Beth Fenn Kearney
University of Queensland

In 1962, the surrealist writer and collagist, Valentine Penrose, née Boué (1898–1978), published a work fictionalizing the scandalous life of a Hungarian noblewoman said to have tortured and killed more than six hundred young women. The life of Erzsébet Báthory (1560–1614) is considered so “bloody” that, in the words of Georges Bataille, if “the Marquis de Sade had known of her existence, he would have expressed the worst elation” and “howled like a wild beast²My translation: “S’il avait connu l’existence d’Erzsébet Báthory, sans nul doute, Sade aurait eu la pire exaltation. Ce qu’il sut d’Isabeau de Bavière l’exalta, Erzsébet Báthory aurait tiré de lui un hurlement de fauve.” Georges Bataille, Les Larmes d’Éros, Paris, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1971 [1961], p. 108..” In La Comtesse sanglante, Penrose incorporates libertine and Gothic literary tropes³The Gothic appears elsewhere in Penrose’s work, notably in the short tale Martha’s Opera (1946) and the surrealist book Dons des féminines (1951). See: Kimberley Marwood, “Imaginary Dimensions: Women, Surrealism and the Gothic,” in Maria Purves (ed.), Women and Gothic, Cambridge, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, p. 39-62. while drawing on material traces relating to the life and crimes of the infamous countess. These include historical monographs and records, a portrait by a painter “without a name” (CS, 11), and the official record of court proceedings⁴The narrator states in a prelude to the tale: “La minute du procès, d’abord conservée aux Archives du Chapître de la ville de Grán, avait été transférée aux Archives nationales de Budapest” (CS, 9). The narrator later states that resources and illustrations were provided by a number of libraries in Paris, London and Vienna (CS, 10). I can only assume that the excerpts of court proceedings included at the end of the book (CS, 231-235) were provided by one of these libraries. . The tale portrays the protagonist as a scandalous lesbian, torturer, sadistic torturer, dealer in black magic and narcissistic witch⁵These themes point to the author’s close affiliation with the surrealist movement, as Georgiana M. M. Colvile explains in her introduction to Penrose’s anthology: “[La Comtesse sanglante] répondait à la curiosité et à la fascination des surréalistes pour les femmes folles, perverses et/ou criminelles”. Georgiana M. M. Colvile, “Introduction”, in Valentine Penrose, Écrits d’une femme surréaliste, Georgiana M. M. Colvile (ed.), Paris, Éditions Joëlle Losfeld, 2001, p. 16. Penrose was indeed an integral member of the surrealist group for many years; in addition to marrying the surrealist painter, Roland Penrose, she was close with André Bréton, Pablo Picasso, Nusch and Paul Éluard, and others. Feminine monstrosity, vampirism and libertinism, all themes that appear in La Comtesse sanglante, were also explored by surrealist artists. In his Manifeste du surréalisme (1924), André Bréton points to The Monk as an exemplary text, namely because moral and sexual transgression play “a logical role”: André Breton, Manifestes du surréalisme, Paris, Gallimard, 2015 [1924], p. 25. Just as we see in Bataille’s fascination with figures like the Marquis de Sade, Gilles de Rais and Erzsébet Báthory, the libertinism applauded by Breton indicates the extent to which surrealism viewed sadism as a means of questioning Western notions of sexual and moral normalcy. While most of Penrose’s work privileges female protagonists and the sexual liberties that they afford themselves (as in her Sapphic poetry from the 1920s and 1930s, Martha’s Opera [1946] and Dons des féminines [1951]), her work inherits from surrealism because its libertine and “dark” Gothic themes expose the symbolic underbelly of Western rationalism and moral decency. who bathed in the blood of young virgins sacrificed for the preservation of her pale, vampiric beauty. Throughout the text, Penrose represents the mythic countess and her corrupted soul by describing, in horrifying detail, the crimes committed. This is exemplified in a retelling of the disciplinary measures taken upon a group of seamstresses working in her castle:

This passage highlights Erzsébet’s perverse fascination with mutilating the bodies of young women; we see, for example, that her “sombre eyes returned to life” (CS, 91) at the opportunity to torture a nude young girl. These scenes depict both the unjust punishment of a powerless victim and the sadistic pleasure of the noblewoman who, permanently self-exiled in one of her feudal castles, “grants herself limitless liberties” (CS, 155)⁶“Erzsébet préférait se retirer dans son haut château solitaire, où elle s’accordait des droits sans limites” (CS, 155). In order to respect syntactical conventions of both French and English languages, I will cite certain passages of La Comtesse sanglante in English. All translations of the book are my own..

