{"id":1210,"date":"2023-10-20T22:03:52","date_gmt":"2023-10-21T02:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=1210"},"modified":"2023-10-20T22:03:52","modified_gmt":"2023-10-21T02:03:52","slug":"pretty-powerful-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2023\/10\/20\/pretty-powerful-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Pretty Powerful Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vernon Lee\u2019s Dionea<\/em> tells the tale of Dionea, an exotic child found adrift from sea, through a man\u2019s letters to his higher up. Although the purpose of the letters is to inform the higher up of their prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Dionea\u2019s, progress, the letters mostly fixate on unrelated topics, such as Dionea\u2019s exotic beauty and her supernatural powers. Since Dionea brewed love potions and celebrated mysterious deaths in town, the town treats her as a frightening, powerful supernatural. The man\u2019s letters despise Dionea\u2019s exotic beauty and mysterious powers since they do not adhere to the typical religious townswoman\u2019s role.<\/p>\n

In addition to beauty, the man emphasizes religion in many of his letters. When the town attempted to baptize Dionea as soon as they adopted her, \u201cshe kicked and plunged and yelled like twenty little devils, and positively would not let the holy water touch her\u201d (Lee 5). The man notes that this failed baptism meant that Dionea had already been baptized, but his diction implies the opposite. By comparing Dionea to \u201ctwenty little devils\u201d and specifying the water was \u201choly,\u201d the diction implies that Dionea refused to ever be baptized because she is an unholy devil. Her supernatural powers often harm religious persons, which suggests her powers are unholy too. At one point Sor Agostino dies right in front of Dionea, which she happily terms \u201can accident from Heaven\u201d (Lee 15).<\/p>\n

Dionea strays from the town\u2019s accepted roles for woman as much as she strays from their religious standards. When describing the exotic natural curls of Dionea\u2019s hair, the man writes \u201cI am glad she should be pretty, for she will more easily find a husband\u2026Unfortunately, her character is not so satisfactory; she hates learning, sewing, washing up dishes\u201d (Lee 6). Dionea detests typical chores women are excepted to take care of, like sewing and washing dishes. The man notes that at least Dionea\u2019s beauty will get her a husband, since heterosexual marriage is part of a religious woman\u2019s accepted role in society. Due to the town\u2019s discomfort that a woman has power, they use religion and beauty to fit her back in her place, much like what Lucy experienced in Dracula<\/em><\/p>\n

As soon as Lucy turned into a vampire, the men that had once loved her knew \u201chad she then to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight\u201d (Stoker 225). Vampires have more power than humans, considering vampires can kill humans by sucking their blood. The men view Lucy as pure when she is human, but unholy when she is a powerful vampire. They called her \u201ccallous as a devil\u201d and claimed \u201cher eyes blazed with unholy light\u201d and warded her off with a crucifix, which she \u201crecoiled\u201d from (Stoker 226). Yet the men were still fixated on her beauty, noting her \u201clanguorous, voluptuous grace\u201d and \u201cwanton smile\u201d (Stoker 226). Lucy falls into the same situation as Dionea, where they are both women with supernatural powers that humans fear. The men in both books use the women\u2019s beauty to convert her back to the more traditional, powerless woman. For Dionea, the men use her feminine beauty as a reason to make her into a wife. For Lucy, they focus on how her beauty has become unholy as a result of vampirism, and determine she must be killed at once.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vernon Lee\u2019s Dionea tells the tale of Dionea, an exotic child found adrift from sea, through a man\u2019s letters to his higher up. Although the purpose of the letters is to inform the higher up of their prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Dionea\u2019s, progress, the letters mostly fixate on unrelated topics, such as Dionea\u2019s exotic beauty and her supernatural … Continue reading Pretty Powerful Women<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5319,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125361],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}