When it comes to discussing the conventions of the Gothic novel, I have to admit that I am somewhat at a loss, having never made any sort of real study of the genre. In fact, The Castle of Otranto is the only Gothic novel—the only Gothic novel from the eighteenth century, I should say—that I have ever read. I am certainly aware enough of the hallmarks of the genre to identify Gothic elements in other works, but I had never really paid attention to them, dismissing them as simply the necessary machinery of a novel of that genre. I suppose that I had always considered the Gothic novel a special case; it's unreality, I believed, disqualified it from the sort of attention I paid to realistic novels—novels I held in higher esteem because of their purported aim of faithfully representing social reality. The gothic novel, on the other hand, I dismissed as simply a spooky, but ultimately inconsequential, piece of entertainment devoid of any probing critical commentary or compelling insights. It is only by returning to The Castle of Otranto, by reading it a second time, that I came to understand that it did indeed have a scholarly value exceeding that of its historical significance in the development of a genre, that it does serve as a window on its times—an ornate, highly wrought one to be sure, but no less effective or useful for being so.
Before I discuss the contents of The Castle of Otranto, I will offer a few remarks about I regard it within the context of the eighteenth century novel. I have noticed the terrible plight of women in these works. The female characters are usually in a tremendous amount of jeopardy, both physically and financial (the latter largely presumes the former). That is, eighteenth century England struck me as a veritable house of horrors for anyone unfortunate enough to have been born female. Potential deflowering lurks at every turn. Every address from interested young gentlemen carries with it a tinge of foreboding. In short, every woman of that period seems one amorous misstep, one lapse of caution and judgment away from financial devastation and a brutal life of utter destitution. It is therefore fitting that the gothic novel should be in ascendancy in the late eighteenth century, a time when women have already been subjected to the horrors of sexually predatory rakehells for sixty-odd years.
One of my first encounters with the plight of women, in Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, held some promise. The title character of that work is certainly a survivor in that she does not allow her early tryst with her eventual brother-in-law lead her into permanent ruination. Her incredible resiliency, and the cunning that make this resiliency possible, led me to expect that the plight of women would indeed improve in the following novels. I have to say though, that this improvement was long in coming, and subject to reversals and detours, the sort of which we find in Eliza Haywood's The British Recluse. After Cleomira, the titular recluse, and her new friend Belinda gain satisfaction in Belinda's public exposure of Courtal, the man who, unbeknownst to them, jilted them both, they retire from society, two jaded women, one deflowered and the other still virtuous, interested in nothing else than retiring to anonymous sorority. Moll, however, stays in the game, as it were, but has nothing to show for it in the end save imprisonment in Newgate.
The truly revolutionary figure in the novels we read before The Castle of Otranto is the titular heroine of Richardson's Pamela, whose virtue is compensated by her would-be rapist's hand in marriage (?!). Though often silly, I found Pamela promising. I felt that I was seeing a woman match wits with a man quite out in the open, not covertly, as was Moll Flanders's modus operandi. Part of her power of resistance lies in the fact that she writes her own story. She controls the discourse and thus eventual outcome. The women of The Castle of Otranto, however, represent what I consider to be a step backward from Pamela's revolutionary promise. In the novel, Walpole supplants the power of the woman's pen with a supernatural apparatus. The women of the novel, Hippolyta, Matilda and Isabella, are placed in a much more passive position, forced to do little than seek refuge with each other and endure Manfred's outrages until the supernatural machinery can finish its work by declaring Theodore the true heir of Alfonso, whose throne Manfred's ancestor had usurped (Walpole 104). Matilda must even be sacrificed before imperiled women's plight is over.
It also bears mentioning that, when confronted by Manfred, the woman express the wish to retire to the nearby monastery to finish their days in pious seclusion, which recalls the desire of Cleomira and Belinda to do the same, if not so pious. Admittedly, Hippolyta convinces Manfred to join her at the monastery. One could thus claim that, despite Matilda's death, the women of this novel certain prevail and perhaps triumph over oppressive patriarchy. The supernatural apparatus does seem to favor the women of this novel, but nonetheless it is a shame that this supernatural power comes at the expense of real, individual power, the sort of power of which we glimpsed in Pamela, and will hopefully glimpse again before the semester is over.
Since I was very young and first began to experience the pleasure of reading, I have been a believer in the power of the written word. I always appreciated its power to affect change, and it is reassuring to see hints that the female authors and characters of these eighteenth century works cherish a similar notion. After all, a mere twelve years after the publication of The Castle of Otranto, some strokes of the pen, albeit in masculine hands, will bring forth a new nation defiantly declaring its independence from its mother country. Perhaps this power of the pen in the hands of women is part of the reason why Walpole had to distance the time of the events of his novel. Only woman of a bygone era would be as believably passive as Hippolyta, Matilda and Isabella, seeking refuge in a nunnery.
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