Here comes the last section of this three-part series on gendered Gothic villains. If you haven’t yet read the first two parts, scroll down below and give them a read.
Note: If you haven’t yet read The Castle of Otranto or A Sicilian Romance, they are both short reads and available freely online.
Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole (1717 – 1797) is well-known as the father of the Gothic fiction genre. Walpole published The Castle of Otranto in 1764, which was reissued in 1765 as The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, thus formally marking the birth of a genre of fiction that came to become a staple of many. Walpole went on to write only two other Gothic novels, namely The Mysterious Mother (1768) and Hieroglyphic Tales (1785).
The Castle of Otranto (1764) revolves around Manfred, the Prince of Otranto, and his family. Manfred’s frail fifteen-year-old son Conrad is killed by a supernatural being on the day of his marriage to Isabella, a girl who has been in his custody since her childhood. As per a prophecy, it was crucial that Manfred’s son give him an heir so as to maintain his family’s claim over Otranto. Therefore, Manfred decides that he would divorce his wife Hippolita and marry Isabella himself, in order to produce a viable male heir. Meanwhile, Manfred’s daughter Matilda falls in love with Theodore, a peasant boy who is later revealed to be Friar Jerome’s son of a noble birth. Manfred, however, suspects that it is Isabella who is in love with Theodore. As the story proceeds, Isabella’s birth father Frederic, believed to be dead, reveals himself and in a confusion is injured grievously by Theodore. He survives his injuries and falls in love with Manfred’s daughter Matilda. He makes a deal with Manfred, allowing him to marry Isabella if Manfred allowed him – Frederic – to marry Matilda. However, Manfred discovers Isabella passionately conversing with Theodore in a church and in a fit of rage stabs her to death, only to find that it was his daughter Matilda and not Isabella whom he had just killed. Supernatural spectres appear and tell Manfred that Theodore is the rightful heir of the principality of Otranto. Ultimately, Manfred abdicates the principality of Otranto, allowing Theodore to rule as Prince.
In The Castle of Otranto, the lord of the castle Manfred is popularly regarded as the villain. He blames his wife Hippolita for the sickliness of his son Conrad, forces a divorce upon her to marry the girl his son was about to marry before his death (Isabella), tries to rape Isabella, and ultimately, kills his own daughter believing her to be an insubordinate Isabella. At the same time, Walpole also portrays Frederic, Isabella’s father, as a villainous character – Frederic makes a deal with Manfred to allow him to marry Isabella (Frederic’s daughter) in return for his permission to marry Matilda, Manfred’s daughter. Both characters need Gothic intervention/apparitions/religion to forgo their pursuits. Frederic backs out of marrying Matilda after Bianca informs him of the supernatural apparition that had spelled Otranto’s doom: “…keep your daughter, and think no more of Isabella. The judgments already fallen on your house forbid me matching into it.” Manfred stops his villainy after he kills his daughter and is doomed to lose his wrongfully acquired principality as informed by a spectral apparition.
There is yet another villain in The Castle of Otranto, somewhat latent, like Radcliffe’s Marchioness – the supernatural. As discussed earlier, even with the strong definition of a villain, Arenas allows the supernatural to be a villain. The spectres in The Castle of Otranto certainly play their parts in the villainy seen throughout the story, thus making the supernatural a third villain in the story. It could even be argued that just as Radcliffe pits the Marquis against the Marchioness in the end, Walpole pits Manfred against the supernatural in The Castle of Otranto. However, just like the Marquis was the primary villain in A Sicilian Romance, Manfred is the primary villain in The Castle of Otranto.
Walpole tries to justify Manfred’s villainy, create sympathy for him among the readership, and give him some redeeming qualities, although these attempts seem intentionally insincere, as discussed below. Walpole writes:
He even felt a disposition towards pardoning one who had been guilty of no crime. Manfred was not one of those savage tyrants who wanton in cruelty unprovoked. The circumstances of his fortune had given an asperity to his temper, which was naturally humane; and his virtues were always ready to operate, when his passions did not obscure his reason. (Chapter I)
In another instance, Walpole writes Manfred’s character as one who can be moved by deep emotions, but whose pride and incessant skepticism of the intentions of others take over his good qualities:
Manfred’s heart was capable of being touched. He forgot his anger in his astonishment; yet his pride forbad his owning himself affected. He even doubted whether this discovery was not a contrivance of the Friar to save the youth. (Chapter II)
Manfred is also shown as having an inner conflict about his emotions, between villainy and humanity.
