Abbey and Barbara

  Both Abbey and Barbara were very Gothic. We learned that in most Gothic stories, there is a darkness, ghosts/supernatural, seduction, being trapped by the past etc. Both of these stories exemplify that. In Barbara, she ran off with someone who she wasn't supposed to be with and eloped without telling her family. Barbara was very vein because her husband while abroad got burned in a fire and his face was different and she couldn't even look at him. I think she married him out of lust and not love because if she loved him his face being burned should not have affected her love towards him. Also at the end, Lord Uplandtowers messed up the statue of Edmond and again she could not look at him the same way. Lord Uplandtowers kept the statue in their room forcing her to look at it every night until she told him that she no longer loved Edmond and loved only him which caused her to have a seizure and die. In the Ruins of Abbey, it was a little confusing since it was like a story within a story, but was not too difficult to follow. The gist of it was Abbey was seduced by a complete stranger, who left her but said he was going to come back and never did. She became a nun but also conceived a child, which is going against their religion. Someone had ratted her out and she died because of it. At the end when Rosaline was reading about the story of Abbey, we find out that Abbey and her baby comes back as a ghost and haunts the person who ratted her out and ends up killing him. The author describes her as a glowing green light figure which is ridiculous because when most people think about ghosts, they think of clear people that you can see through.