What is it about the gothic novel
that so excites us? That draws us in past
the mist-shrouded moors, through imposing iron gates into candlelit corridors
where unwitting young maidens and magnetic, tortured lords cast their
spell? From the halls of Rebecca’s Manderley to the cemetery
crypts of Dark Shadows, for those of
us gripped by the mystery and romance of these stories, we just can't get
enough.
Hence, this Halloween season, yes,
it's an entire season for me, I'm giving into the voluptuous enjoyment of Anya
Seton's Dragonwyck. Vague murmurings of this book reached my
ears in the past. I knew it fell somehow
under the gothic heading, but had never paid it much mind until my interest
turned to the Gilded Age and the fabulous estates of the Hudson River Valley,
an area that has always been rich in the lore of Washington Irving's Sleepy Hollow and the poems penned by
Edgar Allen Poe during his stay at the Yaddo, Saratoga's famously haunted
artist colony.
Yes, this book has a naive golden-haired
heroine who is greatly abused by the haughty inhabitants of Dragonwyck.
Yes, it has a dark and brooding
hero, or is he the villain? So excited
to find out!
Yes, there is a big imposing
mansion replete with ghosts, ancient curses and unnerving servants.
I have only just begun to immerse
myself in Seton's wonderfully atmospheric novel, but I anticipate curling up by
the fire this evening with my Kindle and forgetting all about the mundane
issues of the day in the twists and turns of Dragonwyck's shadowy halls....
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