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Chapter III - "The Novel of Suspense" Mrs. Radcliffe
The vogue of Mrs. Radcliffe; her tentative beginning in The Castles
of Athlin and Dunbayne , and her gradual advance in skill and power;
The Sicilian Romance and her early experiments in the "explained"
supernatural; The Romance of the Forest , and her use of suspense;
heroines: The Mysteries of Udolpho ; illustrations of Mrs.
Radcliffe's methods; The Italian ; villains; her historical accuracy
and "unexplained" spectre in Gaston de Blondeville ; her reading;
style; descriptions of scenery; position in the history of the
novel.
The enthusiasm which greeted
Walpole's enchanted castle and
Miss Reeve's carefully manipulated ghost, indicated an
eager desire for a new type of fiction in which the known and
familiar were superseded by the strange and supernatural. To
meet this end Mrs. Radcliffe suddenly came forward with her
attractive store of mysteries, and it was probably her timely
appearance that saved the Gothic tale from an early death.
The vogue of the novel of terror,
though undoubtedly stimulated by German influence, was mainly
due to her popularity and success. The writers of the first half of
the nineteenth century abound in references to her works,[34]
and she thus still enjoys a shadowy, ghost like celebrity.
Many who have never had the curiosity to
explore the labyrinths of the underground passages, with which her
castles are invariably honeycombed, or who have never
shuddered with apprehension before the "black veil," know of
their existence through Northanger Abbey, and have probably
also read how Thackeray at school amused himself and his
friends by drawing illustrations of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels.
Of Mrs. Radcliffe's life few
facts are known, and Christina Rossetti, one of her many
admirers, was obliged, in 1883, to relinquish the plan of
writing her biography, because the materials were so scanty.[35]
From the memoir prefixed to the posthumous volumes, published
in 1826, containing Gaston de Blondeville, and various
poems, we learn that she was born in 1764, the very year in
which
Walpole issued The Castle of Otranto, and that
her maiden name was Ann Ward.
Christina Rossetti
In 1787 she married William
Radcliffe, an Oxford graduate and a student of law,
who became editor of a weekly newspaper, The English Chronicle.
Her life was so secluded that biographers did not hesitate to invent
what they could not discover. The legend that she was driven
frantic by the horrors that she had conjured up was refuted
after her death.
It may have been the publication of
The Recess by Sophia Lee in 1785 that inspired Mrs. Radcliffe
to try her fortune with a historical novel. The Recess
is a story of languid interest, circling round the adventures of the
twin daughters of Mary Queen of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk.
Yet as we meander gently through its
mazes we come across an abbey "of Gothic elegance and
magnificence," a swooning heroine who plays the lute,
thunderstorms, banditti and even an escape in a coffin items which
may well have attracted the notice of Mrs. Radcliffe, whose
first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne ,[36]
appeared in 1789.
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