Literary conventions represent women as occupying domestic spaces while men take control over the public sphere. Hearth, kitchens, chambers or attics, for example, are all loci which women are traditionally associated with. Women live in the house, and are constricted inside it. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in their famous The Madwomen in the Attic once point out “dramatizations of imprisonment and escape
are so all pervasive in the nineteenth-century literature by women that we believe that they represent a uniquely feminine tradition of the period” (85). We can find the initiation of this escape tradition back in the eighteenth century’s Gothic novels, in which the interior spaces gradually come to symbolize confinement and persecution inside the tyrant-ruled house.
The Gothic spaces subvert the preconceived assumption that for women, living inside the house means safety and going outside it suggests dangers. In Udolpho, Emily once detects a secret stair-case connected to her chamber. “She wished to know to what it led, and was the more anxious, since it communicated so immediately with her apartment”(240). Not knowing the stair-case’s destination, Emily then determines to lock the door joined to it, only to discover “that it had no bolts on the chamber side, though it had two on the other” and hence “could not be perfectly fastened on the inside” (240). A woman’s chamber should have been a safe haven for her, but here, the stair-case is an intermediate space that exchanges the safety of the inside and the uncertainty of the outside. More accurately, it invites and brings in the invading darkness into the comforting security of the house, namely the nightly visits of Court Morano. With said door unfastened, the boundary between the inside/outside becomes ambivalent. Not only does it indicate the possible danger coming from the outside;
moreover, its existence suggests the house itself is not a secure place from the very beginning!
Of course, while Court Morano employs this stair-case to steal inside, chances are that Emily could also take advantage of this passage as a means of escape to go
outside. However, at her first opportunity, Emily finds herself “[wanting] courage to venture into the darkness alone” (240). Her chances are forever forfeited, for later Montoni locks this door on account of Court Morano’s intrusion. The immobilization of women, whether physically or psychologically, involuntary or self-imposed,15 is a prominent issue in terms of escape. The Bildungsroman often depicts a male
protagonist “entering the world as a mobile being” (Tucker 4), but when it comes to female development, such mobility is often precluded or limited. Without the chance to enter the (public) world, and threatened by the inner danger coming from the house, women are forced to search for certainty in the spaces in between, like the mystical stair-case, which does not entirely belong to the inside, and yet is not strictly the outside. In the labyrinth of Castle Udolpho, Emily could still have her nightly exploration on the underground passages, secret galleries or dark corridors, whose departing points and destinations are not definite, and hence are fluid and infinite. In this light, Mark S. Madoff regards Emily’s exploration as an act of transgression from the inside to the outside, a penetration of the ignorance to the realm of knowledge (50-52).16 Since transgression leads to discovery, these spatial metaphors are at the same time symbolic of the heroine’s quest for her sexuality, subjectivity and identity,
15 In the last chapter of volume one in Udolpho, Valancourt repeatedly asks for a secret union with Emily so he can take Emily away from the possible persecution of Montoni. His offer is resolutely declined by Emily due to “her duty, her disinterested considerations for Valancourt, and the delicacy, which made her revolt from a clandestine union” (164). The same scruple happens again in The Italian when Ellena considers Vivaldi’s offer of elopement (122). Here the female delicacy becomes their obstacle in escape and turns their wills to escape into immobilization.
16 Madoff in his article “Inside, Outside, and the Gothic Locked-Room Mystery” tries to distinguish the poetics of spaces in Udolpho and The Monk. In his opinion, the inside becomes the locus of crime, disorder, barbarity and indecorum, while the outside represents resolved mystery, restored order and rationality. His distinction of the inside/outside is based upon the conventions of detective novels, and is exactly the opposite of mine. Here I try to preserve both ways of distinction in order to highlight the ambiguity of the inside/outside in Gothic spaces.
and therefore is a crucial factor for her social development.
A passage in Udolpho can be read as demonstrating Emily’s symbolic entering into enlightenment:
“O! do not go in there, ma’amselle,” said Annette, “you will only lose yourself further.”
“Bring the light forward,” said Emily, “we may possibly find our way through these rooms.”
