The Dungeon: Reflections on Penny Dreadful, Vanessa Ives, and the Price of Relief

Welcome to Sacred Musings, my blog. Here is where I share my thoughts and feelings about topics close to my heart. I thank you for coming here and do hope that you return.

There is a scene from Penny Dreadful that has lived in my mind for years. I have not watched the series in a long time, but I still remember exactly how it made me feel.

The story follows Vanessa Ives, a woman gifted with extraordinary intuition. She is a tarot reader, a spiritualist, a seeker, a woman who can sense things others cannot. Depending on who is telling the story, she is called blessed, cursed, gifted, dangerous, holy, or wicked. Throughout the series, she is haunted. Not only by literal spirits, but by expectations, by religion and fear. By society’s insistence that she become something more acceptable than what she naturally is. She spends much of her life trying to reconcile her gifts with a world that fears them. One of my favorite characters was the old woman who lived in the woods. Vanessa would seek her wisdom whenever life became unbearable. At one point, the old woman essentially tells her, “You only come to me when you’re in trouble.” That moment always stayed with me. How often do we abandon our spiritual practices until we are desperate? How often do we neglect our own inner wisdom until life forces us to listen? But it was the ending that broke my heart. Vanessa eventually finds herself in the hands of a wealthy, beautiful, charismatic man who turns out to be Dracula himself. He places her in a dungeon. A magnificent dungeon. A luxurious prison. And suddenly I understood something that would take me years to fully articulate. Many prisons do not look like prisons. Some look like relationships. Some look like marriages. Some look like careers. Some look like religion. Some look like social approval. Some look like safety. Some look like beautiful homes. Some look like everything we have spent our entire lives trying to achieve. The bars are hidden beneath comfort. The chains are hidden beneath promises. The captivity is hidden beneath admiration. I remember watching that scene years ago while sitting inside a house I had worked hard to purchase. A house that represented success. A house that was supposed to mean I had made it. Yet somehow, it felt hollow. I remember looking around and realizing that the house itself was little more than paper and wood. An expensive illusion that society told me I should want. At the same time, I was in a relationship that already felt wrong. I had fallen in love with an idea of a man rather than the reality of who he was. I was carrying disappointment. I was carrying loneliness. I was carrying responsibilities that felt endless. I was carrying the grief of motherhood in ways I had never expected. Most of all, I was carrying it alone.

There was no family member I could call and unload my fears onto. No trusted circle waiting to catch me when I fell. Everything rested on my shoulders. And then I looked at Vanessa sitting in that dungeon. Chained. Captive. No longer free. And I cried. Not because I pitied her. Because I understood her. For the first time, I understood why someone might surrender. Not because they are weak. Because they are exhausted. That realization changed everything. For years, I thought the dungeon represented oppression. Now I think it represented something even more dangerous. Relief. Vanessa was no longer fighting. No longer searching. No longer carrying the burden of her gifts. No longer running from ghosts. No longer responsible for saving herself. For a brief moment, she could simply stop. And I understood the appeal of that. Because there are seasons in life when a person becomes so tired that relief begins to look like freedom. But relief and freedom are not the same thing. That was the bargain. The bargain was not love. The bargain was not wealth. The bargain was not protection. The bargain was relief. The promise that she could finally rest. The cost was herself. I think that is why the scene affected me so deeply. I was looking at a woman who had spent her life fighting impossible battles and was finally too tired to keep fighting. And I was looking at myself. At the time, I had achieved many of the things I thought would bring happiness. The relationship. house, future, stability, and appearance of success.

Yet I was sitting there crying because I had discovered something nobody warns us about: You can possess everything you thought you wanted and still feel imprisoned. Perhaps that is why the scene remains unforgettable. Not because Dracula was frightening. Not because Vanessa was weak. But because I recognized the temptation. The temptation to exchange freedom for relief. To exchange authenticity for acceptance. To exchange yourself for the promise of peace. Yet somewhere inside me, even as I cried, I knew the truth. The dungeon was peaceful. But it was still a dungeon. And peace that requires the sacrifice of your freedom is not peace at all. It is captivity with better decorating. The older I get, the more I realize that freedom is often lonely. Freedom means uncertainty. Freedom means responsibility. Freedom means carrying your own life. Freedom means wandering roads without guarantees. But freedom also means remaining connected to yourself. It means being able to roam the earth. And if life has taught me anything, it is this: I would rather walk alone beneath an open sky than spend my life inside a beautiful prison. Perhaps that is what Penny Dreadful was really about for me. Not vampires, religion, or monsters. But the lifelong struggle between freedom and captivity. And the courage required to choose yourself, even when surrender looks easier. Especially when surrender looks easier.

By Kimberly!