Ashamed, too, of his inhuman treatment of a Princess who returned every injury with new marks of tenderness and duty, he felt returning love forcing itself into his eyes; but not less ashamed of feeling remorse towards one against whom he was inwardly meditating a yet more bitter outrage, he curbed the yearnings of his heart, and did not dare to lean even towards pity. The next transition of his soul was to exquisite villainy. (p.23)
However, Walpole’s attempts to give Manfred these empathetic, redeeming qualities seem intentionally insincere to reveal the villain’s true nature to the readership because he has written Manfred as having a chameleonic character. One moment, Manfred is forgiving when he seeks help from someone, the next moment, he returns to his tyrannical nature against that person if he no longer needs their help. When Friar Jerome is revealed to be Theodore’s father and the Count of Falconara, Manfred expresses his mighty anger at the discovery and calls Jerome a hypocrite who had dismissed Manfred’s son’s death as something that the heavens decided, and who now sought pardon for the life of his own long-lost search. However, a few moments later, Manfred goes back to calling Jerome “Father”, a man of religion instead of the Count of Falconara, because he is terrified that the heavens had sent a spirit to punish him. In these moments, he even agrees to pardon Theodore’s life unconditionally. However, again, once Jerome has inquired of what the ‘spirit’ wanted, Manfred decides that “Heaven does not send Heralds to question the title of a lawful Prince” and immediately goes back on his own words, now demanding that Jerome bring Isabella into his custody if Jerome wanted his son’s life to be spared. Another example of this is seen in Manfred’s treatment of his wife. At first, Manfred ignores Hippolita even after he sees her for the first time after their son has been killed. He also asks Jerome to “persuade [Hippolita] to consent to the dissolution of [their] marriage, and to retire into a monastery” (Chapter II). Later, he takes a turn and says to convince the Friar: “…true, I honour Hippolita’s virtues; I think her a Saint; and wish it were for my soul’s health to tie faster the knot that has united us – but alas!” (Chapter II). This impulsive, fickle-minded, chameleonic character is unlike Radcliffe’s Marquis who is undeterred in his pursuit of his daughter Julia throughout the story.
Walpole has also given Manfred the qualities of a master wordsmith and a great orator who knows how to lie with a straight face in all sincerity to convince unassuming people to follow the paths of his own desires. When the Knights and train of Frederic’s party arrive at the castle of Otranto to fight Manfred for Isabella’s liberty, he shrewdly engages them in a discussion to convince them that it would be in everyone’s best interests that Isabella be married to himself now that his son was dead. He even attempts to justify his proposal to dissolve his marriage with Hippolita, presenting it as something that needs to be done for ‘the greater good’: “…though Hippolita’s virtues will ever be dear to me, a Prince must not consider himself; he is born for his people.” (p.49). In comparison, Radcliffe’s Marquis is villainous but cunning he is not.
Overall, Walpole’s villain is more sadomasochistic. He attempts to rape Isabella, the girl who was going to be his daughter-in-law. He orders that the peasant boy (Theodore) not be given any food and be forced to wear a helmet that was too heavy for him to wear. Radcliffe’s male villain, the Marquis, on the other hand serves food to his first wife, whom he imprisoned in a dungeon in his castle. The emotions of Radcliffe’s villain read more honest than Walpole’s.
Both the villains – the Marquis in A Sicilian Romance and Manfred in The Castle of Otranto – are fearful of men of God – the former was afraid that the Abate of the convent where Julia had sought refuge would spill his ill secret, of imprisoning his first wife and lying about her death, to the world; the latter was “daunted” (p.32) by the authoritative resoluteness of the Friar Jerome of St. Nicholas’ Church, who calls himself “the minister of a mightier prince than Manfred” (p.32).
Walpole uses women as an instrument for his villainy. Manfred bribes Bianca to gain information about Isabella’s affairs (he also has other spies in the castle, to spy on Jerome and Theodore, Matilda and Isabella). He uses Hippolita’s wifely devotion for him against her and Isabella – he manipulates Hippolita to agree to a divorce and to convince Isabella to marry him instead, thus snatching away Isabella’s will and freedom.
Walpole’s villain gets easy forgiveness from the objects of his tyranny. Matilda, whom he kills – albeit accidentally – is quick to forgive her father even as she is on her deathbed. On the other hand, Radcliffe gives them more power. Julia dares to venture into territories unbeknownst to her with only occasional help from people she chances upon during her journey.
