[PREV - VILLAINY] [TOP]
DRIP_DRIP_DRIP
October 1-8, 2007
Anne Radcliff's "Mysteries of Udolpho" (1794)
The first really remarkable
feature of this book: it's *so*
slow! Slow by our standards, to
be sure, and to be expected, but
it's so slow it's hard to imagine
anyone being engaged by it.
You get hundreds of pages into
it's 700 odd, and you will find
NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. The It's astounding, Lovecraft
main characters don't even praised Radcliff for ability
arrive at the castle Udolpho to establish atmosphere,
of the title until page 200 and objected only to the
or so. poetry.
But then:
Shifting fashions in
the style of prose. GHOSTWATCH
Once it was very verbose
and slow, then during the
pulp period it became Ah, and also...
terse and quick...
SPOILERS
Now it's veered
somewhat back I think he also
toward the PARSIMONY objected to her
earlier style. constant resolution
of the fantastic
elements as an
As the novel progresses, illusion rooted
the prose takes on a kind in the mundane.
of weight, there's a
definite fascination here Everything
after around the half-way neatly explained.
mark, watching the
gathering storm clouds
around this remarkably
passive woman, as she
bounces between clear
knowledge and obvious
denial --
But midway through, I was
left wondering: Where *can*
this story go? Our heroine
has only two possible Ah: around two-thirds of
saviours, two forms of the way through, she
calvary that can storm in comes up with a glimmer
and save the day without of an escape plan! It's
Lacking her getting her dainty, absurdly late, and
strength feminine hands dirty: the ineffectual, but it gives
of arms, arrival of Vallancourt one the sense that she
or a line and/or supernatural might not be thoroughly
of communi- intervention -- the revenge retarded.
cation with of ghosts on the badguys
any author- (She asks her maid
ity; she (Vallancourt if her boyfriend
deigns to being the guy might be able to
indulge in she *should* spring the two of
any distaste- have just them on promise of
ful activity eloped with and reward later.)
such as avoided the
spying or entire fucking
conspiracy... problem, but
*noooo* she had
to keep a
promise made to I had a thought that
her evidently the stuff she read in
braindead dear her father's papers
deceased before burning them
father). might be a terrible
spell, some words of
power to invoke the
spirts on her behalf.
Were this a, shall we
say, *normal* story,
By the by... where the hero is With "women's
I don't think expected to have some fiction" such
we're ever role in their fate, as this, all
told what the I might have been bets are off.
hell she read correct.
that was such
a shock. SPOILERS
Radcliffe went But I'd forgotten
through the Radcliffe's
trouble to set reputation as a
up that wild tease that always
card, and later explains away the
to remind the supernatural by
reader that it the end.
exists, and then
never plays it. Funny, because
that's one of the
reasons I resolved (Way back
By the end of the story, to read this book: when, 700
it surprises by developing long pages
a degree of psychological I was interested ago.)
realism underneath the in the history of
stilted prose. that trope.
And all in all, No one would be
this is a huge The major interested in this
improvement on plot twists form who was not
Walpole's that turn fascinated by the
"Castle of up are fantastic, and yet
Otranto". pretty it's important to
crazy though: undercut it and
(Which strikes return to the normal
me as a more Everything by story's end.
direct is tied up That is,
influence on with Is this intended if you
Sir Walter Udolpho to sanitize it in regard
Scott than some way? pirates
Radcliffe.) creeping
Tales of the through
Could it be that daemonic that pose secret
she was learning as the opposite. passages
to write as she as "normal"
was working on
this book? That VILLAINY
would explain
the interminable
meandering at it's
outset.
--------
[NEXT - GHOSTWATCH]