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Radcliffe’s Empowered Feminine:
Masculinity and Femininity in The Mysteries
of Udolpho and The Italian
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Contents:
Introduction 4
Masculinity and Male Sensibility 8
Radcliffe’s Empowering Sublime 21
Conclusion 34
Bibliography 36
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Abstract
My dissertation attempts to show how Ann Radcliffe tries to
empower her female readers through her use of sensibility and the
sublime in her narratives. By using sensibility to emasculate her male
characters, Radcliffe is able to challenge patriarchal structures and
question gender roles within society. In addition, I aim to demonstrate
the connection between the two novels to show the development of
Radcliffe’s gender politics in The Mysteries of Udolpho and The
Italian, something that has been somewhat overlooked by Bondhus,
Mullan, and Miles in other contemporary scholarship on Radcliffe. I
argue that both novels act as a set of stages which illustrate Radcliffe’s
gender politics, by conveying the way in which she uses the sublime to
empower her female protagonists. Moreover, my dissertation defines
sensibility and the sublime in the eighteenth century, providing an
understanding of how both men and women were perceived in society.
It also discusses the concept of masculinity and how Radcliffe’s
heroines, Emily and Ellena, are given the male characteristics of sense
and reason to recover from their sensibilities. I conclude that through
her female character’s ability to rescue themselves from danger, rather
than relying on the typical Gothic hero, Radcliffe is able to challenge
the idea of chivalric fantasy in order to, ultimately, empower her female
readers.
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Introduction
‘If Horace Walpole was the father of the Gothic novel, Ann Radcliffe
was certainly its mother.’1 Ann Radcliffe, one of the most acclaimed
and influential female authors of the Gothic genre, gained this title
through her way of depicting women in Gothic fiction as strong and
independent; and is a crucial figure to what we now consider to be the
Female Gothic. This Female Gothic genre is defined by Ellen Moers
as, ‘the work that women writers have done in the literary mode since
the eighteenth century’2, which ‘always has something to say about the
woman in question’.3
The Female gothic has been re-defined as a genre which tries to
engage with gender issues and inspires women readers to become
independent, and negotiate their position in a patriarchal society. I aim
to examine each of Radcliffe’s male and female protagonists in The
Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, and show how they are presented
through Radcliffe’s use of sensibility and the sublime, in order to
achieve female empowerment.
In the eighteenth century, novel reading was dis-reputable
among females as the Gothic novel was a world of fantasy that was
thought to excite women’s sensibilities. In Fordyce’s Sermons to young
women, ‘The magic power of fancy, set to work by vanity, ambition,
and hope, creates a kind of world within, to which she fondly refers
1Norton Rictor, Gothic Readings: The First Wave, 1764-1840 (London: Leicester University Press, 2000), p 40. 2 Wallace Diana and Andrew Smith (ed.), The Female Gothic: New Directions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p.43. 3 Ibid. p.47.
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that without, as always subordinate, and chiefly subservient.’ 4 This
statement exemplifies that ‘The magic power of fancy’ or ‘the world
within’, were dangerous ideas that would question the ‘subservient’
attitude that women were expected to have within patriarchal society.
Fordyce also refers that, for women:
Manly exercises are never graceful; that in them a tone and
figure, as well as an air and deportment, of the masculine kind,
are always forbidding; and that men of sensibility desire in every
woman soft features, and a flowing voice, a form not robust, and
a demeanour delicate and gentle.5
These qualities form the stereotypical women of the Eighteenth
century, perceived by their male counterparts as being ‘delicate and
gentle’. Radcliffe attempts to challenge the idea that women have a
delicate nature in her narratives, by presenting her heroines as
embodying masculine virtues of strength and independence.
Contemporary scholarship discussing Radcliffe’s gender politics can be
seen in Claudia Johnson’s Equivocal beings politics, gender and
sentimentality in the 1790s Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen.
Johnson states that:
In her later novels, accordingly, legitimate sensitivity is so
exclusively the prerogative of men that female affectivity is
4 Fordyce, James D.D, Sermons to Young Women (London, 1766). P. 235 5 Ibid. p. 233.
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denounced, and the formerly male virtues of self-command and
steadiness are required of every good girl. Radcliffe’s heroines
must thus be paragons of passive feminine virtue as well as
exemplars of an older-styled masculinity.6
This piece of contemporary scholarship conveys that it is the women
who become passive and take on traditional masculine characteristics.
This is because men are full of sensibility, embodying the ‘passive
feminine virtue’ (of sensibility) that women at the time were associated
with. This ‘passive feminine virtue’ is delineated by John Mullan in
Sentiment and Sociability: ‘It is true that in women, hysteric symptoms
occur more frequently, and are often much more sudden and violent,
than the hypochondriac in men’7. In Sentiment and Sociability, John
Mullan denotes a clear connection between women and the concept of
sensibility, in that ‘sensibility is an investment in a particular version
of the feminine-tearful, palpitating, embodying virtue whilst
susceptible to all the vicissitudes of ‘feeling’’. 8 The way in which
women were perceived as ‘embodying virtue’ and ‘susceptible to all
the vicissitudes of ‘feeling’’ is suggestive that women were seen as
emotionally fragile or ‘peculiarly ‘delicate’’9, and as a result lacked the
strength and ability to reason, which, it was assumed, men have.
6 Johnson, Claudia L. Equivocal beings politics, gender and sentimentality in the 1790s Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995, p.97. 7 Mullan, John. ‘Hypochondria and Hysteria: Sensibility and the Physicians’. In: Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the
Eighteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. p. 217. 8 Ibid. p.218. 9 Ibid. p.217.