After he kills his own daughter amid doubt, Manfred is a changed man. Repentance for his actions and love for his daughter are finally seen. He even wants his present fate to be a warning to all tyrannic rulers that Otranto may see in the future.
“Thou guiltless but unhappy woman! unhappy by my crimes!” replied Manfred, “my heart at last is open to thy devout admonitions. Oh! could—but it cannot be—ye are lost in wonder—let me at last do justice on myself! To heap shame on my own head is all the satisfaction I have left to offer to offended heaven. My story has drawn down these judgments: Let my confession atone—but, ah! what can atone for usurpation and a murdered child? a child murdered in a consecrated place? List, sirs, and may this bloody record be a warning to future tyrants!” (p.85)
Like the Marquis, Manfred also has a change of heart, which gives him more humanity. However, many of Manfred’s non-villainous acts or changes of heart were in fact a result of fear of the spectres and prophecies, or driven by pure selfishness.
It is almost as if Walpole’s villain is unaware of his villainy – he likes to blame his actions on anyone and anything but himself. Even when Manfred kills Matilda, his own daughter, mistaking her for Isabella, he has no one but the heavens to blame: “I took thee for Isabella; but heaven directed my bloody hand to the heart of my child.” (p.82). Manfred also exclaims: “I pay the price of usurpation for all!” (p.86). He seems to shift blame for his impious acts and instead blame it on his ancestors who had taken the land away from Alfonso, whose spirit has been haunting the castle of Otranto. He goes on to describe how his grandfather Ricardo had killed Alfonso, the then Prince of Otranto, by poisoning him with the intention of usurping the principality. Manfred says that even though his grandfather committed these crimes, he did not lose a daughter or a son, yet he – Manfred – lost both Conrad and Matilda. Therefore, Manfred, the prime villain, actually considers many other characters “villain” in the novel. To him, Theodore is a villain without any justified reason: “Villain! Monster! Sorcerer! ’tis thou hast done this! ’tis thou hast slain my son!” Even Hippolita, to him, is a villain: “Too long has she cursed me by her unfruitfulness” (Chapter I). At other times, it is the supernatural that he blames: “…are the devils themselves in league against me?…if thou art my grandsire, why dost thou too conspire against thy wretched descendant…” (Chapter I).
Radcliffe has grey areas to her villains, as discussed earlier, but Walpole’s villains are somewhat black-and-white. One could say that Manfred too had some moments where he shows signs of repentance. However, I argue that these moments are ‘too little, too late’. In fact, since Walpole has given Manfred a chameleonic personality that was discussed earlier, it is difficult for the reader to find Manfred sincere even when he seems to be showing genuine emotions. For example, while he initially seems to be shocked at the death of his son Conrad, he later says to Isabella: “I hope, in a few years, to have reason to rejoice at the death of Conrad” (Chapter I). Similarly, while he sings praises of Hippolita’s virtues and faultlessness to Jerome, he behaves very coldly, selfishly and accusingly with Hippolita herself:
[H]e at last discoursed with that Princess on the subject of his disquiet, and used every insinuating and plausible argument to extract her consent to, even her promise of promoting the divorce. (Chapter V)
Thus, Walpole’s Manfred does not truly share the same shades of grey as does Radcliffe’s Marquis.
Yet, even with his redeeming qualities, Radcliffe’s primary villain – the Marquis – dies, though through no acts of heroism by the heroine or the hero, while Walpole’s primary villain survives. Meanwhile, in A Sicilian Romance,the Marquis is killed by the Marchioness, and then the Marchioness stabs herself, while the heroine gets her hero and saves her mother and they all get to live happily. Thus, Radcliffe gives a happy ending to the story. Meanwhile, Walpole gives The Castle of Otranto a rather gloomy ending, in which the blameless daughter Matilda dies, and the villain Manfred survives even though his principality is lost to the hero Theodore. Thus, Walpole, the male author, presented a “tragic” ending characteristic of the Female Gothic, while Radcliffe, the female author, chose a “happy”, “whitewashed” ending characteristic of the Male Gothic.
Nevertheless, Walpole’s novel, by being centred around its prime villain, Manfred, becomes a classic example of Male Gothic novel. On the other hand, Radcliffe’s novel remains focused on Julia – the sensible, adventurous, rebellious heroine who ultimately gets what she wants. This difference is further accentuated by the observation that in A Sicilian Romance, only the villains die – all innocent characters survive to live happily ever after, while in The Castle of Otranto, the innocent Matilda loses her life to her father’s senseless, impulsive tyranny, while the villain survives, albeit in the guilt of having killed his own daughter. This reinforces the idea that Walpole indeed intended to portray Manfred as the centrepiece in the novel – as the hero, even.
