Wordsworth Inspired Shoot at the Historic Grove Park Inn

"For oft when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude, And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the Daffodils."
- from I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud by William Wordsworth

OP: Mary Magdalene
Necklace: Offbrand (alloy)
Basket (see last photo): Offbrand, thrifted

I had a small impromptu photoshoot back in April with a visiting friend of my mother who happens to be a photographer. Since we were all out for dinner at the Grove Park Inn (which sounds like a tiny place but is really a huge luxury hotel where even President Obama has stayed) and since she had never seen me in lolita (albeit I wasn't exactly wearing a petti, so it's more like a poofy tiered dress), she decided to improvise a shoot by some daffodils. We had to fight the sun, so the lighting isn't fabulous, but I'm happy the pictures came out alright--it's been a dream of mine to have a photoshoot inspired by Romantic poetry. This one is inspired by William Wordsworth's poem which in turn he based on a passage in his sister's journal (sometimes good things come from having your brother read your journal, there is hope!). This is one of my favorite poems and one of yours too if you're a hopeless romantic like me ;-)

Which Austen Heroine am I?

Take the Quiz here!

"You are Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey! You love a good Gothic romance - so much, in fact, that you'll fool yourself into thinking you're living one! You are imaginative and naive, which is at once endearing and perplexing. Perhaps your heart is TOO pure...but it is adventurous. After all, you love a trip to Bath or a stay at an ancient Abbey."

I'm not surprised. I actually dislike Austen for a number of reasons, namely that she is way too Neoclassical for my taste, a bit too rational where romanticism might have kicked in. I prefer Ann Radcliffe or the later Bronte sisters. I suppose I'm horrid because I like shocking things to happen to the main characters---I mean "I left my abusive alcoholic husband in the Victorian era and I'm about to change social norms FOREVER" type things, not "oops that guy wasn't as much of a jerk as I thought" type things (Tenant of Wildfell Hall versus P&P). I must admit, the Gothic is an overlooked genre--I encourage everyone to read a good gothic, preferably one with a strongly-defined heroine like those of the Bronte sisters' novels. Male writers also produced some salicious Gothics, and many see the Gothic as the most hyper-sexualized of literary genres (makes sense--Victorian sexuality was fairly repressed). Not that Austen isn't wonderful, but she's the tip of a delicious iceberg of women writers of the late 18th and 19th century.

So, if you were an Austen character, who would you be?