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Ann Van Sant refers to the term of sensibility as ‘an organic
sensitivity dependent on brain and nerves and underlying a) delicate
moral and aesthetic perception; b) acuteness of feeling, both emotional
and physical; and c) susceptibility to delicate passional arousal’10 ,
which ‘are characteristic of women’.11 This illustrates that women were
commonly associated with the notion of sensibility, and it is this
perception of women that Radcliffe tries to change through her writing.
Robert Miles claims that, ‘For Radcliffe, sensibility was not a fashion
accessory. On the contrary, it was an important fictional instrument,
one that expanded the scope of her writing.’12 I will focus on two of
Radcliffe’s novels, The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, as both
represent the beginning and end of her literary career, and clearly show
the development of her female protagonists in regards to controlling
their sensibilities, with intent to potentially empower her female
readers.
I will begin by discussing how Radcliffe participates in debate
about sensibility, in order to question the concepts of reason and
passion in the eighteenth century, in regards to her male characters in
both novels. In the second chapter, I will show how Radcliffe tries to
empower women by bestowing them with the sublime, focusing
specifically on her female protagonists, Emily St Aubert in The
Mysteries of Udolpho, and Ellena in The Italian. In this discussion I
will attempt to demonstrate that Radcliffe is trying to question
10 Van Sant, Ann Jessie Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Novel: The Senses in Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004, p.1. 11 Ibid 12 Miles, Robert Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. P.152.
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patriarchal structures that define femininity by using different
techniques to empower her female characters. It is through her use of
sensibility and the sublime that she encourages her female readers to
be more in control of their sensibilities, in an attempt to change these
patriarchal values in society. As a result, each of Radcliffe’s’ novels
form part of a ‘literary mode’, depicting women in different ways by
using techniques in her narratives that highlight her characters’
sensibilities; but are always seen to empower the heroines.
Masculinity and Male Sensibility
In Ann Radcliffe the Great Enchantress, Robert Miles highlights that
Radcliffe’s, The Italian, ‘was a final, considered text, one putting her
earlier work in a measured, self-conscious perspective.’ 13 This ‘self-
conscious perspective’ refers to Radcliffe’s last novel The Italian, as it
can be seen to differ from her first novel. In The Mysteries of Udolpho,
Radcliffe focuses on the portrayal of Emily St Aubert through her use
of the sublime, whereas in The Italian, Radcliffe highlights her male
character’s sensibilities rather than that of her heroine, Ellena. This
shift in focus emasculates her male characters, and in turn places the
heroine in a position of empowerment. In this chapter, I will attempt to
show how Radcliffe is challenging the idea of gender roles in a
patriarchal society, and consider how she uses sensibility to
disempower her male characters. I will focus specifically on,
13 Miles, Robert Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. P.149-150.
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Valancourt, Montoni, Vivaldi and Schedoni showing the way in which
Radcliffe’s narrative techniques emasculate her male characters in
order to present her female protagonists as more psychologically
powerful.
In order to understand the complexity of the gender politics that
informs Radcliffe’s fiction, I will begin by discussing the concept of
masculinity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
According to John Tosh, masculinity undertook a ‘transition from a
genteel masculinity grounded in land ownership to a bourgeois
masculinity attuned to the market.’14 From the mid eighteenth century,
‘land ownership’, wealth, and title were associated with the idea of
being a man. Men were also associated with the concepts of sense and
reason, and would rarely express or convey emotion as it was
considered to oppose the idea of masculinity. Angus Mclaren
demonstrates this idea when discussing how men were perceived in the
late eighteenth century:
To have a “man to man talk”, we are told, was to speak directly;
“to be one’s own man” was to be in full possession of one’s
faculties; to “play the man” was to act courageously; to be “the
man” was to be the one in charge.15
14Tosh, John Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain. London: Pearson Education Ltd., 2005, p. 63. 15 Mclaren, Angus. The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries, 1870-1930. London: The University of Chicago Press Ltd. 1997.
p.1.
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If the idea of masculinity then ‘was to be the one in charge’, it is
implied that the individual had to have control over themselves, and
surely that would include control of one’s emotions. If this is the case,
then the idea of masculinity is associated with emotional, as well as
physical control, and it is this lack of control which emasculates her
male characters, and can be seen to potentially empower her female
readers. Tosh continues to explain that ‘Household authority and sexual
predation were in this sense facets of hegemonic masculinity, and they
persisted through substantial changes in the class formation between
1750 and 1850.’16 If we relate this idea of ‘land ownership’ and ‘sexual
predation’ to Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, we can see these
ideals implemented through Montoni and his ownership of the castle,
and Count Morano with his sexual predation towards Emily and her
hand in marriage. Radcliffe challenges contemporary expectations of
men’s gender roles in society by creating male characters who have
less control over themselves and their emotions than their female
counterparts. Her questioning of dominant modes of masculinity
contributes to the emasculation of her villainous heroes in The
Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian.
Consequently, Radcliffe attempts to empower her female
characters by challenging the gendering of sensibility as feminine,
through the creation of male characters who are as irrational and
sentimental as women were believed to be.
16 Tosh, John Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain. London: Pearson Education Ltd. 2005. P. 68.
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This is evident in The Mysteries of Udolpho with Montoni upon
his return to Venice with Emily, who is portrayed as lacking control
over his sensibility:
He delighted in the energies of the passions; the difficulties and
tempests of life, which wreck the happiness of others, roused and
strengthened all the powers of his mind, and afforded him the
highest enjoyments, of which his nature was capable.17
The utterance ‘delighted in the energies of the passions’, is suggestive
that Montoni is also defined by an excess of emotion that was deemed
as problematic for women in eighteenth-century conduct literature, and
it is this emotional revelation that illustrates that he opposes the
Augustan concept of reason over passion.
