06-25-2011, 12:50 PM
(07-15-2010, 10:54 PM)Penfeather Wrote: Another curious thing: the ubiquitous lone lighted window in the tower on the cover of almost every modern Gothic, with the heroine pictured foreground in an attitude of flight or desperation, is a scene that almost never actually occurs in the story. If anyone can contradict me on this I'd be delighted; it ought to be the subject of a contest to find a book that really contains this scene. I've ready plenty in which the heroine flees outside, running barefoot across the moors or through a swamp, but never come across the single lighted window except in cover art.
Mary Stewart's NINE COACHES WAITING (1958) actually has a scene exactly like that:
Quote:Clutching at my hand, and panting, Philippe climbed gamely beside me. We turned once to look at Valmy. On the far side of the valley the château, catching the moon, swam pale above its own woods, its side stabbed with a single light. Léon de Valmy still waited. [p 234 of the Chicago Review Press edition]
