I am ashamed. Udolpho has been shelved. I might have made it if, upon arriving in Venice the trips up and down the alps weren't traded for gondola rides up and down the canals. By the time I decided to spare myself I was convinced that when Emily and her aunt were imprisoned at Udolpho the majority of their captivity would be spent walking up and down the tower stairs, complete with descriptions of every brick. I shall have to be content to be one of those people who has never read the Grandmother of all Gothic fiction because I'm pretty sure that doing so will kill me.

However, Anya Seton has pretty much succeeded in seducing me away from Daphne Du Maurier.

Dragonwyck

Holy S&M, Batman! Dragonwyck is from the same school as Rebecca. Dragonwyck is the hardened bastard child of Jane Eyre and Tess. I couldn’t possibly recommend a book more, and for so many reasons. In the afterword, Phillipa Gregory points out how utterly cliché Dragonwyck is, and she’s right. A naive girl from a poor background has the opportunity to live the life with a wealthy relative. Of course, one of them is the handsome master of the house.

I’ve never met a leading man like Nicholas Van Ryn before. I’m usually the one who’s rooting for the Byronic hero no matter how twisted he gets. This is Heathcliff’s legacy to me. With Nicholas Van Ryn I had no idea what to do about him. Maybe it was because his perspective was shown from the offset, but he just struck me as wrong. He looked at Miranda as though she were nothing more than a thing, which was how he regarded everyone around him. He had no passion, no fire. He didn’t act on impulse. He was as well ordered as the world he created.

He gave me the heebie jeebies.

He also had the perfect foil. Jeff Turner didn’t jump out at me as a love interest for Miranda, not when he was just a country doctor. No, in spite of Nicholas being wrong, Miranda was going to save him and Jeff was going to get in the way. Not until Nicholas commits murder in order to keep his world as he saw fit did I start to get the “Uh oh …” vibe. Jeff took over my perspective as a reader and in a few pages had me screaming at the vain and frivolous Miranda “NooooOOOOOooo!!! Run!!! You gonna die!!!”

And now for the S&M. Having cleared the way for his marriage to Miranda, Nicholas gets her, and the skin starts crawling. While Seton doesn’t go into much detail about the loss of Miranda’s virginity she also doesn’t skimp: it ain’t pretty. In fact, it’s downright terrifying, and as I read on it was clear why – Nicholas likes it rough.

I’m enough of a pop culture whore to make the connection to HBO’s Rome where Octavian speaks to his future bride:

You should know that when we are married, I shall on occasion beat you. With my hand... A light whip... When I do so you must not think you have offended me. I do it because it gives me sexual pleasure. So remember that and don't be upset.

This could very well have been spoken to Miranda by Nicholas, and surprisingly Miranda begins to experience sexual pleasure, referred to as her ‘dark pleasure.’ Yes, she's into it.

As the novel continues the squicky feeling Nicholas inspires doesn’t go away. To my astonishment I eventually began to hate him. Sticking out in my mind is a scene in which he is explaining something to Miranda and she agonizes over the fact that she doesn’t understand the words he speaks. The word is voluptuous. The way she struggled over trying to decipher this made me want to cry. She remains a country girl, subservient to him, and this is the way he likes it.

In the end, as clichéd as this book was, I loved it. For one, it wasn’t European. This was an American tale, set in New York state, and its characters were richly American. I was one of those confused kids who by the time she reached school had imbibed so much American culture and history it came as quite the shock to learn that I was from a place called Canada, that Ronald Regan wasn’t my president, and that the second language of my nation was French (and not Spanish, as Sesame Street would have led me to believe.) My interest in US history has remained, conflicting with my inherent colonialism that growing up in what for centuries was a major British port town has hammered into me.

The most intriguing cameo appearance by far was from Edgar Allan Poe. I missed the appreciation boat when it came to Poe during my university years but in recent months my interest in the man has me rethinking getting my hands on a Poe anthology. It’s because of Poe that Nicholas becomes a drug addict, that he rapes Miranda and ultimately drives her away, and that he can’t save himself. Phillipa Gregory muses that Nicholas stays with you long after you’ve put down Dragonwyck. He does. He’s the type of character you find yourself thinking of as you sit at a stop light or are waiting in line at the coffee shop.