Eighteenth century sensibility was governed by reason which
Hume claims ‘is, and ought to be the slave of the passions, and can
never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.’18 He
refers to the concept of reason as a ‘slave’ which suggests that the
passions have a powerful effect on the ‘object’19. In other words, that
reason is an inferior concept that has little, if any, influence to counter
the effects of the passions. Ellis in contrast, states that ‘moral
judgments need reason to inform the passions as to the existence and
condition of the object considered’20. This implies that reason is a
17 Radcliffe, Ann The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966, p.182. 18 Ibid. p.13. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.
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concept that does have influence over passion, as it can ‘inform the
passions as to the existence and condition of the object.’ If we relate
this to Montoni in The Mysteries of Udolpho, it could be argued that
when Montoni delights ‘in the energies of the passions’ he is
completely vulnerable to its effects, as ‘reason cannot judge between
warring passions’. It is through Montoni’s impaired reason, and his
‘highest enjoyments’ of the passions that disempowers his character, as
he is presented as willingly embracing them without attempting any
kind of moral judgement. It could be argued that through Montoni’s
character, Radcliffe is trying to teach her female readers of the
importance of cultivating their reasoning capabilities to allow for moral
judgment. Therefore, this idea could be seen as a response to
contemporary concerns about reading and Gothic fiction being morally
detrimental to the female reader, because of its excitation of feminine
sensibility.
Radcliffe’s Gothic hero Valancourt is portrayed as similarly
weak in regards to his control of the passions: ‘A sigh, a tear, so sweet,
he wish’d not to control.’ 21 This opening verse exudes sensibility
which emasculates Valancourt. Both words, ‘sigh’ and ‘tear’ suggest
sadness, a feeling that both Valancourt and Emily experience when
they are separated later in the novel. It could be argued that Radcliffe
uses this verse as an implication that Valancourt has a tendency
towards sentimental weakness and, similar to Montoni, does not have
the ‘developed reason’22 that Emily is shown to have.
21 Ibid. p.35. 22 Ibid. p.130.
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Furthermore, Valancourt’s letter to Emily confirms Radcliffe’s
indications regarding his lack of control over his sensibilities, showing
how his actions are driven by emotion rather than reason: ‘I sit lost in
reverie – I endeavour to see you dimly through my tears, in all the
heaven of peace and innocence, such as you then appeared to me’.23 By
his own admission, ‘through my tears’, we begin to picture Valancourt
sobbing over Emily’s absence showing that he embraces his emotions
rather than controlling them. This immediately emasculates him in
comparison to Emily, who appears to control her sensibilities much
more effectively through her investment in fortitude and the education
received from her father at the beginning of the novel. ‘Above all, my
dear Emily…do not indulge in the pride of fine feeling, the romantic
error of amiable minds. Those, who really possess sensibility, ought
early to be taught, that it is a dangerous quality’.24 This investment in
fortitude enables Emily to assess a situation throughout the novel by
preventing her from falling back upon her sensibilities.
Bondhus, who reinforces the idea of the disempowerment of
Radcliffe’s male characters, similarly argues ‘that sensibility is actually
being interrogated in men in Radcliffe’s novels, as it is the heroes, the
men of feeling, who are ultimately weakened by their embracement of
this philosophy.’ 25 Moreover, by continuing to evoke his feelings
towards Emily, Valancourt is confirmed to be one of ‘the men of
feeling’ in the novel. ‘I lean on the wall of the terrace, where we
23 Ibid. p.193. 24 Ibid. p.79. 25 Bondhus, Charlie ‘Sublime Patriarchs and the problems of the New Middle Class in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The
Italian’. Gothic Studies, Vol. 12, 1, 2010, p.20.
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together watched the rapid current of the Garonne below, while I
described the wild scenery about its source, but thought only of you.26
His continuing admission of his feelings for Emily implies that, like
Montoni, he is too ‘delighted in the energies of the passions’, a level of
sensibility which ‘in period context was thought to have ‘feminized the
nation, given women undue prominence, and emasculated men’.’ 27
Radcliffe gives Valancourt this ‘level of sensibility’ in The Mysteries
of Udolpho, in an attempt to challenge the idea of patriarchal
dominance in that period and giving her female characters a sense of
superiority, by having more control over their sensibilities.
As a villain, Montoni is portrayed as more dynamic character
than Valancourt through his ownership of the castle at Udolpho and
through his manipulation of the intended marriage of Emily and Count
Morano. Therefore, when Radcliffe writes, that it ‘roused…all the
powers of his mind’ his strength of character is diminished. The word
‘roused’ implies that he is oblivious to the fact that he has lost all reason
and suggests that he is overwhelmed with sensibility. This shows that
both the male and female characters in Radcliffe’s novels are
susceptible to their sensibilities, and it is in the way that they protect
themselves from such susceptibility where they differ. Emily uses
fortitude but Montoni lacks this power of mind. This is because he is
too materialistic and is defined by his vices of greed and desire for
power, which demonstrates the change in the power dynamic between
26 Radcliffe, Ann The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966, p.193. 27 Bondhus, Charlie ‘Sublime Patriarchs and the problems of the New Middle Class in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The
Italian’. Gothic Studies, Vol. 12, 1, 2010, p.20.
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the two characters, presenting Emily as psychologically superior. In
doing this, Radcliffe conveys Montoni and Emily as equally
‘susceptible to all the vicissitudes of ‘feeling’’ which, supposedly,
cause the ‘tearful, palpitating’ ‘version of the feminine’ showing
Radcliffe using gender politics to empower the feminine.
