Initially diffused by the gothic novel, and later revisited by romances of chivalry; the abyss, the mountain and the castle were very popular images in 18th and 19th century literature. With the popularisation of the novel these images went on to spread to almost every European literature. Their features were submitted to constant re-interpretations and ended up being recreated or rearranged by later writers, as the images reached even further corners of the world later in the 19th century. An exemplary scene, which features this multiple images of gothic landscape, can be found in Ann Radcliffe. The castle here in The Italian (1796)[1] takes the form of a monastery but it could also appear in gothic romances in the shape of a church or a fortress.
Along this deep and shadowy perspective a river, which was seen descending among the cliffs of a mountain, rolled with impetuous force, fretting and foaming amidst the dark rocks in its descent, and then flowing in a limpid lapse to the brink of other precipices, whence again it fell with thundering strength to the abyss, throwing its misty clouds of spray high in the air, and seeming to claim the sole empire of this solitary wild. Its bed took up the whole breadth of the chasm, which some strong convulsion of the earth seemed to have formed, not leaving space even for a road along its margin. The road, therefore, was carried high among the cliffs, that impended over the river, and seemed as if suspended in air; while the gloom and vastness of the precipices, which towered above and sunk below it, together with the amazing force and uproar of the falling waters, combined to render the pass more terrific than the pencil could describe, or language can express. Ellena ascended it, not with indifference but with calmness; she experienced somewhat of a dreadful pleasure in looking down upon the irresistible flood; but this emotion was heightened into awe, when she perceived that the road led to a slight bridge, which, thrown across the chasm at an immense height, united two opposite cliffs, between which the whole cataract of the river descended. The bridge, which was defended only by a slender railing, appeared as if hung amidst the clouds. Ellena, while she was crossing it, almost forgot her misfortunes. [...] The transition was as the passage through the vale of death to the bliss of eternity; but the idea of its resemblance did not long remain with Ellena. Perched high among the cliffs of a mountain, which might be said to terminate one of the jaws of this terrific gorge, and which was one of the loftiest of a chain that surrounded the plains, appeared the spires and long terraces of a monastery; and she soon understood that her journey was to conclude there.(The Italian, vol. I, chapter VI, pp. 63-64)
The awe inspiring scene carries the three images: the dangerous precipice, towering mountains and a monastery at the end that appears very ominous. It is remarkable in the passage how the abyss stems as a powerful, uncontrollable element. It encompasses an irresistible force which both attracts and compels to destruction, embodying an ambiguity which is central to the gothic form. This contradiction is particularly explicit when Ellena approaches the gorge; at the same time she is reminded of her own death, she does not resist to peak down. The passage also shows how gothic landscape may assume ideological significances. This is captured above with the introduction of the word ‘empire’ in the depiction of the scenery, addressing issues of domination and national sovereignty. The mountain and the castle will also bring political connotations, another key attribute of gothic novels [2], demonstrating how aesthetic symbols have values attached to them. Henceforth, I will use these images to isolate some of the gothic conventions, ultimately relating them to aspects of national identity.
Radcliffe’s usage of the three images was somewhat in tune with a gloomier philosophical disposition which emerged in Europe in 18th century. Her formidable description of landscapes in the Alps and in the Pyrenees reminded readers of the ‘truth’ that was to be found in Nature. To this branch of philosophy, sceptical of the Cartesian principles, the idea of the mountain evoked primarily the undisputable power of the natural world. Mountains represented the notion of timelessness which contrasted with human mortality. The real laws of the world were not those created by men but those inherent to Nature, which is bigger than anyone and whose last and irrefutable authority is death. At the same time overpowering mountain ranges indicated Nature’s supremacy over the designs of men, they also inferred that we live in a world of chaos and disorder. This was represented by the irregularity of mountainous topography, an evidence which defied overtly simple neoclassical standards, founded on symmetry, proportion and rationality. Lastly, the image of the mountain also meant a place of seclusion. To be in the mountains meant that one was largely by their own means, astray from society and susceptible to the vicissitudes of the landscape. In another interpretation, to climb the mountain could mean a human quest for spirituality, yielding a search for revelation. This more mystical aspect of the mountain can be noted in the passage above in the metaphor: ‘the vale of death to the bliss of eternity’, contrasting the mountain and the precipice which the heroine safely glides over.
The abyss was traditionally seen as a source of imminent danger, reflecting the possibility of being headed to destruction. It was a recurrent image in the libertine novels of Sade,[3] which appeared around the same period of the gothic novel. The marquis used the image to illustrate the terrible void of life. He questioned the existence of a benevolent Nature/God (the foundation of any moral) by focusing on aristocratic characters who indulge on ruthless passions. At the same time he denied the Rousseauesque idea of the kindness of human nature by parodying the discourse of sensibility, portraying his plebeian characters as potential victims in an essentially violent and unethical world. Sade’s work demonstrates, by choice of themes and transgressive language, that he was more engaged in philosophical debate than in aesthetic creation. His writings confronted the two major trends of thought in the period, the rationalist and the 1800 religious philosophers, representing one position of this gloomier outlook that questioned Enlightenment philosophy.
