"a swarm of beaus surrounded them"

PARSONS, YOU ARE DOING IT ALL WRONG!!!!!
       YOU COULD HAVE BEEN HERALDED AS THE MOTHER OF CHICK LIT!!

                Instead it goes to Jane Austen.

But I'll get to that in a bit.

Matilda gets to Paris and is warmly welcomed by the Marchioness and her husband. She learns that the mysterious kidnapped lady's name is Victoria--writer of bad poetry on walls-- and she "starts suddenly on hearing the name" because that was a big shocker.

Matilda breaks the news that said Victoria has been kidnapped. But Matilda, "Perceiving the agitation and distress of her auditors," says, "I have little doubt of the poor Lady's safety, from a persuasion that if any ill was intended towards her, they would have destroyed her as well as the servant." And this oddly does give the Marquis and Marchioness comfort, with the Marquis actually thinking of doing something for the poor victim. "By heavens! neither oaths nor promises shall prevent me from publicly calling on the Count to produce her!"

But otherwise things are going very well for Matilda. The Marchioness is immediately convinced that Matilda is wonderful because Matilda is pretty. Really. "That countenance needs no recommendation." The Marquis also loves her immediately for being pretty saying she "claims a double share of my esteem from her own merit, legible in her countenance." In fact everyone in the novel is just immediately convinced Matilda is wonderful just by looking at her. Among the many gifts Matilda is always thanking Providence for she should add thanks that she doesn't have a bad case of adolescent acne.

And then they all go off and take a nap. For the next few days they take her around Paris and show her the sites and introduce her to society. This is where Helen Fielding would have had a field day. A whole novel just on these three days.  Matilda has been sheltered from society her whole life. She's never done any of this before. And she's uncomfortable with suddenly being a part of it.

This is rife with possibilities. Instead Parsons passes this opportunity by with one line. "Matilda was in a new world: the polite and sensible conversation she now enjoyed was so different from every thing of thi kind to which she had been accustomed, that she was mortified at her own deficiencies, and most assiduously endeavoured to profit by the good sense and elegant manners of her protectoress." If she'd just spun that line into a few chapters, or maybe its own book, more people might know her name alongside Jane Austen. But Parsons is busy with other things. She has a message.

BOYS DROOL, GIRLS RULE!

Wait what?

Men aren't really in the picture. Except for the Marquis, no other man is mentioned and he barely gets to speak. This is no good. Doesn't Parsons understand what is supposed to be important to a woman?

She doesn't.

Matilda and the Marchioness go to an assembly where Matilda does not meet or dance with any men. Mrs. Bennet would be beside herself with disappointment.

But then the Marchioness isn't even trying!! She only introduces Matilda to other women! How is she ever going to marry the girl off like that? But no. Instead she focuses on especially calling Matilda to the attention of the Countess De Bouville and her daughter Adelaide, and Madame de Nancy and her sister Mademoiselle De Bancre.

I mean, Parsons! Get it together! You are a woman so it's already difficult for you to make it into the literary canon. You will never get there if you don't include some men! And by that I mean some men who aren't evil. Ones the heroine can fall in love with! You know, This:

Or this:

If you don't want love stories then just make the man the main character. Like this:

You need men, Parsons!!

But then it gets worse. The Countess De Bouville is a widow. Her daughter Adelaide is engaged, but he's not there. Neither is her brother, the current Count De Bouville. Then comes Madame De Nancy, who is in her 20s and also a widow.  She was "sacrificed very early in life to an elderly man, every way unworthy of her," where she "suffered under his tyranny five or six years," died, and "left her the mistress of a large independence." And her sister, Mademoiselle De Bancre, "who had witnessed [Madame De Nancy's] bad treatment from an unworthy husband, determined never to marry."

The sisters live together and seem completely happy on their own. In fact all the women seem completely happy together without men. To the point where they ignore the men at the party completely. "A swarm of beaus surrounded them, but [Matilda] thought their conversation, their fopperies, and fulsome compliments truly disgusting, on comparison with the sensible and elegant manners of her newly-acquired female friends."

No, No, No, Parsons. You aren't getting it. Women NEED men in order to be decent human beings. See?

Without them we are just sad beings who sing about how we are all alone in our ugly red pajamas.