In contrast to The Mysteries of Udolpho, Radcliffe’s writing
style in The Italian differs greatly with regards to how she chooses to
evoke sensibility. In The Mysteries of Udolpho, Radcliffe focuses on
Emily’s control of her sensibilities to empower her female readers,
whereas in The Italian, ‘the last novel produced by Radcliffe’28, the
focus shifts onto her male characters rather than her female protagonist
Ellena. By the time Radcliffe writes The Italian, her readers already
know that Radcliffe’s heroines are defined by fortitude, and as such,
this allows Radcliffe to shift her focus onto the portrayal of her male
characters. By focusing more on her male characters, Radcliffe is able
to give a sense of female empowerment by presenting the male
characters as lacking fortitude; as Robert Miles indicates further:
The Italian is a different kind of text. In it the heroine is not
overly predisposed to the ‘spectral’, is not given to ‘superstition’,
to the imaginative excesses of sensibility. As we shall see, the
hero Vivaldi occupies the ‘feminine’ role of fantasist. The
difference is crucial.29
28 Miles, Robert Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, p.149. 29 Ibid. p. 151.
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In The Italian, Vivaldi’s gaze towards Ellena when he admires her on
the balcony at the beginning of the novel, conveys how he ‘occupies
the ‘feminine’ role of the fanatasist’ which Miles underlines as the
crucial ‘difference’ between the two texts: ‘The sweetness and fine
expression of her voice attracted his attention to her figure, which had
a distinguished air of delicacy and grace; but her face was concealed in
her veil.’30 After ‘the breeze from the water caught the veil’ Vivaldi
witnesses ‘a countenance more touchingly beautiful than he had dared
to image.’ 31 His ‘admiration’ 32 of Ellena’s beauty indicates that
Vivaldi is experiencing emotion and has succumbed to the effects of
Ellena’s beauty. This lack of resistance to his sensibilities emasculates
him when compared to Ellena and presents her as a superior character,
which in turn, could empower her female readers. Radcliffe uses
sensibility in both The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian to
emasculate her heroes, Valancourt and Vivaldi. In addition, Radcliffe
also emasculates the male villains, as we can see in The Italian with
Radcliffe’s chief villain Schedoni.
Schedoni, is another male character who is portrayed as
emotionally weak, despite Radcliffe’s depiction at the beginning of the
novel that he is a strong and influential character. It isn’t until later on
in the novel when Schedoni believes he is Ellena’s father, that we see
his emotions overcome him:
30 Radcliffe, Ann The Italian. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. p.5. 31 Ibid. p.6. 32 Ibid.
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Ellena’s terror began to yield to astonishment, and this emotion
increased, when, Schedoni approaching her, she perceived tears
swell in his eyes, which were fixt on her’s, and his countenance
soften from the wild disorder that had marked it. Still he could
not speak.33
Through ‘Ellena’s terror’, Schedoni is continuously described as
having an intimidating presence despite his lack of emotional control.
However, Ellena is able to look past Schedoni’s figure when she sees
‘tears swell in his eyes’. If we compare this to Emily in The Mysteries
of Udolpho, who would have perhaps given into her sensibilities at the
sight of something as terrifying, then we would expect Ellena, in The
Italian, to react in a similar way. By focusing more on how her male
characters control their sensibilities, it prevents this thematic repetition
in her narrative which is purposefully used to inspire her female readers
to question patriarchal structures in society as the female gender has
become empowered in comparison. In addition, the control that Ellena
demonstrates in not giving into her sensibilities despite her ‘terror’
towards Schedoni, shows how Ellena’s character is in control of her
sensibilities than Emily was shown to be in The Mysteries of Udolpho
which, shows that in The Mysteries of Udolpho Radcliffe focuses on
Emily’s struggles with her excited sensibility, whereas in The Italian
Ellena is portrayed from the beginning as being able to master her
sensibilities through fortitude. Therefore, the female readers of The
33 Ibid. p.236.
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Italian are expected to know how to control emotion, as this was
demonstrated by Emily in The Mysteries of Udolpho. This shows that
Radcliffe targets the same readership in people that are familiar with
her work, her type of characters and how her novels act as different
lessons to her female readers.
Radcliffe continues to use sensibility to de-masculinise her
male characters, for example Schedoni in The Italian, to empower her
female characters. We see this through the ‘tears’ that Ellena saw swell
in his eyes and his ‘softened countenance’. Both examples show that,
despite his powerful figure, he has difficulty in controlling his emotions
involving Ellena, who he believes, at this point in the novel, to be his
daughter: ‘here a malevolent patriarch appears to be the heroine’s
father until the final revelation discloses the true one to be benevolent
and paternal, if also usurped.’34 The lack of Schedoni’s emotional
control not only portrays him as susceptible to his sensibilities, but
empowers Ellena as Radcliffe has made her Schedoni’s emotional
weakness providing her with some influence over his emotions;
empowering her character.
Furthermore, Schedoni’s experience of his journey through the
mountains with Ellena is another example that demonstrates how
Radcliffe uses sensibility to emasculate her male characters. ‘Darkness
now confounded every object, and no domestic light twinkling,
however distantly, through the gloom, gave signal of security and
comfort.’35 Here, Radcliffe changes her technique of terror through
34 Miles, Robert Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, p.150. 35 Radcliffe, Ann The Italian. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. p.272.
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obscurity that she used to highlight Ellena’s reaction towards
Schendoni. Instead, Radcliffe uses horror rather than terror, with the
lexis such as ‘gloomy’, and, ‘darkness’, both of which give
connotations of fear of the unknown suggesting that Schedoni is afraid
of his surroundings. In her essay, On the Supernatural in Poetry,
Radcliffe identifies the difference between horror and terror, stating
that:
Terror and Horror are so far opposite that the first expands the
soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other
contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them ... And where lies
the difference between horror and terror, but in the uncertainty
and obscurity that accompany the first, respecting the dreading
evil?36
Radcliffe writes that ‘uncertainty and obscurity’ are states ‘that
accompany’ terror, and it is this fear of the unknown that is produced
when Schedoni is travelling through the mountains with Ellena, where
it is implied that he is afraid. ‘They descended dejectedly into the
hollow of the mountains, and found themselves once more immerged
in woods.’ The contrast of the words ‘hollow’ and ‘immerged’ mirrors
Schedoni’s mental state, when he was once able to resist conveying his
emotions to the state in which he has become horrified. This is further
illustrated with the adverb ‘dejectedly’ which suggests that the
36 E. J. Clery and Robert Miles, eds, Gothic Documents: A Sourcebook 1700-1820, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000,
p. 168.
