A collection of short stories, Seven Gothic Tales was the
first commercially successful book written by Isak Dinesen, better known for her biographical book Out of Africa, and later
in her career Babette’s Feast – both more famous today as movies,
than as books.
Isak Dinesen, was one of the pseudonyms used by Karen
Blixen-Finecke (1885 – 1962). She was
born and raised in Denmark and spent 20 years of her married life in
Kenya. She was multi-lingual, and
largely picked her pseudonym based on what language she was writing in/publishing
for.
Included in the collection are:
The Deluge at Norderney has a meandering plot set
during a severe late-season storm centered at a seaside (Baltic) resort hotel. Guests attempt
an escape via boat as the town is flooding.
In departing they come across a woman and her children standing on a
barn which is rapidly being submerged by the water. Several volunteers on the boat swap places
with the family, agreeing to risk the night staying in the barn awaiting rescue
in the morning. The characters include
an aristocratic woman, a Catholic Cardinal, and others. Their secret identities and pasts are the
tale.
The Old Chevalier set in 1874 Paris, tells of a young
man walking home after being dumped by the married woman he’s been having a
several months affair with. Depressed
and drunk he meets a young lady on the street and takes her home for a one-night
stand. After she leaves in the early
morning, he realizes that he can’t live without her, he spends all of the next
days searching the streets for her, with no success. Fifteen years later, he comes across an
artist’s painting of her, but is still unable to find out her identify.
The Monkey clearly fits the gothic elements of
supernatural, with a heavy religious subset. A young man has come to visit his aunt, the
Virgin Prioress of Closter Seven, a Lutheran convent. He seeks her advice on marriage, and she instantly
takes charge of finding him a suitable bride.
She arranges to hook him up with a young woman who will be the heiress
to a neighboring estate. Following his aunt’s
advice, the arranged date goes horribly astray (he pounced, as Sally would say
in Cabaret), though not near as horrible as the confrontation they have with
the aunt in the morning.
The Road Round Pisa is long-winded, convoluted, and
dumb. A man has been given a small “smelling bottle” with a heart-shaped drawing
of an idyllic country estate on it by his maiden aunt. Throughout his childhood he has heard romantic
stories told by his aunt with the estate being the setting. After her death, he travels to Italy in search
of the estate painted on the bottle. A
coach accident leads him to make a dying woman a promise to find her daughter
before she dies.
(My favorite) The Supper at Elsinore takes place on
the NE coast of Denmark (as a reader of Hamlet would be able to tell you). There, the DeConink family has kept a large
old home near the harbor for several generations. A caretaker lives in the
home. The only remaining members of the
family, two unwed sisters now into middle-age, have moved to Copenhagen. They have/had a brother who went to sea on
the eve of his wedding day and is rumored to have become a pirate. He is presumed dead. In the story, the caretaker has seen his ghost
in the old house and gone to Copenhagen to fetch the sisters back to the old
house for a conversation with him.
The Dreamers is interesting, yet another
long-winded tale. It takes place in
1863 aboard a dhow (a small craft boat) off the coast of Zanzibar. The boat’s passengers are an escaped political
prisoner and his friends who are secreting him back to Tanzania to seek revenge. To
pass the time on the trip, they begin telling stories, each trying to one-up
the others. This takes us to Europe and
a story about three different men, each of whom have met and fallen for a mysterious woman who
then disappears on them. Each man
believes the woman has ditched him to escape a sinister “Old
Jew” who is following her – described by each with the stereotypes of the time. Spoiler alert, he ends up being the good guy. The stories end as the sun begins to rise and the
dhow is approaching shore.
The final Gothic tale is The Poet about a wealthy older
man who takes a young poet under his tutelage.
In the story the older man decides to marry a poor young widow who resides
in one of the homes he owns. Unbeknownst
to him or the young woman, the young poet is in love with her. Because of this, he decides he must leave
Denmark after the wedding. He visits the young woman on her wedding’s eve to
tell her his intention. The old man, who
had been hunting nearby, overhears the conversation, and ends up dead.
Recommendation: For
Lit majors only, with the exception of The Supper at Elsinore.
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