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Wed 27 Oct 2021
Every October, I have a personal tradition that I read or re-read a classic Gothic novel, such as the originals of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein". This year, I decided to go nearly back to the source, and read "The Mysteries of Udolpho", by Ann Radcliffe (1794). It's generally recognized as the most important early Gothic novel, and was satirized by Jane Austen in "Northanger Abbey" (1803). In "Supernatural Horror in Literature", H. P. Lovecraft writes that Radcliffe "made terror and suspense a fashion, and who set new and higher standards in the domain of macabre and fear-inspiring atmosphere despite a provoking custom of destroying her own phantoms at the last through laboured mechanical explanations" and that "Udolpho" "may be taken as a type of the early Gothic tale at its best".
So how am I enjoying it?
Well, first of all, let me say that it is long. I don't expect to finish it before the end of October. I've been pretty reliable at reading a chapter or three every day, and I'm now at 61% of the way through it. My ebook reader typesets the Project Gutenberg edition of "Udolpho" at 1188 pages (Libre Baskerville, 17dip≅12pt). That's quite a few more pages than it would be in a printed book, because of the 6" page size and large-ish font; my back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest it would be about 750 pages in a regular hardback edition. A lot of this length is atmospheric description of scenery and the viewpoint character's emotional state. This is a book in which, relative to its length, not much happens. As for my personal tastes, I like this perfectly well. The language of the descriptions is delicious, and the scenes and moods that Mrs. Radcliffe establishes are absolutely sympathetic to my preferences. One should read this book in order to feel things; things that one might have become too jaded to feel in life, or no longer be in the position to experience again.
The plot, as I've read it so far, is just enough to hang the rest of the story on. It's perfectly serviceable, and I won't spoil it for anyone who might be inspired by this review to read it. There are a number of oddities that I suspect represent mainly cultural differences between when it was written and now, and changes or developments in literary technique. There are a number of places where Emily, the protagonist and viewpoint character, witnesses something that disturbs her greatly, but what it is that had that effect is not shared with the reader (until possibly much later in the story). The veiled picture which gives the title to abridgments and adaptations of the novel is the most prominent of these. Likewise, there are cases where we would expect Emily to draw a definite conclusion from something she witnessed (the identity of a person seen, for example), where she remains in doubt. It's also the case that Emily is remarkably sheltered, even for the time in which the novel is set, and for when it was written, and is horrified by things someone more worldly would have considered regular crime or realpolitik, to the point of being unable to believe reports of them until forced to. All that said, Lovecraft's complaint, that she explains away supernatural occurrences in the story, doesn't seem significant to me, because Mrs. Radcliffe's prose produces the same emotional effect as if she had made the causes really supernatural. I also don't find her poetry as dire as Lovecraft did, though it mostly doesn't measure up to the prose.
I think overall that this is a book to enjoy reading; if you get one hundred pages into it without enjoying it, I wouldn't push through just to say I had read it or expecting it to change. I find the prose simply delicious, but if you don't, it's really not for you. You might read the abridgment "The Veiled Picture, or, The Mysteries of Gorgono", but I can't vouch for it. Part of my goal with my annual Gothic reading is to go back to themes and images we now consider hackneyed or played-out, to experience what they were like when they were novel and even shocking, and to compare how something has become interpreted in one consistent way by popular culture with how it was actually written. Although I won't finish on time, I consider this year's Gothic dive a resounding success.
"The Mysteries of Udolpho" by Ann Radcliffe at Project Gutenberg (WWW)
"Supernatural Horror In Literature" by H. P. Lovecraft (WWW)