However, in both the novels, the reader is given more than one choice of characters to consider a villain. In The Castle of Otranto, one is left to wonder who the true villain in the story was – Was it the father who accidentally killed his own daughter thinking he was killing a cheating lover? Or was it the supernatural being who began the story by killing Manfred’s son in the first place? This confusion about the identity of the villain continues in A Sicilian Romance, where the reader wonders if the villain was the Marquis, who only attempted to kill many people, or the Marchioness De Vellorno, who actually killed her husband and herself. Radcliffe’s Marquis ultimately yields to the villainy of his second wife, while Walpole’s Manfred is overpowered by the supernatural villain in The Castle of Otranto.
The characteristics that define a villain in any given story also derive from the characteristics seen in the hero/heroine of the story. To a story with a hero or a heroine who are good and ideal beyond par, the slightest misdemeanour on the part of another character might deem them villainous in the eyes of a reader. Radcliffe creates a stark contrast between the villainous Marquis and the duke on the one hand and Ferdinand and Hippolitus on the other. The latter two are shown possessing endless virtues throughout the story. This contrast further elevates the ugliness of the villains’ vices. Such was Ferdinand’s kindness that “he refused to expose a servant to the hardship he would not himself endure.” (p.103). A similar contrast is made between the Marquis’ first and second wives – the second wife is shown as a villain while the first is a victim of the Marquis’ oppression.
Both Walpole and Radcliffe also make their primary villains even more villainous by incorporating a sudden twist in their stories, a sudden revelation that paints them in even worse pictures than they already had been. Towards the end of A Sicilian Romance,Radcliffe reveals that the Marquis had imprisoned Julia’s mother, his first wife, for fifteen years only to marry another woman while his children were led to believe that their mother was dead. Walpole, in the middle of The Castle of Otranto, reveals that Manfred had come to have Isabella in his custody by bribing her guardians, and he wanted to use her marriage to his son as a means to justify his claims over Otranto, a principality that his ancestors had wrongfully taken over from Isabella’s ancestors.
Even though the generally discussed format of a Gothic novel refers to the presence of a male villain oppressing a female victim, Gothic fiction in general, and the Female Gothic in particular, offers women the parts of a victim, a heroine (or both at the same time), as well as a villain. As discussed earlier, Radcliffe uses a female character (the Marchioness) as a second villain in A Sicilian Romance.Gothic literature of Radcliffe’s era has had other, more pronounced female villains too. Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya; or, The Moor: A Romance of the Fifteenth Century, published in 1806, depicts a leading character Victoria di Loredani as a villainous woman who conspires with a man to commit several crimes against many other characters in the story. Some Gothic novels of the late nineteenth century also depict female villains, such as Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, published in 1872, where Carmilla is a female vampire. By the early twentieth century, Gothic fiction had seen many female villains, most of whom were loud, bold, seductive and controlling. These adjectives aptly define the Marchioness as Radcliffe’s eighteenth-century female villain. She is lustful, seductive and adulterous, she is loud and manipulative, and she controls her life as well as her death.
However, Radcliffe herself does not give her female villain – the Marchioness Maria de Vellorno – the centre stage in her novel. Throughout the story, the Marchioness only on occasion makes an appearance. Her infidelity is highlighted, but not to make her seem like a villain. Her step-motherly behaviour towards Julia and Emilia is highlighted too (discussed in detail in the next sub-section), but not to the extent of her being called the classic villain. In fact, the readers are not led to believe that she will have any identifiable part to play in the events to transpire. But with a twist, Radcliffe makes the Marchioness the more powerful villain in the end, as she manages to kill in cold blood the character whom the readers were considering the only main villain. It must be remembered that Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance was published anonymously and thus it is possible that Radcliffe attempted to maintain a more commonly used style of Gothic fiction in her story, which was the Male Gothic with a more classical male villain – which could be why we quite often only see the Marquis as the primary villain.
