"a faithful servant like him is an acquisition to any family"

Finals are pretty much done. I'm in the last week of my second to last term. And I'm reading for fun again!

And there is something that has been on my mind all through the time I was trying to write papers on governmental and non-profit accounting. And that is how Parsons shows the servants, who are all incredibly devoted to their ladies because the ladies they serve are "the best and most courageous lady I ever saw in my life" and such a "sweet creature."

(Okay. I've been analyzing things too much lately and am in an academic frame of mind. I'll get over it by tomorrow.)

Parsons manages to show both the servants' thoughts and the thoughts of the ladies about the servants. The ladies, Mathilda and our mystery woman, congratulate each other on having loyal servants and make the statement in the title.  The servants are an acquisition. That sense of entitlement and practically ownership. Such as when "Matilda expressed her satisfaction that the lady had such a faithful servant." Which is just as nice as a faithful dog, but better because a faithful servant brings you tea and hides your very existence from your horrible husband.

But at the same time, Parsons gives us these moments where she shows the reader what the servant is thinking. Their reasoning. And even at one point, their grief. Even though we never see the old servant from the castle again, Parsons still spends a bit of time showing him grieving the death of his wife (the Count burned the castle with her inside) and what happens after than, letting the reader know that he ends up okay. (Which is good. I rather liked him.)

But my favorite moment of these is a funny one. It's back when Matilda is being brave and sleeping upstairs in spite of the ghosts. Albert decides he's not brave enough for that and decides to sleep below stairs, figuring he'll be safe there. Because "as they were ghosts of quality, who never condescended to visit kitchens, he thought himself perfectly safe, on the ground floor."

And now, I'm not quite done with these classes, even if it is a light week, so it's about time I finish up that homework.

"They are very fine drawings, Sir, but I think the subjects of them are exceptionable"

I love the language they use. So lovely. So ladylike. When shown obscene drawings our heroine says the line in the title. In modern parlance we'd say something more like...

Getting ahead of myself. Last we saw Mathilda had decided the rest of the household were senile and she was going to go find out what was haunting the castle, trusting that she is so virtuous that evil could not harm her (in which case, why did she need to run away from..... Getting ahead of myself again.)

She does find what is haunting the castle, which is actually a hidden lady and her elderly serving woman. And since Parsons can't be mysterious and withhold the names of both ladies without it getting really confusing, this is when we actually learn Mathilda's name is Mathilda, so the other lady can just be "the lady." Because apparently no one actually tells their name when introducing themselves....

Anyway, Mathilda becomes immediately great friends with lady, sharing everything (except for a name) kindred spirit, Anne Shirley and Diana Barry style.

And Mathilda tells her tragic story, which because it is a gothic, involves her much older male guardian--in this case her uncle-- developing a "love" for her. And since Mathilda is a very young woman, and in his care, when he was "for ever seeking opportunities to caress" her, she "scarce knew how to repulse" him.

Ew.

But she finally decides she will run away after overhearing her uncle planning with his devoted maid.

where they plan that he should "not longer stand upon ceremony" with Mathilda, and instead go "into her room at night when she's asleep," and "be happy." (See what I mean? And we thought the government was good at euphemisms. And I repeat, Ew.)

So instead she packs her box, carries it down downstairs, and runs away with the help of Albert, who goes with her. They travel a bit. They intended to live with his sister, but when they show up, "this sister, on whose protection I relied, had been dead three weeks."  Poor Mathilda. She goes on to say that her "fellow traveller [Albert] was more affected" than herself. Hard to believe that a man learning his sister died would be more affected than our heroine, but he was.

Since their plan fell through, and Mathilda's money was running out, she and Albert were heading for Zurich which Albert tells her is a good city and that "some way or other, doubtless, [she] might procure a living by [her] talents." (Clearly she is an innocent, because what exactly is a 16 year-old pretty girl who grew up secluded from everything by a creepy uncle going to be able to do to earn a living?

But fortunately for Mathilda's virtue and the sake of this story, they don't make it to Zurich, and instead end up in a storm, in a woods, at night, and she ends up in this not-really-haunted castle with her mysterious lady new BFF.

At which point, before the mysterious lady can tell Mathilda anything about herself, Mathilda decides she's been away from the old people for too long and needs to go back to them so they don't worry. Which Parsons probably did just to try to draw out the mystery, but sort of makes Mathilda look a bit like an ass. I mean, she comes in, she doesn't bother to learn the lady's name, she talks all about herself and then says she needs to leave.

She must mean it in the sweetest, bestest ways, because she's a heroine. And of course old Albert was thinking she could do sewing or something when he suggested that they go to Zurich where she could earn a living on her talents. Yep. Nothing creepy there at all. Or maybe Albert had other plans in mind once they hit Zurich...

