“January. It was all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year.”
by Patricia Highsmith, from “The Price of Salt” (1952)
01/02/2024, London, UK
My dear,
What pretty story do you want me to spin for you today? All I have is January tales— grey, amorous, vaguely religious. Updates galore. I have had dreams of a glowing sword, the phrase “heartsworn”- grammatically incorrect, all one word- gleaming on the horizon, thick and syrupy in my mind. Most of all, my life in the past month has just been an unending sequence of scones, clotted cream, and blackberry jam. A general resolution to tend to a love of fragile things. But enough of that. I know you’re not just here for me, but rather my mind. I won’t complain, I won’t play dense, I won’t be upset. There is simply so much to discuss, and I do not want to delay any of it any longer. I take it you will be understanding, as always.
New things, new things, new things. There are so many shiny things for you to examine, love. Among them, a collection of film-related write-ups has found its way to the Substack, as well as “Song for a Final Girl”: a poem of mine, a social write-up about Julia Scher and surveillance culture, and one more piece about Alexander McQueen’s Fall 1996 RTW collection “Dante”. A little something for every someone. And of course, there are the new and old selected sources added to the official White Lily Society archive. Plentiful avenues for further exploration if you so desire.
So, with that out of the way, let us get into the metaphorical meat and potatoes of this newsletter. Move along now.
I. Archive Updates
“It’s all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.”
by Ivan Turgenev, from “Fathers and Sons” (1862)
Forgive me, my mind has been fractured lately. I haven’t had a good single-focused hyperfixation this January. Or rather, there is too much on my mind. Lots of smaller, separated obsessions. Fixations clustered together like constellations in my thoughts. So, in this archive update you will find several things of significance: the rise of [female] auteur cinema, your regularly scheduled Gothic examinations, and a little something about the overlap between the “Gothic” (whatever you wish that to be) and the “high/low art” divide. The latter of which, just in case you were wondering, I also fundamentally disagree with. But those are all rants for another time or place. We must try to cultivate a focus, even in the chaos of collecting, even in the pain of writing, even in the challenges of reading. We must sharpen our minds like blades, and let them shimmer in the winter sun.
“Off with Hollywood's Head: Sofia Coppola as Feminine Auteur” - link
This wonderful piece seems to have captured all my thoughts on Sofia Coppola’s films, her specific style of directing, and the whole “style and substance” debate (obviously, I’m team “Style is Substance”) perfectly. There is something so innate about Coppola’s films, like a secret language lamenting both the confines and pleasures of girlhood, that I could never explain properly in my own words. But why would I need to? I have this paper to do just that for me now.
“Coppola develops a pleasure in looking that the camera posits as distinctly feminine—a pleasure found in consumption of clothes, shoes, pastries, and, essentially, anything pretty. Time and again, the film uses close-ups and montage […] to ask its audience to identify with Marie […] this display of endless consumption is part of Coppola's critique (and, largely, what accounts for Marie's downfall), but it is also a means of asking the audience to derive pleasure through a feminine form of scopophilia from which Marie derives the only power, and agency, available to her.”
“Gothic Repetition: Husbands, Horrors, and Things That Go Bump in the Night” - link
The horrors of the Gothic are very often domestic: wives locked in attics and cellars, haunted houses, incestuous family melodramas— all should be familiar to a seasoned Gothicist such as you and I. And with this foundation of domestic horrors in mind, this paper turns its attention to the “marital Gothic”: the tropes that stem from marriage and its imprisonment in Gothic literature. Gender roles, masculine authority, and problems of identity and confinement, among others, are all aspects of the marital Gothic, as fascinatingly discussed and picked apart in this paper.
“Culturally prohibited from speaking of passion, unable to move toward the object of desire, the heroine remains the passive center of the novel and of the female adolescent's erotic dream. The phantasmagoric horrors that bombard her are the natural companions of repression, the price she must pay for her transgression, desire, even when it is only obliquely acknowledged and represented.”
“The Word "Gothic" in Eighteenth Century Criticism” - link
A much shorter read than the two aforementioned articles, this is a short and concise history of the use of the word “Gothic” itself in the 18th century. Successfully boiling the muddy use of the word down to mean either “barbarous, medieval, or supernatural”, each of these meanings is examined in their appropriate literary context. Most crucially though, it discusses the clear prejudice in dealing with “Gothic” subject matter: whether that is racially motivated, snobby, or simply disregarded for being “popular” and therefore bad.
“[…] because to Renaissance sceptics the Gothic ideal, wrought in castle and cathedral, seemed dark and thwarted beside the measure of a Parthenon, it came to pass, in the early Renaissance, that the term "gothic" took on a new and colored meaning, a meaning that masked a sneer. To the Renaissance, mediaeval or Gothic architecture was barbarous architecture. By a trope all things barbarous became ‘Gothic.’"
II. Feverish, sullen, shimmering
"Because if you can survive the violet night, you can survive the next, and the fig tree will ache with sweetness for you in sunlight that arrives first at your window, quietly pawing even when you can't stand it,"
by Ruth Awad, from “Reasons to Live”(2023)
Due to my aforementioned drought of hyperfixations, this section will be more of a scatterbrained look— a January recap, if you will. Like a scrapbook, or a journal entry, or a long conversation over a cappuccino where you are not sitting across from me at the table, but invited to peer in through some sort of barrier. A window, or an unaddressed letter. A message in a bottle. Though you should know that even if it not addressed to you, it is very much meant for you, and you alone. For your eyes only.
II.I CULTURE, EXHIBITIONS, FILMS
A substantial amount of museum visits is good for the mind, and the soul. At least, if you ask me. I’m no true authority on anything except for an undying devotion to the Intersection of Love and Violence, and a yearning brand of Romanticism.
January was actually quite the busy month for me when it came to culture, exhibitions, and films. First of all, I dipped into the National Gallery to see my love “the Execution of Lady Jane Grey” (Paul Delaroche, 1833) again. And for the first time in a couple of years, I visited the Wallace Collection, only to end up reminded of how utterly stunning everything on display is there, as well as their surroundings. A major source of decor envy, and inspiration, I dare write.


