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3.28 AVERAGE
3.28 AVERAGE
The Mysteries of Udolpho is an excellent and some say genera defining example of 19th century gothic literature. It has it all: dark forests full of bandits, foreign locals, ruined castles, convents, unexplained mysteries hinting at the supernatural, and a heroine who is the paragon of innocence and fortitude.
The writing style of Radcliffe is also very 19th century, and not necessarily in a good way. She is verbose in a way approaching James Fennemore Cooper. The story takes a very long time to develop and many of the descriptions are superfluous and repetitious. I actually had to look up whether it was published as a serialized novel which could explain these trates (it wasn't). Despite this, Radcliffe had a wonderful way of using the English language to great affect. There were several passages which I found to be quite beautiful.
The main sin of the book, and one of the main reasons I only gave the novel three stars was the fact that Radcliffe withholds information from the reader. The entire novel is told in the third person but from the point of view of Emily, the heroine. However, the narrator neglects to reveal certain things that even Emily knows or saw merely to intensify the mystery. However, several hundred pages later when it is explained what it was she saw, there was no reason to keep this from the reader. Rather than enhance the mystery, it served to annoy.
The other reason I graded the book harshly is because of the number of mysteries which piled upon each other like a game of Jenga. Just as the tower was about to collapse Radcliffe resolves everything by introducing a deus ex machina.
I do recommend this book to any who enjoy Gothic literature or wordy 19th century literature. If you want something a little less verbose, check out The Castle of Ontoronto or Northanger Abbey, both of which I enjoyed more.
The writing style of Radcliffe is also very 19th century, and not necessarily in a good way. She is verbose in a way approaching James Fennemore Cooper. The story takes a very long time to develop and many of the descriptions are superfluous and repetitious. I actually had to look up whether it was published as a serialized novel which could explain these trates (it wasn't). Despite this, Radcliffe had a wonderful way of using the English language to great affect. There were several passages which I found to be quite beautiful.
The main sin of the book, and one of the main reasons I only gave the novel three stars was the fact that Radcliffe withholds information from the reader. The entire novel is told in the third person but from the point of view of Emily, the heroine. However, the narrator neglects to reveal certain things that even Emily knows or saw merely to intensify the mystery. However, several hundred pages later when it is explained what it was she saw, there was no reason to keep this from the reader. Rather than enhance the mystery, it served to annoy.
The other reason I graded the book harshly is because of the number of mysteries which piled upon each other like a game of Jenga. Just as the tower was about to collapse Radcliffe resolves everything by introducing a deus ex machina.
I do recommend this book to any who enjoy Gothic literature or wordy 19th century literature. If you want something a little less verbose, check out The Castle of Ontoronto or Northanger Abbey, both of which I enjoyed more.
Emily is so so annoying and whiny. Nothing is ever her fault, every else is just mean.
The ever so long description of places, people, houses. I don't care what the forest looks like or how old and tall the tree is. Ann Radcliffe though. She apparently also never heard of full stops but rather uses commas to accentuate surroundings. I was bored out of my mind with this.
The ever so long description of places, people, houses. I don't care what the forest looks like or how old and tall the tree is. Ann Radcliffe though. She apparently also never heard of full stops but rather uses commas to accentuate surroundings. I was bored out of my mind with this.
(2.5 stars)
This became a marathon read as I kept taking breaks to read other books. It took me over five months to read almost 700 pages.
I liked the descriptions more than the style of the story, but some of the settings are wonderfully described, and there are moments where I‘m completely engaged in the action.
What got me was the wordiness. This made it a tiring read for me, and it didn’t help how it kept deflating the suspense that was being built up.
Like this passage:
This became a marathon read as I kept taking breaks to read other books. It took me over five months to read almost 700 pages.
I liked the descriptions more than the style of the story, but some of the settings are wonderfully described, and there are moments where I‘m completely engaged in the action.
What got me was the wordiness. This made it a tiring read for me, and it didn’t help how it kept deflating the suspense that was being built up.
Like this passage:
To relieve her mind, in some degree, from the painful recollections, that intruded upon it, Emily busied herself in preparations for the journey into Languedoc, and, while Annette, who assisted her, spoke with joy and affection of the safe return of Ludovico, she was considering how she might best promote their happiness, and determined, if it appeared, that his affection was as unchanged as that of the simple and honest Annette, to give her a marriage portion, and settle them on some part of her estate. These considerations led her to the remembrance of her father’s paternal domain, which his affairs had formerly compelled him to dispose of to M. Quesnel, and which she frequently wished to regain, because St. Aubert had lamented, that the chief lands of his ancestors had passed into another family, and because they had been his birth-place and the haunt of his early years. To the estate at Thoulouse she had no peculiar attachment, and it was her wish to dispose of this, that she might purchase her paternal domains, if M. Quesnel could be prevailed on to part with them, which, as he talked much of living in Italy, did not appear very improbable.
And when the big mystery is revealed, it wasn’t a big surprise. However, I was intrigued by the details of it – for the time it was written (late 1800s) this felt very, very brave to me.
But the bigger mystery for me is how I am still thinking about this novel. There are so many little moments throughout that made this a pleasure to read.
It’s hard to explain but there is something hauntingly beautiful about this read.
I have never seen the word "melancholy" used as much as in this book, nor in such widely varied situations.
