy, you saw how she winged that frat boy with a biology textbook the other day, but you didn’t go all the way across the country for college to have to sneak past a smaller, scarier version of your mother just to have some fun.

    Laura

    You desperately need her to notice that she and Carmilla are dating. Or for Carmilla to say something about it other than increasingly obvious poetry that’s still somehow going over Laura’s head. “I live in your warm life,” Carmilla says, only for Laura to ask you later if you think Carmilla’s in love with some guy while trying her hardest not to sound jealous. The whole thing has become a Sapphic comedy of errors of Shakespearean proportions and you’re really trying to focus on midterms here.

    Also you’re pretty sure she’s suffering from sleep paralysis or something, because the other night she woke up shouting about a giant black cat in the room. She should maybe talk to someone about that. Maybe you’ll get a single next year.

    Lucy Westenra

    You really need her to stop opening the window after you’ve gone to sleep. It can’t be helping that serious case of fresher’s flu she’s come down with, and now its starting to look like she’s passed it on to you as well. Hell, maybe its mono? You’ve been so tired lately, and you’ve certainly never had a sore throat like this before.

    Maxim’s girlfriend

    Look that sounds terrible but she genuinely hasn’t told you her name and at this point it would be weird to ask. You do know her boyfriend though, because he’s the TA for the English Literature class you’re taking together. Weird and inappropriate? Yes, but he’s also always buying the two of you beer and food that’s significantly nicer than the cafeteria plan, and apparently his family own a mansion upstate so maybe she’s on to something there.

    You’re also way too familiar with his ex girlfriend’s name. Boy does your roomie talk about Rebecca a lot for someone whose never even met her. The other night you caught her Instagram stalking the girl all the way back to 2020 with a Vinted tab open beside it. In fairness she didn’t have to go back that far to get there because it seems to be an old account, and the two of you can’t find the one she’s using now no matter how hard you look. (You know you shouldn’t be encouraging this but at this point you’re invested in the drama). It makes sense though, because if you were Rebecca you too would have locked down your social media too and vanished off the face of the earth.

    Mina Harker

    Actually the perfect roommate, Mina is kind, tidy, and helpful, without any of the terrifying repressed rage Jane has burning in her eyes. If you’re struggling with a subject she’ll tutor you, if your life falls apart at 2am she’ll be there with spreadsheets and a cup of tea to sort it all out again. Even her boyfriend’s completely unobjectionable, which is saying something at this university full of brooding wind swept men. At this rate you might even join them when they go railroading around Eastern Europe this summer (she loves trains that one), it’ll be the adventure of a life time!

  • Return to “A Mirror of the Graces” as I Count Backward from Ten

    Return to “A Mirror of the Graces” as I Count Backward from Ten

    Part two! Are you excited? I’m excited. I’m starting to find it funny now that I’m sharing it with you. We’re heading into the chapter entitled “On the Female Form” and just like Hildegard of Bingen I’m wondering if our dear Lady has some repressed feelings going with the way she’s cataloguing types of female beauty. There’s also a lot of classical allusions going on. A lot.

    “In one youthful figure, we see the lineaments of a wood-nymph; a form slight and elastic in all its parts. The shape,

    “Small by degrees, and beautifully less,
    From the soft bosom to the tender waist!”

    A foot light as that of her whose flying step scarcely brushed the “unbending corn;” and limbs, whose agile grace moved in gay harmony with the turns of her swan-like neck and sparkling eyes.

    Another fair one appears with the chastened dignity of a vestal. Her proportions are of a less aërial outline. As she draws near, we perceive that the contour of her figure is on a broader and less flexible scale than that of her more ethereal sister. Euphrosyne speaks in the one, Melpomene in the other.”

    She goes on like this for a while.

    “The general characteristics of youth, are meek dignity, chastened sportiveness, and gentle seriousness. Middle age has the privilege of preserving, unaltered, the graceful majesty and tender gravity which may have marked its earlier years. But the gay manners of the comic muse must, in the advance of life, be discreetly softened down into little more than cheerful amenity. Time marches on, and another change takes place. Amiable as the former characteristics may be, they must give way to the sober, the venerable aspect with which age, experience, and “a soul commercing with the skies,” ought to adorn the silver hairs of the Christian matron.”

    Shan’t.

    I mean aside from the utter pretentiousness it’s not any different from the things people say about dressing your age even now. But you can pry my glitter eye shadow from my wizened crone hands.