Also on my agenda was the BFI “the Red Shoes: beyond the Mirror” exhibition which was, of course, all about the 1948 film. This, and the “Poor Things” (2023) costume exhibition I saw at the Barbican were both quite small, only taking up one or two spaces in their respective buildings lobbies. Still, I feel so lucky to get the opportunity to interact with all these items from film and art history. Anyway, there was this one quote from the BFI exhibition that managed to grab my imagination, which went as follows…
“Red shoes are never ordinary. They have a place in our shared childhood memories and in the wardrobes of our imaginations. In the Ballet of the Red Shoes, they take their wearer on a wild and willful dance which ends in terrible suffering and death. […] As symbols of love and loss, they hold a lingering enchantment.”
BFI exhibition (2023-2024)


Finally, in a fortunate twist of events, my re-resolution (repeat resolution?) to watch a new movie every week of this blessed year is running ahead of the charge with an astounding ten movies watched so far. Just in case you were wondering, the cream of the crop are “Priscilla” (2023), “Phantom Thread” (2017), “La Belle et La Bête” (1946), and “Black Swan” (2010). Just a little something for your curious mind. Would you look at that, my film resolution is speeding, and my book resolution is dragging. Quelle surprise (not).
II.II CHURCHES
Listen up, (read up?) if there is one thing that brings me joy in my day to day life, it is exploring London’s plentiful churches. If I’m out and about, never minding my business, and I spot a church in the distance, you can bet that I will be going in to marvel at its beauties. January was an especially fruitful month in terms of serendipitous church discoveries, so let me highlight the two I visited.


This first church I came across while in a hurry to make it to the Wallace Collection. Those Gothic hallmarks- flying buttresses, ribbed vaulting, and pointed arches- all caught my eye right away, practically seducing me, a poor defenceless soul, a worshipper of beauty, to step inside. And oh boy, was she a beauty.
There is just something so haunting, so delicate, so sublime about any old buildings, especially churches. Maybe it’s because we are aware of their use, we are aware we should be looking up at God when we visit them, or maybe it is some other innate sense of gravitas. One of these days I will absolutely feel moved to make a church master post for the Substack, a running list of churches I have visited. But now is not yet that day.


Now, this second church was actually recommended to me by a friend, ironically enough. She told me it was a bit simpler than my usual type, but had some key Gothic features to suit my tastes. And she was right. I did very much ooh and ah, and I did marvel. Last time I checked that wasn’t a crime, so you’ve got nothing on me. Touché. You’ve got to stay on your toes, my dear. Perhaps you can make it up to me with more church recommendations?
II.III STRAWBERRY HILL HOUSE
Strawberry Hill House was something that had been on my mind for a year or two now, eagerly awaiting its turn, sitting patiently on a numbered list, waiting to be crossed off. Ever since I attended a Gothic literature class in ‘22 that started with Horace Walpole’s “the Castle of Otranto” (1764), I was utterly enraptured by the myth of a Gothic hall that could inspire such a genre-defining novel. Quite literally, that is. Horace added the subtitle “a Gothic story” on the second edition and the term just stuck.
According to the mythos of the novel, the legend surrounding it, Walpole awoke one night having dreamt about a “gigantic hand in armour”, imagery which heavily featured in the resulting novel: one man gets crushed by an enormous armour helmet, and another gets imprisoned underneath it. In fact, scale is a big motif in the novel, as well as illusion, and the same goes for Strawberry Hill House. Much of the impressive stonework in the stairway, for example, is actually wood. The detailed carvings on the walls on closer inspection turn out to be just intricately painted wallpaper. A clever bit of trickery.
Walpole himself also enjoyed a good bit of illusion, something he had in common with Oscar Wilde (“Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.”). Walpole was an avid collector, who enjoyed inviting people over to his house to give them a guided tour, and along the way he loved telling stories about his collection, some of which were most definitely made up.
“In his villa, every compartment is a museum; every piece of furniture is a curiosity […]”
Thomas B. Macaulay, account of a visit to Strawberry Hill