The image of the castle stems in this context as an ambivalent place. On that spiritual note it could denote a refuge or a sanctuary in the mountains, but it also represented the symbol of a noble past. In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Edmund Burke uses the metaphor of a gothic castle in support of the English heritage and monarchy.[4] His point of view was connected to an aristocratic or conservative part of the society. Defending long-standing relations within the social fabric, he expressed a rejection of the revolutionary upraising in France. This nostalgia about the past and the lament for the end of a chivalric age constituted indexes of an idealization of a medieval era as an ‘organic’ world based on tradition and family bonds, in comparison with a modern bourgeois society.
On a more sinister interpretation the castle implied a monstrous place where feudal or monastic tyrants, isolated from the eyes of society, could indulge in perverted practices. In that sense, it was related with a despotic government, arbitrary power and aristocratic privileges that could no longer exist in the new world. This view was adopted by democrats like Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft. This approach was more related to the Whig party, the middle class and the class of society who shared a progressive opinion. This tension and duplicity about the image of the castle signalled conflicting political stands in a dispute that was reflected in literary contexts.
Ann Radcliffe’s treatment of the three previous images was intended more as a novelistic appreciation than as a head-on engagement in this debate. Her work balances romantic aesthetics (scenery, landscapes, beauty and terror) with Enlightenment ideals (the limits of reason, explained supernatural). She avoided graphic descriptions of horror that could provoke reactions of outrage in the public. A different trend of gothic fiction was pursued by Matthew Lewis in The Monk (1796), based on the German type of novel, Schauerroman (horror-romance), which introduced blunt terror and heavy handed violence contrasting with the subtle thrills of the Radcliffean mode. When evoking the mountain, the abyss and the castle, she was primarily aiming to raise feelings of sublime, in the terms proposed earlier by Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). Her awareness of the aesthetic possibilities implied in Burke’s treatise, itself a revision of ideas attributed to the Greek Longinus, made her invest chiefly in obscurity, danger and pain as passions capable of generating pleasure for the readers, as well as the characters. In Burke’s paradoxical observation, delight could be extracted from terror if experienced from a safe distance (reading is a supposedly safe distance). This is what Ellena seeks by looking down the abyss as she crosses the bridge, extracting a frisson from the possibility of falling in the overwhelming precipice. If a similar feeling was also experienced by the reader of the novel, then this typical Radcliffean scene would have achieved its purpose.
[1] Ann Radcliffe. The Italian, or the Confessional of Black Penitents. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. All subsequent quotations are taken from this edition. Volumes, chapters and pages references will be given in parentheses. The brackets here indicate my omissions.
[2] 18th century reviewers were in no doubt that gothic novels represented a kind of political literature. Two of the most influential accounts can be found in T.J. Mathias’ The Pursuits of Literature (1796) and in the Marquis de Sade’s, Les Idées sur le romans, preface to the novel Les Crimes de l’Amour (1800). Though both commentators diverge as to what interpretation they should give to the political inferences of these novels.
[3] I am thinking here of the abyssal images in the novels Justine, or the misfortunes of virtue (p.32), 120 Days of Sodom (pp. 37 and 363), Juliette, or the prosperities of Vice (p.76) and The Philosophy in the Bedroom (p.112). References to the editions and publishers are given in the bibliography.
[4] Burke believed that the French monarchy was one of the best in Europe and its mistake was not to make concessions to the uprising bourgeoisie. IN: Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982. (p. 16).
Along this deep and shadowy perspective a river, which was seen descending among the cliffs of a mountain, rolled with impetuous force, fretting and foaming amidst the dark rocks in its descent, and then flowing in a limpid lapse to the brink of other precipices, whence again it fell with thundering strength to the abyss, throwing its misty clouds of spray high in the air, and seeming to claim the sole empire of this solitary wild. Its bed took up the whole breadth of the chasm, which some strong convulsion of the earth seemed to have formed, not leaving space even for a road along its margin. The road, therefore, was carried high among the cliffs, that impended over the river, and seemed as if suspended in air; while the gloom and vastness of the precipices, which towered above and sunk below it, together with the amazing force and uproar of the falling waters, combined to render the pass more terrific than the pencil could describe, or language can express. Ellena ascended it, not with indifference but with calmness; she experienced somewhat of a dreadful pleasure in looking down upon the irresistible flood; but this emotion was heightened into awe, when she perceived that the road led to a slight bridge, which, thrown across the chasm at an immense height, united two opposite cliffs, between which the whole cataract of the river descended. The bridge, which was defended only by a slender railing, appeared as if hung amidst the clouds. Ellena, while she was crossing it, almost forgot her misfortunes. [...] The transition was as the passage through the vale of death to the bliss of eternity; but the idea of its resemblance did not long remain with Ellena. Perched high among the cliffs of a mountain, which might be said to terminate one of the jaws of this terrific gorge, and which was one of the loftiest of a chain that surrounded the plains, appeared the spires and long terraces of a monastery; and she soon understood that her journey was to conclude there.(The Italian, vol. I, chapter VI, pp. 63-64)
The awe inspiring scene carries the three images: the dangerous precipice, towering mountains and a monastery at the end that appears very ominous. It is remarkable in the passage how the abyss stems as a powerful, uncontrollable element. It encompasses an irresistible force which both attracts and compels to destruction, embodying an ambiguity which is central to the gothic form. This contradiction is particularly explicit when Ellena approaches the gorge; at the same time she is reminded of her own death, she does not resist to peak down. The passage also shows how gothic landscape may assume ideological significances. This is captured above with the introduction of the word ‘empire’ in the depiction of the scenery, addressing issues of domination and national sovereignty. The mountain and the castle will also bring political connotations, another key attribute of gothic novels [2], demonstrating how aesthetic symbols have values attached to them. Henceforth, I will use these images to isolate some of the gothic conventions, ultimately relating them to aspects of national identity.