    “Virgin, bridal Beauty, when she arrays herself with taste, obeys an end of her creation — that of increasing her charms in the eyes of some virtuous lover, or the husband of her bosom. She is approved. But when the wrinkled fair, the hoary-headed matron, attempts to equip herself for conquest, to awaken sentiments which, when the bloom on her cheek has disappeared, her rouge can never recall; and, despite of all her efforts, we can perceive “memento mori” written on her face, then we cannot but deride her folly, or, in pity, counsel her rather to seek for charms, the mental graces of Madame de Sevigné, than the meretricious arts of Ninon de l’Enclos.”

    Repulsive. Culturally normative, obviously, but repulsive all the same.

    John William Waterhouse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    “A strange kind of art, a sort of sorcery, is prescribed by tradition, and in books, in the form of cosmetics, &c., to preserve female charms in perpetual youth. But I fear that, until these composts can be concocted in Medea’s caldron, they will never have any better effect than exercising the faith and patience of the credulous dupes, who expect to find the elixir vitæ in any mixture under heaven.”

    Genuinely hilarious phrasing even if it is horrible. It’s not that she’s entirely wrong; most of the anti-ageing products available in her era were actively poisonous, leaving their users with everything from horrible rashes to neurological damage and death. Just the sheer contempt for women trying to preserve the thing they’re primarily valued for, that they’ve been indoctrinated from birth to fixate on. It’s entirely on brand for her, though I’ve heard she changed her mind on makeup et al once she started ageing herself.

    “The secret of preserving beauty lies in three things, — temperance, exercise, and cleanliness. — From these few heads, I hope much good instruction may be deduced. Temperance includes moderation at table, and in the enjoyment of what the world calls pleasure. A young beauty, were she fair as Hebe, and elegant as the Goddess of Love herself, would soon lose these charms by a course of inordinate eating, drinking, and late hours.”

    This sounds harmless enough but she’s about to dive into disordered eating 101. It’s mostly orthorexia but there’s also aspects of restriction in there too, it’s very nineties and oughts diet culture at it’s worst with elements of pleasure is sin and sin makes you ugly mixed in.

    “But, when I speak of inordinate eating, &c., I do not mean feasting like a glutton, or drinking to intoxication. My objection is not more against the quantity than the quality of the dishes which constitute the usual repast of women of fashion. Their breakfasts not only set forth tea and coffee, but chocolate, and hot bread and butter.”

    Not hot bread. Imagine eating an actual food for breakfast instead of just liquid caffeine. The horror. She then goes on to make a good point about how skipping lunch is a bad idea but walks back the only common sense she’s shown by scolding women for eating rich, flavoursome food and drinking anything other than plain water. That and staying up late and attending social functions will make you ugly.

    “Young Ladies at Home”, Henry Moses 1823

    “This delightful and delicate Oriental fashion is now, I am happy to say, prevalent almost all over the continent.”

    Bathing. She’s talking about bathing regularly. I cannot express how embarrassed I am on behalf of my ancestors. Culturally appropriating basic hygiene. Good gods. Bad enough we weren’t doing it ourselves to begin with, now we’ve got to be weird about the people who modelled it.

    “Every house of every nobleman or gentleman, in every nation under the sun, excepting Britain, possesses one of those genial friends to cleanliness and comfort. The generality of English ladies seem to be ignorant of the use of any bath larger than a wash-hand basin.”

    Absolute embarrassment. For once I’m with the Lady. Rinse them ma’am. Possibly literally.

    “It may be remarked, en passant, that rubbing of the skin in the bath is an excellent substitute for exercise, when that is impracticable out-of-doors.”

    And we’re back to our regularly scheduled nonsense.

    “I beseech you, therefore, as you value the preservation of your charms, to resist the dominion of this rude despoiler, to foster and encourage the feelings of kindliness and good-humor, and to repress every emotion of a contrary character.”

    Emotions make you ugly folks. Sorry, emotions that aren’t convenient for other people, mostly men, are inconvenient. God forbid a woman experience anger, “The first emotions of anger are apparent to the most superficial observer. Every indulgence in its paroxysms, both adds strength to its authority, and engraves its history in deeper relief on the forehead of its votaries.”