"your ghosts are very rude unsociable folks"

And there is nothing I hate more than a ghost with no manners.

So the manservant (Albert) and the lady (Mathilda) hightail it for the castle where they are admitted by the old, married caretakers there (Joseph and Bertha) and told they can stay there as long as they like. But they should probably sleep downstairs, because, as Bertha explains, "Nobody will sleep in the rooms up stairs; the gentlefolks who were in it last could not rest, such strange noises and groans, and screams, and such like terrible things are heard..." Fortunately, "the ghosts never come down stairs," which Bertha has a great theory for. "They were some of your high gentry, I warrant, who never went into kitchens."

But Mathilda won't sleep below stairs because ghosts are preferable to sleeping in servants' quarters.

This?














Or this?

I'm with Mathilda on this one. Bring on the ghosts.

Who do show up. Albert, not wanting to be less than a coward than his lady, also decides to sleep upstairs and doesn't sleep at all because, "chains were rattling, ghosts roaring and groaning doors banging with violence enough to shake the foundation of the walls...." The next morning Albert determines he will never sleep upstairs again. He is a servant and is not too good for small rooms and bare floors.

Mathilda on the other hand...

...figures that Albert and the caretakers are freaked out by ghosts because they are getting on in years. "...she was not surprised that the weak minds of the old people should be terrified, or that Albert, who was likewise far advanced in years, above sixty, should shrink from alarms which had given her a momentary terror...."

She decides there has to be something behind this and decides to go exploring. Because every heroine should go exploring in the creepy castle.

I admit, I would too.

  

"shiver by shiver, we gain insight"

The quote is from Guillermo del Toro in his introduction to a Penguin horror imprint series that he edited. In his introduction he quickly traces the history of horror from the gothic novel through to H.P. Lovecraft. It doesn't necessarily run through anything new for those who have looked deeply at horror in literature, the idea being that horror is like fairy tales, it puts a face, creature to outright fear, on the things that we as a society fear.

For example: In the 1970s, an era when murder rates had doubled and rates for all crime had quadrupled in the past 10 years, you get the slasher flick--the stranger come to stalk and kill.







In the 1980s and 90s, we were coming to terms with HIV and AIDS and the idea that sex can kill. Vampires, sexy and deadly, were the horror. (Yes, vampires are still big in pop culture, but they are hardly horror now.)






With current fears of GMOs, science going too far, global warming, and an apocalypse of our own making, zombies are the horror motif of choice. (It may be running its course though. How long before we have The Zombie Diaries and True Rot? )










So when del Toro starts out his introduction with, "To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls," this isn't a mind blowing concept. What he traces is the line from gothics with their over-the-top imagery and emotions, to the more subtle and nuanced horror of the modern era, taking a brief look at the major authors and works along the way. It's when he come to Edgar Allen Poe that I paused and began to see parallels to our modern world and especially our modern political system. I thought of a Poe story del Toro didn't mention, but that fit what he was saying of Poe's writing and the way Poe saw the world, which was through the darkness in ourselves. Poe shows us inside the heads of monsters. Shows up why they do what they do. How they can resort to such evil.

"He knew that a rational, good-hearted man could, when ridden by demons, sink a knife in the eye of a beloved cat and gouge it out. He could strangle an old man or burn alive his enemies. He knew that those dark impulses can shape us, overtake us, make us snap--and yet, we would still be able to function, we would still presume to possess the power of rational thought.

"Why would anyone say we are mad?"

Later del Toro will give the overarching reasons for what turns Poe's protagonists into monsters, "that two thoroughly modern demons...: perversity and arrogance."

Which brought to mind the monster in a little known story of Poe's called, "The Devil In the Belfry." If you want to read it, here is a link. I'm going to completely spoil the story below.

The Dutch town of Vonderwotteimittiss believes it is idyllic. Each house is the same as any other, including the people in them. The artisans can only carve 2 objects, a timepiece and a cabbage, but they do so with incredible skill. Each person carries a watch, which they look at constantly. Even their pigs and cats have watches, tied onto their tales by the children. On their mantles are no less than 3 clocks bookended by carvings of cabbages. In each kitchen the same dinner is being made.  Each house has a small garden where exactly 24 cabbages have been planted. The narrator calls it, "the finest place on earth."

Life in this town is devoted to time. To keeping time. In the center of town is the House of the Town-Council on in the steeple is a seven-sided clock. It had never broken down. It and all of the other clocks and watches were exact to the minute so that when the big clock rang all the other watches and clocks, "opened their throats simultaneously, and responded like a very echo."

