Remember: For blog posts, you may reply to one of the prompts I post (see below), but you may also reply to another student’s post or to anything in the work that interests you.
Also: remember that blog posts should be at least 200 words to receive credit and they are due by 9:00 a.m. on the day we’re discussing the material in class.
Prompts
- Discuss your impression of the opening of The Mysteries of Udolpho. How do you react to the first 4 chapters? Do you like the book, not like the book? What did you notice about it thematically? Does Ann Radcliffe seem to have particular obsessions? Was it what you might have expected of a 1790’s Gothic novel or was it surprising to you?
- Discuss something from one of the critical background essays that either struck you or interested you.
I was really impressed with the opening of the book. The opening’s tone and descriptions were full of warmth, light, and nature, which I think made the darker tone, themes, and emotions later more clear. The first chapters really set up the later emotional beats well. I genuinely felt very heartbroken for Emily and her father when their house was being taken over and renovated because we had previously had all of those scenes of the family quietly enjoying their house and nature together before her mother passed away. I could understand why Emily was hesitant to have a hasty marriage with Valencourt after we had seen her parents’ strong dynamics and her other family members’ views and experiences with relationships. I wonder if some of the suspense elements in the first chapter with the poem, lute, and lost portrait will be addressed later. Overall, I really enjoyed it. I think the emphasis on nature is really interesting. It definitely places this novel in the Romantic trends of the late 18th century, but I was surprised to see so much of it in a gothic context. When I typically think of a gothic novel, I usually don’t associate it with nature, especially the warm, life-bringing nature that is present in this novel. It will be interesting to see if this presentation of nature shifts as the novel continues.
I thought that the opening was very interesting. I was shocked by Emily’s relationship with her father because we discussed in class that typically the father/daughter relationship is unsafe or strained. The fact that they are so considerate of each other, without anything that felt…icky for lack of better words, seemed out of place given the attributes of the “typical gothic” which we had discussed. I noticed the warm and inviting pastoral environments which allow nature to feel safe and reassuring, but also the sublimity and eerie danger of their travels through the Pyrenees. This lends itself to the thought that things are not always as they seem. Part of me wonders whether this will lead to a deeper understanding of her relationship with her father. This is interesting when you consider that it wasn’t the terrain that made the Pyrenees feel particularly dangerous, rather the people that dwelled there, the environment added to this air of danger by the restrictive nature of the routes. I attributed this to foreshadowing about the expected environment and people she would experience later in the novel. I also liked how Ann Radcliffe wrote Emily as the character that made the connections between the poem, the lyre and the missing item. This allows an otherwise, at this point, timid female character a show of intelligence (that extends past her fathers teaching i.e. the intelligence of a male character) early in the novel. I think this is important because her intelligence is not in response to dire circumstances or as a means of survival.
Reading The Mysteries of Udolpho deterred my expectations of what I set for the book. I opened the document expecting the book to be horrific immediately, but the four chapters were positive and displayed a loving family, but with subtle moments of dread,, for instance when Emily was wondering who could have been possibly using her lute. It caught me by surprise as she described the chateau as a fairytale wonderland, the description immediately felt so warm and sunny, versus where the stereotypical location would be dreary, almost falling apart. Another thing that caught me by surprise was the relationship between St. Aubert, Madame Aubert, and Emily, the trio had a tender and tight-knit relationship, even after the passing of Madame Aubert followed by St. Aubert. Still, once Madame Aubert was out of the picture, St. Aubert and Emily still had a positive relationship. For a moment, I thought St. Aubert would become cruel to Emily. I must admit, it was a rough start reading it, but I was able to ease into Radcliffe’s writing style as I progressed. I still struggle to read through Radcliffe’s prose, but it does match the book, especially seeing how Emily’s life becomes convoluted when she’s on her own and sent to her aunt. As I continued, I was able to connect back to Moers’ essay of how Gothic literature could be used as a vacation for the heroine, specifically when Emily first was wandering through the woods, then through the mountains where she meets Valancourt (which I still don’t trust), and thought not part of the first four chapters, when she in talks of going to Italy with her aunt.
