The Stress of Her Regard
Encyclopedia
The Stress of Her Regard is a 1989
horror/fantasy novel by Tim Powers
. It was nominated for the 1990 World Fantasy
and Locus
Awards in 1990, and won a Mythopoeic Award. As with a number of Powers' other novels, it proposes a secret history
in which real events have supernatural causes: in this case, the lives of famous English
Romantic
writers—as well as political events in central Europe during the early 19th century—are largely determined by a race of protean vampire
-like creatures.
Drawing from European and Middle Eastern mythology
, Powers depicts these beings as having qualities of vampires, succubi
, incubi
, Lamia
, fairies
, and jinn
. Not only predators but sometimes benefactors of humans, they are the basis for both the Muses and the Graeae
.
The novel's title is taken from the poem "Sphinx and Medusa" by Clark Ashton Smith
("...Yet thought must see/That eve of time when man no longer yearns,/Grown deaf before Life's Sphinx, whose lips are barred;/When from the spaces of Eternity,/Silence, a rigorous Medusa, turns/On the lost world the stress of her regard.").
Crawford marries Julia. Julia's stepsister Josephine is present as the maid of honor, but neglects to complete the marriage rite and the newly wed couple leave for their honeymoon. The married couple enjoy their first night together and Crawford is wakened later, being made love to by someone. Although Crawford believes it is his wife, he wakes later to discover her horribly disemboweled body next to him in the bed. He flees and in the chase, he loses his left ring finger to a pistol shot.
Crawford returns to London under the guise of being a medical student. In this capacity he meets John Keats, also studying medicine. Keats is about to leave and Crawford is chosen to replace him. On their way through the wards, Keats and Crawford discover a priest seemingly siphoning blood from a nearly deceased body. Keats runs the priest off, but not before Crawford's "wife" makes an appearance to save Crawford from a gunshot directed at him by the grief stricken Josephine.
Keats discovers that Crawford knows nothing about his "wife." He and Crawford visit a sort of pub or bar that caters to those Keats refers to as "neffys". Keats does his best to help Crawford understand what has befallen him. He sends Crawford to the Alps, in order to help rid himself of his "wife."
Crawford takes a boat to the continent. Crawford meets DeLoge in the first village he stumbles across in France. DeLoges has been an "in-law" for a number of years and he furthers Crawford's education. DeLoges asks Crawford to drown him, but Crawford refuses and flees.
Crawford meets Lord Byron, Claire Clarmont, Polidori when he treats Shelley for a seizure. Crawford succumbs to the lure of his new "wife," and as a result becomes unable to go outside in direct sunlight. Byron, also a sufferer, Shelley, whose "twin sister" is Crawford's "wife" and Crawford decide to climb one of the highest mountains in the Alps to relieve their burdens. Crawford and Byron come to the top and are saved by Josephine. In the meantime the first to "marry into the family" has traveled to Venice where the Graeae and their eye are now part of the city.
From this point forward, it is a constant battle between the poets and the vampires for their personal freedom and most importantly freedom from the jealous vampires for their families.
1989 in literature
The year 1989 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* February 24 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini places a US$3 million bounty for the death of The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie.-Literature:...
horror/fantasy novel by Tim Powers
Tim Powers
Timothy Thomas "Tim" Powers is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare...
. It was nominated for the 1990 World Fantasy
World Fantasy Award
The World Fantasy Awards are annual, international awards given to authors and artists who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in the field of fantasy...
and Locus
Locus Award
The Locus Award is a literary award established in 1971 and presented to winners of Locus magazine's annual readers' poll. Currently, the Locus Awards are presented at an annual banquet...
Awards in 1990, and won a Mythopoeic Award. As with a number of Powers' other novels, it proposes a secret history
Secret history
A secret history is a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real history which is claimed to have been deliberately suppressed, forgotten, or ignored by established scholars.-Secret histories of the real world:...
in which real events have supernatural causes: in this case, the lives of famous English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
writers—as well as political events in central Europe during the early 19th century—are largely determined by a race of protean vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
-like creatures.
Drawing from European and Middle Eastern mythology
Middle Eastern mythology
Middle East mythology may refer to:*mythologies of the Ancient Near East**Mesopotamian mythology** Ancient Egyptian mythology** Hittite mythology*Abrahamic mythology** Islamic mythology** Jewish mythology** Christian mythology...
, Powers depicts these beings as having qualities of vampires, succubi
Succubus
In folklore traced back to medieval legend, a succubus is a female demon appearing in dreams who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual intercourse. The male counterpart is the incubus...
, incubi
Incubus (demon)
An incubus is a demon in male form who, according to a number of mythological and legendary traditions, lies upon sleepers, especially women, in order to have intercourse with them. Its female counterpart is the succubus...