The power dynamics at play between the countess and her six hundred or so victims – all pale young girls, and mostly peasants in need of work – upend morally righteous notions of justice, retribution and punishment, notably because Penrose’s heroine infringes on the freedoms of the most vulnerable while legitimizing her own perverse “right” to seek pleasure in whatever way her most virile and sadistic instincts demand⁷The notion of Báthory’s “right” to seek pleasure draws from a typically XVIII^th century Libertine justification of sadism. In her detailed study of the confluence of XIII^th century Gothic and Libertine traditions, Elizabeth Durot-Boucé describes the reasoning that underpins the Libertine’s pursuit of sexual pleasure and violence: “l’aspiration au plaisir est naturelle, parfaitement licite, rejetant les préceptes d’une morale religieuse ou sociale qui n’est que corruption de la loi naturelle et divine.” Elizabeth Durot-Boucé, Emily philosophe, ou, Le goût du plaisir. À l’ombre des Lumières, roman gothique et roman libertin, Rennes, Travaux d’Investigation et de Recherche (T.I.R.), 2017, p. 78. . Erzsébet unyieldingly defends this “right” to practise torture and witchcraft due to the renown and privilege of the noble Báthory name⁸The narrator describes the importance of the Báthory name and the “just” punishment that Erzsébet is spared: “[…] le feu attendait les sorcières ; et la seule mort digne d’Erzsébet Báthory eût été d’avoir sa belle tête tranchée. D’ailleurs, elle n’eût pas davantage reconnu la légitimité de ce châtiment. N’avait-elle pas pour les grands droits de l’aigle et du loup ?” (CS, 93).. Despite her feudal privilege, over the course of the tale the reader learns that the Hungarian authorities gather evidence against the noblewoman. Yet on her arrest in 1611, the countess is spared the executioner’s sword and sentenced to life imprisonment in her Gothic fortress, Csejthe.

Therefore, La Comtesse sanglante examines the sadistic crimes of a wealthy noblewoman who, it may seem, did not suffer a just retribution. “Out of respect for her illustrious name” (CS, 7), the king agreed to lessen her punishment⁹After delivering the guilty verdict, the judicial officers gave King Mathias the choice of sentencing: Erzsébet Báthory was to face either the executioner’s sword or indefinite incarceration. She was spared the former for fear of disapproval from her privileged relatives and because the countess allegedly murdered only servants and neither royal nor noble Hungarians (according to the narrator, this last detail was a lie). Ultimately, it was owing to the countess’ noble title that she was not executed: “Le roi Mathias [écrit] : ‘Erzsébet Nádasdy doit être exécuté’. Mais Thurzó écrivit une autre lettre, insistant sur le fait qu’elle était ‘veuve de soldat, noble et de grande famille, et que son nom, un des plus anciens de Hongrie, devait être épargné’” (CS, 222). and, in the end, Erzsébet Báthory does not meet the same fate as her beaten and bloodied victims: “[pour la sauver] on invoquait toujours les mêmes motifs : sa famille, son mari, son nom” (CS, 222). However, Erzsébet’s faithful accomplices pay dearly for their collaboration, as their fingers are, in the name of justice, brutally dismembered; these women – the countess’s trusted servants – are subsequently burned alive¹⁰The court declared the following: “[…] attendu que ses complices étaient Ficzkó, Jó Ilona et Dorkó, et que ces crimes demandent châtiment, nous avons décidé qu’à Jó Illona, puis à Dora Szentes, les doigts seront arrachés par les pinces du bourreau, parce qu’elles ont par ces doigts commis des crimes contre le sexe féminin ; elles seront ensuite jetées vivantes dans le feu” (CS, 218).. Not only does Báthory’s sentence of indefinite incarceration appear disproportionate to the crimes committed, but it is highly unjust by today’s standards, given the monarchical privileging that occurs in feudal Hungary: “Erzsébet, en effet, ne fut pas décapitée parce qu’il n’y avait à retirer d’un tel geste rien d’autre que la réprobation, pleine de menaces, de sa famille et de ses pairs” (CS, 223). Where, then, does retribution for Báthory’s crimes lie?

The following analysis of La Comtesse sanglante shows that the noblewoman does, in fact, pay for her infamous sadism. My initial explanation of the principal crimes that she commits will lead me to demonstrate that these same offences are linked to her retribution because they are set in motion by her hybris. I argue that the countess’s retribution is best understood, first, by recalling ancient Greek conceptions of Nemesis and hybris and, second, by suggesting that Penrose borrows from the Faustian plot. This three-part analysis – which focuses respectively on the crimes of the heroine, their relation to ancient Greek mythology and the tale’s borrowing of a typically Faustian retribution – suggests that Penrose’s protagonist does, throughout her “bloody” life, suffer a particular kind of punishment and does not, in fact, fully enjoy the unbridled freedoms of which she believes herself worthy.

