Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Despite being classified as a gothic novel, I'm not quite sure that Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, measures up to Jo Walton's requirement that the novel should be a romance between a girl and a house, for the house is lacking. Instead the girl, who is, naturally, an ophan, has her romance with the impulsive scion of the Neapolitan aristocracy. Needless to say, Vincentio di Vivaldi's noble parents do not approve of his pursuing a destitute young woman of no particular family. Thus, while the Marchese contents himself with huffing and puffing, the Marchesa, ably assisted by her father confessor, the sinister Schedoni, sets about trying to put Ellena di Rosalba beyond the reach of her son's affections. After various adventures, including a spell in an abbey, a run-in with the Inquisition and a whole set of unlikely twists, the problem of Ellena's lower class origins are suitably resolved, all the villains end up dead, and the couple finally get to live happily ever after.

While not perhaps quite as good as straight up gothic of The Mysteries of Udolpho, the distinctive elements of Radcliffe's style are all present and well employed in The Italian. The descriptions are, as ever, rather good especially considering Radcliffe never visited Italy. The Scooby-Doo approach to the supernatural, in which all apparently ghostly events are actually explained as the results overactive imaginations or febrile sensibilities, is preserved and the story never quite lapses into the fantastic. But the book suffers slightly from the lack of a gloomy gothic house and the constant presence of Vivaldi limits the degree of peril Ellena faces at the hands of the Marchesa's henchmen.

There are also, perhaps, a few problems of plotting with at least some of the plot turns far too heavily signposted to make them genuinely startling, while other twists turn up seemingly out of the blue. But it's hard to complain about this for, as doctor_squale says, Radcliffe's generation were learning the rules of novel writing as they went along and it is hard to judge them by modern standards. In that respect, at least, Italian shows some signs of improvement over Udolpho, with the former showing far greater variation in mood and intensity than the latter, in which moods never seem to run at anything less than fever pitch...

I've spent a decent chunk of this week reacquainting myself with the charms of Mrs Radcliffe's gothic masterpiece The Mysteries of Udolpho. Set in the 1580s, it follows Emily St. Aubert as she comes to terms with the deaths of parents, deals with a sinister guardian and forever frets about her beloved. The narrative is rambling, often surreal, full of gothic sensibilities and almost impossible to describe, not that that is going to stop me trying:

On the orders of his physician, M. St Aubert leaves his home in Gascony and, following a long route through the Pyrenees, he and his daughter Emily head for the Mediterranean cost. En route, they encounter a young and headstrong chevalier, Valencourt, who quickly becomes enchanted with Emily. When the party reach the edge of the mountains, Valencourt decides to continue his hunting trip and leaves St. Aubert and Emily to travel on alone. Shortly after their arrival in Longuedoc, M. St. Aubert's becomes seriously ill and, after commending his daughter to the care of his sister, Madame Cheron, he dies.

Following her father's funeral, Emily travels to Toulouse to present herself to her new guardian. She finds her aunt to be a singularly shallow and selfish woman, much enchanted with parties and Parisian fashions. Initially unwilling to allow Valencourt to pay court to her niece, Mme Cheron eventually learns that Valencourt's social connexions are not as poor as she thought and she arranges for the two to marry. But the marriage plans are scuppered when the madame becomes married to Signor Montoni, a sinister Ventian, and undertakes to return with him to Italy.

On arrival in Venice, both Emily and Mme Montoni are much taken with the Signor's palazzo, his aristocratic friend and their fine parties. But things soon sour. Montoni is more interested in the gaming tables than his wife and Emily finds herself trying to fend off the unwanted advances of a count who refuses to leave her alone. It briefly looks like Emily is all set to become an unwilling countess, but at the last moment she is saved when Montoni quits Venice for the Fortress of Udolpho.

At Udolpho, the true character of Montoni is is revealed. He tries everything he can to separate Mme Montoni from the estates and wealth which she has sequestered in France; he decides to solve his money problems by becoming the head of a group condottieri; and there are rumours that he obtained title to his fortress through blood and deceit. After a great deal of hard treatment, which results in the death of Mme Montoni, Emily and her servant Annette escape the clutches of mercenaries and flee for France.