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travellers do not want to continue into the woods as they are horrified
of their surroundings. Moreover, the way in which Schedoni ‘called the
peasant to his side, and bade him keep abreast of him’37 reinforces the
idea that, similarly to Vivaldi, his actions are driven by emotion rather
than reason. By showing that he needs the ‘peasant’ to make him feel
safe, it suggests that Schedoni cannot continue without the peasant who
is acting as a form of protection as they venture further into the woods.
Radcliffe uses horror rather than terror to emasculate Schedoni, as
horror paralyses the hero who cannot act on the situation. Terror on the
other hand, as we see with Ellena, only temporarily takes over which
enables her, eventually, to master her sensibility. By using horror,
Radcliffe is preventing Schedoni from mastering his sensibilities, and
thus conveys a sense of power to Ellena’s character.
To summarise, the differing narrative styles between The
Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian act as a set of stages conveying
Radcliffe’s attempt at challenging gender roles in society by relating to
sensibility. In both novels, Radcliffe portrays Valancourt, Montoni,
Vivaldi and Schedoni as ‘the men of feeling’38 in the novel through
their conscious expression of emotion which was seen to be feminine,
in a society that was dominated by men. By using sensibility as a
technique to emasculate her male characters, Radcliffe is able to inspire
her female readers by changing how women were perceived in gothic
fiction through the empowerment of her female protagonists.
37 Radcliffe, Ann The Italian. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. p.272. 38 Bondhus, Charlie ‘Sublime Patriarchs and the problems of the New Middle Class in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The
Italian’. Gothic Studies, Vol. 12, 1, 2010, p.20.
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Radcliffe’s Empowering Sublime
Whereas Radcliffe emasculates her male characters by
depicting them as men of sensibility, she purposefully uses the sublime
in order to further empower her female protagonists. In The Italian,
Radcliffe uses the sublime as a technique in the narrative to empower
her female protagonist, Ellena, by defying the conventions of the
patriarchal society she finds herself in. I aim to show how Radcliffe
uses the sublime as a tool in her narrative to empower her heroines by
using their ability to reason. One definition of the sublime is given by
Edmund Burke:
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and
danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is
conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner
analogous of terror, is a source of the sublime.39
Radcliffe uses Burke’s idea of terror as ‘a source of the sublime’, on
her female protagonists to create a sense of female empowerment. In
difference to using horror to emasculate her male characters, as
previously discussed, she uses her heroines’ ability to recover from the
‘terror’ they experience through the sublime as a way of empowering
her female readers.
39 Burke, Edmund A Philosophical Enquiry into the origins of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990, p.36.
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By providing her female protagonists with the ability to recover
and regain reason, Radcliffe shows how modern her heroines are in
comparison to her male characters, who still try to uphold chivalric
values that have no place in a modern world. According to Bondhus,
Social commentators at the end of the eighteenth century
believed that sensibility was problematic for women insofar as it
would supposedly inspire them to live within a realm of chivalric
fantasy, rather than satisfactorily fulfilling their roles as wives
and mothers.40
In this chapter, I will focus on Emily and Ellena’s experiences of the
sublime to show how Radcliffe can be seen to challenge gender roles
in society and empower her female readers.
In the early parts of the novel, we get the sense that Emily’s
misfortunes are just beginning when her father receives a letter from
M. Quensel stating that he is financially ruined: ‘A variety of
circumstances have concurred to ruin him, and – I am ruined with
him.’41 At this point, the security of Emily’s future is being taken from
her, first through the death of her mother, the loss of her financial
prospects through M. Quensel, and the imminent death of her father.
This de-contextualisation is expected in the Gothic novel, where
rationality and judgment are removed from the heroine which enhances
40 Bondhus, Charlie ‘Sublime Patriarchs and the problems of the New Middle Class in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The
Italian’. Gothic Studies, Vol. 12, 1, 2010, p.19. 41Radcliffe, Ann The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966, p.59.
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their receptivity towards the sublime. It is this ‘sensitive,
impressionable connection that a sentimental individual like Ellena or
Emily has with the world, combined with the emotionality that
characterizes sensibility’42 that ‘logically implies a greater receptivity
to the sublime’43. This sense of misfortune that Radcliffe indicates
early on in the novel, is reinforced by Robert Miles, author of Ann
Radcliffe The Great Enchantress. He states that ‘Emily’s weakness
links back to St Aubert’s death-bed warnings to be beware of excessive
passion in all its forms, including its most beguiling shape:
sensibility’. 44 It is this warning towards ‘excessive passion’ that
Radcliffe is trying to convey through Emily’s observation of the
sublime, to create a sense of female empowerment.
In the typical Gothic novel, we expect Emily St Aubert to give
in to her emotions and become the female stereotypical woman of
Gothic fiction, helpless and in need of rescue from a male protagonist.
Instead, Radcliffe uses the sublime to empower Emily’s character,
despite the distress she has endured following the death of her mother
and her father’s ill health:
There was something so gloomy and desolate in the appearance
of this avenue, and it’s lonely silence, that Emily almost
shuddered as she passed along; and recollecting the manner in
which the peasant had mentioned the chateau, she gave a
42Bondhus, Charlie ‘Sublime Patriarchs and the problems of the New Middle Class in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The
Italian’. Gothic Studies, Vol. 12, 1, 2010, p.17. 43 Ibid. p.17. 44 Miles, Robert Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, p.130.
