This book was written in 1794, is 672 pages long, and features a heroine that cries a lot and faints even more. That being said, wanna hear something shocking? I really, really liked this book.
Okay, to be sure, it started out a bit slow. The book begins with the very picture of a tranquil family - Monsieur St. Aubert, his demure wife, and his blushing, innocent daughter Emily. This is a family that enjoys the music of the lute, long strolls in the woods, and sudden bursts of poetry composition. They are, of course, as happy as can be, and it's really quite boring. But luckily the plot begins to zip right along - Emily loses not one, but two parents, goes on a journey through France, meets a dashing young Chevalier, dodges a couple marriage proposals, gets kidnapped to Italy, is held in a mysterious, haunted castle with a band of ruffians, and discovers the secrets of her family's past. Oh, and did I mention she faints a lot? She also really loves to repose. I've started saying repose after reading this book, and now my flatmates think I'm crazy. Blame the eighteenth century fiction, I say!
I took me awhile to get past the language in this book, first off, and it is a bit off-putting to have a heroine that's constantly bursting into tears at the mere thought of her lost love. But all that being said, Emily really is a brave girl, especially for the time period, and she ends up learning how to handle herself quite well. I think one of the points Radcliff was trying to make with this book was "Control your passions, be levelheaded, act demurely," but what I got out of it was, "No one's gonna stick up for you, so it's time to grow up and make the hard decisions the best you can." Not a bad theme, I'd say. I mean, most of the book is about the epic romance between Emily and Valancourt, and of the two of them, he's more of the hysterical princess, always babbling about running off and forever parting and the shade of love being pulled over his eyes....the reversal of gender roles is kind of refreshing. I may have started off scoffing at Emily, but after we had traveled almost seven hundred pages together, I started to feel almost like we were....friends, I guess? Don't judge me, I know I'm a book nerd. It's just that the book is so focused on Emily's trials and inner conflicts that I ended up feeling like I really got to know her, and liked her better for it. I think that's the mark of a good author, which Radcliff has certainly proven herself to be.
Another thing I really enjoyed about this book was the beautiful descriptions of nature. You'd think that after the seventh time she had described a sunset sinking into the distant Pyrenees, it would start to get old. Maybe I'm just a hopeless nature lover, but it didn't feel stale to me, and her language was so evocative and lovely - people just don't write like that anymore. It reminds me of when we were all in English class in like middle school and first learned what imagery was, and had to write all sorts of nonsense about the "shimmery, sparkling blue water" and such. Well, that's bad imagery. This is good imagery - a passage where Emily is on the ramparts of Udolpho watching a lightning storm.
"Sometimes, a cloud opened its light upon a distant mountain, and, while the sudden splendour illumined all its recesses of rock and wood, the rest of the scene remained in deep shadow; at others, partial features of the castle were revealed by the glimpse -- the ancient arch leading to the east rampart, the turrent above, or the fortifications beyond, and then, perhaps, the whole edifice with all its towers, its dark massy walls and pointed casements would appear, and vanish in an instant."
There is a very small moment that I also really connected with. Near the end of the book, the Lady Blanche is looking out the window of her chateau at the first ocean sunset she's ever seen. Blanche had spent the better part of the past few years locked in a convent, but as she gazes out at the sun over the water, she feels closer to God than any time she spent with the nuns, and wonders how people could think to find Him in anything other than nature. Quite pantheistic for the eighteenth century.
I've got one last thing to address - the spooky parts of the story, of course! The back cover of the copy I have explains that Radcliff was an inspiration to everyone from Poe to Sade, and all the creepy hauntings and inexplicable events she has included within the book were some of the precursors to modern horror stories. I love a ghost story as much as anyone, so I was a little disappointed when Radcliff appeared to be frantically tying up loose ends in the last thirty pages or so, including logical explanations for all the hauntings and disappearances within the castles. I would have loved for a few unsolved mysteries to stay in there to keep on puzzling the readers, but you can't have everything, and given that this book was probably intended for young ladies, it wouldn't do to frighten them.
In summary: A surprisingly engaging and beautiful book about fortitude and perseverance. I would love to read this my children, if my children could understand words like "tempest" and "lamentation". I can dream, right?