Scholars have noted that Radcliffe’s novels have ‘pseudo-parents’ who are either unable to protect the damsel-in-distress heroine, or actively commit villainy against her. A step-motherly figure is often shown as a wicked character who deceives the adolescent heroine. This is clearly seen in The Romance of the Forest (1791) (Madame La Motte), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) (Madame Cheron) and The Italian (1797) (the abbess). In A Sicilian Romance, this step-motherly character is present in the literal form of Maria de Vellorno, the Marchioness. Radcliffe writes her as a character who shows the stereotypical and widely storied jealous, wicked and manipulative ‘step-motherly’ behaviour towards her step-daughters Emilia and Julia, quite often seen in fairy tales, such as Cinderella:
[Julia] secretly sighed for a view of that world, from which she had hitherto been secluded by the mean jealousy of the marchioness, upon whose mind the dread of rival beauty operated strongly to the prejudice of Emilia and Julia. She employed all her influence over the marquis to detain them in retirement; and, though Emilia was now twenty, and her sister eighteen, they had never passed the boundaries of their father’s domains. (Chapter I)
However, the Marchioness does not directly affect the fate of the tragic heroine in the story. She exercises her villainy in a subtle manner by triggering the Marquis’ villainy, as was discussed earlier.
It could also be argued that the fathers in both the novels also acted in the stereotypical ‘step-fatherly’ fashion towards their daughters. Both fathers (the Marquis and Manfred) lacked any affection towards their daughters – the Marquis in A Sicilian Romance left his daughters in the castle de Mazzini and lived with his son and his second wife elsewhere. Even when he returned to the castle, his attitude towards his daughters was cold and distant. Meanwhile, Manfred in The Castle of Otranto “never showed any symptoms of affection to Matilda”, his daughter (Chapter 1). Moreover, Manfred was indeed a step-fatherly figure for Isabella, since she had been living in his and Hippolita’s custody since childhood. Like Matilda, Isabella too faces the wrath of Manfred’s villainy. Furthermore, Isabella, who has never known her father, Frederic, until the day some critical events of the story take place (hence, Frederic too is step-fatherly towards Isabella), becomes an object of trade for her father. Frederic promises Isabella’s hand to Manfred, while securing the hand of Manfred’s daughter Matilda for himself.
Interestingly, the ultimate acts of villainy committed by both Walpole’s Manfred and Radcliffe’s Maria de Vellorno are derived from their desire for sexual freedom. Manfred, who has previously “desired” Isabella and desperately wants to marry her is furious when he thinks that she is plotting with whom he believes to be her lover, Theodore. He kills her, only to discover that he has killed his daughter Mathilda. Maria de Vellorno, an adulterous wife to the Marquis, is enraged when the Marquis confronts her about her sexual affairs with other men. Channelling that rage, she poisons her husband and kills herself too.
However, it should be noted that the use of sexual freedom as a reason for the villainy of female characters is not limited to female-authored Gothic fiction like A Sicilian Romance. In fact, Walpole’s second Gothic novel, a tragedy called The Mysterious Mother published in 1768, much before A Sicilian Romance or any other Radcliffe novel, takes the notion of female sexual freedom to the extremes of incest, turning the character into a villain under Arenas’ strong definition. The Mysterious Mother portrays the Countess of Narbonne as the villainous mother who, after her husband’s death, knowingly engages in incestuous relations with her son one night, while the son believes her to be a maid named Beatrice. Her act forces her to banish her son for several years, who returns after long last only to fall in love with a girl who in fact is the product of the past incestuous act between his mother and himself. The act and these subsequent revelations establish the Countess as a bona fide villain and ultimately lead her to kill herself with a dagger as the story ends. This story, though written by a male author, bears a slight resemblance to the Marchioness’ plot in Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance. Both Walpole’s Countess and Radcliffe’s Marchioness are shown as women who do not shy away from illicit sexual pursuits, acts that ultimately make them villains in these stories. Both also suffer the exact same fate – suicide. Thus, the fact that Radcliffe as a female author gave villainous characteristics to a female character does not distinguish her as a writer of the Female Gothic, nor is it something that only female writers ‘dared’ to do.
When he is obstinate enough as a result of his pride and anger, Walpole’s Manfred is ruthless towards everyone, irrespective of their sex (even though it could be argued that some of his villainous acts against the female characters are perhaps more condemnable than others). Manfred initiates his pursuit of Isabella after a failed attempt to rape her and conceive a viable male heir for his family; he tries to manipulate his wife Hippolita into divorcing him and resigning herself to a convent; he bribes Bianca to procure information about Isabella’s suspected affair with Theodore; he cares little for his daughter Mathilda (“Begone! I do not want a daughter”) and ultimately ends up killing her, albeit in mistake. At the same time, he imprisons Theodore and orders for him to be killed; he does not care that his sickly son Conrad had died because of some supernatural being (“[Manfred] seemed less attentive to his loss, than buried in meditation on the stupendous object that had occasioned it.”; “[H]e was a sickly, puny child, and Heaven has perhaps taken him away, that I might not trust the honours of my house on so frail a foundation…My foolish fondness for that boy blinded the eyes of my prudence—but it is better as it is. I hope, in a few years, to have reason to rejoice at the death of Conrad.”); he is cruel to Jerome, the Friar and Theodore’s father; he tries to ‘sweet-talk’ and trick Frederic, Isabella’s father, into marrying his daughter off to him. Thus, Manfred’s villainy is not gendered.