    Alright that’s the end of “On the Female Form.” I’m going to leave you here, with just one chapter for this instalment, because I think that’s quite enough for now. It is interesting how many modern parallels there are in her work to modern, misogynistic women’s magazine articles. Some of the things in this book read like paraphrased entries from the glossy magazines of my own oughts adolescence. Anyway until next time, when we dive into “The same subject, of female beauty, more explicitly considered.” She’s definitely going to be normal about this. Cannot wait.

  • Where to Read the Complete Works of the Brontë Sisters for Free

    The Brontë sisters made an indelible mark on the gothic genre, creating a small library’s worth of work’s between them. While Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are ubiquitous, Ann Brontë’s and much of Charlotte’s work are significantly more obscure and harder to find – and physical copies can be expensive as a result. However, as with much classic gothic fiction, the fact that their work is well out of copyright means that most of it can be found online for free, and so I’ve created this directory to help you locate and read them for yourselves.

    Though not everything the sisters wrote falls within the gothic genre I believe their other writing, including ephemera like personal correspondence, provides valuable context for their work that does and so I have included as much as possible of that here as well.

    While there are a lot of helpful sites publishing out of copyright works online sometimes these websites do get taken down, either by the creator themselves or because of external challenges to the website. If any of the links are broken please let me know and I’ll try and find a replacement. Similarly if there’s anything missing off this list and you know where it can be found online then I’d love to know so I can add it.

    Emily Brontë

    Emily only wrote one book and it’s one of the most iconic gothic novels. Wuthering Heights is a gothic romance, one of the few categories of romance that doesn’t require a happily ever after, and Emily delivered that absence with gusto. A book whose primary relationship has been lovingly summarised as “we can make each other worse” by countless tumblr users, Wuthering Heights explores all the ways love can be selfish and cruel instead of improving, as well as the oppressive and cruel social dynamics that lead to a people becoming that way.

    Wuthering Heights can be read here at Project Gutenberg or here on a dedicated website that also provides helpful notes about the novel. It can be listened to here.

    Charlotte Brontë

    The most prolific of the sisters, Charlotte wrote another of the iconic gothic romances, Jane Eyre, which is where most people’s knowledge of her corpus stops. However, Charlotte’s work spans genres, ranging from romance to the social novel.

    Novels

    Jane Eyre, the archetypal gothic governess, is a gothic romance with an ostensibly happy ending. I have questions about that myself (which you can read about here) but regardless; Jane Eyre balances supernatural elements with psychological horror with a whole heaping helping of social criticism layered in. It can be read here at Project Gutenberg, or here at standard ebooks, or listened to in audiobook form here.

    Villette shares some of the base materials of Jane Eyre, a penniless young woman forced to make her way as an educator, coming up against social prejudices and the restrictions placed on women. It’s a more complex book, and one that leans more heavily on social issues than romance or the supernatural, but still has it’s own gothic thrills. It can be read here, or here, or listened to in audiobook form here.

    Shirley is a social novel dealing with the impact of the Napoleonic wars and Industrial Revolution on the Northern industrial towns as well as the familiar topics of gender roles, relationships, and the precarious positions they left women in. It can be read here, or here, or listened to in audiobook form here.

    The Professor is a romance novel inspired by Charlotte’s own time spent teaching in Brussels. It’s told from the perspective of a well educated but pennyless man who, despite poor treatment by wealthy family and employers, is eventually able to marry the woman he loves and build a comfortable life with her. The Professor has a lot of the same themes of classism, exploitation, and familial maltreatment as Jane Eyre, as well as some anti-Catholic sentiment, and was actually written earlier though it wasn’t published until after Charlotte’s death. It can be read here, or here, or listened to in audiobook form here.

    Emma is Charlotte’s last, unfinished novel, about a child who arrives at a boarding school under a false identity. Several authors have attempted to finish the novel, however Charlotte only left us twenty pages in two chapters. It can be read here or here, or listened to here.

    Short Stories and Novellas

    Charlotte wrote a number of short stories and novellas in multiple genres. Unfortunately I have note been able to track down all of them, and if you know of one that I’ve missed and where it can be read online please let me know so I can include it on the list.

    The Search After Happiness is an allegorical fantasy written for children, featuring two friends, discontent with their lives embarking onto a quest into the wilderness where they live in a cave. After one goes missing the other returns to society, where after a journey that allows him to reintegrate himself he finds his missing friend. It can be read here

    The Twelve Adventurers is a collection of short stories written during Charlotte’s childhood about a group of men questing through a magical land. It can be read here and here.

