Drawn by the antique cover and the peculiar name, I stumbled upon “Dragonwyck”, a gothic romance novel that tells the story of Miranda Wells, an 18-year-old farm girl in the US during the mid-nineteenth century. The author Anya Seton set the story in 1844 when Miranda seized a rare chance of escaping the ordinary and expected lifestyle of her father’s farm to go to Dragonwyck manor, the world of her distant and aristocratic cousin, Nicholas Van Ryn. Following the customs of their little society at the time, Miranda was pushed by her father to start a family and get married to a devout, traditional middle-class husband. Societal views of this 19th century American maiden is not so different to me than some views of modern women in Egypt. We all know how coming of age can be a stressful time for Egyptian women. Suddenly everyone in society will be preaching you to get married, start a family, and not to be picky about any potential suitors. Any well mannered and hard working man should be fine. I could see all of that in the story of a 19th-century American teen. Things,…