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mysterious meaning to his words, such as she had not suspected
when he uttered them.45
Radcliffe’s lexical choice of, ‘gloomy’, has connotations of darkness,
which implies that Emily cannot see much of her surroundings as she
advances towards the cabin with her father, creating a fear of the
unknown. It is Emily’s curiosity that is generated through the idea of
the unknown (obscurity), which creates her feeling of terror.
Radcliffe’s use of terror enlarges Emily’s understanding by exciting
her imagination, enabling her to be resourceful and regain control of
her emotions. Horror, for Radcliffe, confounds this understanding
preventing the individual from acting, and it is through Radcliffe’s use
of terror rather than horror that shows her reworking of the Burkean
sublime.
In addition, other lexis such as ‘desolate’, not only illustrates
they are alone, but evokes the idea that the landscape is lifeless,
providing the setting with a threatening, supernatural atmosphere.
Ellen Ledoux in Defiant Damsels, reinforces the view that ‘women
authors sometimes portray Gothic spaces as confining or threatening,
they also depict them as settings in which female characters exhibit
physical prowess’46. If we relate this statement to Radcliffe and The
Mysteries of Udolpho, we see that the woods around the chateau
provide the ‘threatening’47 setting that Emily finds herself. Ledoux also
45 Radcliffe, Ann The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966, p.63. 46 Malenas Ledoux, Ellen ‘Defiant Damsels: Gothic Space and female agency in Emmeline, The Mysteries Of Udolpho and Secresy’.
Women’s Writing. Vol. 18, 3, 2011, p. 331. 47 Ibid
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mentions that female characters ‘exhibit physical prowess’, something
that Emily doesn’t seem to have in this passage. However, it could be
argued that Radcliffe intended to convey Emily’s strength of character,
rather than her ‘physical prowess’ to empower her female readers, by
showing them that Emily is able to resist her sensibilities unlike
Radcliffe’s male characters.
What's more, in Edmund Burke’s essay A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas into the Sublime and Beautiful,
he states that ‘The passion caused by the sublime in nature, when those
causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is
that state of the soul, in which all its emotions are suspended, with some
degree of horror.’48 By using words such as ‘gloomy’ and ‘desolate’
to describe the chateau, Radcliffe is able to create a setting which
causes Emily to feel the ‘degree of horror’ that Burke highlights as a
cause of the sublime, placing Emily in a situation that requires her to
take control of her sensibilities. Therefore, this highlights Emily’s
ability, from the beginning of the novel, to turn horror into terror and
shows that it is the sublime that creates the conditions which she finds
the strength to fortify her mind against her excited sensibilities. In
addition, it indicates that, for Radcliffe, the sublime creates not just
horrors, but also terror in which her heroines can then overcome their
distress and come to their own rescue. In Sublime Patriarchs and the
problems of the New Middle Class in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of
Udolpho and The Italian, Charlie Bondhus reinforces the idea that
48 Burke, Edmund A Philosophical Enquiry into the origins of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990, p.53.
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Radcliffe uses the sublime as a tool in her narrative by stating that
‘sublimity is what allows her to act on what she sees, as it is the sublime
which enhances the female self with the fortitude and self-
awareness…that is required to confront villainy and alter the
environment.’49 This is important as it suggests that the chivalric notion
of the damsel in distress does not work in Radcliffe’s fiction. Instead,
she creates heroines capable of protecting themselves when confronted
with something such as the sublime by empowering their minds with
fortitude, illustrating how Radcliffe tries to challenge gender roles to
change the perception of women in society.
The sublime description of Barnardine is an example of where
Radcliffe gives the sense of empowerment to her female readers. This
is the first of two attempts by count Morano to steal Emily away from
the castle at Udolpho, before she enters the chamber where she finds
her aunt’s body:
Emily, surprised and somewhat shocked, did not dare to oppose
him further, but, as he was turning away with the torch, desired
he would not leave her in darkness. He looked around, and,
observing a tripod lamp, that stood on the stairs, lighted and gave
it to Emily, who stepped forward into a large old chamber, and
he closed the door.50
49 Bondhus, Charlie ‘Sublime Patriarchs and the problems of the New Middle Class in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The
Italian’. Gothic Studies, Vol. 12, 1, 2010, p.16. 50 Radcliffe, Ann The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 346-47.
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Both words, ‘surprised’, and ‘shocked’ give connotations of fear
implying that Emily is, at this point, terrified of Barnardine’s figure and
in awe of the sublime, and as previously discussed, it is these effects of
terror and astonishment that show that Emily is experiencing the
Burkean sublime. It is reinforced that Emily is afraid when she enters
the chamber and is allowing the passions to, momentarily, cloud her
judgement: ‘Her anxiety increased, though she considered, that the
thickness of the floor in this strong building might prevent any sound
reaching her from the upper chamber.’51 Despite her anxiety regarding
Barnardine’s presence outside the door, Emily regains her composure
and checks the floor for an explanation as to why she can no longer
hear his footsteps. She says that ‘the thickness of the floor…might
prevent any sound from reaching her from the upper chamber’52, and it
is her composure in the situation that allows her to search for an
explanation; which as Robert Miles claims ‘return Emily, not just to
‘reason’, but to cultural and gender norms.’53
Similarly, in The Italian, Radcliffe uses the sublime as a way of
empowering her female readers, when Ellena is being held captive by
Spalatro:
Ellena shrunk while she gazed. She had never before seen
villainy and suffering so strongly pictured on the same face, and
she observed him with a degree of thrilling curiosity, which for
51Ibid, p.347. 52 Ibid 53 Miles, Robert Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, p.132.
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a moment excluded from her mind all consciousness of the evils
to be apprehended from him.54
In this utterance, the ‘thrilling curiosity’ that as Radcliffe writes,
‘excluded from her mind all consciousness of the evils to be
apprehended from him’, suggests that Ellena is encountering terror
from the very beginning invoked through Spalatro’s sublime figure.
