In her fourth novel, Ann Radcliffe explores the machinery of the Gothic novel but reveals the mysteries referenced in her most popular work’s title. Its popularity validated her publisher’s interest in the work, which had gained unprecedented support by the established London publisher G. G. and J. Robinson. Previously, all Gothics, including Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) and Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline (1788), had been issued by circulating publishers. Radcliffe’s Mysteries earned an unheard-of copyright payment of £500.

As do many Gothics, Radcliffe’s novel introduces a damsel in peril, Emily St. Aubert of Gascon, who feels her life threatened as she remains captive in the 16th-century Italian Castle Udolpho in the Apennines. However, Radcliffe departs from the typical in allowing readers to enter Emily’s mind through third-person narration, giving them a glimpse into her perceptions of illusion and reality, which were missing from previous first-person-narration epistolary novels. The distinction between the real and the imagined also separates Radcliffe’s plot from that of the more traditional writings of Walpole, whose use of unabashed mysticism drew criticism.

Radcliffe positions her Gothic in the time period acknowledged as a transition between the superstitions that grew from the feudal, tyrannical order and those of the more modern era preceding the 18th-century Enlightenment. Her characters reflect those differences, with some representing a Machiavellian sense of design and religious superstition, and others representing a new order of sensibility.

The setting provides the traditional trappings of mysterious noises, gloomy recesses, hidden passages, and ancient mythology, causing conflict for the orphaned protagonist. However, Emily’s virtue eventually leads to her escape, unharmed and still innocent, in the company of two sympathetic castle servants. Despite Emily’s despair, she escapes the control of her guardian aunt, Madame Cheron, and her wicked step-uncle, Montoni, who separate her from her true love, Chevalier de Valancourt, a man of whose moderate means her aunt does not approve. She retains control of her emotions to outwit Montoni, whose evil ways kill her aunt, allowing him to develop designs on Emily.

She must suppress her imagination to control the horror that threatens to overcome her senses during her hours alone in the moldering darkness of the castle and seeks to avoid the unwanted attentions of Count Morano. She reunites with Valancourt following further adventures in France and understands the superiority of her rational nature over that of high emotion. The novel concludes with the capture and punishment of Montoni, who has begun to wreak havoc in the countryside.

Radcliffe is careful to offer rational explanations for mysterious phenomena, not depending upon coincidence and magic for her plot developments. Emily becomes a rounded character, maturing both emotionally and intellectually, without losing her virtue. She learns to trust her intellect over her imagination and to accept evil as the result of corrupted human nature, not supernatural sources.

Feminist critics and New Historicist critics find this novel of interest in its divergence from the Gothic demand that readers simply accept its mystical aspects and from the stereotype of hysterical helpless women who depend on Byronic heroes for rescue. The novel enormously affected later writers, including Sir Walter Scott, the Romantic poets, Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, and Wilkie Collins. Still appealing and continuously in print since its original publication, The Mysteries of Udolpho has proved one of the most enduring representatives of the Gothic genre.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Howard, Jacqueline. Introduction to The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001, vii–xxv.

Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. New York: Leicester University Press, 1999.

Sage, Lorna. “Mysteries of Udolpho, The.” The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 458.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Mystery Fiction, Novel Analysis

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