The crimes of Erzsébet Báthory: lesbian sadism, witchcraft and narcissism

The narrator’s descriptions of the countess’s sadistic behaviour are particularly detailed, as seen in the previously cited passage in which the faithful servant-accomplice, Dorkó, cuts the skin between the seamstresses’ fingers and pierces their naked breasts with a needle. This provision of gruesome details is important, and not only because it illustrates the influence of the Sadean novel¹¹The work of the most iconic XVIII^th century Libertine author – the Marquis de Sade, whose name is, of course, the origin of the term “sadism” – relies on an unsettling precision regarding the description of sexual violence: “Terme clé de l’esthétique sadienne, le détail est à la fois la micro-correction stylistique qui a permis de parvenir au mot juste, et dans les scènes violentes de la fiction, l’information de plus qu’on a fait mine de cacher au lecteur, portant toujours sur la manière dont tel personnage a été blessé, mutilé ou tué en détail.” Jean-Christophe Abramovici, Encre de sang. Sade écrivain, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2013, p. 13. Abramovici’s emphasis.: most scenes of ritualistic murder highlight the spectatorship of the countess who watches her accomplices perform torture. This “staging¹²Andrea Oberhuber refers to the “sacrificial theatre” of La Comtesse sanglante: Andrea Oberhuber, “Désir, violence et sexualité ‘noire’ dans La Comtesse sanglante de Valentine Penrose,” Sextant, nº 29, 2012, p. 74.” of sexual violence foregrounds one of Báthory’s most obvious crimes, that is, her lesbian sadism: “Les juges, au procès, et le roi Mathias dans ses lettres, considérèrent comme une circonstance aggravante le fait que ces crimes aient été commis ‘sur le sexe féminin’. Sommairement, ils durent entrevoir des profondeurs perverses, mystérieusement sensuelles, qui lui firent horreur” (CS, 165). Lesbianism and sadism are, on the whole, two concepts frequently coupled in the tale, as Andrea Oberhuber evinces in her analysis of what she terms the heroine’s “dark” sexuality: “le récit […] pose au fond la question d’une pratique sexuelle transgressive à plus d’un égard. La comtesse Báthory […] s’adonn[e] à des rituels jouissifs de mise à mort de jeunes femmes¹³Ibid., p. 72. .” This aspect of the tale is explicitly described in the following passage wherein the narrator explains that astrology, in fact, has much to do with this disturbing juncture of homosexuality and sadistic violence: “la lesbienne, souvent, est aussi sadique ; l’influx de Mars masculin et guerrier la mène, et son esprit influencé par les lances cruelles ne redoute pas de blesser, en amour surtout, ce qui est beau, jeune, amoureux et féminin” (CS, 25). The convergence of Eros and Thanatos in La Comtesse sanglante points to the protagoniste’s “diabolical” libertinism, in the sense that Bataille suggests in Les Larmes d’Éros: “[…] essentiellement, ‘diabolique’ signifie la coïncidence de la mort et de l’érotisme¹⁴Georges Bataille, Les Larmes d’Éros, op. cit., p. 56.”. It also highlights the countess’ twisted malady: her scopophilia¹⁵Oberhuber also explores this aspect of the countess’s perversions, but in relation to the nudity that occurs outside of the torture chamber and in the domestic space of her castle: ibid., p. 78., a term closely associated with voyeurism that, in Freudian theory, underscores the sexual pleasure derived from the activity of looking¹⁶Cf. Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, “Sadism and Film: Freud and Resnais”, Qui Parle, vol. 6, nº 1, 1992, p. 7. Scopophilia has since become a key term in Film Studies, especially following Laura Mulvey’s 1975 feminist analysis on the objectification of women in cinema.. The following passage foregrounds the homosexual arousal that the noblewoman derives from acting as spectator to such “scenes” exhibiting the torturous deaths of nude young girls:

Theatre is undoubtedly at the heart of these recurring scenes of lesbian violence, as we notice, in the sections emphasised here, when the protagonist primarily acts as a voyeuse sitting “unflinching in her high carved pulpit”, only sometimes actively participating in the torture. The narrator describes the fascination and the “duration of sexual pleasure, of a witch’s pleasure” that accompanies the act of “watching dying” (CS, 156-157). Indeed, throughout the tale, the scopophilic drive underpinning Erzsébet’s twisted brand of lesbianism is consistently evoked in multiple references to the “trance” that she falls into during the underground, ritualistic torture: “il dut passer alors, comme souvent à la suite de semblables cruelles libertés, que la Comtesse tombât dans une de ces transes que, justement, elle recherchait” (CS, 140-141).

This kind of “dark,” transgressive¹⁷Research on Penrose’s text considers the idea of transgression as the act of surpassing socially and societally conceived boundaries, as per Bataille’s definition. The experience of eroticism is, for Bataille, related to the idea of crossing symbolic boundaries as it is tied to death, murder, and sacrifice: Georges Bataille, L’Érotisme, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1957, p. 46-56 and p. 91-99. In addition, Bataille frequently makes references to the work of Sade, a writer infamous for his coupling of sexuality and violence: ibid., p. 183-219 and Les Larmes d’Éros, op. cit., p. 105-106.