The way in which her ‘curiosity’ is presented as greater than the terror
associated with the ‘villainy and suffering so strongly pictured on the
same face’, indicates her strength of character as she has been able to
recover from this feeling of terror and become curious, rather than
afraid. If we compare this to Emily’s initial reaction to Barnardine in
The Mysteries of Udolpho when she ‘did not dare to oppose him
further’, there is a clear distinction between the two heroines. This is
because, unlike Ellena, Emily has to fortify her mind in order to control
her feeling of terror towards Barnardine whereas Ellena is presented as
already having mastered this ability through her ‘thrilling curiosity’ of
Spalatro. Radcliffe’s female readers that have read The Mysteries of
Udolpho, would likely make a similar comparison and expect Ellena to
react to Spalatro in a similar way. Yet, when Ellena demonstrates this
control over her emotions, Radcliffe’s readers can see Ellena’s strength
of character as an empowerment upon themselves as women in a
patriarchal society.
54 Radcliffe, Ann The Italian. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. p.210.
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However, as the passage continues, the sublime becomes too
much for Ellena when ‘the efforts she made to sustain her spirits, were
no longer successful’55 and ‘conviction struck like lightening upon her
heart’56. Expectantly, Ellena is overwhelmed by the sublime, but it is
her actions that follow this experience where Radcliffe can be seen to
empower Ellena’s character further: ‘She employed these two minutes
in examining the chamber, and the possibility it might afford of an
escape.’57 It could be a coincidence that Emily in The Mysteries of
Udolpho is forced to enter a chamber and, similarly to Ellena, search
for ‘the possibility of an escape’58, however I maintain that there is a
purpose for Radcliffe’s repetition in her plot narratives. Radcliffe
presents Ellena as being assertive and independent through the way in
which she spent time ‘examining the chamber’, and it is this analytic
approach and awareness of her surroundings that is an example of
Radcliffe’s challenging of gender stereotypes as women were not seen
as being analytical. By creating a scene in The Italian that mirrors that
of The Mysteries of Udolpho, Radcliffe’s readers are able to notice
distinct changes in her heroine’s reactions to the sublime, which
ultimately attempts to empower her readers and challenge established
hierarchies and power structures within a patriarchal society.
‘Although it is clear then that the sublime empowers women’59,
Radcliffe shows that, similarly to her male characters, Emily in The
55 Ibid. p.211. 56 Ibid 57 Ibid. p.212. 58 Radcliffe, Ann The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. p.347. 59 Bondhus, Charlie ‘Sublime Patriarchs and the problems of the New Middle Class in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The
Italian’. Gothic Studies, Vol. 12, 1, 2010, p.18.
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Mysteries of Udolpho allows her emotions to drive her actions when
she hears of her aunt’s imprisonment in the castle:
Soon after, she was inclined to consider these suspicions as the
extravagant exaggerations of a timid and harassed mind, and
could not believe Montoni liable to such preposterous depravity
as that of destroying, from one motive, his wife and her niece.60
In this utterance, Emily is conscious of the fact that she may be
‘suffering from her romantic imagination’, yet there is a sense of
naivety in Emily’s attitude towards Montoni and the accusations posed
against him that could be perceived as a weakness. Emily is clearly
aware of her current emotional state, which she refers to as ‘the
extravagant exaggerations of a timid and harassed mind’, yet the
following utterance that she ‘could not believe Montoni liable to such
preposterous depravity’ suggests that Emily still trusts Montoni, and
feels as though she knows him despite his real intentions. This is
obviously not the case and it could be said that Radcliffe is potentially
highlighting Emily’s naïve attitude as an example to her female
readers, to raise awareness of their own attitudes. In addition, it
highlights that Emily’s character differs from the usual conventions of
the Gothic novel where the heroine would give into her sensibilities
and require rescue from a hero. Due to her lack of family and seemingly
powerless position in the castle, Emily has no choice but to regain
60 Radcliffe, Ann The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966, p.342.
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composure. By attempting to analyse the situation and entering the
chamber despite her fears of what she will find, Emily’s awareness and
control over her excited sensibility can be seen by Radcliffe’s female
readers as an empowerment of the feminine; when compared to the
stereotype of the ‘truly sentimental individuals’ who, in earlier Gothic
fiction, ‘are often overcome by emotion, frequently shedding tears
when they are faced with a pathetic (or bathetic) sight.’61
It is clear then that Emily has some awareness of her emotional
susceptibility, which is preventing her from moving away from being
associated with Mullan’s ‘version of the feminine’. As a result,
Radcliffe uses the sublime as a technique which helps her to
communicate a sense of female empowerment to her female readers.
Radcliffe’s sublime description of Barnardine in The Mysteries
of Udolpho is typical of a masculine villain in Gothic fiction, and is an
example of Radcliffe using the Burkean sublime that gives a sense of
empowerment to her female readers. The ‘long dark cloak, which
scarcely allowed the kind of half-boots, or sandals, that were laced
upon his legs, to appear’ and his mysterious figure, ‘darkened by
habitual discontent’62, is what confronts Emily before she enters the
chamber. This is significant as Radcliffe describes the apparel of
Barnardine in some detail, yet there is no facial description, nor does
she describe any colour other than black.
61 Bondhus, Charlie ‘Sublime Patriarchs and the problems of the New Middle Class in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The
Italian’. Gothic Studies, Vol. 12, 1, 2010, p.15. 62Radcliffe, Ann The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966, p.346.
