The Lady Of The House Of Love

Question 1

What sleep disorder is she described as having and what does she do ‘helplessly’?

Answer 1

‘The beautiful somnambulist helplessly perpetuates her ancestral crimes’

Question 2

How is her sadness described?

Answer 2

‘The perennial sadness of a girl who is both death and the maiden’

Question 3

What was she wearing?

Answer 3

‘Wearing an antique bridal gown’

Question 4

She is described as the queen of what? What does she do?

Answer 4

‘The beautiful queen of the vampires sits all alone in her dark, high house’

Question 5

What is her voice filled with?

Answer 5

‘distant sororities’

Question 6

Finish the sentence: “now you are at the…”

Answer 6

“Place of annihilation”

Question 7

What does she ask herself?

Answer 7

‘Can a bird sing only the song it knows or can it learn a new song?’

Question 8

How is she described after she draws her fingernail across the cage and it makes a ‘plangent twang’?

Answer 8

‘like that of a plucked heartstrings of a woman of metal’

Question 9

How is her hair described?

Answer 9

‘Her hair falls down like tears’

Question 10

The description of her unnatural beauty….

Answer 10

‘She is so beautiful she is unnatural; her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity, for none of her features exhibit any of those touching imperfections that reconcile us to the imperfection of the human condition’

Question 11

What is her beauty a symptom of?

Answer 11

‘Her beauty is a symptom of her disorder, of her soullessness’

Question 12

What does she like to hear from her pet lark?

Answer 12

‘She likes to hear it announce how it cannot escape’

Question 13

How are her teeth described, using sibilance?

Answer 13

‘Teeth as fine and white as spikes of spun sugar’

Question 14

What is in the middle of her room?

Answer 14

‘An elaborate catafalque, in ebony’

Question 15

What does she dream of?

Answer 15

‘In her dream, she would like to be human’

Question 16

What does she wear when she goes to sleep at dawn?

Answer 16

‘In a white lace neglige stained a little with blood’

Question 17

Describe how she catches her prey..

Answer 17

‘Crouching, quivering, she catches the scent of her prey. Delicious crunch of the fragile bones of rabbits’

Question 18

How does she go home after catching her prey?

Answer 18

‘She will creep home, whimpering, with blood smeared on her cheeks’

Question 19

What are her feelings for her role?

Answer 19

‘Her terrible reluctance for the role’

Question 20

What would she like to do with the gipsy boys instead of killing them?

Answer 20

‘She would like to caress their lean brown cheeks and stroke their ragged hair’

Question 21

What will the blood be mixed with after she eats her prey?

Answer 21

‘The blood on the Countess’ cheeks will be mixed with tears’

Question 22

What does the British boy have the special quality of?

Answer 22

‘He has the special quality of virginity, most and least ambiguous of states: ignorance, yet at the same time, power in potentia’

Question 23

Although he is young, he also what? And what transport has he chosen?

Answer 23

‘Although so young, he is also rational. He has chosen the most rational mode of transport’

Question 24

What does the young officer in the British army laugh about?

Answer 24

'’On two wheels in the land of the vampires’’

Question 25

What is his rationality about to collide with?

Answer 25

'The timeless gothic eternity of the vampires'

Question 26

What wakes who?

Answer 26

'A single kiss woke up the Sleeping Beauty in the wood'

Question 27

What is she surprised to find she has laid in her Tarot cards?

Answer 27

'The lovely cartomancer has, this time, the first time, dealt herself a hand of love and death'

Question 28

How is the scent of the roses first described?

Answer 28

'A great, intoxicated surge of the heavy scent of red roses blew into his face'

Question 29

What do the roses induce?

Answer 29

'Inducing a sensuous vertigo'

Question 30

Description of the roses: 'faintly..

Answer 30

..corrupt sweetness strong enough almost, to fell him'

Question 31

What's the description of the roses and their implications?

Answer 31

'Tightly budded cores outrageous in their implications'

Question 32

What was the interior of the house like?

Answer 32

'Ruinous...cobwebs, worm-eaten beams, crumbling plaster'

Question 33

Finish the sentence: "blast of cold air,

Answer 33

as from the mouth of a grave"

Question 34

What did the Countess remind the British boy of?

Answer 34

'A child dressing up in her mother's clothes'

Question 35

How did she live in the 'self-articulated garment'?

Answer 35

'Like a ghost in a machine'

Question 36

Finish the sentence: "a girl with

Answer 36

the fragility of a moth"

Question 37

How is her voice described?

Answer 37

'Her voice is curiously disembodied; she is like a doll, he thought, a ventriloquists doll'

Question 38

Because of his virginity, he doesn't know there is anything to be afraid of, so simply sees her as....

Answer 38

'an inbred, highly strung girl child'

Question 39

As she struggles with her broken glasses, she cuts her thumb. What description follows?

Answer 39

'watches the bright bead of blood form a drop. She has never seen he said own blood before'

Question 40

How does the boy try to help?

Answer 40

'He puts his mouth to the wound. He will kiss it better for he, as her mother, had she lived, would have done'

Question 41

What are the ancestors described as thinking when she pricks her thumb?

Answer 41

'How can she beer the pain of becoming human?'

Question 42

The boy wants to take her away in order to...

Answer 42

'Turn her into the lovely girl she is; I shall cure her of all these nightmares'

Question 43

How is she described in death?

Answer 43

'In death, she looked far older, less beautiful and so, for the first time, fully human'

Question 44

What does she leave him?

Answer 44

'Dark, fanged rose I plucked from between my thighs, like a flower laid on a grave'

Question 45

The flower regains life, how is it described?

Answer 45

'Reeling odour of a glowing, velvet, monstrous flower whose petals had regained all their former bloom and elasticity, their corrupt, brilliant, baleful splendour.'

Question 46

Next day?

Answer 46

'His regiment embarked for France'