I will not let thee go except thou bless me.

She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches as they swayed to it.

Suddenly it became clear that flight, and instant flight, was the only thing conceivable. The longing to escape, to get away from familiar faces, from places where she was known, had always been strong in her in moments of distress. She had a childish belief in the miraculous power of strange scenes and new faces to transform her life and wipe out bitter memories. But such impulses were mere fleeting whims compared to the cold resolve which now possessed her.

Yes, The Bloody Chamber is delightful, and so vividly written. Here are my suggestions to go further with the Bluebeard archetype:

Bluebeard (Barbe-Bleue), Charles PerraultBluebeard (Blaubart), The Grimm BrothersBluebeard, Carol Ann Duffy, in Duffy/Supple/StillBluebeard’s Egg, Margaret AtwoodBluebeard (Barbe-Bleue), Amélie NothombThe Seven Wives of Bluebeard (Les Sept Femmes de Barbe-Bleue), Anatole FranceWomen Who Run With Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola EstésBluebeard, Francesca Lia BlockWaiting for Bluebeard, Helen IvorySecrets Beyond the Door, Maria TatarMr. Fox, Helen Oyeyemi& of course :Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë, and a few works on the question:

- Bluebeard and the Beast: The Mysterious Realism of Jane Eyre, Jessica Campbell- Tradition and Transformation: Fairy Tales in the Victorian Novel, Jessica Campbell - Bluebeard Gothic: Jane Eyre and Its Progeny, Heta Pyrhoenen

Power, of course, is vampiric. We enjoy it only because someone else does not. Power is what philosophers would call a positional good, meaning that its value is determined by how much of it one has in comparison to other people. Privilege, too, is a positional good, and some have argued that health is as well.

Our vampires, whatever else they are, remain a reminder that our bodies are penetrable. A reminder that we feed off of each other, that we need each other to live. Our vampires reflect both our terrible appetites and our agonized restraint. When our vampires struggle with their need for blood, they give us a way of thinking about what we ask of each other in order to live.

PERIOD DRAMA APPRECIATION 2024

Day 5 - Favorite Aesthetic: Just like a painting

Il gattopardo 1963 (The Leopard) + Art:

Auguste Toulmouche - The Reluctant Bride (La Fiancée hésitante)

Hermann David Salomon Corrodi - Queen Victoria on the Terrace of Villa Palmieri

Mihaly Zichy - Ball in the Concert Hall of the Winter Palace during the Official Visit of Nasir al-Din Shah in May

Constant Cap - Le Jour des Innocents à Anvers

Franz Xaver Winterhalter - Empress Eugenie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting

Carl Spitzweg - Sunday Stroll

Claude Monet - Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe

Giovanni Fattori - Garibaldi a Palermo

im just gonna do top however many for books/movies/tv

BOOKS

WOLF HALL TRILOGY‼️‼️‼️‼️ dune series, blood meridian, absalom absalom, radetzkymarsch, the age of innocence, annihilation, to the lighthouse, emma, wuthering heights, anything stefan zweig, the sunne in splendour, war and peace

MOVIES

stoker, D U N E, lady macbeth, house of flying daggers, cure, lawrence of arabia, in the mood for love!!!!!!!!, emma, the fall, the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford!!!, vertigo, hero, the lion in winter, rope, nosferatu (herzog and eggers), blade runner, days of heaven, sympathy for mr vengeance, there will be blood, atonement, 2001, raise the red lantern, das boot,

TV

he is! catherine's! childhood friend! she doesn't see him as a handsome mysterious stranger she sees him as her other half and as someone who was there for her and loved her when she was a kid running around and being dirty and improper and deeply disliked by everyone in her house including her father for daring to not live up to the gendered excpectations of what she should be. and she misses being that kid so so so bad, and she hates married life and she wants to go back home even though home was awful and abusive and she ran away from it because at leaaaast she was allowed to be herself there. and heathcliff is home.

and heathcliff isn't obsessed by Cathy the way people describe him she's not a thing to own. she's the only person to have ever loved him apart from his dad for like a few years. she's the only one that doesn't constantly dehumanize him or wait for him to turn into the savage beast they all think he is. he's deeply alienated from the society he grows up in because of his skin color and she! doesn't! care!

sure sure their love is bad for them and those around but you know why it is that way? not because they're toxic or whatever (i mean sure, in part, but) but because they're not fucking allowed to love each others. because god knows and Heathcliff knows and Cathy knows they could never get married. because the only way for Catherine to hope to help him is to marry a nice guy she kind of likes because as a woman she's powerless because even if Heathcliff comes back a gentleman he's only ever be perceived as a crook! because even if he owns "Wuthering Heights" he's "cheated Hareton out of his birthright", because Heathcliff doesn't and will never have a birthright!!

henry vi as a gothic heroine