    The Green Dwarf, a short gothic fantasy in one of Brontë’s original second world settings, filled with classic gothic romance tropes against a political and military backdrop. It can be read here or here (thirty day free trial).

    The Spell is set in another of those fantasy kingdoms and follows the political intrigue surrounding the death of an heir. It can be read here.

    Tales of the Islanders saw Charlotte collect and collate into story form the adventures of her brother Bramwell’s twelve toy soldiers developed through play between the four of them.

    Tales of Angria is a collection of short stories about the aristocracy of Charlotte and Bramwell’s imaginary kingdom Angria. It can be read here (free thirty day trial).

    Mina Laury is an Angrian story exploring love and relationship dynamics through the relationship between a Duke and his mistress. It can be read here.

    The Secret contains six stories (one named The Secret) set in another of Charlotte’s fantasy cities. It can be read here.

    Stancliffe’s Hotel is one of the final Angrian stories, in which Charlotte rounds off a lot of the characters story arc. It can be read here.

    Anne Brontë

    The youngest of the sisters, Anne’s work was more sombre and less fantastical, producing social novels rather than gothic works.

    Novels

    Agnes Grey tells the story of a governess whose early life mirror’s Anne’s own. Considered an early feminist work Agnes Grey explores the precariousness position governesses and women in general found themselves in, as well as the abuse they often suffer as a result. It can be read here and here.

    The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is another early feminist work, this time dealing with marital abuse and the dangerous power imbalance that marriage imposed on women. Deeply shocking for the time as it featured a heroine breaking both law and social convention to support herself independently and protect her son from his father, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall resonated with suffragists and women’s right advocates. It can be read here and here.

    Poetry

    Published under the same male pseudonyms, Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne) Bell, as their early fiction the Brontë sisters wrote a collection of poetry, which can be read here or here, or listened to here.

    Richard Coeur de Lion and Blondel by Charlotte Brontë are a pair of poems from the perspective of the captive Richard and his faithful minstrel Blondel and can be read here.

    Ephemera

    Charlotte Brontë’s letters can be read here.

    Collected letters of the sisters and extracts from contemporary biographers can be read here.

    If you want to get yourself a physical copy of any of these I have put together a reading list on bookshop.org, so you’d be helping me and an independent bookshop if you chose to purchase from there.

    Similarly my Kofi is here if you found this list useful and want to feed my coffee habit.

  • Extracts from “The Mirror of the Graces” Very Much With Commentary

    Extracts from “The Mirror of the Graces” Very Much With Commentary

    I’ve been doing research into what the daily lives of historic gothic heroines might have looked like in those rare periods of stability when they weren’t running from castles or finding extra wives hidden in the attic. Part of this has involved reading “The Mirror of the Graces”, a 19th century guidebook on how to groom, dress, and conduct yourself like An Appropriate Young Lady tm, and let me tell you, it has been an experience. Originally I hadn’t planned on writing anything specific about this one book but in order to keep my sanity as I continue to wade through it I’ve decided to share some particular extracts with you. This may end up being a part one. We’ll see.

    God wants you to get dressed up. But not too much.

    Is this the correct amount of bonnet? Think carefully, your immortal soul depends on it.

    I’m only on the introduction. But it’s a long introduction. In which our Lady of Distinction references such luminaries as Dr. Knox (the famously woman hating Dr. Knox of Calvinist fame? Unclear) to justify her claim that God actually wants women specifically to be exactly the right amount of fashionable and pretty.

    “God created the body, not only for usefulness, but adorned it with loveliness; and what he has made so pleasing, shall we disesteem, and refuse to apply to its admirable destination? — The very approving and innocent complacency we all feel in the contemplation of beauty, whether it be that of a landscape or of a flower, is a sufficient witness that the pleasure which pervades our hearts at the sight of human charms, was planted there by the Divine Framer of all things, as a principle of delight and social attraction. To this end, then, I seek to turn your attention, my fair countrywomen, upon YOURSELVES! — not only to the cultivation of your minds, but to maintain in its intended station that inferior part of yourselves, which mistaken gravity would, on the one hand, lead you to neglect as altogether worthless; and vanity, on the other, incline you too much to cherish, and egregiously to over-value.”

    Really she’s doing everyone a public service by writing this book. She says so herself.

