Contrary to the Lewisian heroine’s failure, the Radcliffean heroine’s attempt at escape is reassuringly always successful, a tendency that reflects the authoress’
positive attitude as regards the agency and educability of women, and the progress thereafter. However, we must also take into account that such optimism towards escape and female mobility is still limited by the social constraints at that time, in which women have little access to places outside the periphery of their daily lives, can scarcely journey without chaperon or other company, and moreover, their conduct and movement are strictly regulated by the code of propriety. The whole process of escape therefore is hardly executed single-handedly by the heroine herself. On the other side of the heroine’s escape is the attempt to rescue and to help from many other characters, including servants (Udolpho), sisters from the convent (The Italian) and most
conspicuously, the Gothic hero, who often comes to the heroine’s rescue and offers the prospect of marriage.
The reliance upon her rescuers and the final reintegration into the social structure of matrimony seem to undermine the Gothic heroine’s mobility at the first glance, but
19 Later plot will reveal to us that in fact, Agnes has already been caught and imprisoned by the abbess before she can have the chance to execute her plan, and what Raymond rescues is actually Bleeding Nun, the real ghost. This revelation renders the subjectivity and identity during escape more intricate, which I am going to relate further in following pages.
a closer examination soon reveals to us the problematic association between rescue and the prospect of marriage. In Udolpho, being acquainted with Montoni’s real character and his former crimes, Valancourt repeatedly asks for an immediate
marriage with Emily lest she commit herself to Montoni’s ward. Valancourt’s proposal is resolutely declined. Though “[the] tenderest love had already pleaded his cause…
[Emily’s] duty, her disinterested considerations for Valancourt, and the
delicacy…[make] her revolt from a clandestine union” (164). Similar scenario also takes place in The Italian. While the plan of rescue might deliver Ellena from
captivity, the agreement on it is given with much deliberation, because its implication makes a heart “so tremblingly jealous of propriety…[recoil] with alarm” (122). The pledge of marriage for the rescue is like a hidden code, never mentioned, but mutually acknowledged on the both sides. From the rescuer’s point of view:
Vivaldi secretly hoped that she might be prevailed with to give him her hand on quitting San Stefano, but he forbore to mention this hope, lest it should be mistaken for a condition, and that Ellena might be either reluctant to accept his assistance, or, accepting it, might consider herself bound to grant a hasty consent (125).
The pledge for freedom is not openly proclaimed, and Vivaldi “forbears to mention,”
but the connotation is well understood by Ellena. Both Emily and Ellena recoil from such proposal due to “propriety” and “delicacy,” codes that seek to regulate female interaction with the social decorum. “In the conduct manual, an aura of danger surrounded the body: if not properly handled, it was liable to arouse the scorn and
abhorrence of society,” stated Yael Shapira (457). Therefore, if the Gothic villain’s conspiracy entraps women in jeopardy physically, the marriage bond offered to them presents an equally repugnant violation against their body.
Another problem during the rescue lies in the fact that, except for their offering of marriage, Radcliffean heroes are peculiarly in lack of action compared with the Lewisian hero. In her article “The Pleasure of the Woman’s Text,” Coral Ann Howells refers to this inactivity as the “disphoric” element that alerts us to the incompleteness of Radcliffe’s otherwise euphoric romance (154). Both Udolpho and The Italian bear revision to the typical “hero-rescues-heroine” formula. Emily’s escape from Udolpho, for instance, is aided by servants Ludovio, Anettee and her admirer Du Pont, whom she mistakes for Valancourt. Only after Emily is safely returned to the sanctuary of St.
Clare does Valancourt reunite with her. The same statement also applies to Vivaldi in The Italian, whose plan to conduct Ellena away from the convent of San Stefano is in
fact contributed by Sister Olivia, and only succeeds for a short period of time, before they are again arrested by Inquisition on false charges. The rest of the plot unfolds with them separated from each other until the closure of this story. Consequently, the heroines are left to their own devises most of the time, and have to pursue their own survivals at the mercy of their oppressors’ villainy. In Udolpho, various instances demonstrate Emily’s stoicism in times of desperation, and she even reprimands Valancourt’s tearful franticness: “for heaven’s sake, be reasonable—be composed”
(522). Sabine Augustine recognizes this contrast between the sensible heroine and the feminized hero as subtly posed and effectively undermining the contemporary
assumption of gender stereotypes, a “fictive strategies by which women authors conferred power on their heroines” (161). Though in the end, the Radcliffean heroine is always reintegrated into the social structure and domestic happiness under the protection of their legitimate husbands, these “odd moments” constitute a hidden configuration alternative to the “good marriage” (Howells 152-53).
The real rescuers, it turns out, are the chatty servants and convent sisters, who are indeed “the friends in need.” Interestingly, they are either beneath the heroine’s class or under a gender stereotype that should be submissive, powerless and incapable of action. To some degree, the reversal of power structure is carnivalesque by
providing a topsy-turvy liberation. Though it is only a temporary upside-down in the absence of Gothic hero’s patriarchal authority, and will eventually return to the normal norms, it nevertheless brings out a possibility of subversion for a time being.
This subtext, or the counter-narrative, is hence potential of challenge and transgression.
I would also like to point out a significant figure during Ellena’s escape in The Italian, namely the Sister Olivia in convent San Stefano. Her compassion towards
Ellena manifests a purely feminine and maternal sentiment, and could not behold her falling victim to the solitary imprisonment consigned to her:
Within the deepest recesses of our convent, is a stone chamber, secured by doors of iron, to which such of the sisterhood as have been guilty of any heinous offence have, from time to time, been consigned. This condemnation admits of no reprieve, the unfortunate captive is left to languish in chains and darkness,
receiving only an allowance of bread and water just sufficient to prolong her sufferings, till nature, at length, sinking under their intolerable pressure, obtains refuge in death. (126)
Ellena is not the first victim of this persecution synonymous to the sentence of death.
It is a punishment “generally inflicted upon nuns who…have been detected in escaping from the convent” (126). Olivia herself has witnessed a nun perish in such solitude, and is determined to assist Ellena avoid this similar fate. The cruelty of this punishment also reminds us of the inhuman condemnation Agnes suffers in The Monk, an infliction that renders her “so wretched, so emaciated, so pale, that [Lorenzo]
doubted to think her woman” (381)! Ellena’s escape, therefore, reflects not only her personal experience, but a universal struggle shared by women to whom this monastic cruelty has befallen. The role of Olivia is momentous not only because she brings out the collective experiences of suffering endured by women, but also because she represents a mentor, a guardian and a mother figure among the way of the heroine’s development and escape. In the absence of male protection, her assistance towards Ellena indicates an alliance and an intimate bonding between sisterhoods inside the female community.20