Bataille’s understanding of transgression is at the heart of both Oberhuber and Karen Humphreys’ respective analyses of La Comtesse sanglante. The former writes, for example: “[L]’héroïne [est] sexuellement et moralement au-delà du supportable. […] La Comtesse sanglante révèle le penchant de Penrose pour des héroïnes à la beauté explosive, transfrontalières, se situant au-delà des normes éthiques et des lois sociales de leur époque”. Andrea Oberhuber, loc. cit., p. 72. Humphreys explains that “the novel is rife with topoï that are transgressive in their controversial nature and literally in their liminal spaces and places within culture—such as insanity, lesbianism, transvestism, and witchcraft. Through the protagonist Báthory, Penrose transcribes a deviant lineage”: Karen Humphreys, “The Poetics of Transgression in Valentine Penrose’s La Comtesse sanglante,” The French Review, vol. 76, nº 4, 2003, p. 741 and p. 745-746. Renée Riese Hubert adopts a similar perspective, especially when pointing out that the protagonist defies female stereotypes: Renée Riese Hubert, “Lesbianism and Matriarchy: Valentine and Roland Penrose,” in Magnifying Mirrors. Women, Surrealism, & Partnership, Lincoln & London, University of Nebraska Press, 1994, p. 102-109. sexuality is closely entwined with Báthory’s practice of witchcraft: “tout sorcier et toute sorcière sont érotiques” (CS, 112). That is, torture is most often committed following the counsel of two “witches from the forest” in order to procure the blood that will preserve the countess’s beauty. During the feudal, post-medieval age and in the far-off regions where Erzsébet chooses to reside, black magic and sacrificial violence thrive, despite being described as anachronistic and archaic practices considered by most as the “most hateful evil of all” (CS, 174): “en Angleterre, en Suède, peu de temps après, les sorciers furent systématiquement persécutés. En Hongrie, pasteurs et prêtres catholiques faisaient, en chaire, assaut d’éloquence pour dénoncer ce mal, le plus détestable de tous. Le roi Mathias II [le roi de la Hongrie du récit] était particulièrement peu favorable aux recherches occultes” (CS, 174). The tale portrays Hungary during the late XVI^th and early XVII^th centuries as a superstitious nation where European progress from the Renaissance was barely present and where one “continued to live as if it were the Middle Ages” (CS, 41); Hungarian Catholics and Protestants alike are frequently described as God-fearing folk. In fact, the pastors of the village of Csejthe (named Ponikenus and, later, András Berthoni) play an important role in Penrose’s fictionalized “history” of Countess Báthory, as they testify against the noblewoman and confirm numerous rumours relating to her blood baths. The strange, vampiric rituals where the countess will have the blood of her victims poured over her shoulders in fact partially serve as evidence of her witchery, an activity that goes against the natural order of the world and, according to the religious milieu of feudal Hungary, against the intentions of God¹⁸It is important to note that Báthory’s trial was judicial, as opposed to ecclesiastical. This detail in fact represents an important difference between the trial of Erzsebet and that of Gilles de Rais, the XV^th century French baron, sorcerer and homosexual sadist, to whom the countess is repeatedly compared. The narrator explains that Gilles de Rais faced harsher sentencing owing to the Church’s involvement in the trial: “malheureusement pour Gilles de Rais, on transféra le procès au tribunal de l’évêque de Nantes [et] le procès d’Erzsébet Báthory ne releva pas du tribunal ecclésiastique […]” (CS, 173-174).. Therefore, witchcraft, and related practices such as alchemy, necromancy and occultism, further incriminate the countess; her witch-accomplices, Darvulia and Erza Majorova, counsel her on ways to use the powers of the earth to eliminate enemies that suspect her secret activities. They advise her on whose blood will be most valuable and how it will best render her eternally pale and youthful: “La sorcellerie n’avait pour elle qu’un but : se préserver de toutes parts. Se préserver de la vieillesse, car elle était de ces êtres qui désirent avec fureur, et presque gratuitement, garder toujours leur sombre perfection ; se préserver de l’ennemi qui pourrait faire obstacle à son inlassable poursuit, dans un néant étale, de son œuvre de néant. Ainsi protégée, elle pouvait nier la vie et la détruire, pour aucun autre profit que de la nier” (CS, 93).

Given that she is driven by a “tireless pursuit” (CS, 93) of self-preservation, narcissism appears as the countess’s greatest crime because it motives her collaboration with the two strange “witches from the forest” and her perpetration of sexual violence. The narrator references, for example, the research of a historian who found, in 1729, the minutes of the Báthory court proceedings¹⁹“La minute du procès fut retrouvée en 1729 par un Père Jésuite, Laszló Turóczi, qui écrivit une monographie d’Erzsébet Báthory. Il devait la faire réimprimer en 1744. Il recueillit l’histoire que nul, dans la région de Csejthe, n’avait encore oubliée” (CS, 8).: “Turóczi László, le Jésuite qui plus de cent ans après écrivit cette histoire, remarque au sujet d’Erzsébet Báthory : ‘Elle était vaine’. ‘Son plus grand péché était de vouloir être belle’ […]” (CS, 92). Penrose wields this historical detail in order to foreground the noblewoman’s introversion, self-worship, and inherent narcissism. Penrose indeed implicitly references the Narcissus myth in order to warn against unchecked vanity. This warning reoccurs in passages that liken Báthory to the evil queen in the fairy tale²⁰The intertextuality of Penrose’s later poetry, notably in Les Magies (1972), demonstrates her enduring interest in fairy tales (Donkeyskin, Sleeping beauty) and mythology (Demeter, Venus, Kàli), among others themes (astrology, herbology). See: Valentine Penrose, Écrits d’une femme surréaliste, Georgiana M. M. Colvile (ed.), Paris, Éditions Joëlle Losfeld, 2001, p. 222, p. 225-229, p. 249 and p. 254. Snow White:

Narcissism is the ultimate catalyst for the countess’s other crimes of lesbian sadism and witchcraft: Erzsébet experiences sexual pleasure from torturing young girls²¹As further evidence of Penrose’s fascination with fairy tales, the protagonist’s tendency to seek young girls from neighbouring regions and to invite them into her castle references the Bluebeard tale. This is because both Báthory and Bluebeard use their privilege to lure young women into their castle in order to torture and murder them. because they are sacrificed for the preservation of her pale beauty, an unnatural ambition made possible through the practice of devilish magic (through ritualistic torture which involves drawing blood to make potions and to cast spells). Penrose portrays this arrogant attempt to remain beautiful as an insatiable, even animalistic, desire: “Comme on s’inquiète soudain, comme le feu prend, comme on arrache ses habits, subitement la soif de sang s’emparait d’Erzsébet” (CS, 72-73). Erzsébet’s instinctive and monstrous quest for blood and beauty is therefore the reason for her imprisonment. And yet, her three main crimes of lesbian sadism, witchcraft, and narcissism reveal more than the countess’s culpability.

Hybris as Nemesis

The incriminating actions of Erzsébet Báthory illustrate her own torment. By devoting her life, privilege, and wealth to the bloody and “tireless pursuit” (CS, 93) of pleasure via sacrificial violence, she perpetuates a self-destructive cycle:

This citation demonstrates, first, that Báthory appears impulsively, even instinctively, drawn to the crimes outlined above, because the narrator describes a phenomenon whereby, as emphasised in the citation, “nothing could prevent her from sliding towards destructive and perverse pleasures.” Second, we see that these desires are unattainable, that her quest for supernatural beauty is futile; Erzsébet’s gaze remains “bored and unsatisfied.” This ultimately impossible search for (un)earthly power and beauty is evoked in a later description of Erzsébet’s potential state of mind during her imprisonment: “Pourquoi suis-je ici, durement accusée, pour expier ce que mes désirs ont fait, mais dont je n’ai, moi, jamais senti l’accomplissement ? Mes désirs se sont réalisés hors de moi, sans moi ; mes désirs m’ont manquée” (CS, 225). Penrose’s heroine consistently, but ineffectively, attempts to surpass the limits of what humankind is, or should be, capable: “Allant aux ultimes limites, elle s’était égarée loin au-delà du niveau ordinaire des humains” (CS, 96).

Engaged in this necessarily impossible quest to become superhuman, the countess is driven purely by her desires that are, importantly, portrayed as innate: “[…] sa nature profonde, […] elle [la] devait à son hérédité et à ses astres” (CS, 22). This citation refers to the “stars” because the astrological relation between the Moon, Mercury, and Mars at the moment of the heroine’s birth are thought to have rendered her an inherently cruel lesbian; in addition, the mention of her lineage references the terrible headaches bordering on epilepsy that the countess inherits from her ancestors who were “all cruel, all mad” (CS, 63). The Báthory family headaches are evoked in order to portray their hereditary, demonic nature (CS, 60), especially in the case of the countess: “Frappée par le subtil rayon au plus profond d’elle-même, Erzsébet Báthory subissait de véritables crises de possession. On ne pouvait prévoir quand cela allait arriver. Et, soudain, c’étaient de lancinant maux de tête et d’yeux” (CS, 25). Here, the narrator explicitly evokes the “possession” that Báthory suffers during such episodes, presumably by Satan or some other hellish entity (other references to the heroine’s internal demons abound). The noblewoman’s astrology and her hereditary headaches thereby evince her intrinsic madness, a trait that is often, especially in the Platonic tradition, associated with hybris²²Richard V. Cudjoe, “The Fall of the Tragic Hero: A Critique of the ‘Hubristic Principle’”, Unizik Journal of Arts and Humanities, vol. 12, nº 1, 2011, p. 5, <www.ajol.info/index.php/ujah/article/viewFile/71740/60697> (accessed 22 October 2019)..

