![]() ![]() ![]() Nicholas’s first wife may be present in the drawing-room rather than hidden in the attic, but she’s described in monstrous, grotesque terms, clearly presented as an unfeeling obstacle to the true love of Nicholas and the slender Miranda. A distant cousin, Nicholas Van Ryn, a darkly handsome and enigmatic patroon on the Hudson River with his own mini-fiefdom, invites Miranda to his manor Dragonwyck to be a semi-governess to his daughter, the result of an arranged marriage with Johanna, a woman who has lost her figure and her looks. Miranda is a pretty farm girl with aristocratic aspirations, in Connecticut in the 1840s. So I ordered cheap secondhand paperback off Awesomebooks, and read it in a night. But then again, I read Jane Eyre then too. A Gothic scholar I follow on Twitter mentioned Dragonwyck quite recently, which recalled giddy memories of swooning at the suspense and romance and delicious clothes as an early teenager, probably too young to be reading about abusive relationships shrouded (at least initially) in glamour. ![]()
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