But that is not the only thing Walpole made up in his time. Between the invention of the “Gothic” novel, and the creative, uh, embellishments about his history and home, he also had his ventures into linguistics. Fun fact: Horace Walpole actually coined the term “serendipity” in a letter in January of 1754:
“This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word, which, as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavor to explain to you.... I once read a silly fairy tale, called “The Three Princes of Serendip”: as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of ... now do you understand Serendipity?”
III. What I’ve read: Rouge, a book review
“The dark, twisting poison one that aches and eats and empties. And wants. All by itself.”
by Mona Awad, “Rouge” (2023)
Plot description: “For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass”
I fear I lack the words to even begin to describe most of Mona Awad’s writing. First of all, you must go into an Awad novel expecting the uncanny, expecting oddities and unexplainable, surreal events. But, even knowing that beforehand was not enough to properly prepare me. My God, this was a weird read. It goes without saying that Mona Awad is no stranger to surrealist fiction- her novel “Bunny” is what I would consider a significant milestone in modern, popular surrealist writing- but “Rouge” takes this several layers higher. Not in the sense that it is weird in a shocking, or vulgar way, mind you. No, it’s more David Lynch weird: unexplained, dreamlike, filled with the uncanny mundane. I’m talking “extended-flashbacks-to-someone-who-may-be-Tom-Cruise-or-perhaps-the-devil” weird. It is a trip.
Yet, there is something in this amusing mix of elements that did not entirely jive with me. Call me old fashioned (and you would be right), but I prefer my Gothic fairytales with all the due tropes and clichés. A haunted castle, a poisonous apple, a treacherous evil [step]mother. And “Rouge” only half-scratched that itch. It teased me. I was looking for “a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother’s unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty” (as per the Goodreads description), and got only a little bit of that, and much more Californian sea-and-sunshine than I thought I bargained for.
That is not necessarily a bad thing by default, though. If you have had your fill of classical Gothic fairytales, then perhaps you are looking for a more interpretative take on the genre staples, in which case “Rouge” is perfect for you (granted that you are on-board for all the weird). But if you are more like me, a glutton for that gloomy grey sky genre of Gothic, then this is a book that will nail the themes and motifs, but leave something to be desired in terms of set dressing. It’s a good, strange, shimmering time overall, but like with beauty, there is always something more on the horizon to reach for. Something brighter to be desired. I envy.
“Midwinter – invincible, immaculate.”
by Angela Carter, from “the Snow Child” (“the Bloody Chamber”, 1979)
One of the many pros of human interaction is that we all weave a web of references and ideas as we communicate. Each and every friend of mine, yes, including you, inspires something unique in me, and contributes their own trinkets of wisdom to the feast. Knowing that many of you are writers, same as me and my circle, means we might share some issues. Personally, my problem is that I only like to write when I am absolutely certain, while writing, that it is good. If it is not immediately so, then I find little pleasure in it. And that is something that simply must go, if I wish to write at all. Because you cannot write something good, if you do not write at all.
So, what an absolute joy it is to discuss what it means to write. To work all of it out; the intricacies of the process, the personal significance, the touches every hand lends to their method. And in that way, through those conversations, little by little, the web grows a little denser. So that when my friend, in her hopes to enlighten me, sends me a Susan Sontag quote, that goes:
“I’m always struck by the fact that there is a kind of ambiguity in the very notion of storytelling. […] don’t you think at the very center of the whole enterprise of storytelling there is the fact that storytelling is an activity that faces in two-directions. On the one hand it’s connected with an idea of truth, on the other hand it’s connected with an idea of invention, imagination, lies. One is thrilled by the story precisely because it describes something that can’t happen. It’s connected with fantasy.”
by Susan Sontag, in conversation with John Berger (2016)1
I can always respond with a quote of my own:
“Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.”
by Ursula K. Le Guin, from “the Left Hand of Darkness” (1969)
On and on, and on, and on, until the web becomes a safety net, encouraging us to dive, to jump, to fall. Because, after all, isn’t the fall supposed to be the fun? Don’t worry dear, I haven’t lied to you tonight. I only lie when I am writing fiction, I only hide the truth when I have something prettier than it to present, and none of the wonders contained in this letter have been anything but genuine. The very best of the best, nothing artificial about it. Pinky promise.
Until my next letter,
x Sabrina Angelina, the White Lily Society
Currently reading: “Things We Say in the Dark” by Kirsty Logan // Most recent read: “Rouge” by Mona Awad
White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links
Needed: someone to teach me the art of brevity. Salary: very meagre, non-existent. Location: anywhere, and anytime. Benefits: endless. Come, become a martyr of deliciousness. Join the White Lily Society today.