    “Mothers, perhaps, (those estimable mothers who value the souls as the better parts of their daughters,) may start at such a text. But I call them to recollect, that it is “good all things should be in order!” This is a period when absurdity, bad taste, shamelessness, and self-interest, in the shapes of tire-men and tire-women, have arranged themselves in close siege around the beauty, and even chastity, of your daughters; and to preserve these graces in their original purity, I, a woman of virtue and a Christian, do not think it beneath my dignity to lift my pen.”

    Women, and their clothing, are responsible for mens’ behaviour.

    It wasn’t an uncommon opinion for the time.

    “ Having been a traveller in my youth, whilst visiting foreign courts with my husband, on an errand connected with the general welfare of nations, I could not overlook the influence which the women of every country hold over the morals and happiness of the opposite sex in every rank and degree.

    Fine taste in apparel I have ever seen the companion of pure morals, whilst a licentious style of dress was as certainly the token of the like laxity in manners and conduct. To correct this dangerous fashion, ought to be the study and attempt of every mother — of every daughter — of every woman.”

    I’m still in the introduction. I am very tired.

    The author is an Ancient Greek-aboo

    To be fair she wasn’t the only one (image from Costume Parisien 1799)

    “But even at that period, when the east and south laid their decorating riches at the feet of woman, we see, by the sculpture yet remaining to us, that the dames of Greece (the then exemplars of the world) were true to the simple laws of just taste. The amply-folding robe, cast round the harmonious form; the modest clasp and zone on the bosom; the braided hair, or the veiled head; these were the fashions alike of the wife of a Phocion, and the mistress of an Alcibiades. A chastened taste ruled at their toilets; and from that hour to this, the forms and modes of Greece have been those of the poet, the sculptor, and the painter.”

    To be fair everyone in the West was something of a Classics-aboo at this point, but I do think she takes it a little far even compared to her peers. The entire second chapter is a mix of this and scathing diatribes about the ills of other eras’ and regions’ fashions.

    “Thence, by a natural descent, have we the iron boddice, stiff farthingale, and spiral coiffure, of the middle ages. The courts of Charlemagne, of our Edwards, Henries, and Elizabeth, all exhibit the figures of women as if in a state of siege. Such lines of circumvallation and outworks; such impregnable bulwarks of whale-bone, wood, and steel; such impassable mazes of gold, silver, silk, and furbelows, met a man’s view, that, before he had time to guess it was a woman that he saw, she had passed from his sight; and he only formed a vague wish on the subject, by hearing, from an interested father or brother, that the moving castle was one of the softer sex.”

    I don’t actually have a complaint about that section. I think it’s hilarious.

    “But it was not till the accession of the House of Brunswick, that it was finally exploded, and gave way by degrees to the ancient mode of female fortification, by introducing the hideous Parisian fashion of hoops, buckram stays, waists to the hips, screwed to the circumference of a wasp, brocaded silks stiff with gold, shoes with heels so high as to set the wearer on her toes; and heads, for quantity of false hair, either horse or human, and height to outweigh, and perhaps outreach, the Tower of Babel!”

    The anti-monarchist French satirists would have agreed. I suspect knowing this fact would have given her a heart attack.

    “The health-destroying boddice was laid aside; brocades and whale-bone disappeared; and the easy shape and flowing drapery again resumed the rights of nature and of grace.”

    This I find interesting because it’s anti-corset sentiment pre-dating the Victorian era and the various dress reform movements it spawned. There’s a perception that corset hatred is entirely a product of Victorian dress reform movements and modern Hollywood misrepresentation, but clearly it was a normative enough opinion in the Regency era that women like our dear Lady here felt confident publishing it for all to see.

    I think I’m going to stop here for now as this is getting long. I’ve only finished the second chapter though, so there’s definitely going to be a part two.

  • Where to find the Classic Gothic Vampire Novels Online for Free

    Did you know that a good deal of the classic gothic novels and short stories are now available for free on various parts of the internet? This is perfectly legal, they’re out of copyright now, and extremely convenient when you’re trying to get at the rarer ones. Back in my daaaaay in the oughts you had to order them from print on demand companies for stupid prices and sometimes wouldn’t be able to get hold of them even then. So if you’re looking to read your way through the canon without spending a whole lot of money I have you covered. Here I’ve collected together some of the early, genre defining vampire novels from the 19th century. If there’s anything you’d add to this list please feel free to tell me so I can update it.