, Lamia
Lamia (mythology)
In ancient Greek mythology, Lamia was a beautiful queen of Libya who became a child-eating daemon. Aristophanes claimed her name derived from the Greek word for gullet , referring to her habit of devouring children....
, fairies
Fairy
A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...
, and jinn
Genie
Jinn or genies are supernatural creatures in Arab folklore and Islamic teachings that occupy a parallel world to that of mankind. Together, jinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of Allah. Religious sources say barely anything about them; however, the Qur'an mentions that...
. Not only predators but sometimes benefactors of humans, they are the basis for both the Muses and the Graeae
Graeae
The Graeae , were three sisters who shared one eye and one tooth among them. They are one of several trios of archaic goddesses in Greek mythology. The Graeae were daughters of Phorcys and Ceto...
.
The novel's title is taken from the poem "Sphinx and Medusa" by Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...
("...Yet thought must see/That eve of time when man no longer yearns,/Grown deaf before Life's Sphinx, whose lips are barred;/When from the spaces of Eternity,/Silence, a rigorous Medusa, turns/On the lost world the stress of her regard.").
Plot
The plot centers around the story of Michael Crawford. On the eve of his second marriage to Julia, he inadvertently places his wedding ring in the hand of a statue in a garden. When he goes to retrieve it, he discovers the statue has mysteriously vanished.Crawford marries Julia. Julia's stepsister Josephine is present as the maid of honor, but neglects to complete the marriage rite and the newly wed couple leave for their honeymoon. The married couple enjoy their first night together and Crawford is wakened later, being made love to by someone. Although Crawford believes it is his wife, he wakes later to discover her horribly disemboweled body next to him in the bed. He flees and in the chase, he loses his left ring finger to a pistol shot.
Crawford returns to London under the guise of being a medical student. In this capacity he meets John Keats, also studying medicine. Keats is about to leave and Crawford is chosen to replace him. On their way through the wards, Keats and Crawford discover a priest seemingly siphoning blood from a nearly deceased body. Keats runs the priest off, but not before Crawford's "wife" makes an appearance to save Crawford from a gunshot directed at him by the grief stricken Josephine.
Keats discovers that Crawford knows nothing about his "wife." He and Crawford visit a sort of pub or bar that caters to those Keats refers to as "neffys". Keats does his best to help Crawford understand what has befallen him. He sends Crawford to the Alps, in order to help rid himself of his "wife."
Crawford takes a boat to the continent. Crawford meets DeLoge in the first village he stumbles across in France. DeLoges has been an "in-law" for a number of years and he furthers Crawford's education. DeLoges asks Crawford to drown him, but Crawford refuses and flees.
Crawford meets Lord Byron, Claire Clarmont, Polidori when he treats Shelley for a seizure. Crawford succumbs to the lure of his new "wife," and as a result becomes unable to go outside in direct sunlight. Byron, also a sufferer, Shelley, whose "twin sister" is Crawford's "wife" and Crawford decide to climb one of the highest mountains in the Alps to relieve their burdens. Crawford and Byron come to the top and are saved by Josephine. In the meantime the first to "marry into the family" has traveled to Venice where the Graeae and their eye are now part of the city.
From this point forward, it is a constant battle between the poets and the vampires for their personal freedom and most importantly freedom from the jealous vampires for their families.
Real people
Real people figuring in the novel include:- George Gordon, Lord Byron and his involvement in the CarbonariCarbonariThe Carbonari were groups of secret revolutionary societies founded in early 19th-century Italy. The Italian Carbonari may have further influenced other revolutionary groups in Spain, France, Portugal and possibly Russia. Although their goals often had a patriotic and liberal focus, they lacked a...
- Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
- Mary ShelleyMary ShelleyMary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
, her novel FrankensteinFrankensteinFrankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
, and her stepsister Claire ClairmontClaire ClairmontClara Mary Jane Clairmont , or Claire Clairmont as she was commonly known, was a stepsister of writer Mary Shelley and the mother of Lord Byron's daughter Allegra.-Early life:... - John KeatsJohn KeatsJohn Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
and his poem "LamiaLamia and Other Poems"Lamia" is a narrative poem written by English poet John Keats.Believing himself a failure as a poet, Keats asked for his tombstone to read "Here lies one whose name was writ in water"...
" - John PolidoriJohn PolidoriJohn William Polidori was an English writer and physician of Italian descent. He is known for his associations with the Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. His most successful work was the 1819 short story, The Vampyre, the first vampire...
(Powers does not mention his influential story "The VampyreThe Vampyre"The Vampyre" is a short story or novella written in 1819 by John William Polidori which is a progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction...
") - Leigh Hunt
- François VillonFrançois VillonFrançois Villon was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison...