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such a beastly month as February
Feb. 29th, 2012 11:23 pmHappy Leap Year! *obligatory Pirates of Penzance subject line* I have been tired lately but last night I put ALL THE EGGS in the stir-fry and I woke up this morning feeling super genki.
...
I’ve been reading The Woman in White, inspired by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sarahtales’s series of Gothic novel posts, and I have to say it’s pretty hilarious. Being a Gothic novel, there’s a lot about houses and manors. In addition to thinking, with increasing dissatisfaction, about my own apartment (which is not helped by realtors tramping in at every hour, often without warning), I’ve been thinking about The Perilous Gard as a Gothic novel.
TPG is set a bit earlier than many Gothic novels, in Tudor days rather than Victorian, but now it makes a lot of sense to think of it this way, in terms of Good and Bad Houses. Our Heroine is sent away from one cold, unhappy house to another cold, unhappy (though more luxurious) house. She then spends a lot of time underground in a labyrinthine network of caves, and she and Our Hero keep their sanity by talking about their dream house and arguing about renovations. (Shut up, carpentry is adorable in the dark.)
I’m not really sure what this says about TPG but I think it’s interesting. There are quite a lot of Gothic elements actually: the houses, of course; the mysterious master of the manor; the sinister and/or terrified servants; the dead wife; the family secret(s); the mysterious female figure with odd, uncanny powers. Is there more? I don’t actually know all that much about Gothic novels.
The grumpy (or tormented, whatever) love interest and incessant bickering are just icing on the cake, I guess. (I just typed that as “tortmented”. CAKE!)
Actually TPG has another thing in common with The Woman in White, which is the pair of sisters: one is pretty and innocent and stupid, and one is less pretty and quite smart and inclined toward things like logic and sleuthing. Only, as Kate laments in TPG, the wrong one is sent off to a dark and dismal fate… okay, it’s not that dismal, it’s just a big house in the middle of nowhere… really, there is no need to embellish… kindly get a grip!
I suspect Kate and Marian Halcombe would be excellent friends. Hurrah for sensible ladies!
...
I’ve been reading The Woman in White, inspired by
sarahtales’s series of Gothic novel posts, and I have to say it’s pretty hilarious. Being a Gothic novel, there’s a lot about houses and manors. In addition to thinking, with increasing dissatisfaction, about my own apartment (which is not helped by realtors tramping in at every hour, often without warning), I’ve been thinking about The Perilous Gard as a Gothic novel. TPG is set a bit earlier than many Gothic novels, in Tudor days rather than Victorian, but now it makes a lot of sense to think of it this way, in terms of Good and Bad Houses. Our Heroine is sent away from one cold, unhappy house to another cold, unhappy (though more luxurious) house. She then spends a lot of time underground in a labyrinthine network of caves, and she and Our Hero keep their sanity by talking about their dream house and arguing about renovations. (Shut up, carpentry is adorable in the dark.)
I’m not really sure what this says about TPG but I think it’s interesting. There are quite a lot of Gothic elements actually: the houses, of course; the mysterious master of the manor; the sinister and/or terrified servants; the dead wife; the family secret(s); the mysterious female figure with odd, uncanny powers. Is there more? I don’t actually know all that much about Gothic novels.
The grumpy (or tormented, whatever) love interest and incessant bickering are just icing on the cake, I guess. (I just typed that as “tortmented”. CAKE!)
Actually TPG has another thing in common with The Woman in White, which is the pair of sisters: one is pretty and innocent and stupid, and one is less pretty and quite smart and inclined toward things like logic and sleuthing. Only, as Kate laments in TPG, the wrong one is sent off to a dark and dismal fate… okay, it’s not that dismal, it’s just a big house in the middle of nowhere… really, there is no need to embellish… kindly get a grip!
I suspect Kate and Marian Halcombe would be excellent friends. Hurrah for sensible ladies!
