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What a fun book Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe turned out to be! Sure it’s a long book, and sure there is lots of wandering and admiring the sublime scenery, but oh, when I got down to the end and all the secrets and mysteries began to be revealed, what fun! All the revelations at the end could have been handled better. Instead of making them part of the narrative, they end up feeling like Radcliffe knew she had to end the book and disclose all the secrets and she wasn’t sure how so she just tells us in one long rush. She does manage to tie up everything which was good because I was starting to wonder if she was going to remember to say what was behind the black veil at Udolpho. Now I know why there is so much wondering about this very thing by Catherine in Austen’s Northanger Abbey.

The Mysteries of Udolpho was published in 1794 in four volumes. It is a Gothic Romance with love, bad men, castles, hidden passages, ghosts, bandits, murder, coincidences, and secrets galore. But Radcliffe did not write a supernatural gothic novel, for her there is an explanation for everything. And to make extra sure we know we are not to believe in the supernatural, she makes fun of the people in the novel who do.

The story follows Emily St. Aubert who becomes an orphan at the tender age of seventeen. Because she is not yet of age, she is given to the care of her father’s sister, Madame Cheron, a vain, ambitious woman with a mean streak. Not long after Emily goes to live with her aunt, Madame Cheron agrees to marry Count Montoni, a handsome, passionate and agreeable Italian. Almost immediately they set out for Venice. Montoni turns out to be other than he represented himself and his sins, to the horror of the good and pure Emily, begin to mount up fast as soon as they arrive in Venice. After a few months in Venice where Montoni tries to trick Emily into marrying Count Morano, Montoni suddenly packs up his household and hurries his servants and women off to Udolpho, his crumbling and remote castle in the Pyrenees. The only thing that sustains Emily’s spirits throughout her trials at Venice and Udolpho is her love for the Chevalier Valancourt who loves her in return.

Poor Emily’s road is never smooth but in spite of the river of tears she cries, the horrors she must face, the many moments of fainting and insensibility, she remains true and kind and good so is therefore rewarded in the end.

There are many things the book is about but I think the one that stands first in line is, in the words of Emily’s father:

‘A well-informed mind,’ he would say, ‘is the best security against the contagion of folly and of vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within. Thought, and cultivation, are necessary equally to the happiness of a country and a city life; in the first they prevent the uneasy sensations of indolence, and afford a sublime pleasure in the taste they create for the beautiful, and the grand; in the latter, they make dissipation less an object of necessity, and consequently of interest.’

Of course Emily has a well-informed mind and it is from all this her goodness and many virtues flow. It is also because of this that she is the only one in the book who, while suffering more than anyone, comes through it all unblemished. We are subtly and not so subtly reminded of this throughout the book.

We are also to learn what it means to have good taste as well as gain an appreciation of the sublime. In fact, there is so much sublime this sublime that in the book I was prompted, by the suggestion of Tom, to read Burke’s Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful. Which I did, mostly, and about which I will write tomorrow and attempt to relate it to Udolpho without boring you too much.

The completion of this book also concludes my RIP Challenge reading. It has been great fun, as usual, and I even managed to read one more book than I had planned. Yay!

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole was originally published in 1764 and is commonly considered to be the first gothic novel. The first edition title was The Castle of Otranto, A Story. Translated by William Marshal, Gent. From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto. Quite the mouthful! The novel was presented as a translation of a manuscript printed in Naples in 1529 but the manuscript’s story is claimed to have come from a still older story dating back to the Crusades. Critics of the time took it for a medieval romance and some really believed it was a translation.

The novel was so successful, however, that Walpole acknowledged his authorship in later editions. In the introduction he explains the novel is an attempt to blend ancient and modern romance — pre-novel prose of the fantastic with the modern novel of the supposedly real (real people, real places, real situations).

The Castle of Otranto has many of the elements that become standard gothic tropes: virginal maiden (Matilda, Isabella), foolish older woman (Hippolita), Hero (Theodore), tyrant (Manfred), servants as comic relief/ stupid or gossipy servants, clergy (Father Jerome), setting (castle/church/secret tunnels), a prophecy, omens, a hermit, the supernatural.

And melodrama. Can’t forget the melodrama. This book hits the ground running and doesn’t let up for a second. Manfred’s son is killed on his wedding day by a giant helmet that appears from nowhere. Manfred has no more male heirs and is therefore in danger of losing his rights to the castle and surrounding lands. He therefore proposes to Princess Isabella, the woman his son was going to marry. Manfred will divorce his wife and Isabella will give him an heir. Isabella flees the castle through secret tunnels, one of which connects the castle to the church.

There are signs and portents that Manfred is committing grave deeds and his days as Prince are numbered. The feathers on the top of the helmet in the castle courtyard wave ominously on occasion and a mysterious knight appears with a large retinue and a giant sword, companion to the giant helmet. There is also a possible ghost spied by Manfred and others at various times as well as a giant foot.

But Manfred is nothing if not single-minded in his pursuit of Isabella. We are assured early in the novel that Manfred is not a bad man and then he proceeds to prove that, while he may have once been a good man, he is no longer:

Manfred, though persuaded, like his wife, that the vision had been no work of fancy, recovered a little from the tempest of mind into which so many strange events had thrown him. Ashamed, too, of his inhuman treatment of a Princess who returned every injury with new marks of tenderness and duty, he felt returning love forcing itself into his eyes; but not less ashamed of feeling remorse towards one against whom he was inwardly meditating a yet more bitter outrage, he curbed the yearnings of his heart, and did not dare to lean even towards pity. The next transition of his soul was to exquisite villainy.

I love that last line, “The next transition of his soul was to exquisite villainy.” Most excellent!

No more about the plot. You have to read it to believe it. And reading it is great fun. I expected it to be completely silly, and it was, but it was also engaging and kept me turning those e-book pages. I can imagine it must have been frightening and shocking to readers back in the day when there was no gothic tradition and cliche for it to fall into. Readers today might roll their eyes a bit and giggle now and then, but it is still well worth the read, especially as a