The Haunted Hotel · Chapter
XXII explained
Alone in her hotel room in Venice, Agnes Lockwood unpacks and struggles with restless thoughts, including a newfound bitterness toward the dead Lord Montbarry and tender feelings for Henry Westwick.
What happens
Alone in her hotel room in Venice, Agnes Lockwood unpacks and struggles with restless thoughts, including a newfound bitterness toward the dead Lord Montbarry and tender feelings for Henry Westwick. After midnight, she falls asleep but wakes to find the Countess Narona mysteriously present in her room, seemingly in a torpor. As Agnes reaches for the bell, she sees a severed human head hovering in midair above her—a horrifying apparition that leaves her paralyzed with terror.
Themes in this chapter
Supernatural and the Unknown
The severed head appears silently and inexplicably, hovering in midair, defying natural explanation and plunging Agnes into supernatural terror.
Madness and Psychological Torment
Agnes's emotional turmoil—shame over her feelings for Henry, bitterness toward Montbarry—and the Countess's torpor suggest psychological distress and haunting.
Deception and Secrets
The Countess's unexplained presence in Agnes's room hints at hidden motives and secrets surrounding the hotel and its past.
Characters to notice
- Agnes Lockwood
Alone in her room at night, Agnes unpacks, battles conflicting emotions about Lord Montbarry and Henry Westwick, and is terrorized by the apparition of a severed head.
- Countess Narona
Mysteriously appears in Agnes's room, reclining in a chair in a deathlike torpor, insensible to sound or touch.
- Henry Westwick
Presiding image in Agnes's memory; she dwells on his devotion and feels the pain of their separation.
- Lord Montbarry
Dead; Agnes recalls his broken faith and feels a new, harsh sense of the wrong she suffered.
Key passages
“What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their hiding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!”
Agnes reflects on how solitude and night-time privacy can stir forbidden romantic feelings.
Highlights Agnes's internal conflict between her loyalty to the dead Montbarry and her growing affection for Henry Westwick.
“She was not alone in her room! There—in the chair at the bedside—there, suddenly revealed under the flow of light from the candle, was the figure of a woman, reclining.”
Agnes discovers the Countess Narona has entered her room without permission and is sitting in a chair by the bed.
Marks the beginning of the supernatural encounter and the Countess's mysterious intrusion.
“Midway between her face and the ceiling, there hovered a human head—severed at the neck, like a head struck from the body by the guillotine.”
Agnes sees a disembodied human head floating in the air above her bed.
The central supernatural event of the chapter, evoking horror and the macabre.