    Dracula

    Obviously there’s the brilliant Dracula Daily, where they email you the chunk of the novel set on that date but if you want access to the whole novel at once Project Gutenberg have it available in various formats here; Dracula by Bram Stoker | Project Gutenberg

    Carmilla

    Project Gutenberg have you covered here too; https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10007/10007-h/10007-h.htm

    Polidori’s “The Vampyre”

    The short story that started it all can be read here, in multiple different formats; https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6087

    “Wake not the Dead” by Johan Ludwick Tien

    An early vampire tale that inspired Byron in his unfinished vampire story (that Polidori then adapted into a scathing critique of the man himself); https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606821h.html

    Varney the Vampire

    Published in Penny Dreadful form, of uncertain authorship; https://gutenberg.org/files/14833/14833-h/14833-h.htm

  • Where to Start With the Classic Gothic Novels?

    Gothic literature has a timeless appeal. As long as people are horrible to each other in grand, sweeping ways, as long as there are unbalanced power dynamics and people willing to exploit them, as long as people decide to psychologically torture each other instead of going to therapy, gothic literature will be there — offering catharsis, or at least, to make the horrors sexy.

    Maybe you find yourself with a sudden need for that catharsis. Maybe you’ve recently encountered the gothic and it’s ignited something feral and greedy inside you. Maybe you’re already a fan of more recent gothic works and looking for a deeper understanding of the genre as a whole. Whatever brought you here, one of these novels will be the right one to start your descent into gothic literature’s early depths — and I’ve included links on where to read them for free at the bottom of the post.

    “The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole

    The original gothic novel, if you want to understand the origins of the genre then The Castle of Otranto is the place to start. It does have the benefit of being a pretty fast read, however…

    It’s also an objectively bad novel. The pacing is erratic, the plot is full of holes, and its genuinely hard to believe Walpole had ever so much as spoken to a woman in his life just going off the way he wrote his female characters. Its still worth reading because of its impact on later work, and so you can understand the references other author’s both in and outside of the genre make to it, but its a disaster of a book. On the other hand it’s a fairly entertaining disaster, in the deliberately watching a bad movie sort of way; especially if you make it a group activity and take it in turns to read it out loud with a group of equally unfamiliar friends.

    “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte

    Often recommended to teenagers, Jane Eyre is one of the most accessible of the early gothic novels, so if you tend to struggle with the prose in older works she’s a great entry point to the genre. One of the most influential of the gothic romances, Jane Eyre established the figure of the governess as an archetypal gothic heroine. Filled with familiar gothic tropes like the brooding hero, mist filled countryside, and looming, isolated mansions, the story manages to be surprising (at least, if you haven’t had it spoilered for you) and is a pretty enjoyable read.

    “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte

    Wuthering Heights genuinely has something for everyone. There’s romance, tragedy, horror, analysis of oppressive social structures, drama, and the gloriously gloomy scenery of the moors standing behind it all. No-one in this book is remotely likeable, so if you’re someone who needs a relatable protagonist, or at least one you don’t want to strangle, this probably isn’t the place to start. However, if you’re someone who lives for the drama, and watching two people commit to making each other worse is your idea of a good time, then this is the one for you.

    Be warned though; animal cruelty and domestic violence feature, so if those are topics you don’t want to engage with you might want to avoid.

    “The Phantom of the Opera” by Gaston LeRoux

    This might be a great entry point for fans of the musical. I say might because in my experience there’s a fifty fifty chance they’ll absolutely love or utterly hate the book, and the same goes for book fans encountering the musical for the first time. Still, it’s got the lush, romantic aesthetics and grimy reality of the Parisian opera, intense psychological horror, and a truly terrifying villain. The overall vibes are histrionic, in an entirely enjoyable way, and the plot has twists you won’t see coming even if you are intimately familiar with the musical. The Phantom of the Opera is a great gothic starting point for readers who generally lean towards horror, enjoy social history, or fantasise about being a 18th century artistic type in France.

    “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley

    If you’re someone who enjoys science-fiction, existential questions about the nature of humanity, and monster as metaphor for man’s own monstrosity, then Mary Shelley’s genre spanning opus is for you. A novel that leans hard toward the horror and away from the romance in gothic fiction, I didn’t find Frankenstein frightening when I read it, just incredibly, incredibly sad. It’s definitely horrifying, but not in the jump scare sleeping with the lights on way, at least in my experience. It may make you sit with uncomfortable philosophical questions in the middle of the night, which is it’s own sort of horror I suppose.