In ancient Greek literature (and, in particular, according to the tragic poets)²³Cudjoe analyzes the work of Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus and Thucydides, as well as the ancient tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, in order to describe hybris and the idea that in such literature “sin never goes unpunished”: ibid., p. 7-27., hybris is understood as “a disposition of overconfidence or presumption, as a result of which one fails to realize or recognize one’s limitations and the precariousness of one’s human condition²⁴Ibid., p. 4..” The term is famously defined in Aristotle’s Rhetoric as a characteristic trait exhibited when one perpetrates actions wherein “the victim incurs shame, not in order that [the perpetrator] may achieve anything other than what is done, but simply to get pleasure from it. […]. The cause of the pleasure for those committing hubris is that by harming people, they think themselves superior²⁵Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1378^b, 23-30, trans. by Cudjoe, cited in ibid., p. 3..” The heroine of La Comtesse sanglante corresponds to the ancient Greek hybristic model for three reasons: she believes that her privileged name renders her immune from the hand of justice; she enacts murder both to detriment – or “shame,” to borrow Aristotle’s term – of innocent victims for the sole purpose of deriving pleasure from their pain; and she uses witchcraft to narcissistically render herself superior by seeking eternal beauty and by eliminating her enemies. In the ancient Greek tradition, hybris is often accompanied by Nemesis, an anglicized term referring to the goddess personifying retribution and justice²⁶This is the definition provided by Emma J. Stafford, “Nemesis, Hybris and Violence”, in Jean-Marie Bertrand (ed.), La violence dans les mondes grec et romain, Paris, Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2005, p. 195-212, <books.openedition.org/psorbonne/21983> (accessed 22 October 2019)., but also to the more abstract concept of being given what one is due²⁷Richard V. Cudjoe, loc. cit., p. 6. Emma J. Stafford adds that, according to the ancient Greek tradition, “the kinds of behaviours that Nemesis is opposed to [are] acts which display lack of moderation and aidôs, which often […] constitute hybris.” Emma J. Stafford, loc. cit., p. 208. Aidôs is the god personifying modesty and humility; he preserves justice and defends from evil. Stafford writes that “Nemesis joins with Aidôs in fleeing from the dishonour, hybris and injustice of the ‘race of iron’”, that is, from the mortal race: ibid., p. 196..

As a result of the fundamental hybris that drives her “tireless pursuit” (CS, 93) of impossible beauty, Báthory suffers the wrath of Nemesis well before her arrest by the Hungarian authorities in 1611:

This passage describes a process by which each time the heroine, who anxiously senses that her enemies suspect her secret atrocities, “witnesses the onset of old age”, she “faces her crime.” As a result, the countess’s fear of old age drives her to make every effort to chase it away by delving deeper into her “evil” activities. She is therefore inextricably dependent on magic: “Erzsébet […] ne se sentait en sûreté que bardée de talismans, que murmurant incantations, que résonant aux heures de Mars et de Saturne” (CS, 73). She is also heavily reliant on “the lake of all strength: blood” (CS, 93) and, therefore, as Oberhuber points out, on her victims: “le sang pur et limpide des vierges est donc pour la comtesse le moyen paradoxal d’appartenir à la race des humaines et non à celle des fantômes²⁸Andrea Oberhuber, loc. cit., p. 74..” Given the heroine’s addiction to the depraved activities that only intensify her guilt, she is often described as an animal engaged in a hunt, as we have already seen in the above example of her strange “trance”. The text indeed often refers to the heroine’s “thirst” to procure the blood of young virgins, portraying her as a monstrous creature not dissimilar to a werewolf or a vampire that acts and reacts in response to her instincts, that is encouraged by a kind of invisible hand driving her towards her own undoing: “[…] comme le loup va à ses courses faméliques, Erzsébet allait à ce qu’il lui fallait” (CS, 20).

The noblewoman’s instinctive relationship with the world is in fact her malady and her torment, inviting a consideration of hybris as an intrinsic, inescapable and even animalistic element of her personality and, ultimately, as evidence of her existential suffering. Caught in a maddening, primal and self-perpetuating cycle, Erzsébet suffers the wrath of Nemesis because she lives in a perverted world motivated purely by her own hybristic desires. We may, therefore, associate Báthory’s torment with the more commonplace understanding of nemesis, an English term that typically refers to a rival, enemy or challenger: from this perspective, the countess’ greatest enemy – the thing that most threatens her undoing – is her own hybris. The lonely and secretive countess thereby erects her own symbolic prison, as her quest for eternal beauty functions as her only, albeit unachievable, hope of assuaging her torment. Unlike the Sadean Libertine, who sought pleasure through pain in order to rebel against XVIII^th rationalism, Báthory, instead of rendering herself entirely free from the moral confines of her privileged milieu, is punished by her hybris. In other words, Penrose’s heroine is portrayed throughout the tale as someone so characteristically twisted and tortured that she is incapable of extricating herself from the desires that motivate her crimes; Erzsébet Báthory is a typically “damned” heroine.

