As far as the scarce biographical information could tell, Radcliffe has lived a life of social exclusion. Except for few journeys, she remains private and domestic. If it is intriguing that an author who has never been to Europe is capable of composing the poetic sceneries in Udolpho, it is equally interesting to discuss the theme of escape for the novelist whose life is confined in the household throughout.
Since the war within and with France had terminated English travelers’ access to Europe, Radcliffe was not able to make her Grand Tour until 1794, after the
publication of Udolpho. Her travel experience is recorded in A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794, Through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany. It was her
first travel to Europe. Hence during the whole time she was composing Udolpho, Radcliffe was portraying places she had never been to before. According to Ruth Facer, her elaborate descriptions of landscapes are greatly influenced by travel
pamphlets or paintings from authors like William Gilpin, Claude Lorraine or Salvator Rosa, to name just a few. This no doubt explains the connections between her novels and the aesthetics of the picturesque. Moreover, it reflects the parallel experience of imagination of the author, her characters and her readers, as it places Radcliffe in the role of a reader, who is subject to the nature provided by the picturesque authors;
Emily and her readers also play the role of the author, for them actively respond to and participate in the fantastic world Radcliffe has built.
The flight of imagination is underwritten in the whole process of escape.
Vigorous imagination and keen sensibility help the female subject to break away from her present time and space, to create a “limitless territory” that de Beauvoir describes.
In time, it implies a temporal annihilation in the flow of chronological hours, an experience we frequently have while the enchantment of reading renders us “lost the track of time.” In space, it infers the transference of locus from physical fixation to spiritual mobility through imagining an “elsewhere,” as I have demonstrated in the previous sections. In the following chapter, I shall look closer at the episodes of escape in Udolpho and other texts, such as The Monk and The Italian, to explore the connotative metaphor of escape.
Chapter II
The Flight of Characters
In this chapter, I intend to give a counterpart of Radcliffe—Matthew Gregory Lewis—in order to present an entirely different point of view in Gothic escapes.
Matthew Lewis’ first novel The Monk was published in 1796. Its appalling
descriptions of excessive lust, sins and violence were soon received with astonishment and controversy.14 In a letter to his mother, dated May 15, 1794, Lewis stated that, “I was induced to go on with it by reading The Mysteries of Udolpho, which is in my opinion one of the most interesting books that ever have been published” (Peck 208).
The praise becomes an open tribute to Radcliffe’s literary influence, and an
association Radcliffe did not receive with pleasure. In 1797, she published her fifth novel The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents, which is commonly regarded as a corrective response to Lewis in terms of their discrepant aesthetics and political approaches. From Udolpho, The Monk to The Italian, this literary anecdote suggests a link between these three novels, a link that I aim to explore in this chapter about Gothic characters.
In the last chapter, we have explored Radcliffe’s narrative as a faithful reflection of her contemporary female constrictions and an attempted escape of imagination to break away from these limits. Escape at the level of imagination is pleasant, peaceful and harmless. Escape for the Gothic characters, however, is a
14 In fact, as André Parreaux’s The Publication of The Monk: A Literary Event, 1796-1798 records, Lewis’ anonymous first edition was received rather favorably. It is only after the second edition, when the author proudly signed his name along with the initials M.P. (which indicates his membership at Parliament) that the criticism began to mount (87-91).
matter of life and death. Every choice or decision would testify the heroine’s mobility and her ability to survive. In Radcliffean novels, the escapes are always successful in the end. Despite the horror and dangers along the way, they are only put on the stage as a testament to the heroine’s virtues; they never “overwhelm.” These episodes of escape demonstrate Radcliffe’s faith in reason and her affirmative attitude, if optimistic, towards the possibility of female development. Lewis’ treatment of the female body and female agency, however, speaks otherwise. Radcliffe and Lewis’
literary approaches differentiate them as representative of the opposite brands of female Gothic and male Gothic. Yet I contend that Lewis’ writing does not merely stand as a counterpart to the former. Read both authors in conjunction, Lewis’ male perspectives can also be seen as a complement to Radcliffe’s purely female
experiences in terms of escape. Given their literary interactions, we may even say, to contemplate Lewis is to provide a better understanding of Radcliffe. Therefore, I am going to examine the textual relations between Udolpho, The Monk and The Italian in the following sections.