Secrets of Bly Manor
By Abigail Bainbridge
This October marks a year of living in the Circle City for me. I spent two months sleeping on a futon at a friend’s basement apartment in Fountain Square. Then the weekend after Thanksgiving, I moved into a house that we affectionately call a “Queer Liberal Arts Commune” or, alternatively, a “Swamp Witch Coven” with two other queer women.
One of the things my roommates and I bonded over very quickly was our shared identities, our love for T.V. and film, and our affection for the autumnal season– particularly Halloween. Although we had narrowly missed the opportunity to celebrate that season together last fall, it meant we had a year to prepare.
This October marks the First Annual Olney House Spook-tober T.V. and Film Festival, and you can view our itinerary here. (If you can figure out which house on Olney Street is a queer liberal arts commune run by a coven of swamp witches… please don’t.)
My T.V. selection for the event was The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), I watched it in October of 2020 when it first came out and was excited to share its haunting sapphic love affair with my coven. As it stands, we are four episodes into the show and are scheduled to watch the 5th episode tonight. For those who aren’t familiar, The Haunting of Bly Manor is a sapphic reimagining of Henry James’ 1898 horror novella Another Turn of the Screw, made for T.V. by the infamous horror writer, director, and showrunner Mike Flanagan. I think it is worth noting that, while Flanagan is not openly queer, his wife Kathern Siegel is bisexual. So, regardless of his own sexual identity, he is in an inherently queer relationship.
Throughout the first three episodes of the show, which updates James’ story from the 1890s to the 1980s, we watch as Dani (a lovely performance by Victoria Pedretti), the closeted au pair with a dark secret, grows closer to Jamie, the out-and-proud Gardner. Although it’s clear from the start that Jamie knows what she wants, and is actively pursuing Dani (mostly by providing emotional support and connection in a very isolating environment), Dani seems reluctant at best. While she shows obvious affection for the other young woman she is haunted by a young man with broken glasses every time she looks in the mirror.
In episode five, The Way It Came, we finally get a glimpse into Dani’s past. After the chief (played by the infallible Rahul Kohli)’s mother dies, Dani and her coworkers participate in an old-English tradition of building an autumn bonfire (old English for Bone Fire) to mourn those who have died and let them go.
While Dani declines to share with the group, we finally learn that the man with the glasses is her high school sweetheart and ex-fiance who died a bloody death right in front of her while she was in the process of calling off their engagement. After her flashback, Dani and Jamie sneak into the greenhouse where Dani confesses to Jamie that she sometimes sees her dead fiance, and then the pair begin to passionately make out, only to suddenly break apart when Dani sees the apparition of her dead lover.
Now, I am known to have a rather dark sense of humor. And to me, this over-the-top traumatic backstory that equates coming to terms with your sapphic sexuality with the literal death of your loved ones and previous life, forcing you to give up the found family you had built for yourself was downright laughable. It was over the top and the kind of “being gay will ruin your life and make you sad” style trope that I hate to see in queer media.
While I am bisexual, I’ve never been in a serious romantic relationship with a man. I’m attracted to them, sure. And I even kind of coasted on assuming I was straight until part way through college because of it, but I never really thought that my attraction to women and people of other genders would cancel that out. My view of queerness is, and always has been, one of inclusion and expanse. Think of it kind of like improv comedy; it’s a “yes and” type of situation.
I never viewed my attraction to women as the death of my attraction to men. So when all of this melodrama came to a crashing crescendo of Dani getting jump scared by her dead ex-boyfriend while she was making out with a woman for the first time I just couldn’t help myself; I laughed. And I’m not talking about a little giggle. I mean I laughed from deep in my belly. I laughed and laughed and laughed for probably a good thirty seconds.
I cannot make it clear enough; THIS IS NOT A FUNNY SCENE. It’s sad and scary and intimate and maybe even a little sweet, but it’s not funny.
It’s so not funny in fact, that my reaction actively upset one of my roommates. Both of my roommates are bisexual like I am, but everyone’s relationship with their own sexuality is unique to them, and although we share a sexuality our experiences with that sexuality are not necessarily the same. While I was sitting there laughing at the overzealous terror of the scene, the bisexual beside me was having a very different reaction.
My housemate is the opposite of me in many ways. Where I’m an extrovert, she’s an introvert. Where I like to smoke the occasional joint, she has no interest in weed. Where I have never had a serious relationship with a man, she married and then divorced, her high school sweetheart.
I found Dani’s backstory to be almost entirely unrelatable. I didn’t understand the difficulty she found in breaking off her soon-to-be marriage, I didn’t relate to her desire to keep her in-laws as her family, and I thought it was silly that his presence was still looming so large and so long after she had moved on.
So while I sat there laughing, my roommate was busy finding herself on the screen. At that moment, I believe she truly felt seen in a way she very rarely does in media; that Mike Flanagan’s character’s had reached out and shown her that other people, too, struggle with letting go of a relationship that didn’t work no matter how much you wanted it to. I think she saw characters who were also wrestling with how that love and that loss fit into not just your sexual identity, but how those things shape you as a person, and that they may still haunt you even after the relationship itself is long gone
If you follow my blog then you know that I’m always writing about how important it is for queer people to see themselves on the silver screen. But I also think it’s important to remember that you don’t have to see yourself in every piece of media you consume, because sometimes it’s not about you, sometimes, instead, it’s about the person sitting next to you.
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Abi Bainbridge (she/they) is a 23-year-old essayist and humorist based in the Broad Ripple neighborhood of Indianapolis, IN.
As a writer, they often focus on the intersection of her queer identity, Midwestern roots, and experience with pop culture.
If you’re interested in hearing more of her thoughts as they finish the second half of Bly Manor later this month, be sure to subscribe to her blog www.abiraccoon.com or follow them on Twitter & Instagram @abiraccoon.