The Faustian Gothic model, or, the path to inevitable retribution

Damnation, which operates as the inescapable price for the heroine’s hybristic crimes, appears in the tale as a narrative trope borrowed from the English Gothic. That is, some of this tradition’s classic late XVIII^th and early XIX^th century novels, such as William Beckford’s Vathek (1886)²⁹William Beckford, Vathek, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008 [1786]., Mathew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk (1796)³⁰Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Monk, New York, Evergreen Books, 1952 [1796]. and Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya, or the Moor (1806), which famously transforms the Faustian hero into a scandalous heroine³¹Charlotte Dacre, Zofloya, or the Moor, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008 [1806]., narrate the inescapable destiny of a narcissistic, impulsive and impressionable protagonist. The shared fate of Vathek, Ambrosio “the Monk,” and Victoria di Loredani is tied to their characteristic hybris, a trait leveraged by Satan who, in each novel, inhabits the body of mere mortals to beguile the temptable and power-thirsty hero(ine). Dacre’s Satan, for example, triumphantly points out to Victoria di Loredani that “Yes, I it was [who] appeared to thee first in thy dreams, luring thee to attempt the completion of thy wildest wishes! – I found thee, oh! of most exquisite willingness, and yielding readily to all my temptations – But what hast thou gained? For I have deceived thee throughout³²Ibid., p. 267..” In the Gothic tradition, the Faustian figure is evoked through the evocation of libido sciendi, that is, the thirst for knowledge and the hybristic desire to exceed mortal limitations, as Durot-Boucé writes: “Faust incarne l’humanité qui aspire à la connaissance absolue, qui s’efforce de dominer la nature, de vaincre la mort, d’obtenir puissance et richesse. […] Cette hubris est toujours punie et […] le sacrilège tombe aux griffes de Satan³³Elizabeth Durot-Boucé, Introduction à la fiction gothique : Identité et altérité. L’écriture des frontières, Paris, Publibook, 2013, p. 159. Durot-Boucé associates Faust with the Greek Prometheus, the mortal who, after stealing fire from the gods as a gift to mankind, was punished for seeking to transgress his role as mere mortal: ibid., p. 157-160. The convergence of Faust and Prometheus appears, for example, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus (1818) which, in the words of Carol Dougherty, “raises enduring Promethean questions about the dangers of unbridled scientific research and the limitations of the creative process”: Carol Dougherty, Prometheus, London, Routledge, 2006, p. 111. See also: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus, Nick Groom (ed.), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018 [1818].”. The Faustian Gothic novel most often culminates in the stylized scenes in which the protagonists sell their souls in “a damning contract³⁴Matthew Gregory Lewis, op. cit., p. 417.” to the devil who drives them into “the dreadful abyss³⁵Charlotte Dacre, op. cit., p. 267.” of hell, as is exemplified by this passage from Beckford’s Vathek:

Beckford’s narrator demonstrates how the Gothic tradition inherits, first, from ancient Greek conceptions of hybris and Nemesis and, second, from the Faustian type inaugurated by the German legend of the overly ambitious scholar and alchemist, Faust³⁷This legend is a timeless literary trope, and the object of many well-known works of literature, such as, to name only the most famous, Christopher Marlowe’s play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (c. 1604), John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost (c. 1667), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play Faust (1808) and Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus (1947): Cf. Mildred Frederiksen, “Introducing the Faust Legend”, The English Journal, vol. 55, nº 7, 1966, p. 875-877. These rewritings of the Faustian type indicate the extent to which the figure has been passed down over the centuries. As we see in the case of Vathek, The Monk, Zofloya and La Comtesse sanglante, Gothic authors seem particularly interested in representing a hybristic and impressionable protagonist with a lust for power, knowledge or superhuman qualities who becomes caught in the devil’s ruse while attempting to fulfil his or her desires.. The Gothic schema conceives of the damning, Faustian fall into hell as an entirely just retribution for the unforgivable crimes of libido sciendi and hybris.

In a similar fashion, the narrator of La Comtesse sanglante foregrounds the countess’s damning excess, which she exhibits in her practice of alchemy and witchcraft and in her sadism, in order to forewarn of each mortal’s vulnerability to the devil’s ruse: “il faut savoir à travers quels dérèglements des sens le démon s’est manifesté chez l’être humain” (CS, 179)³⁸This citation resembles an eloquent and iconic passage in Zofloya, or the Moor: “Reader – consider not this as a romance merely. Over their passions and their weaknesses, mortals cannot keep a curb too strong. The progress of vice is gradual and imperceptible, and the arch enemy ever waits to take advantage of the failings of mankind, whose destruction is his glory! That his seductions may prevail, we dare not doubt; for how can we otherwise account for those crimes, dreadful and repugnant to nature, which human beings are sometimes tempted to commit? Either we must suppose that the love of evil is born with us (which would be an insult to the Deity), or we must attribute them (as appears more consonant with reason) to the suggestions of infernal influence.” Charlotte Dacre, op. cit., p. 267-268.. Erzsébet’s “dérèglements” – that is, her narcissistic desire to render herself impossibly and eternally beautiful through torture and witchcraft, as well as her sadistic libertinism –, portrays her as a typically Faustian heroine. Driven almost exclusively by her quest for unnatural beauty, the countess is incapable of eluding her Faustian destiny precisely because she is, as Oberhuber explains, “the ultimate victim of her own excess³⁹My translation: Andrea Oberhuber, loc. cit., p. 76. .” Báthory indeed finds herself in an inescapable impasse wherein her hybristic desires are at the heart of her undoing, as she falls into the same trap as the above-mentioned Gothic prototypes. This trap is inextricably entwined with both the inability of the noblewoman to suppress her hybris and the eternal damnation tied to her receptivity of the devil’s seductive promises: “sa mégalomanie et son goût du néant la laissaient toujours disponible pour recevoir et pour accepter” (CS, 144). Erzsébet, a Faustian heroine par excellence, is so driven by her thirst for blood and beauty and blinded by her privilege that she refuses to acknowledge that she treads the path to damnation: “[elle] ne pensa [jamais] à son salut. Malgré son lunatisme, elle était prédestinée à ce monde d’abord avant de l’être à un ciel ou à un enfer lointain” (CS, 19-20). As a result of Báthory’s arrogant belief that her noble lineage endows her with the right to commit horrendous and unnatural crimes, she remains blind to the devil’s ruse. It is in fact the so-called “witches from the forest” – they mysteriously flee prior to the arrest in 161 – that beguile the countess who willingly “abandons herself to [their] powers” (CS, 144):

