#(2020)

[majestativa]

This detachment of her personality from her distress impressed one curiously. She wasn’t altogether real, she didn’t altogether live, and yet in her presence there was the supreme reality of the unreal.

CHARLOTTE MEW — Medusa’s Daughters: Magic and Monstrosity from Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle [Ed. Theodora Goss], (2020)

[majestativa]

The Señora, ‘una belleza de reposo,’ a beauty of quiescence, a dignity above prosperity.

CHARLOTTE MEW — Medusa’s Daughters: Magic and Monstrosity from Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle [Ed. Theodora Goss], (2020)

[majestativa]

I have seen her once more! — almost spoken to her. I have been promised her love! Ah, Spiridion! you were right when you felt that you were not made for any earthly amori.

VERNON LEE — Medusa’s Daughters: Magic and Monstrosity from Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle [Ed. Theodora Goss], (2020)

[majestativa]

“Amour Dure — Dure Amour,” as runs her device — love that lasts, cruel love — yes indeed, when one thinks of the fidelity and fate of her lovers.

VERNON LEE — Medusa’s Daughters: Magic and Monstrosity from Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle [Ed. Theodora Goss], (2020)

[majestativa]

It seems to me that the supernatural, in order to call forth those sensations, terrible to our ancestors and terrible but delicious to ourselves, skeptical posterity, must necessarily, and with but a few exceptions, remain enwrapped in mystery.

VERNON LEE — Medusa’s Daughters: Magic and Monstrosity from Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle [Ed. Theodora Goss], (2020)

[majestativa]

In her essay “The Child and the Shadow,” Ursula Le Guin writes that “the shadow is the other side of our psyche, the dark brother of the conscious mind. It is Cain, Caliban, Frankenstein’s monster, Mr. Hyde. It is Virgil who guided Dante through hell, Gilgamesh’s friend Enkidu, Frodo’s enemy Gollum. It is the Doppelgänger. It is Mowgli’s Grey Brother; the werewolf, the wolf, the bear, the tiger of a thousand folktales; it is the serpent, Lucifer.” But if Le Guin had written this essay later in her career, when her thinking had been influenced in a more significant way by feminist theory, she might have identified the shadow as a dark sister, as Lilith, Hecate, Hel, Ereshkigal.

THEODORA GOSS — Medusa’s Daughters: Magic and Monstrosity from Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle, (2020)

[majestativa]

She is the bride rescued from the sea serpent, the hero’s wife. Medusa’s petrifying countenance is the instrument by which she was saved; her salvation depends on the death of another woman. Only because Medusa, the monster, died can Andromeda live.

THEODORA GOSS — Medusa’s Daughters: Magic and Monstrosity from Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle, on Andromeda, (2020)