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melslostinabook 's review for:
The Mysteries of Udolpho
by Ann Radcliffe
My first introduction to this book, and Ann Radcliffe in general, came through Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, as she frequently mentioned it throughout that novel. I’ve been eager to read Udolpho ever since and I am patting myself on the back at having finished this unwieldy and lugubrious tome.
The Mysteries of Udolpho is Radcliffe’s longest novel, coming in at 700 pages and divided into four volumes. Now after becoming an Anthony Trollope fan, long books don’t intimidate me much anymore, but… whereas Trollope’s novels focus more on character development, this book spends a good bit of its pages on landscape descriptions. It’s almost as if the landscapes and nature itself are characters.
"The spiral summits of the mountains, touched with a purple tint, broken and steep above, but shelving gradually to their base; the open valley, marked by no formal lines of art; and the tall groves of cypress, pine and poplar, sometimes embellished by a ruined villa, whose broken columns appeared between the branches of a pine, that seemed to droop over their fall."
You see? Beautiful yes, but (the MC) Emily’s story is a long build-up. In the beginning I wasn’t sure that I would stick this one out, but I’m oh so glad that I did!
Like all Gothic novels, The Mysteries of Udolpho contains ruined castles, a beautiful countryside, a virtuous heroine, and a dastardly villain. It’s set in 16th century France, with a shift to Italy, and tells the tale of an isolated young woman, imprisoned in a castle by an older, domineering man.
Also, I must insert here that the plot really picks up at the point when the setting shifts to Udolpho. Things begin to feel more mysterious and there is a feeling of danger, of foreboding—a crumbling castle with cold, damp walls, secret passageways and a torture chamber, unusual noises, haunting music and phantom figures—everything that you expect from a gothic horror novel. We begin to wonder if Emily’s fears are the result of an overactive imagination, or if there is some truth to the accounts she’s heard of murder and ghostly spirits within the walls of her prison. Filled with gloom as I was, I found that I couldn’t put the book down; I had to keep turning the pages to know what would happen next!
And those last 100 or so pages—that denouement? What I expected to happen did not, and what did happen was certainly not expected. Magnificent, I tell you!
The Mysteries of Udolpho is Radcliffe’s longest novel, coming in at 700 pages and divided into four volumes. Now after becoming an Anthony Trollope fan, long books don’t intimidate me much anymore, but… whereas Trollope’s novels focus more on character development, this book spends a good bit of its pages on landscape descriptions. It’s almost as if the landscapes and nature itself are characters.
"The spiral summits of the mountains, touched with a purple tint, broken and steep above, but shelving gradually to their base; the open valley, marked by no formal lines of art; and the tall groves of cypress, pine and poplar, sometimes embellished by a ruined villa, whose broken columns appeared between the branches of a pine, that seemed to droop over their fall."
You see? Beautiful yes, but (the MC) Emily’s story is a long build-up. In the beginning I wasn’t sure that I would stick this one out, but I’m oh so glad that I did!
Like all Gothic novels, The Mysteries of Udolpho contains ruined castles, a beautiful countryside, a virtuous heroine, and a dastardly villain. It’s set in 16th century France, with a shift to Italy, and tells the tale of an isolated young woman, imprisoned in a castle by an older, domineering man.
Also, I must insert here that the plot really picks up at the point when the setting shifts to Udolpho. Things begin to feel more mysterious and there is a feeling of danger, of foreboding—a crumbling castle with cold, damp walls, secret passageways and a torture chamber, unusual noises, haunting music and phantom figures—everything that you expect from a gothic horror novel. We begin to wonder if Emily’s fears are the result of an overactive imagination, or if there is some truth to the accounts she’s heard of murder and ghostly spirits within the walls of her prison. Filled with gloom as I was, I found that I couldn’t put the book down; I had to keep turning the pages to know what would happen next!
And those last 100 or so pages—that denouement? What I expected to happen did not, and what did happen was certainly not expected. Magnificent, I tell you!