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The idea of a faceless figure, in conjunction with the colour
black is evocative of death, giving a sense of the supernatural; creating
a frightening situation for Emily despite her best intentions to implore
reason. Furthermore, darkness is heavily associated with the idea of the
unknown, something which is achieved through obscurity in
Radcliffe’s sublime descriptions, causing Emily to feel ‘terror – fear of
pain’ 63 and a ‘paradoxical delight’ which forms the ‘basis of the
sublime’ 64 . It could be argued that Radcliffe uses this feeling of
apprehension to push Emily’s emotional capabilities to their limits,
providing us with the expectation that she will fail to control them. She
does this first, with the sublime image of Barnardine, then with the
mysterious chamber, and finally with the unknown contents of the
chamber. However, despite Emily’s terror from the sublime, she still
managed to use, what Robert Miles describes as, ‘developed
‘reason’’65, which, he says, acts as a kind of ‘surrogate guardian’66
preventing her from falling back onto her sensibilities. The control that
Emily exerts while experiencing the sublime, shows her strength and
empowers her character. In Defiant Damsels, Ellen Ledoux
acknowledges that there used to be a ‘dominant reading of Gothic
settings as places in which female characters generally lack agency’67,
yet Radcliffe contrasts this idea and uses the sublime to ‘foster strength
63 Miles, Robert Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, p.46. 64 Ibid 65Ibid. p.130. 66Ibid 67 Malenas Ledoux, Ellen ‘Defiant Damsels: Gothic Space and female agency in Emmeline, The Mysteries Of Udolpho and Secresy’.
Women’s Writing. Vol. 18, 3, 2011, p.332.
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and activity in female readers’68; in other words, giving a sense of
female empowerment.
In his enquiry, Burke states that ‘to make anything very terrible
obscurity seems in general to be necessary’69, in that ‘when we know
the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a
great deal of the apprehension vanishes.’70 Burke is indicating that the
feeling of apprehension that is generated from the idea of the unknown,
is vital in creating the feeling of terror, a term commonly affiliated with
Radcliffe, one that is used on Emily in The Mysteries of Udolpho:
‘Presently, it advanced along the rampart, towards her window, and she
then distinguished something like human form, but the silence, with
which it moved, convinced her it was no sentinel.’ 71 Emily’s
imagination has been overwhelmed in this passage as a result of the
sublime figure on the rampart beneath her window. She first believes it
to be a ‘sentinel’72 that looked ‘something like human form’, until she
saw it ‘glide down the rampart’ 73 which convinced her ‘she had
witnessed a supernatural appearance.’74 The quick change between
these thoughts, shows how the sublime affected Emily, causing her
mind to search frantically for some kind of logical explanation for what
she had seen. It isn’t until further down the passage when the figure has
disappeared into ‘the obscurity of night’75 that ‘her spirits recovered
68 Ibid 69 Burke, Edmund A Philosophical Enquiry into the origins of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990, p.54. 70 Ibid 71 Radcliffe, Ann The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966, p.356. 72 Ibid 73 Ibid 74 Ibid 75 Ibid
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composure’76, and her ‘developed reason’77 takes control once again.
‘Afterwards she was inclined to believe that Count Morano had
obtained admittance to the castle’. 78 Emily’s frantic imagination
implies that she was experiencing the effects of pain, terror and danger;
effects that Burke defines as a cause of the sublime in his enquiry. ‘No
passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and
reasoning as fear.’ 79 It also shows that the mind can become
uncontrollable when excited by the sublime; highlighting Emily’s
temporary powerlessness to prevent it. Therefore, in Emily’s case,
Radcliffe allows the reader to see Emily’s feelings of terror, pain, and
pleasure when she is observing the sublime which make her appear
temporarily powerless; as we saw with the figure on the rampart which
excited her imagination. Once Emily regains composure and control of
her emotions, she uses ‘developed reason’80 to overcome her feelings,
in turn, showing her strength of character and again giving her a sense
of power.
Conclusion
To conclude, Radcliffe uses the concept of sensibility and the
sublime as techniques which aim to empower her female protagonists,
Emily and Ellena, in The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian. As
Bondhus reinforces, ‘The sublime is not, however, the only hegemonic
76 Ibid 77 Miles, Robert Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, p.130. 78 Radcliffe, Ann The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966, p.356. 79 Burke, Edmund A Philosophical Enquiry into the origins of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990, p.53. 80 Miles, Robert Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, p.130.
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tool that Radcliffe’s heroines gain control over; the sublime is also
connected to the cultural trend of sensibility.’ 81 Radcliffe uses the
concept of sensibility to emasculate her male characters as part of a
broader focus; to give a sense of female empowerment.
Radcliffe is using Emily and Ellena to exemplify the ‘woman in
question’82 within the female gothic genre to try and raise awareness to
her female readers of their own sensibilities. Bondhus reiterates ‘that
Radcliffe was attempting to rewrite the sublime for women, as she felt
that this phenomenon, in its Burkean formulation, is
At best a temporary escape, and at worst actively perpetuates,
the oppressive politics of a patriarchal society. Sublime
experience isolates, overwhelms, and eventually effaces those
individuals who succumb to it.83
Although I agree with this statement, I maintain that Radcliffe is
not only using the sublime as a ‘temporary escape’ but uses it in
conjunction with sensibility, to challenge the way women were
presented in eighteenth century society. Consequently, by participating
in debate about sensibility and using the sublime as a tool of
empowerment in her narrative, Radcliffe is able to question patriarchal
structures that define femininity and give a sense of empowerment to
her female readers.
81 Bondhus, Charlie ‘Sublime Patriarchs and the problems of the New Middle Class in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The
Italian’. Gothic Studies, Vol. 12, 1, 2010, p.15. 82 Wallace Diana and Andrew Smith ed. The Female Gothic: New Directions. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p.47. 83 Bondhus, Charlie ‘Sublime Patriarchs and the problems of the New Middle Class in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The
Italian’. Gothic Studies, Vol. 12, 1, 2010, p.18.
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