    The above links are bookshop.org affiliate links, so if you purchase through them you’ll be helping me and my favourite small local bookshop. Because these novels are all out of copyright however they can also be read easily online for free at the links below;

    The Castle of Otranto

    Jane Eyre

    Wuthering Heights

    The Phantom of the Opera

    Frankenstein

  • A Gothic Literature Playlist

    Glastonbury Abbey

    I was listening to Can’t Catch Me Now from the newest Hunger Games movie and was struck by how gothic it is. Not in the musical sense, though it’s resemblance to traditional murder ballads does place it in the same family tree, but because of how well it conforms to gothic narratives and archetypes in storytelling.

    Like the brutally present Rebecca the singer is made inescapable by her absence, permeating every facet of a life without her in it. In the book it’s left unclear if Lucy Gray Baird survived, or if Snow himself even knows the answer to that, and all three possibilities present a sort of choose your own gothic epilogue for listeners familiar with the story; is he haunted by the ghost of the woman he loved and killed, is she Bertha Rochester freed from the attic, coming when he least expects it, or does he even know which literary nightmare he’s living? For those without the original context informing their interpretation of the song the gothic possibilities are more open, and nebulous; all that’s certain is a mixture of loathing and passion, that ended in violence, and her presence like a curse even if she’s not really there.

    I love narrative songs, especially if that narrative can be repurposed and fleshed out in different ways, to tell different but archetypically similar stories. It’s an easy way to help yourself break through a writer’s block, and also just fun to daydream with on the bus. But realising the gothic elements of Can’t Catch Me Now got me thinking about other non-gothic (musically) songs that contain gothic (literary) narratives and themes, and I decided to put together a playlist. This is what I have so far, and I’d really like to know your thoughts on it, and what you’d add to it yourselves. (Obviously there’s Kate Bush’ Wuthering Heights, but I think putting songs directly inspired by specific gothic works is cheating a little bit).

    1. The Last Beautiful Thing I Saw — Paris Paloma
    2. The Traitor — Leonard Cohen
    3. Betsy Bell and Mary Gray (it’s a traditional folk song but I recommend the Steeleye Span version)
    4. Blood Brothers — Iron Maiden
    5. River Lea — Adele
    6. Bones — Little Big Town
    7. You’ve Haunted Me All My Life — Death Cab for Cutie
    8. Black Sun — Death Cab for Cutie
    9. Ghost — Indigo Girls
    10. Dead Hearts — Stars
    11. The Doll People — Sofia Isella

  • The Grim Origins of The Girl With the Green Ribbon

    You’ve likely come across the story of the girl whose head is held on with a ribbon at some point in your journey as a horror fan, but what if I told you it has surprisingly dark origins? The roots of this tale go back to the French Revolution, and the urban legends and folklore that sprang up around Madame la Guillotine.

    Alvin Schwarz’s version of the story, The Girl with the Green Ribbon, from the children’s anthology In a Dark, Dark Room, is the one most people are familiar with. In it childhood sweethearts Alfred and Jenny, who always has a green ribbon tied around her neck, grow up, get married and grow old together. Alfred keeps asking about the ribbon but Jenny refuses to tell him why she won’t take it off until finally she’s on her death bed and gives him permission to untie it, at which point her head comes tumbling down. It’s a surprisingly wholesome take on the story, at least up until the point when her head comes off, but it’s that dissonance between the two parts and the surprise of it that makes it such an effective piece of horror.

    Schwarz’ adaptation has reached iconic status, entering contemporary English language folklore as a phenomenon all it’s own, detached from the historical context and narrative lineage that produced it. The original version of the tale, or at least the earliest version anyone can track down, is an urban legend and one decidedly not for children. In it a young German student, as in the similarly named The Adventure of the German Student by Washington Irving, was (bizarrely) hanging around near the guillotine after the day’s grisly work was done. While there it just so happened that he met the woman of his dreams, took her home with him, and, intending to live together going forward, went out again the next day in order to find a larger apartment for them both. On returning home however he found that the velvet ribbon she had worn around her neck had been removed, and she now lay there dead, her head separated from her body. Upon investigation by a member of the local constabulary it was ascertained that she was actually one of the victims of the guillotine from the day before, and that she had of course already been dead by the time the two of them met.

