Moving In and Out: The Property of Self in Sense and Sensibility

Vampire Darcy: The Impossible Romantic Hero

“…Framed in Austen's England, all of these characters represent ordinary rather than paranormal threats to the virtue of the young women of Austen's novels, but they are no less sinister. Willoughby's clipping of a lock of Marianne's hair in Sense and Sensibility (1811), for instance, signifies much more than an innocent desire for a romantic keepsake when read with Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1712) in mind (Bristow 31–33; Greenfield 96)—let alone his (and Wickham's) serial seduction of teenage girls. Furthermore, John Thorpe's trapping of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey has been noted for its parallels with the more vexing abductions of contemporaneous Gothic fiction (Ty 251; Fuller 96–97), a resemblance from which Colleen Gleason has obviously taken her cue in “Northanger Castle.” As one Austen blogger suggests, to “close our eyes” and imagine these characters as vampires “is not too far of a stretch,” and neither is “a Jane Austen's gentleman's vampire club!” (Nattress).…”