Do not go to Udolpho for character development (there's none -- people are wholly good, wholly servant-funny, wholly evil, or wholly conniving) or for rapid plot developments (we spend a lot of time looking at melancholy vistas, worrying about whether banditti may linger in the forests, or seeing peasant children from a distance and finding them picturesque). However, if you created the "Greatest Hits of the Gothic Novel," you'd pretty much get this very book. There's not a convention left untouched -- mysterious birth, mistaken identity, unwilling marriages, maybe ghosts, secret passages, smugglers, loyal servants, spurned lovers, the list goes on and on and on and . . . .
At times, I was frustrated by the slowness of the book, and by the apparent dimwittedness of the leading ladies (Emily in particular, though Blanche is pretty much just a younger version of her). However, what's interesting here I think (and what's become more interesting now that I'm done with it and never again have to read one of Emily's melancholy sonnets about being a butterfly and waiting to learn if your fellow butterfly has died) is how ahead of its time it was. I mean, not completely. But ahead of its time in that it's told entirely from the perspective of a character who is completely out of the loop, in terms of the mysteries. She has no idea what forces are moving her around, and even though we as readers see through some of it pretty readily, Emily's state of mind is what drives the narration.
Do not go to Udolpho for character development (there's none -- people are wholly good, wholly servant-funny, wholly evil, or wholly conniving) or for rapid plot developments (we spend a lot of time looking at melancholy vistas, worrying about whether banditti may linger in the forests, or seeing peasant children from a distance and finding them picturesque). However, if you created the "Greatest Hits of the Gothic Novel," you'd pretty much get this very book. There's not a convention left untouched -- mysterious birth, mistaken identity, unwilling marriages, maybe ghosts, secret passages, smugglers, loyal servants, spurned lovers, the list goes on and on and on and . . . .
At times, I was frustrated by the slowness of the book, and by the apparent dimwittedness of the leading ladies (Emily in particular, though Blanche is pretty much just a younger version of her). However, what's interesting here I think (and what's become more interesting now that I'm done with it and never again have to read one of Emily's melancholy sonnets about being a butterfly and waiting to learn if your fellow butterfly has died) is how ahead of its time it was. I mean, not completely. But ahead of its time in that it's told entirely from the perspective of a character who is completely out of the loop, in terms of the mysteries. She has no idea what forces are moving her around, and even though we as readers see through some of it pretty readily, Emily's state of mind is what drives the narration.
I wanted to read this because it is mentioned in Northanger Abbey. It was very interesting to compare the two books and "get" all of Austen's references. The story was interesting but it was just way too long.
Thus had she been tossed upon the stormy sea of misfortune for the last year, with but short intervals of peace, if peace it could be called, which was only the delay of evil. (619)
So goes the year that changes Emily St. Aubert’s life. Raised in peaceful, pastoral comfort by parents who adore her, Emily’s life alters dramatically when first her mother, then her father pass away. She is given to the care of her selfish aunt who is only kind when the kindness will benefit herself. Through the actions of her aunt, Emily is removed from everything she knows – her home, her lover, her country – at the mercy of her aunt’s new husband, the Italian Montoni.
Practically every dramatic plot point possible in the history of dramatic plot points is tossed into this 693 page behemoth of a novel, written by Ann Radcliffe in 1794. Considered one of the most popular novels of Gothic literature, The Mysteries of Udolpho sports a massive cast of characters all connected by various forms of villainy. We find no less than 3 crumbling castles, 2 presumed ghosts, 1 veiled image to horrible to describe, more murderers than I can count, weeping on every page, kidnappings, sword fights, secret passages, subterranean burial chambers (which seem to only be used at midnight), shipwrecks, madness, love found and lost again, and even pirates. It’s a bit of a mess, but through the mess, I have to say I was entertained. It’s quite sensational.
Udolpho is like one of those daytime TV shows that has been on for 20 years. Every time you think that the plot is finally, FINALLY about to wrap up, a new cast of characters brings a new twist onto the scene. Out of the 693 pages, everything is described in excessive detail except the conclusion: it is really quite rushed after the abundance of earlier chapters. I suppose there is little drama to be found in “happily ever after”.
So goes the year that changes Emily St. Aubert’s life. Raised in peaceful, pastoral comfort by parents who adore her, Emily’s life alters dramatically when first her mother, then her father pass away. She is given to the care of her selfish aunt who is only kind when the kindness will benefit herself. Through the actions of her aunt, Emily is removed from everything she knows – her home, her lover, her country – at the mercy of her aunt’s new husband, the Italian Montoni.
Practically every dramatic plot point possible in the history of dramatic plot points is tossed into this 693 page behemoth of a novel, written by Ann Radcliffe in 1794. Considered one of the most popular novels of Gothic literature, The Mysteries of Udolpho sports a massive cast of characters all connected by various forms of villainy. We find no less than 3 crumbling castles, 2 presumed ghosts, 1 veiled image to horrible to describe, more murderers than I can count, weeping on every page, kidnappings, sword fights, secret passages, subterranean burial chambers (which seem to only be used at midnight), shipwrecks, madness, love found and lost again, and even pirates. It’s a bit of a mess, but through the mess, I have to say I was entertained. It’s quite sensational.
Udolpho is like one of those daytime TV shows that has been on for 20 years. Every time you think that the plot is finally, FINALLY about to wrap up, a new cast of characters brings a new twist onto the scene. Out of the 693 pages, everything is described in excessive detail except the conclusion: it is really quite rushed after the abundance of earlier chapters. I suppose there is little drama to be found in “happily ever after”.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Sorry, Emily, I just don't care.
I can appreciate this novel as a kind of spiritual ancestor to Jane Eyre, but that's just a better (and shorter) book.
I can appreciate this novel as a kind of spiritual ancestor to Jane Eyre, but that's just a better (and shorter) book.