Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Page references are to the Oxford World's Classics edition of Udolpho (2008).Education, life
Ann Ward Radcliffe, 1764-1823.
Born 1764, Holborn, London. Closely related to the Wedgwood circle: Thomas Bentley (1730-1780), the partner of Thomas Wedgwood (1730-1795) from 1768, was Ann's uncle. As a child Ann stayed with her uncle at his Chelsea house: the longest period appears to have been Autumn 1771 to Spring 1772 when Ann was aged seven, while preparations were in hand for the Bath showrooms of Wedgwood that Ann's father was hired to supervise. She may have attended Sophia Lee's school in Bath.
She would also have met several figures in the literary and scientific world who were friends of Bentley, such as Hester Lynch Piozzi, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Joseph Banks, Sir William Hamilton, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and Erasmus Darwin; the latter two were to produce their treatises on education during the 1790s; Bentley appears to have produced his own treatise, now lost.
Susannah Wedgwood (1765-1817), who married Dr. Robert Darwin (son of Erasmus) in 1796, was the mother of Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Her education and ill-health, as shown in contemporary family letters, were probably typical of her class.
In 1787 Ann married a journalist, William Radcliffe, and moved to London. Here she began writing fiction, producing five novels between 1789 and 1797 that soon made her the preeminent writer in the Gothic genre. That she produced no further novels thereafter led to rumours that her Gothic preoccupations had resulted in her derangement. Another reason for her silence was said to be the mushrooming of poor imitations in the "Radcliffe school," which "tended altogether to disgust her with the world" (obituary notice, New Monthly Magazine 2nd Series, 9, May 1823, p. 232). In fact, almost nothing is known about her later life.
Female accomplishments: Hester Thrale Piozzi writes of the female student, that "her Mother only loads her with Allurements, as a Rustic lays Bird Lime on Twigs, to decoy & catch the unwary Traveller" -- that is, a husband. Cf. "elegant arts" acquired by Emily, p. 3.
Female anorexia. Langour: Emily's melancholy on parting from Valancourt, attempts to restrain her sorrow: "efforts which diffused over the settled melancholy of her countenance an expression of tempered resignation, as a thin veil, thrown over the features of beauty, renders them more interesting by a partial concealment," p. 161. At Chateau-Le-Blanc later, Emily's face now more interesting for "the faint expression of melancholy, that sometimes mingled with her smile," p. 502.
Publications
Radcliffe's first two novels, which attracted little attention, were The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789) and A Sicilian Romance (1790). Her third, The Romance of the Forest (1791), set in France and Savoy, made her famous; it was followed in 1794 by The Mysteries of Udolpho, set in France and Italy, and in 1797 by The Italian. Radcliffe travelled only once outside England in 1794, to Holland and Germany (her account, including travels in the British Lake District, A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794, was published in 1795). A historical novel, Gaston de Blondeville, was published posthumously in 1826.
Sensibility
Corrected: Emily's early sensibility described; but how St. Aubert's education chastened it. He strove "to teach her to reject the first impulse of her feelings, and to look, with cool examination, upon the disappointments he sometimes threw in her way," p. 5. Cf. death of Emily's mother, pp. 20-21; St. Aubert's last advice to Emily on sensibility, p. 79-80.
As response to Nature: "the mountain's stupendous recesses, where the silence and grandeur of solitude impressed a sacred awe upon her heart," p. 6. "Emily could not restrain her transport as she looked over the pine forests of the mountains upon the vast plains," p. 28. "Emily, wrapt in high enthusiasm, wandered away under the shades, listening in deep silence to the lonely murmur of the woods," p. 37. Vs. insensibility: "Madame Montoni only shuddered as she looked down precipices near whose edge the chairmen trotted lightly and swiftly," p. 166. Emily's view from Udolpho, p. 241-2.
As insight: Emily's implicit judgement of Montoni on seeing him again at Mm Cheron's, having described his appearance: Emily's admiration for him "was mixed with a degree of fear she knew not exactly wherefore," p. 122. See also her distrust of Montoni from appearance of his eyes, etc., p. 157. Similar judgement of Montoni later: Emily thinks she sees "a lurking cunning" in his eyes, p. 171, and "the glare of malice," p. 172. Emily, left alone on eve of threatened marriage to Morano, fears something beyond the immediate: "Her mind, long harassed by distress, now yielded to imaginary terrors; she trembled to look into the obscurity of her spacious chamber, and feared she knew not what," p. 221. Emily's anticipatory fears following sudden departure from Venice, ascending mountains whose gloomy images impress her; "other images, equally gloomy and equally terrible, gleamed on her imagination," p. 224. And note, on entry to Udolpho, "One of those instantaneous and unaccountable convictions, which sometimes conquer even strong minds, impressed her with its horror," p. 228.
Precepts
St. Aubert's to Emily; also: Valancourt's elder brother described as "haranguing on the virtues of mildness and moderation" (117), a kind of caricature of St. Aubert's advice to Emily; serves to show in both cases how such precepts underestimate the important role of feelings, sensibility. Mm Cheron talks in precepts: eg., how "she failed not to inculcate the duties of humility and gratitude," p. 121. Cheron's precepts, based as she claims on "a little plain sense" (204) or "only common sense" (205): involve a complicity in the world of Montoni and submission to its principles. In this way "common sense" is invoked to disguise the operations of patriarchal power. It is no coincidence that, while Montoni attempts to gain control over Emily's property, he talks to her in precepts: "you should learn and practise the virtues, which are indispensable to a woman -- sincerity, uniformity of conduct and obedience," p. 270.
