Analysis of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 1, 2025

Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto proved crucial to the development of Gothic fiction. As indicated by the book’s subtitle, Walpole (1717–97) designed it to provide readers with a romance incorporating a dark, moody villain, an endangered heroine, a hero with a mysterious past/identity, mysticism, and adventures set in a forbidding and mysterious structure.

In his first edition, Walpole’s preface claimed he based the book on an Italian tale. By the next edition, he admitted that the story was his own, and his preface’s opening claim that:

The following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. The style is the purest Italian.

had been part of a playful ruse. He continues his fun with the later claim that, “Yet I am not blind to my author’s defects. I could wish he had grounded his plan on a more useful moral than this: that ‘the sins of fathers are visited on their children to the third and fourth generation.’”

Walpole praises the “author’s” fashioning of secondary characters who prove so crucial to the plot, singling out in particular Bianca, whose “womanish terror and foibles” remain essential to the novel’s final “catastrophe.” When he claims that the English language does not provide a good vehicle for such “simple tales,” because its narrative either falls too low or rises too high, he good-humoredly makes excuses for the melodrama necessary to the Gothic romance. Finally, he claims that the story “is undoubtedly laid in some real castle, proven by the author’s frequent descriptions of the edifice’s ‘particular parts.’” Walpole’s serious tone as he urges readers to accept as at least half true the hyperbolic effects reflects his understanding of the writer’s ability to manipulate his audience.

During the 13th century, Manfred, Prince of Otranto, has assumed his rule from his grandfather, who poisoned the true prince, Alfonso. Based on prophecy, Manfred believes he must produce a male heir in order to perpetuate his family’s false claim to title and property. Others are not so sure that Manfred has correctly interpreted the confusing prophecy that “the Castle and Lordship of Otranto ‘shall pass from the present family, whenever the real owner shall be grown too large to inhabit it.’”

Manfred dotes upon his two children, the beautiful Matilda and the sickly Conrad. Anxious to fulfill what he believes to be the point of the prophecy, Manfred rushes Conrad into marriage to Isabella, daughter of the Marquis of Vicenza, at what his mother, Hippolita, believes to be too early an age. As the bride awaits the groom’s arrival, screams echo outside the chapel, and cries including “The prince!” and “The helmet!” disturb those waiting within the church.

To Manfred’s horror, his son has been crushed to death by an enormous helmet covered in black feathers, “a hundred times larger” than any made for a human. Unaccountably, Manfred appears more concerned for Isabella than for his mangled son, whom the peasants carry into the castle. When one bystander comments that the helmet resembles that worn by a black marble statue representing Alfonso the Good, a former prince, in the church of St. Nicholas, Manfred becomes incensed.

Another group of peasants reveals that the helmet is now missing from the statue, and Manfred accuses the bystander of necromancy. In a move appropriate to Gothic fiction, onlookers simply accept the odd occurrence, and Manfred declares that the “magician” be imprisoned in the helmet, commanding his men to lift the edge and push him under. The crowd agrees with the verdict, convinced that the man will not die in his prison, as he can conjure up sustenance for himself.

In a fury, Manfred refuses to speak with Matilda, who fears, but does not love, her father, or with Hippolita. He commands Matilda to bring him Isabella instead.

Because Hippolita remains barren after having produced Conrad, Manfred decides to marry Isabella and produce another heir. He horrifies the young princess by declaring that Conrad had not been worthy of her and that he will divorce Hippolita and take Isabella that night to his bed. Suddenly, the giant black helmet’s plumes outside the window begin to wave, and Manfred hears the portrait of his grandfather, who had usurped Alfonso’s rightful position, release a long sigh.

When the figure in the portrait steps to the ground and beckons Manfred to follow, he understands that his castle is haunted. A door slams in Manfred’s face, blocking him from contact with the ghost, and Isabella uses the opportunity to escape her pursuer.

All this action occurs in the first few pages of the novel, alerting readers to the fact that the plot will incorporate a tremendous amount of rising action. When the narrator states “Words cannot paint the horror of Isabella’s situation,” the audience accepts that declaration as irony, because the narration immediately does what it claims it cannot.

Isabella subsequently flees the castle with the help of the young peasant Theodore, the imprisoned bystander who had escaped from beneath the helmet by squeezing through a casement shattered by the helmet’s fall. Matilda loves Theodore, and she sets him free after Manfred catches and imprisons him.

Isabella’s father, Frederick, also contributes to the action. Frederick’s tale involves his having had a vision while fighting “the infidels” that his daughter needed his aid. Following his arrival, Hippolita proposes that Matilda marry Frederick to relieve the pain and torment at the castle. Matilda can hardly contain her distress, as she still loves Theodore, and he returns her passion, despite the fact that Isabella also loves him. The two young women discuss the love triangle, and Isabella yields Theodore to Matilda.

Meanwhile, Hippolita learns of Manfred’s plan to divorce her. Instead of the anger the two young women expected, Hippolita meekly accepts the plan for the good of her prince. Frederick cancels the marriage to Matilda, however, when he learns from the servant Bianca that the castle is haunted due to Manfred’s past crimes and guilt. When Frederick is later overcome by passion for Matilda and returns to find her, a skeleton advises him to depart.

Manfred, rightly believing Isabella to be in love with Theodore, learns that Theodore intends to meet his love at Alfonso’s tomb. He stabs the woman he believes to be Isabella, then discovers he has murdered his own daughter. Theodore, distraught at her death, reveals himself as the descendant of Alfonso.

The ghost of Alfonso then grows so enormous that he destroys the castle, and in his terror, Manfred admits he has no claim to the realm. The ghost declares that Theodore is the rightful heir, and Manfred and Hippolita both depart to live in nearby convents. The newly crowned prince finally agrees to marry Isabella, as only she can understand and indulge forever “the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.”

Walpole’s work remained popular within the Gothic genre and by the 20th century became available in electronic text.

Bibliography
Clery, E. J. Introduction to The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, by Horace Walpole. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Project Gutenberg. Preface to The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole. Project Gutenberg. Available online. URL: http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext96/cotrt10.txt. Posted October 2000.