The Mysteries of Udolpho

Written by Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) is famously hailed as one of the most popular works of Gothic romance. It’s an essential piece of classic Gothic fiction actually, so much so that Jane Austen had her characters discuss its suspense and narrative in Northanger Abbey; I have to admit that I did feel like Catherine Morland reading this book: “what’s behind the veil, is it Laurentini’s skeleton? I must know!” 

Intertextual references aside The Mysteries of Udolpho is a phenomenally captivating novel right from the beginning to the last page. 

Emily St. Aubert’s life in rural France is peaceful and beautiful, filled with sublime scenery, loving parents, and her beloved Valancourt: a man after her own heart. But when she is tragically orphaned, she falls under the guardianship of her heartless aunt who then takes her away from beauty and romance and replaces them with terror and misery. Her aunt’s husband, the villainous Signor Montoni has designs on his wife’s and Emily’s fortunes so he takes them away from France and imprisons them in his gothic and medieval Italian castle Udolpho. Separated from her beloved home and Valancourt, Emily must cope with a plethora of ghastly torments and ghostly omens that threaten her virtue and her life. 

The first thing that I absolutely adored about this book was the general tone and the way in which it is written. A delicious and rich mixture of history, politics, tragedy, romance, and poetry, Udolpho is written in the third person register, but not necessarily always omniscient. What is most fascinating about the book is that Radcliffe reports the inner feelings of her characters as she would imagine they feel, but there are times where she openly informs the reader that the degree of fear or joy a certain character feels cannot be described. This makes the novel very aware of its status as a novel and provides a nice sort of breathing space in which the reader is granted relief from the suspense and excitement of the world of the book. 

Radcliffe’s lengthy descriptions of natural scenery make it a very beautiful work of Gothic in terms of the sublime and a lot if not all of the story’s emotion is actually expressed through the settings in which action is taking place. In Emily’s native country, we get a sense of her happiness in the way Radcliffe describes the mountains and the woods, melancholia is also represented through these sublime images after the death of her parents. 

Then at Udolpho, the way the castle is described creates this wonderful sense of horror and gloominess and one can easily jump on the Emily bandwagon in terms of having wild imaginings about ghosts and spectres. It’s almost expected from a castle so decaying and full of forbidden wings and secret passages, it’s much like The Castle of Otranto. 

Our leading heroine Emily is actually one of the most interesting female characters that I’ve read in a while. Whilst rarely being considered a feminist, Radcliffe quite strongly delivers a good story about female independence in the character of Emily because, whilst she is described as being very dainty, beautiful, polite and soft-spoken like a good little pre-19^th century lady, she actually is a very strong woman in the way in which she conducts herself during her imprisonment. It’s through the strength of her own free will and moral integrity that she survives the horror and torment that surrounds her for the majority of the book and it’s wonderful to read because it gets you so on side with her. I’m usually all about the villains and couldn’t care less about the heroines, but I would side with Emily any day. She and Jane Eyre are my homegirls right now. 

Whilst there may or may not be supernatural torments delivering a few of the thrills in this book, ultimately it is about the dark side of humanity: how vice, greed, luxury, and even the romantic lure of higher society can corrupt and decay the purity, natural romance, and innocence of a person and, if we look at in with a picture of the dark castle Udolpho on one side and the sublime country scenery of France on the other, it truly is a story of light vs. dark. Not so much a story of good vs. evil because even some of the story’s more noble characters are not exempt from the corruption of vice, but there’s definitely a beautiful tale of light side vs. dark side going on throughout. 

Filled with action, beautiful scenery that took me right there, drama, tragedy, romance, and suspense that carries through right to the last ten pages, The Mysteries of Udolpho is a beautiful novel that has catapulted itself into the lofty realm of my all-time favourites. If you’re a fan of great romances or Gothic novels then I would strongly recommend you read it. It’s absolutely beautiful!