I thought this novel was going to be darker revolving around the family; prior to Madame Aubert’s death, all the family scenes were heartwarming. I went in presuming that the mother would have already been removed and there would have been a strained relationship between Emily and her father. Their bond however was highlighted and emphasized along their trip. Emily understood at multiple parts in the novel how her father was feeling and they both comforted each other on this trip in their grief. I was also surprised to see mysterious events happening so soon in the novel with the sonnet, the moved flute, the missing bracelet, and the woman in the picture that the monsieur was gazing at. It made me curious if someone has been watching the Aubert’s (maybe a male suitor/antagonist?) and if the mysterious woman and what Monsieur Aubret and Quesnel have been secretly discussing are connected. Another part that surprised me was with how much Monsieur Aubret cried; I did not think the men, especially the father figure, would be described as so gentle and be able to cry in front of others as he has. if i was going to say Radcliffe had an obsession i would say it was of nature; multiple paragraphs are dedicated to the description of nature and how the characters react to it, especially in their grief.
The beginning of the book was very interesting to me because it was not at all what I had expected from a gothic novel. The scenery and nature of the first four chapters were constantly described as bright and airy where I was expecting something more gloomy and dark. Despite dealing with multiple deaths in the family, the story continued to feel more optimistic for the most part with Emily and her father remaining strong and loving to one another. The first chapter was a bit of a struggle to get into as it set up the story but it overall drew me in and became pretty fast paced. The beginning showed themes of how powerful nature was to all three of the family members as Radcliffe went on and on about their time spent outdoors but most importantly had an unusual theme of love for a gothic novel and the time period but in a good way. Based off of what we have read so far I would say that I enjoyed the novel more than I expected to as I first began to read chapter one and it definitely took me by surprise. It is so different from what I imagined it to be as a gothic that I almost thought that I was missing something at first.
I first read the background essays and was confused upon the concept of the gothic to be a female rite during puberty. However, it was a concept that I will keep in mind during the course of this class. That being said, I can see a bit of that in the first 4 chapters of The Mysteries of Udolpho. St. Aubert begins as someone who is seemingly a good father, contrary to class teachings that female gothics usually contain dangerous relationships with father figures. He seems to be keen on teaching Emily to not give in to her sensibility, that she must control them for future events because unfortunate circumstances occur more commonly than fortunate. They seem to have a strong father-daughter relationship, comforting one another, bonding over poetry and education, etc. Emily ponders her father’s health after her mother’s death, claiming that she feels his health declining and worrying, and Aubert feels as though she is all he has left in the world. This melancholy chemistry of the two seem consistently mentioned throughout these first chapters, as if they are a representation of Radcliffe’s experiences of some sort. Overall I think the book is promising in plot, though it is a bit too particular with descriptions of setting in my opinion.
My first impression upon reading the opening of the work was I love the attention that Radcliffe pays to imagery. I would like to specifically compliment the description of twilight/nighttime that she writes, where St. Aubert seems to find comfort “When the moon shed her soft rays among the foliage…” (Radcliffe 9). I was just in awe of the transition from light to dark described so beautifully. This also adds to a theme of the novel, which is finding comfort in nature. Oftentimes, St. Aubert was seen to find solace in nature, even mourning the future loss of his beloved chestnut tree, for example. Moving on, Radcliffe seems to have a particular obsession, not only with nature but with solitude. I have noticed that while Emily’s father cared about having connections with close family (his wife and daughter), he also taught her how to think for herself, which is quite a present-day idea, I would argue. This ties into how the fact that this is a gothic novel from the 1790s is quite surprising. The way Emily was raised by her father, and even the closeness she had with him, is somewhat unusual and even, as I said before, modern. I think that ties into why I enjoy the book so much so far; it seems to be a timeless piece of gothic literature.
In the first four chapters of Udolpho, I was met with much more lush and green settings than I had previously expected. Going into this novel, I had a fairly narrow idea of the Gothic. I imagined dark blues and purples, and cold castle walls. So, the opening of the first chapter in which Radcliffe precisely describes each detail of the banks of Garonne, I was pleasantly surprised. I found myself drawn into this setting and its false sense of security quite easily, but I also loved the more sinister details lying underneath. The early deaths of Madame St. Aubert and both of her sons were my first inclination to the darker aspects of the novel, but my favorite was the mysterious Sonnet on the wall of the fishing house. It was such a laughable idea, a sonnet-writing vigilante, but it drew me in so wonderfully to Emily’s journey. I really resonated with Moer’s description of Radcliffe’s “incantatory prose style, her artful stretching of suspense over long periods of novelistic time.” These four chapters were full of rich language both of nature, emotion, and grief, which would normally deter me from reading, but I found myself hanging on to every word.