Through happenstance, Emily and her friends find themselves back in Longuedoc and at the resting place of M. St. Aubert. Here they become embroiled in the mysteries of the Count De Villefort and the strange goings on at Chateau-le-Blanc. After becoming firm friends with the Villefort family, Emily learns some unfortunate things about Valencourt and decides that she must go against her heart and renounce him forever. After much confusion and not a few disappearances, the enigma of Chateau-le-Blanc is solved, the puzzle over M. St. Aubert's connexion with the Marchioness De Villeroi is resolved and the mysteries of Udolpho itself are explained to the satisfaction of all. And the fate of Emily St. Aubert? What do you think, Dear Reader? She marries her man, of course.

Udolpho is a novel of virtues and vices. First among its virtues must be Radcliffe's gift for describing places unseen. Her descriptions of nature in Gascony and the Pyrenees, where the beauty of the natural is always shown to be favourable to the artifice of man, as evinced by Mme Cheron and her Chateau, or M. Quesnel and his easy willingness to uproot trees simply to improve the view from his front windows.

It's second virtue seems to me to be its characters. Emily, for all that she's a sensitive girl much given to fainting and weeping, generally manages to resist the predations of her family, be it the emotional arm-twisting of her aunt or the rather more physical bullying of the brooding Montoni. Annette, the garrulous servant, who prattles on so that even the kind-hearted and sensitive Emily is included to interrupt, is a joy whenever she appears. Not least because whenever she does turn up, she always manages to propel the plot forward at a rapid pace.

Thirdly and perhaps controversially, I'm going to count the plot as a virtue. For all that it rambles extensively, depends rather unconvincingly on coincidence and may not be entirely self-consistent, Udolpho is nothing if not a page-turner. At every stage it seems, some terrible peril hangs over the heroine or some complicated riddle is about to be unravelled; worse still, many of the mysteries are foreshadowed by Emily's habit of observing something and then failing to describe it in any detail in the narrative, leaving the reader hanging for hundreds of pages, frantically waiting for the hints to condense into a proper solution; all of which make the book almost impossible to put down.

As to vices, there is only one that I think really serious. I'm willing to overlook some of the amusing anachronisms such as coffee and opera in 16th century, or the convents composed of both monks and nuns, but I really have to draw attention to the absurd level of coincidences in the plot, especially when all the stories start to draw to close. It sometimes begins to feel as though everyone is related to everyone else, but they've somehow neglected to mention it to each other or that everyone seems to be in just the right place at the right time to rescue each other in the nick of time. Not exactly convincing. But perhaps I'm being unfair. It's hardly as if Radcliffe's object is naturalism, is it?

In conclusion then, The Mysteries of Udolpho is a fine piece of gothic fiction that stands up with the best modern novels. It has a strong Romantic sensibility, a wildly fantastic plot, fun characters and beautifully realised backdrops. It's a novel well worth reading for itself, regardless of its influences on later English literature in general and gothic fiction in particular.

I've spent much of the weekend in bed re-reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Although it's pretty well known novel, I don't think I've written about it before, so here are a few thoughts.
( Ramblings... )

In line with the seasonal trend towards excess and indulgence, I chose to spend at least part of my Christmas reveling in the decadent literary splendour of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. Here are a few adoring thoughts:

( Worshipful words... )

For some mysterious reason, I've suddenly developed a bizarre craving for classic gothic novels. Since Thursday, I've read (or re-read):
( Rambling summaries )
I now have to decide whether I can be bothered to read Mrs Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, or whether I should move on to War and Peace — the new Penguin translation is supposed to be very good.

Just happened to catch For One Horrible Moment on BBC 7, a brilliantly funny spoof gothic story written and performed, in a perfectly deadpan manner, by Peter Bradshaw. Seriously recommended.