Furthermore, the names of these witches, Darvulia and Erza Majorova, are exotic and mysterious; this detail contributes to their seductive persona, much like Dacre’s strange and beautiful moor, Zofloya, who, after having charmed Victoria di Loredani, we discover is the devil incarnate. In this way, Penrose inscribes her fictionalized biography of the vampiric noblewoman into a long literary history that forewarns against unchecked pride, vanity, and narcissism, traits that ineluctably lead to a tormented life of existential Nemesis before a damning, Faustian, fall from grace.

Conclusion: The Hungarian countesses’ eternal prisons

If indefinite incarceration is described as “a terrible ruling for Erzsébet” (CS, 209), the tale in its entirety must be understood as more than a story of the literal imprisonment of an unruly noblewoman. La Comtesse sanglante describes the symbolic prison that the heroine erects for herself: “[elle est] prisonnière d’un cercle enchanté, rêvant de vivre et ne vivant pas, protégeant de ses folles incantations cette existence qui n’avait jamais pu être une véritable existence” (CS, 74). The text thereby suggests that Nemesis does not always come from without (that is, from judicial authorities), but, in this case, manifests itself from within: seeking supernatural beauty through dark magic and exuberant bloodbaths represents an existential impasse for Erzsébet Báthory, illustrating her tormenting, inescapable and “sovereign narcissism” (CS, 20) all while compelling her to continue on the path of damnation. The heroine’s vanity and thirst for unnatural beauty demonstrates that her punishment lies in the idea that she is, in fact, incapable of fully enjoying the unbridled freedoms that she seeks, precisely because she unceasingly attempts to surpass the limits prescribed for mere mortals. Such hybris can lead only to Nemesis, an inevitable fate typical of the Faustian plot as it appears in classic Gothic novels, as well as in references to the symbolic and literal prisons in which Erzsébet Báthory was destined to languish.

“[Elle est] morte sans croix et sans lumière” (CS, 228) “dans cette lugubre lueur de puits” (CS, 227). After three and a half years, the Hungarian noblewoman perishes, unrepentant, in her own bedroom which, in addition, still contains “her large mirrors” (CS, 221) so that she would observe the effects of time on her aging figure. The Gothic castle of Csejthe, which was once her favourite dwelling, thereby becomes a prison operating as the literal manifestation of the countess’s own internal prison:

The dwindling daylight described in the final pages of the book calls to mind a symbolically Faustian hell, as it is a dark space without faith (“sans croix et sans lumière” [CS, 228]). The countess’s gloomy and ungodly abode operates as a spatial metaphor evoking her “shadowy” spirit that is the origin of her torment. Báthory’s soul is in this way repeatedly likened to the Gothic paradigm⁴⁰Cf. Stéphanie Robert, La cruauté au féminin : mythes et sacrifice dans La Comtesse sanglante de Valentine Penrose, Université de Montréal, 2010, p. 30-34. or to the creatures typically found within it (bats, vampires, etc.). She is described, for example, as a secretive woman “withdrawn into one castle or another, […], always found in the heart of stone and fortification” (CS, 93). The hybris that impels her tormented quest for beauty, blood, and a pact with the devil, does, ineluctably, drive her deeper into the lonely depths of her corrupted soul, which houses her perverted desires:

The infamous Hungarian countess of La Comtesse sanglante thereby pays for her crimes not only because she dies literally “walled in by the hand of justice” (CS, 5), but because she delves further into her hybris – a trait that is her torment and Nemesis – throughout her scandalous life that, from the beginning, “could have never been a true existence” (CS, 74). Therefore, the punishment that the God-fearing citizens of feudal Hungary would likely have considered “just” – that is, the executioner’s sword – appears, in the case of Erzsébet Báthory, inappropriate; it is perhaps more likely that the noblewoman’s greatest pain, that may even equate to torture, is to remain imprisoned with her hybris without any means of pursuing her perverted wishes, and to watch, in her large mirrors, her beauty disappear while she waits for her unholy death in 1614. Even after her lonely passing, “the ruins of Csejthe are haunted” (CS, 228) by her burdened spirit: “La Bête de Csejthe, la Comtesse sanglante, hurle encore la nuit dans les chambres dont les fenêtres et la porte furent, et restèrent, murées” (CS, 7).