Woman's Work in English Fiction, from the Restoration to the Mid-Victorian Period

by Clara Helen Whitmore

But by a series of strange coincidences and dreams Mrs. Radcliffe still makes us feel that the destiny of her characters is shaped by an unseen power. Adeline is led by chance to the very ruin where her unknown father had been murdered years before. She sees in dreams all the incidents of the deed, and a manuscript he had written while in the power of his enemies falls into her hands. Again by chance she finds an asylum in the home of a clergyman, Arnaud La Luc, who proves to be the father of her lover, Theodore Peyrou. It seems to be by the interposition of Providence that Ellena finds her mother and is recognised by her father. So in every tale we are made aware of powers not mortal shaping human destiny.

Mrs. Radcliffe adds to this consciousness of the presence of the supernatural by another, perhaps more legitimate, method. She felt what Wordsworth expressed in Tintern Abbey, written the year after her last novel was published:

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Mrs. Radcliffe seldom loses her feeling for nature, and has a strong sense of the effect of environment on her characters. Julia, when in doubt about the fate of Hippolitus, often walked in the evening under the shade of the high trees that environed the abbey. "The dewy coolness of the air refreshed her. The innumerable roseate tints which the parting sun-beams reflected on the rocks above, and the fine vermil glow diffused over the romantic scene beneath, softly fading from the eye as the night shades fell, excited sensations of a sweet and tranquil nature, and soothed her into a temporary forgetfulness of her sorrow." As the happy lovers, Vivaldi and Ellena, are gliding along the Bay of Naples, they hear from the shore the voices of the vine-dressers, as they repose after the labours of the day, and catch the strains of music from fishermen who are dancing on the margin of the sea.

Sometimes nature is prophetic. The whole description of the castle of Udolpho, when Emily first beholds it, is symbolical of the sufferings she is to endure there: "As she gazed, the light died away on its walls, leaving a melancholy purple tint, which spread deeper and deeper, as the thin vapour crept up the mountain, while the battlements above were still tipped with splendour. From these, too, the rays soon faded, and the whole edifice was invested with the solemn duskiness of evening. Silent, lonely, and sublime it seemed to stand the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance on all who dared invade its solitary reign." When Emily is happy in the peasant's home in the valley below, she lingers at the casement after the sun has set: "But a clear moonlight that succeeded gave to the landscape what time gives to the scenes of past life, when it softens all their harsh features, and throws over the whole the mellowing shade of distant contemplation." It is this feeling for nature as a constant presence in daily life, now elating the mind with joy, now awakening a sense of foreboding or inspiring terror, and again soothing the mind to repose, that gives to her books a permanent hold upon the imagination and marks their author as a woman of genius.

In her response to nature, she belongs to the Lake School. Scott said of her: "Mrs. Radcliffe has a title to be considered as the first poetess of romantic fiction, that is, if actual rhythm shall not be deemed essential to poetry." Mrs. Smith describes nature as we all know it, as it appears on the canvasses of Constable and Wilson. Mrs. Radcliffe's descriptions of ideal and romantic nature have earned for her the name of the English Salvator Rosa.

Mrs. Radcliffe's characters are not without interest, although they are often mere types. All her heroes and heroines are ladies and gentlemen of native courtesy, superior education, and accomplishments. In The Mysteries of Udolpho she has set forth the education which St. Aubert gave to his daughter, Emily: "St. Aubert cultivated her understanding with the most scrupulous care. He gave her a general view of the sciences, and an exact acquaintance with every part of elegant literature. He taught her Latin and English, chiefly that she might understand the sublimity of their best poets. She discovered in her early years a taste for works of genius; and it was St. Aubert's principle, as well as his inclination, to promote every innocent means of happiness. 'A well informed mind,' he would say, 'is the best security against the contagion of vice and folly.'"

In all their circumstances her characters are well-bred. This type has been nearly lost in literature, due, perhaps, to the minuter study of manners and the analysis of character. When an author surveys his ladies and gentlemen through a reading-glass, and points the finger at their oddities and pries into their inmost secrets, even the Chesterfields become awkward and clownish. But Mrs. Radcliffe, like Mrs. Smith, is a true gentlewoman, and speaks of her characters with the delicate respect of true gentility. Julia, Adeline, Emily, and Ellena, the heroines of four of her books, love nature, and while away the melancholy hours by playing on the lute or writing poetry, and are, moreover, well qualified to have charge of a baronial castle and its dependencies. Her heroes are worthy of her heroines. As they are generally seen in the presence of ladies, if they have vices there is no occasion for their display.

It is only in the characters of her villains that good and evil are intertwined, and she awakens our sympathy for them equally with our horror. Monsieur La Motte, a weak man in the power of an unscrupulous one, is the best drawn character in The Romance of the Forest. He has taken Adeline under his protection and has been as a father to her. But before this he had committed a crime which has placed his life in the hands of a powerful marquis. To free himself he consents to surrender Adeline to the marquis, who has become enamoured of her beauty, hoping by the sacrifice of her honour to save his own life. He is agitated in the presence of Adeline, and trembles at the approach of any stranger. Scott said of him, "He is the exact picture of the needy man who has seen better days."

In The Italian, Schedoni, a monk of the order of Black Penitents for whom the novel is named, is guilty of the most atrocious crimes in order that he may further his own ambition, but he is not devoid of natural feeling. Scott says the scene in which he "is in the act of raising his arm to murder his sleeping victim, and discovers her to be his own child, is of a new, grand, and powerful character; and the horrors of the wretch who, on the brink of murder, has just escaped from committing a crime of yet more exaggerated horror, constitute the strongest painting which has been produced by Mrs. Radcliffe's pencil, and form a crisis well fitted to be actually embodied on canvas by some great master."