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Secret of the Growing Gold” was a ' short story written by Bram Stoker . The short story was published in a January 23, 1892 issue of the newspaper and White: A Weekly Illustrated Record and Review", London. The story has not garnered as much attention as Stoker's most famous gothic work, ''.

Plot summary
Secret of the Growing Gold"' is about Margaret Delandre, her brother Wyhman Delandre, Geoffrey Brent, and Mrs. Brent. The story is told through a third person narrative. The events of the story take place between Brent’s Rock and Dander’s Croft. The story begins with a brief history of two notable families called the Delandres and the Brents. The Delandres are of a lower yeomen group, while the Brent’s are more refined. The Delandre family consists of Margaret Delandre and her brother Wyhman Delandre. Both have a divisive relationship, which is only further driven apart by Margaret’s relationship with Geoffrey Brent. Geoffrey and Margaret’s relationship was never proclaimed; but people speculated that the two were married. Margaret and Geoffrey’s relationship was contentious and prone to fights and gossip within the community. One day the couple takes a trip and Margaret supposedly perished during an unfortunate carriage accident while on the trip. Wyhman, Margaret’s brother, makes inquiries into the matter, but never gets a response from Geoffrey. Within a year, Brent marries a foreign beauty and is expecting a child. While Whyman is sitting in his estate one night, Margaret suddenly makes an appearance and is angry with both him and Geoffrey. She states she is going to confront Geoffrey and heads over to Brent's Rock. While confronting Geoffrey, Margaret is killed by Geoffrey and he hides her body behind a makeshift wall, which he is renovating for his new fiance’. Geoffrey is worried that his current wife will find out about the murder so he forbids her from going into the room. Somehow, Maragaret's hair continues to grow at a rapid rate, even pushing through the brick encasing Geoffrey creates. This continues until one night Geoffrey finds his wife in the very room of the murder. Both sit in the room until the next morning when the town Doctor comes to visit after a search for them, only to find them strangled to death with golden hair around their bodies.

Publication History
The story was published in a January 23, 1892 issue of the newspaper Black and White: A Weekly Illustrated Record and Review,in London. It was reprinted in the October 15, 1892 issue of the newspaper The Bristol Observer, in Bristol. And finally it was later published in Guest And Other Weird Stories'', George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., London. 1914.

Background
Bram Stoker (November 8, 1847 – April 20, 1912) is the author of the widely popular novel Dracula (1897), as well as eight other novels. As a boy growing up in Dublin, Ireland, Stoker was very ill and bed-ridden for months at a time. As a way of entertaining himself, he read many folktales and began writing his own poetry and ghost stories. By the age of 17, Stoker had recovered from his childhood illness and began attendance at Trinity College in Dublin. Upon his studies, Stoker became increasingly interested in theater and the works of Walt Whitman, to whom he sent many letters of admiration.

At the age of 24; Stoker began to write more intently on his own literary works, which led to minor publications in newspapers. He devoted much of his time to the research, which led to his publication of Dracula. Like many other nineteenth century artists, Stoker had a great preoccupation with vampirism and the supernatural. His other short stories preceding Dracula, such as Lady of the Shroud, The Lair of the White Worm, and The Secret of the Growing Gold explore fantastical realms of reality and ways in which the supernatural interact with the natural world based on older Gothic fiction conventions. Written during the “Gothic Revival” of the 1880's, this period of Gothic literature was highlighted for experimenting with social roles and ethics of the time while maintaining to the core pillars of the “Gothic Genre” by being a romantic and horrifying short story. “The Secret of the Growing Gold” contains “Gothic” literary elements of the damsel in distress when a romance is taken too far, and the female character turns up dead; the supernatural aspect exists as well, in the revenge of the “undead” societal challenger, Margaret Delandre.

The later years of Stoker’s life were accompanied by a series of dismal events, such as the contraction of syphilis in the 1880s and a steady decline in his mental health. He died at the age of 65 in 1912, which unfortunately was given little notice by the press and his literary peers. Written during the “Gothic Revival” of the 1880s, this period of Gothic literature was highlighted for experimenting with social roles and ethics of the time.

Analysis
Although the short story Secret of the Growing Gold” hasn’t been extensively analyzed, from a critical standpoint, Abigail Heiniger is one of the few critics who discusses the short story in detail in her article “Undead Blonde Hair in the Victorian Imagination: The Hungarian Roots of Bram Stoker’s Secret of the Growing Gold”. Here, Heiniger analyzes the idea of blonde hair and what it represents in the story, in racial terms, and in Victorian culture. Firstly, Heiniger explains that in the story, when Geoffrey murders Margaret, he is essentially suppressing her ability to speak out, and get her revenge or justice. But the blonde hair, although passive in life, becomes active in death. The hair speaks for the injustice that has been done, and behaves both heroically and protectively in the name of Margaret, by punishing Geoffrey for what he had done (2). Additionally, according to Heiniger, the blonde hair is a symbol of the uncontrollable passion that Geoffrey has for Margaret. For instance, at the end of the story, even though he knows that the hair will expose his murderous ways, Geoffrey is entranced by the hair and can’t seem to stop observing it. Thus, Heiniger argues that this story is a projection of male desire, and is a testament to how destructive this desire can actually be; for in the end, this desire is what causes the male to be “victimized” and weak (4). Moreover, in terms of racial anxiety, Heiniger claims that Margaret’s blonde hair is representative of the typical European Anglo-Saxon woman in Victorian culture. However, when Geoffrey assumes her to be dead, and remarries an Italian woman with dark hair, Margaret is essentially replaced. This is a sort of metaphor for what was truly going on in Victorian England, according to Heiniger. In Victorian England, there was a lot of “racial anxiety”, in the sense that something along the lines of counter-colonialism would occur (5). There existed a feeling that the Easterners may invade Britain and take over the genetic pool. For example, if dark-haired Eastern women began to mate with pure Anglo-Saxon men, that blonde hair, being recessive, would probably die out. Critics analyzed Bram Stoker’s Dracula in very similar ways, attesting to the fact that the idea of vampires represented the fear of the mixing of European blood with non-European blood, or people from places such as “Transylvania”. Therefore, both Dracula and “The Secret of the Growing Gold” deal with similar themes on a critical and racial level.

Finally, Heiniger raises the issue of sexuality and femininity in Victorian Culture and in the story. The Victorian male tended to find blonde hair extremely attractive, as that was the norm for the time and for Anglo-Saxon women. Like Geoffrey, many men saw and still do see hair as a symbol of sexuality and beauty. They never assume that something more dangerous and sinister could be lurking in the shadows. However, Stoker plays with this idea by turning blonde hair, something that should customarily be considered attractive to the male imagination, into a living nightmare. In this manner, the story is unique, and sheds a whole new light on female beauty and sexuality (10).

Adaptations
There was a puppet short film (2014) adaptation of Secret of the Growing Gold"'' found on vimeo. Directed by Rían Smith. Voiced by Paul Kerney, Luke Bridgett, Bridget Ní Duinn Belcher and Fiona Mitchell. Designed by Bridget Ní Duinn Belcher, Paul Kerney, Damien Crean, Eva Porter, Ross Walsh and Shauna Griffiths.Produced by Finbarr Crotty. Scriptwriting by Sean Murphy. Production Management by Colmán Mac Cionnaith. Cinematography by Luke Bridgett. Sound by Rob Flynn. Edited by Niamh Mac Namara.