    It’s easy to see where this comes from. At the height of The Terror the guillotine claimed as many as 30 people a day, with the vast majority of victims being pulled from the ordinary citizenry of France rather than the nobility or clergy. Anyone perceived as a threat to the Jacobin’s hold on the government, from poets to feminists to political philosophers who challenged their totalitarian approach, were summarily murdered without trial, and the impact on the population’s psyche was immense. In the wake of The Terror women who were part of the fashionable Marveilleuse subculture wore red ribbon chokers around their necks, as an act of memorial and rebellion, while wild bals des victimes were said to be breaking out all over Paris; parties where people wore mourning garb or dressed as victims of the guillotine, greeting each other with sharp, jerky nods that resembled the moment the blade came down and heads came flying off. There’s some question as to whether these parties were an urban legend themselves, but even if they were, their existence as a story the people of Paris were telling about themselves says something important about the collective psychological state of the city.

    From this the image of the Marveilleuse who is actually a victim of The Terror emerges. Her short hair, scanty clothing, and bare feet aren’t a political-fashion statement but because this is how women were sent to the guillotine. The red ribbon around her neck isn’t a metaphor commemorating the dead or her own narrow escape but camouflage for the real thing, as well as a wholly inadequate bandage quite literally holding body and soul together just a little bit longer (perhaps the knowledge that heads seemed to survive a few moments after decapitation played into this). She could be anyone, passing unseen amongst the living, because so many were killed in that time how would you know them by sight? She’s another beautiful face that ended up in a basket at the end of a long, bloody day, and now she’s in your bed, the ribbon come loose in the night, throwing all of your survivor’s guilt into your face.

    Over time the story takes on new forms. Gothic writers like Alexander Dumas and Irving wrote their own literary versions. It reached America and started shifting for a different society with different needs, guilt, and fears. The ribbon changes colour, to black, white, then green. The underlying evil in the story changes, from indiscriminate state violence to patriarchal, and the demands husbands and lover’s place on women and their bodies — there are some fabulous feminist adaptations out there and I suggest reading them when you get the chance. Jenny and Alfred’s story is relatively benign, they live a long and happy life together, with only the ending, a sharp twist to thrill children, adding horror to the mix. The stories that came before, and after it, are something else entirely.

  • Gothic History: What was the “London Cat’s Meat”?

    Gothic History: What was the “London Cat’s Meat”?

    If you’re following along with Dracula Daily then you may have ended today’s instalment wondering about the “London Cat’s Meat” that Jonathan wrote about in his diary. Surely it must just be a pejorative name given to a cheap street food? Right?

    “Robber steak”- bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks, and roasted over the fire, in simple style of the London cat’s meat!’ — Dracula, Bram Stoker

    Wrong, but don’t worry, no cats were harmed in the making of London cat’s meat. Quite a few horses, but no cats.

    The Victorian era saw cats transition from primarily working animal, serving as pest control everywhere from warehouses to pubs, to beloved pets. While the gainfully employed members of the feline population could largely feed themselves, that is, if they were doing their job right, the diet of their bourgeoisie cousins needed a little supplementation — and that’s where the cat meat vender came in.

    With their hat, apron, and barrow full of pungent, miscellaneous meat, the cat meat vender was a common sight in Victorian London. Having identified a vital gap in the city’s chain of supply and demand these enterprising men and women rushed in to fill it; buying up meat deemed unfit for human consumption from knackers yards and abattoirs and repurposing it into the first commercial pet food of the modern age.

    This meat would be cut into pieces and set onto skewers for ease of portioning — hence Jonathan’s fascination with the robber steak. For someone who’d only ever seen skewered meat in this context, foul smelling and often dyed an alarming blue or green to make sure it wasn’t upsold as a working man’s dinner, the robber steak must have been something of a paradigm shift. Jonathan, the adventurous foody that he is, doesn’t seem to have been put off by it however, merely delighted by the novelty.

    The cat meat trade was a hard one, requiring intense physical labour for little profit, with venders fiercly defending their patch from newcomers trying to muscle in. That said they were known for being a soft hearted crew when it came to cats, often knowing all their furry customers by name, keeping track of whether any of them were missing or looked unwell, and slipping the occasional bite to hungry strays. They also sometimes helped those strays find a loving home, on one occasion with no less a person the Duchess of Bedford, though I’m not clear how such a meeting across the classes could have happened.

    There’s even an account of a vendor named Old Tom who’d trained his furry customers to wait in an orderly line while he gave them their food one by one. As an experienced cat owner whose watched the feeding frenzy that ensues when you try to feed multiple cats at the same time, sometimes requiring one particularly egregious offender to be locked in the bathroom until her brothers are done, that’s something I would pay to see.