Hemingway Loves/Adichie's Characters Hate

Refering to Baroness Karen Blixen, aka Isak Dinesen.

As if the name Count Seraphina didn't give it away at a glance:

from "The Deluge at Norderney"
from Seven Gothic Tales
Isak Dinesin

"Count Seraphina," said Miss Malin, "meditated much upon celestial matters. And, as you must be aware, who have read his poems, he was convinced that no woman was ever allowed to enter heaven. He disliked and mistrusted everything female; it gave him goose flesh.

"His idea of paradise was, then, a long row of lovely young boys, in transparent robes of white, walking two by two, singing his poems to his music, in such lovely trebles as you yourself once possessed, Mr. Jonathan, or otherwise discussing philosophy, or absorbed in his books upon arithmetics. The estate which he owned at Angleshorn in Mechlenburg he endeavored to turn into such a heaven, a Von Platen waxwork elysium, and in the very cernter of it he had, most awkwardly for himself and for her, this little girl, about whom he had doubts as to whether or not she might pass as an angel.

About which what can one say but ick. The pathology here is deep and disturbing: gothic, one might say.  One thinks Les Chants de Maldoror.