I have to say that after reading The Bloody Countess I will think twice before judging a pretty girl before and after getting to know her. From the reading it seemed that Erzebet Bathory looked like a beautiful girl who couldn't hurt a fly, in the public eye. This can be observed by the fact that Ferenez Nadasdy, a courageous soldier, married her and never discovered or wasn't smart enough to find out the truth of his marriege to a monster. However, this made me think a little bit of how Bathory was able to pull this off. When Bathory is finally caught and punished for her horrible acts of murder and torture she says that it was her right as part of the nobility to perform such acts on people. Throughout her years of torturing and murdering she never felt any regret or repentance because she always saw it as her right to be able to commit such acts.
Another important aspect of the reading that I noticed was of the enormous gap between the nobility and the peasants. Erzebet tortured, mutilated and killed hundreds and hundreds of innocent young women peasants and just because they were peasants nobody, not even the proper authorities did anything to stop the murders. It wasn't until Erzebet went after the "blue" blooded young women that something was finally done. This shows that the peasants were literally seen as animals in the 1600's in Eastern Europe. The nobility were able to get away with murder. However, it also shows the weakness of the nobility in its ability to control its own kind. Erzebet also murdered nobility but in a way also got away with it because all they did was put her in house arrest for the rest of her life. The nobility was afraid that the punishing of one branch of nobility would weaken the entire nobility as a group and therefore were afraid to do anything about the mass murdering.
You bring up an interesting point. I'm still quite bewiledered by the scene where she would have the women clean or just hang out in a room naked full of cats while she and her servants looked on. In some twisted way, she is lowering the peasent girls to the level of animals, further creating the gap between herself and those she viewed as inferior to her.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really interesting point that the nobility have trouble keeping their kind under control. It is completely true. If one person of nobility were to go againtst another person of nobility its essentially like going against the entire nobility. It would be almost impossible to control unless you have everyone on your side which requires a drastic event to occur to change everyone's minds.
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