The Castle Spectre

This is tamer than "The Monk" -- I've seen other people compare it to Oscar Wilde and I definitely got that feeling from it, though Lewis was writing almost exactly 100 years before Wilde. More enjoyable than I thought it would be, and in the end the fact that the women act on their own behalf puts this miles above some of the other Gothic stuff we're reading. Sure, one of the women is a ghost, and she's acting out of some sort of need to protect her family, but still ... the fact that her daughter, the heroine, has the agency to stab the villain to death (after spending half the play waiting for various men to save her) gets this one another star all on its own.

Also, the fact that this was written for the stage means that some of the show more action is unseen, while other parts seem rushed because they're described in stage directions. This is not a criticism of the text itself, but just a reminder to read this in a different way than a novel. show less