The Town Council have adopted 3 resolutions:

• "That it is wrong to alter the good old course of things--"
• "That there is nothing tolerable out of Vondervotteimittiss"
• "That we will stick by our clocks and our cabbages."

Obviously you know what is going to happen. 

Someone comes from over the hills. Someone "foreign looking" and "of a dark snuff color." Someone who is not dressed in the same clothing and is dancing steps that are not keeping with the time of the village. This stranger climbs the tower, kills the fat and lazy man meant to keep the clock in good order, and takes over the belfry. At this point the big clock sounds 12. And as it does all the citizens watch and count along with it. After it rings 12 times, the citizens start to put away their watches. But then the clock strikes 13.

And all hell breaks loose. (You saw all this coming of course.) The clocks cease to keep regular time and begin to dance. The cabbages turn red. "But worse than all, neither the cats nor the pigs could put up any longer with the behavior of the little [watches] tied to their tails, and resented it by scampering all over the place, scratching and poking, and squeaking and screeching, and caterwauling and squalling, and flying into the faces, and running under the petticoats of the people, and creating altogether the most abdominal din and confusion which it is possible for a reasonable person to conceive." And to top it all off, the stranger in the belfry keeps ringing the clock bell with the rope between his teeth and on his enormous fiddle is playing Irish songs--foreign songs in a regular Dutch town!

Back to del Toro and his essay, and the quote that really set me off on this thought process. "It is in this arrogance that Poe's characters reveal their true nature: That they are not victims but executioners."

Which is how "The Devil in the Belfry" ends. With the narrator pleading for the reader and "all lovers of correct time and fine kraut," to descend on the town en masse to "restore the ancient order of things in Vondervotteimittiss."

To kill the stranger.

Which brings us to our own era, where we in America are facing the racism of this country through the current political campaigns of the Republican party and the amount of support Donald Trump has garnered.

This is a shock for white people. Many of us would have loved to believe that anyone who made the statements that he has made about Muslims and Hispanics and all people of color would be immediately excoriated. His political career would be over the moment he made those statements. And we're reacting in shock that it hasn't made his political career go splat. His supporters seem to be growing.

We've been protected from all this racial hate. We didn't see it unless we went looking for it. Even if we did go looking for it, it was hidden under social restrictions and "political correctness." Especially where I've lived for most of my life in the predominantly white farming country in the midwest. Trump has stripped away those restrictions and made it okay to say these things outright again. We're faced with the reality that it never went away.

It's not an easy reality to face as our friends, neighbors, family support this madness. People we thought were reasonable and kind. Our favorite uncle. A close friend. Where did this monstrous part of them come from and how did we not see it before? What were the signs we missed? What are they thinking?

Poe knew. Del Toro knows. Poe showed us deep into their minds. How they believe they are reasonable as they call for blood and deportation. As they declare some people are not fit to live in our country for the most stupid reasons possible.

I first read this story I was in middle school. I lived in a town of roughly 200 people in Wisconsin where black people were about as prevalent as unicorns and other races were nearly unthought of. We knew they existed somewhere. Somewhere being on Hawaii Five-0.

I read this story and didn't think it was scary at all. Predictable. Lame. But then I didn't understand who the monster is. I didn't understand that I live in Vondervotteimittiss. Nearly thirty years have passed and now I find it terrifying.

"she cast a retrospection on her past calamities"

How did I stop reading this book?

It did bog down in the middle if I remember right... or perhaps it was a mood. This might also explain it. But now that I'm back to it, this is so good!!

It starts off in perfect gothic style. In a storm. In a forest. With an enfeebled, young lady in need of shelter.

The lady and her manservant asking for shelter at a humble cottage of an old couple. But, being a lady, she can't rest well at the cottage. We don't know her name. We don't know why she is there. All we know is that she is alone (other than the manservant) and she is running from something.

The old couple only have the one bed, which is on the floor. "Growing faint from exhausted spirits," the lady lays down. "but, alas! horror and affliction precluded sleep." (I love the writing. It is so perfect.)

The next morning the lady is still too exhausted to travel on, but really can't stay in the one room cottage with the poor people, so she asks if there is a house nearby. The old woman says, no, but there is a castle nearby. But she wouldn't go there. The lady asks why. "O! dear madam, why it is haunted; there are bloody floors, prison rooms, and scriptions, they say, on the windows to make a body's hair stand on end."

Our lady heroine (she still doesn't have a name-- I wonder if Parsons started without a name in mind and never went back to correct it-- whatever-- she's still just "the lady") doesn't blink or react in horror or curiosity. She just asks how to get there. Can't say I blame her, really. In a choice between prison rooms and buckets of blood or sleeping on the floor with a bunch of old people snoring around you, I'd take my chances on the castle too.