Annette stood at the door, in an attitude of hesitation, with the light held up to shew the chamber, but the feeble rays spread through not half of it. “Why do you hesitate?” said Emily, “let me see whither this room leads.” (235) The light of reason, like the lamp Annette holds, signifies the feeble radiance of reason that can only “spread through not half” in the darkness of schemes and conspiracy. But the curiosity to find out “whither this room leads” prompts the heroine to find out the way through her exploration. In this process, perchance is that she may eventually confront the “patriarchal darkness” (Williams 160) represented by the black veil, and the danger to “lose herself further,” but at the same time, when she peeps into secrecy, gathers information of her aunt and schemes her own escape, it also becomes her only chance to display mobility and independence.
In fact, Emily’s first courageous action takes place not at her own danger, but at her aunt Madame Montoni’s abduction. With ruffians still combating everywhere in the castle, Emily nevertheless “determine[s], when night should return, and the inhabitants of the castle should be asleep, to explore the way to the turret,” in where
her aunt is probably imprisoned, because “any certainty…appear[s] more tolerable, than this exhausting suspense” (324). From this point on, Emily seems to break away from the “suspense” that prevents her from “growing up,’17 and begins to take action against her present plight. Notably, it is her ability to understand and sympathize with others’ sufferings that spurs her action in time of danger. This not only reflects her noble disposition, but also indicates a bonding between families and women.
Although Madame Montoni does not begin as a “good mother” or a competent guardian, trying to force her niece into an unwilling marriage as a representative of patricidal authority (as her father’s sister), she nevertheless is the only remaining family of Emily. Moreover, her unfortunate experience represents the adversity and menace a woman is subject to under an ill-advised marriage. Malicious dominance, physical as well as psychological violence are able to take place and bring distress upon women who are forced to remain at the domestic sphere. These collective experiences shared between two women under the same predicament motives Emily’s sympathy toward her aunt, and make her development possible.
Gothic is renowned to be the genre that best expresses female experiences. In Radcliffe’s novel, the subject of experience is her heroine, who endures much horror, nerves herself in great peril, and plays the role of a female detective in circumstances of obscurity and danger during her escape. In Lewis’ novel, however, the process of escape, if there is any, is narrated through the male perspective, and as a result does not contain descriptions of female experiences like Radcliffe’s novels do. The
17 Cf. Maggie Kilgour’s argument in chapter one.
wretched Antonio, for one thing, falls victim to Ambrosio’s incestuous lust and never has a chance of freedom until her death. Agnes, on the other hand, seems to be a more active and fearless heroine when she initiates the plan of escape to her lover Don Raymond, that she would impersonate the ghost Bleeding Nun in order to leave the convent. This course of adventure, however, is framed by Raymond’s first person point of view. Raymond’s male discourse contains and translates female experiences, and the whole process of escape is represented to us through his watchful gaze:
I kept my eyes constantly fixed upon the window, where I hoped to perceive the friendly glare of a Lamp borne by Agnes…Scarcely had five minutes elapsed, when the expected light appeared…I fancied I perceived a female figure with a Lamp in her hand moving slowly along the Apartment. The light soon faded away, and all was again dark and gloomy.
Occasional gleams of brightness darted from the Staircase windows as the lovely Ghost past by them. I traced the light through the Hall: It reached the Portal, and at length I beheld Agnes pass through the folding gates. (162-63)
Agnes’ endeavour to escape is thus reproduced (and perhaps reduced) under the surveillance of a male perspective. The quoted passage demonstrates her movement is as followed, “traced” and “expected” by Raymond’s powerful “eye/I” as her behavior is supervised by the patriarchs or their agents.18 At the moment when Agnes’ figure finally emerges into view, the male eye/I takes a step further to hold possession of the
18 Upon relating her plan of escape to Raymond, Agnes once states that, “[the] moments are precious, for though no more a prisoner, Cunegonda watches my every step” (155). Cunegonda is later captured by Raymond, who, ironically, in turn watches Agnes’ every step when she escapes.
object of his gaze, as Raymond clasps her to his bosom, and exclaims, “Agnes! Agnes!
Thou art mine!” (163). Though Agnes may own agency and mobility to execute her plan of escape, yet her scheme is ambushed and doomed to failure.19