Do you understand?!?

Good. We are getting somewhere. You might make literary canon yet.

Okay. I give up. I'm loving this part of the book. It's refreshing.

"the wretched victim to some merciless man was sacrificed in that closet"

I want to talk about more than just the story of The Castle of Wolfenbach.  Perhaps I really have focused too much on the stories, on the simple joy of reading them, and not said enough about why these stories are important.  I'm going to correct that now.  Strap in.

It has been nearly two weeks since Elliot Rodger killed people in Isla Vista, blaming women for his actions.  In his manifesto he barely gives any detail to women.  They are nameless and faceless.  On the forum that he frequented, PUA Hate, women were discussed objects to be used, that if the woman was not a virgin she should have sex with any man who wants it from her.  The response from women to these murders has been huge, from #YesAllWomen on Twitter to When Women Refuse, a website cataloging instances of violence against women who refuse male advances.  You probably know all of this.

You also probably know about Bring Back Our Girls.  That school girls were abducted in Nigeria by men who hate the idea of educating women.  That the response from the Nigerian government has been despicably slow.  That these girls are being sold as wives for $12.

So what does all this have to do with the Gothic novel?

The line in the title of this post is from Castle of Wolfenbach.  The wretched victim is, of course, a woman.  The heroine, the lady with the fatigue at the beginning of the story, has fainted already.  She has also escaped an uncle who intended to rape her, entered supposedly haunted chambers no one else dared to, and volunteered to move the bloody body of a woman who had her throat slit when the elderly servant was not sure he could lift the body on his own.  It is a story of a young woman fighting to control her own life and escape the man who feels he is entitled to her.  Gothic novels are about women, violence against women, and the heroine's ultimately successful escape from the control of men who would hurt her or force her into sex and marriage against her will.  They are among the first responses of women against male entitlement to women's bodies.

The heroine is usually an orphan or otherwise considered unprotected by society at that time. She does not kick ass.  She does not take on male attributes to win the fight the way modern heroines do. (I do like modern heroines too, but it does seem that in modern stories women are only seen as strong if they are as violent and unemotional as traditional male heroes. Rambo with boobs.)  Gothic heroines are still within the bounds of acceptable femininity of the time, and I make fun of  the fainting fits, but in these stories being emotional is not considered a weakness, but a virtue. They may faint and cry every other page, but this does not stop them from being resourceful and determined, using the abilities they have to find friends and escape tyranny.  And above all, they are brave.  They stand up for themselves, even when threatened with death, and they never doubt that they will eventually escape and all will end well.

We've all talked or heard about how the literary canon is skewed towards men.  Reading gothic novels is part of the reclamation of female literature.  Of the 9 novels mentioned in Northanger Abbey 6 are written by women.  Yes, they are adventures and meant for a mass audience, which is usually frowned upon by literary establishment anyway, but so were the works of Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, James Fennimore Cooper, and Mark Twain and they made it into commonly known literature.  These women writers are as good as their male counterparts.  So why the difference?  I don't think it is just because the writers are women.  After all, there are some women writers just as well known.  I think it has more to do with telling women's stories.  Gothic novels are the stories of captives who escape.  The stories we commonly regard as literature are stories of men's adventures.  If there is a woman, she is the captive to be rescued by the hero.  Even the female authors who make literary canon tell stories of men or rescue by men. Austen has her intelligent and resourceful heroines use their talents to find a man to marry, and Frankenstein is about a man.

If we are going to expand the canon, we are going to have to accept women writers for the stories they write, which are women's stories.  Gothics are what women wrote about being a woman, with the horror of losing control of your own life, though that is made more palatable by the fun story and adventure.  They are good stories.  They are well written stories.  They are stories we need to read as literature and not just for the purpose of reading women's writings as an attempt to be inclusive.  "Women's literature" is its own way of making those writings second class.

As a reader and a writer I believe art is important.  Until we believe adventure stories of women who rescue themselves--which is not a new or modern phenomenon-- are as important as adventure stories of men rescuing women, we will not, as a culture, begin that deep, ingrained transformation that needs to happen.   Gothics are good stories and worth reading.  Let's read them and enjoy them as if they are as good and important as they really are.