The Mysteries of Udolpho
By Ann Ward Radcliffe
The Mysteries of Udolpho is a quintessential Gothic romance replete with incidents of physical and psychological terror: remote crumbling castles, seemingly supernatural events, a brooding, scheming villain, and a persecuted heroine. Modern editors note that only about a third of the novel is set in the eponymous Gothic castle. At the same time, tone and style vary markedly between work sections. Radcliffe added extended descriptions of exotic landscapes in the Pyrenees, Apennines, and Venice, none of which she had visited. For details, she relied on travel books, which led her to make several anachronisms.
The novel, set in 1584 in Southern France and Northern Italy, explores the plight of Emily St. Aubert, a young French woman orphaned by her father’s death. She is imprisoned in Castle Udolpho by Signor Montoni, an Italian brigand who has married her aunt and guardian, Madame Cheron. He and others frustrate Emily’s romance with the dashing Valancourt. Emily also investigates the relationship between her father and the Marchioness de Villeroi and its connection to Castle Udolpho. Emily St. Aubert is the only child of a landed rural family whose fortunes are declining. Emily and her father share a notably close bond and appreciation for nature. They grow still closer after her mother’s death from illness. She accompanies him on a journey from their native Gascony through the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean coast of Roussillon, over many mountainous landscapes. During the trip, they encounter Valancourt, a handsome man who feels an almost mystical kinship with the natural world. Emily and Valancourt fall in love.
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Ann Ward Radcliffe
Ann Ward Radcliffe was born in Holborn, London, on July 9, 1764.
Biography.
She was the only child of William Ward (1737–1798) and Ann Oates (1726–1800), and her mother was 36 years old when she gave birth. Her father worked as a haberdasher in London before moving the family to Bath in 1772 to manage a porcelain shop for his business partners Thomas Bentley and Josiah Wedgwood. Both of her parents were relatively well-connected. Her father had a famous uncle, William Cheselden, who was King George II’s surgeon.
Her mother descended from the De Witt family of Holland and had a cousin, Sir Richard Jebb, a fashionable London physician. Growing up, Radcliffe often visited her maternal uncle, Thomas Bentley, in Chelsea, London, and later Turnham Green. Bentley was a business partner with a fellow Unitarian, Josiah Wedgwood, who was the maker of Wedgwood China. Wedgwood’s daughter Sukey stayed in Chelsea and is Radcliffe’s only known childhood companion. Sukey later married Dr. Robert Darwin and had a son, the naturalist Charles Darwin. Although mixing in some distinguished circles, Radcliffe seems to have made little impression in this society and was described by Wedgwood as “Bentley’s shy niece.”
Ann Ward Radcliffe