Meanwhile, Radcliffe’s Marquis is disproportionately crueller towards the female characters than the male ones. He imprisons his first wife for fifteen years to marry another woman; he keeps this secret from his daughters who are forced to grow up with only Madame de Menon as their mother figure while his son Ferdinand grows up with him elsewhere; when he returns to Mazzini, it is only for his son’s ceremony – he completely disregards his daughters Julia and Emilia; he restrains and then vehemently pursues Julia after she disagrees to marry the Duke. When the Marquis does show his wrath villainy towards male characters, it is only because they were hindering his motive of giving Julia’s hand in marriage to the Duke by protecting her or helping her find refuge in or escape from different locations. Ferdinand and Hippolitus both faced this villainy – the first in the form of imprisonment, the second in the form of an attempt to murder. This is different from what the male characters in The Castle of Otranto suffer at the hands of Manfred, because Manfred’s wrath is not always dependent upon the fulfilment (or hindrances to the fulfilment) of his motive of marrying Isabella to conceive a male heir. For example, Manfred imprisons Theodore simply because he suggested that the helmet that killed his son Conrad bore a resemblance to Otranto’s former prince Alfonso (““Villain! What sayest thou?” cried Manfred, starting from his trance in a tempest of rage, and seizing the young man by the collar; “how darest thou utter such treason? Thy life shall pay for it.””). This act had nothing to do with Isabella or any other female character in the story.
Therefore, Radcliffe shows female characters (Julia as well as his second wife) as the sole reasons for the Marquis’ villainy. On the other hand, Walpole uses the supernatural, Manfred’s ancestors, Manfred’s inherent prideful, arrogant and angry nature, and to some extent, Isabella, as the reasons for Manfred’s villainy. It could be argued that in giving female characters the power to manipulate and control a male character’s villainous behaviour, Radcliffe renders the female characters more powerful than the male characters and makes them indispensable not only to the story, but also to the life motives of the characters in it.
In making women the prime objects of the male villain’s wrath, Radcliffe brings back the Gothic patriarchy that was previously discussed in the Introduction section. Indeed, it has been argued that Radcliffe did not break away from the traditional patriarchal format of Gothic storytelling in that her stories necessarily had a heroine who, albeit with a contemporary sensibility, would primarily focus on seeking and pursuing a suitor for herself while combating the pressures of the society’s patriarchal norms. Eminent scholars have previously expressed similar views about Radcliffe’s works. Robert Miles highlighted in his book about Ann Radcliffe that class, gender and patriarchy form the “principle axes of power” in Radcliffe’s works (p.4). In her elaborate study, Eva De Ridder also discusses, in the backdrop of patriarchy, how the “gendered characterisation of heroine and villain” is prominent in Radcliffe’s works of the eighteenth century, including The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797) (p.7).
Interestingly however, Radcliffe was already upsetting trends that were a result of a patriarchal society – she became a well-known female author across Europe during her lifetime, which was a rare achievement in the eighteenth century. This disturbance of the status quo is also seen in her depiction of her heroines, even if not in her villains (except for the use of the female villain in A Sicilian Romance). Radcliffe gives sufficient depth to her heroines to make her novel distinct from the conventional patriarchal depictions of women in Gothic literature. For example, in Walpole’s novel, Bianca, Matilda’s maid, says to her at one point: “…a bad husband is better than no husband at all” (Chapter 2). In Radcliffe’s novel, Julia is prepared to become a nun and reside forever in a convent after she hears that Hippolitus, her true love, has been killed. This fate she is ready to choose over her other choice – getting married to the Duke. Ultimately, Walpole’s Matilda is killed by the villain (Manfred), while Radcliffe’s Julia survives to live happily with the man she loves. Therefore, it is in the depiction of the heroines, and not necessarily the villains, that the differing perspectives of a male author and a female author are prominently highlighted in the two texts discussed in this series of blogs.
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