A Living Gothic Heroine

  The reading for today was called The Lonely Empress and it discussed the real life events of the Empress of Austria, Elizabeth (aka Sisi). When first reading this, one might think of what the point of this story might be because it hardly seemed to relate to Gothic literature. However, when analyzing the story and going into further detail about it, you can come to the conclusion that the story is actually quite Gothic because of the female heroine of the story, Empress Elizabeth. There are specific details that came towards the end of part one we were to read for today that made Elizabeth a Gothic heroine. In what was chapter seven in the book, the author describes how Sisi was depressed because her mother-in-law inflicted a forced behavior upon her. She was not allowed to ride horses or even feed them for that matter, talk to her birds, or go anywhere with her husband and she always seemed to be surrounded by death. Since Elizabeth got married so young, she felt that she had lost a lot of her freedom in becoming Empress and she felt imprisoned/caged and very isolated from the rest of the world. Each day she felt like she did not fit in and was yearning for a better life where she could do as she pleased. All of these things are the elements that help make up a Gothic story that everyone would soon love to read. Although, one question that has left me to ponder over for awhile, is one that was asked in class today: If all of this is happening to an Empress and is real, who ends up reading this particular story? Surely not the servants or poorer people because we would assume they were never taught to read. Other Empresses of a different time maybe. Regardless, this story was written over a real life Empress who lived a Gothic lifestyle, which makes the story a little more interesting that it can be about real people rather than just made up characters in a made up world.