Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) (76 page)
Read Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) Online
Authors: Ann Radcliffe
HO
The Mysteries of Udolpho
was originally published in four volumes on May 8
th
1794 by G. G and J. Robinson of London. It was Radcliffe’s fourth novel and remains her most popular today, gaining additional attention due to Jane Austen satirising the work in her successful novel
Northanger Abbey
. In
The Mysteries of Udolpho,
Radcliffe exploits the realm of terror while avoiding the horror genre and anything that would be deemed too explicit. The troubling episodes and incidents in the novel are created by the heroine’s inability to express what she is viewing and the physical reaction she has to situations. It is the unsaid, the unexplained, the half-seen, which works as psychological terror in large sections of the work. The novel is set in 16
th
century France and Italy and the narrative centres on a motherless and soon orphaned girl Emily, who is separated from her desired suitor and forced into the care of an unloving aunt and a villainous step uncle. There are attempts to force her into a marriage, to steal her rightful property and remove her from the supposed protection of society.
Emily St. Aubert is a quintessential Gothic heroine, endowed with great sensibility shown by her love of the arts, her fainting fits and penchant for crying. She, like most of Radcliffe’s heroines, feels too much and is forced to undergo a series of frightening and potentially fatal situations, which attempt to teach her a balance between sentiment and reason.
The Mysteries of Udolpho
does not allow the supernatural to remain so; it provides rational explanations for these events and therefore reason is asserted by the conclusion of the novel. Emily’s beloved is a highly sensitive and emotional young man that is greatly moved by the beauty of nature and Radcliffe portrays him so distraught at his separation from Emily that he becomes corrupted by city life; he too must learn to temper his sensibility with reason.
During the time of Radcliffe’s writing the cult of sensibility and the idea of emphasis on feeling over reason assumed an important political dimension. The French Revolution was unfolding and there was fright and panic amongst the upper-classes of revolutionary ideas spreading to England and resulting in a violent overthrow of the established order. The idea of excessive sensibility was linked to political notions associated with the French Revolution; the focus on individuality and emotional volatility was seen as anti-rationalist and subversive, which English conservatives feared would encourage a bloody upheaval on their shores. Emily is educated through the novel to tame her unrestrained sensibility and learn the importance of elevating reason over her passions, but never to detach her emotions from her life — a lesson in moderation.
Jane Austen wrote
Northanger Abbey
at the end of the eighteenth century, shortly after the success of
The Mysteries of Udolpho,
during a sustained period of success for Gothic romance novels. As a form of writing the novel was associated with a female readership and considered artistically and culturally inferior to poetry, philosophy and history which were all deemed to be masculine subjects. Austen sought to defend the value of the novel from critics, while also attacking aspects of the genre or writers she thought were intellectually feeble. The lack of reason often exhibited by the heroines of gothic fiction and their excessive sensibility is satirised by Austen in her main character, Catherine Moreland, who possesses none of the talents traditionally associated with the heroines of the genre. Catherine is reading
The Mysteries of Udolpho
and the fanciful nature of it causes her to imagine that there are dreadful secrets hidden at
Northanger Abbey
where she is staying. Austen juxtaposes the flight of imagination typical in Radcliffe’s book with the uninteresting, mundane reality of everyday life when Catherine discovers what she believes to be a manuscript full of secrets, locked away in chest, only to read it and realise that it is a laundry list. The fact that Austen chose
The Mysteries of Udolpho
as the Gothic text to satirise identifies the novel’s popularity and influence during that period and it has remained a pillar of the genre since its first publication.
The first edition was published in four volumes.
The original title page
CONTENTS