Property
Emily's interests disregarded by Quesnel, pp. 213-4. Cheron's estates pass to Emily; she is determined to keep them; Montoni demands her signature, p. 379-81; again, pp. 393-4; she signs, p. 436. Later she expects to recover her estates and part of the lost fortune, pp. 494-5; news of its recovery and of Montoni's death, p. 569.
Supernatural
Emily believes she sees a figure in chapel of St. Clair when visiting her father's grave for last time, p. 91; back home hears rustling sound, turns out to be her dog, p. 95-6: note difficulty of distinguishing important from unimportant portents. That St. Aubert had heard mysterious music at night (64), not explained until near end, p. 661. While these are explained, coincidences are not. Du Pont, French prisoner at Udolpho (p. 447-8); death of St. Aubert near Chateau le Blanc, which he knows (p. 70); and Emily's return there driven by storm (p. 487). Role of Providence.
Clinical picture
Education: no maturing of heroine? Macdonald (1989): Udolpho is "a novel of education in which her heroine starts out with nothing to learn, a novel of maturation in which her heroine ends up as innocent, and as infantile, as she began." Radcliffe reproduces in disguised form experiences that properly belong to the period of childhood animism, in which there are no unexplained or random events; every strange sight or sound holds a meaning that has some felt personal significance, even though this significance may be obscure or inexplicable; just so does a Radcliffe heroine respond with hallucinatory intensity to the sights and sounds around her. The female heroines, in this and other novels, pushed back across the borders of adolescence. Inexplicable tyranny of male figures, corresponds to the waking nightmare to which women were subjected.
Contemporary documents
Female education
This phrenzy of accomplishments, unhappily, is no longer restricted within the usual limits of rank and fortune; the middle orders have caught the contagion, and it rages downward with increasing violence, from the elegantly dressed but slenderly portioned curates daughter, to the equally fashionable daughter of the little tradesman, and of the more opulent, but not more judicious farmer. -- Hannah More, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education (1799), p. 69.
The danger of pedantry and presumption in a woman -- of her exciting envy in one sex and jealousy in the other -- of her exchanging the graces of imaginations for the severity and preciseness of a scholar, would be, I own, sufficient to frighten me from the ambition of seeing my girl remarkable for learning. Such objections are perhaps still stronger with regard to the abstruse sciences. -- Mrs. Hester Chapone, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1774), pp. 121-2.
Sensibility
If, therefore, happiness be the ultimate object of pursuit, it must be the part of wisdom to cherish sensibility. The value of sensibility is eminently seen in the pleasures of taste. The survey of grandeur and beauty affords various degrees of gratification between the simple perception of relief from the listlessness of indifference, and those strong emotions, which rise into delight and rapture. To a mind susceptible of these pleasures, Nature exhibits objects of pleasing contemplation in endless variety; and Art presents her whole train of elegant amusements. [William Enfield] The Enquirer, Monthly Magazine (1796), p. 707.
But must not something very different be the consequence of their weak and infant minds operating without any regulation, proceeding on no principle, and pointing to no end? Nothing can be more volatile and excentric than the feminine genius, or require so much attention and government. And this, if not done before the affections are misplaced, the passions inflamed, the judgment misled, and the heart addicted to folly or insignificance, will never after be in your power. -- John Moir, Female Tuition (1784), pp. 24-5.
How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre; nay, I doubt whether pity and love are so near akin as poets feign, for I have seldom seen much compassion excited by the helplessness of females, unless they were fair; then, perhaps, pity was the soft handmaid of love, or the harbinger of lust. -- Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of The Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. IX.
Patriarchy
From the first dawnings of reason they [women] find a part in life already prescribed for them, which they nearly as early find out to be unequal to their powers and capacities. They find themselves enclosed in a kind of magic circle, out of which they cannot move, but to contempt or destruction. And however confined and mortifying to their feelings this prison of the soul may be, they can never hope for emancipation, but from superior power. In this circle, in this prison therefore, during the reign of youth and beauty they gambol and frisk away life as they best can; happily blind and thoughtless as to futurity. -- Mary Hays, Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women (1798), pp. 110-11.
Travel
But what incessantly attracted my regards, and afforded them a delicious repose, were the hillocks and the pastures which rise from the bottom of the precipice towards the steep declivity of the peak, and from a resting point betwixt its summit and its base. There I perceived the hut of the shepherd surrounded with the fresh and verdant herbage of his meadow, the windings of the waters describing the figure of the heights; and the rapidity of the torrents perceptible by the foaming of their waves. Some points especially rivetted my attention. I fancied that I could distinguish a flock and discern their shepherd, who, perhaps, was gazing from below at an eagle, which I beheld beneath me, describing vast circles in the air. -- Ramond de Carbonnières, Travels in the Pyrenees (1789), pp. 55-6. Cf. Udolpho, p. 37. (Ramond on the web: http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/Gothic_Subject/ramond1.htm)
Other sources for landscape of Udolpho: Grosley, New Observations on Italy (1769); Hester Lynch Piozzi, Observations and Reflections (1789) (Available on Romanticism: The CD-ROM).
Supernatural
"I perceive you are not one of those who contend that obscurity does not make any part of the sublime." "They must be men of very cold imaginations," said W----, "with whom certainty is more terrible than surmise. Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them" -- Radcliffe, "On the Supernatural in Poetry" (1826), p. 149. Cf. Barbauld on Gothic terror.
Document created September 5th 2009 / Updated September 15th 2009