Radcliffe’s usage of the three images was somewhat in tune with a gloomier philosophical disposition which emerged in Europe in 18th century. Her formidable description of landscapes in the Alps and in the Pyrenees reminded readers of the ‘truth’ that was to be found in Nature. To this branch of philosophy, sceptical of the Cartesian principles, the idea of the mountain evoked primarily the undisputable power of the natural world. Mountains represented the notion of timelessness which contrasted with human mortality. The real laws of the world were not those created by men but those inherent to Nature, which is bigger than anyone and whose last and irrefutable authority is death. At the same time overpowering mountain ranges indicated Nature’s supremacy over the designs of men, they also inferred that we live in a world of chaos and disorder. This was represented by the irregularity of mountainous topography, an evidence which defied overtly simple neoclassical standards, founded on symmetry, proportion and rationality. Lastly, the image of the mountain also meant a place of seclusion. To be in the mountains meant that one was largely by their own means, astray from society and susceptible to the vicissitudes of the landscape. In another interpretation, to climb the mountain could mean a human quest for spirituality, yielding a search for revelation. This more mystical aspect of the mountain can be noted in the passage above in the metaphor: ‘the vale of death to the bliss of eternity’, contrasting the mountain and the precipice which the heroine safely glides over.
The abyss was traditionally seen as a source of imminent danger, reflecting the possibility of being headed to destruction. It was a recurrent image in the libertine novels of Sade,[3] which appeared around the same period of the gothic novel. The marquis used the image to illustrate the terrible void of life. He questioned the existence of a benevolent Nature/God (the foundation of any moral) by focusing on aristocratic characters who indulge on ruthless passions. At the same time he denied the Rousseauesque idea of the kindness of human nature by parodying the discourse of sensibility, portraying his plebeian characters as potential victims in an essentially violent and unethical world. Sade’s work demonstrates, by choice of themes and transgressive language, that he was more engaged in philosophical debate than in aesthetic creation. His writings confronted the two major trends of thought in the period, the rationalist and the 1800 religious philosophers, representing one position of this gloomier outlook that questioned Enlightenment philosophy.
The image of the castle stems in this context as an ambivalent place. On that spiritual note it could denote a refuge or a sanctuary in the mountains, but it also represented the symbol of a noble past. In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Edmund Burke uses the metaphor of a gothic castle in support of the English heritage and monarchy.[4] His point of view was connected to an aristocratic or conservative part of the society. Defending long-standing relations within the social fabric, he expressed a rejection of the revolutionary upraising in France. This nostalgia about the past and the lament for the end of a chivalric age constituted indexes of an idealization of a medieval era as an ‘organic’ world based on tradition and family bonds, in comparison with a modern bourgeois society.
On a more sinister interpretation the castle implied a monstrous place where feudal or monastic tyrants, isolated from the eyes of society, could indulge in perverted practices. In that sense, it was related with a despotic government, arbitrary power and aristocratic privileges that could no longer exist in the new world. This view was adopted by democrats like Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft. This approach was more related to the Whig party, the middle class and the class of society who shared a progressive opinion. This tension and duplicity about the image of the castle signalled conflicting political stands in a dispute that was reflected in literary contexts.
Ann Radcliffe’s treatment of the three previous images was intended more as a novelistic appreciation than as a head-on engagement in this debate. Her work balances romantic aesthetics (scenery, landscapes, beauty and terror) with Enlightenment ideals (the limits of reason, explained supernatural). She avoided graphic descriptions of horror that could provoke reactions of outrage in the public. A different trend of gothic fiction was pursued by Matthew Lewis in The Monk (1796), based on the German type of novel, Schauerroman (horror-romance), which introduced blunt terror and heavy handed violence contrasting with the subtle thrills of the Radcliffean mode. When evoking the mountain, the abyss and the castle, she was primarily aiming to raise feelings of sublime, in the terms proposed earlier by Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). Her awareness of the aesthetic possibilities implied in Burke’s treatise, itself a revision of ideas attributed to the Greek Longinus, made her invest chiefly in obscurity, danger and pain as passions capable of generating pleasure for the readers, as well as the characters. In Burke’s paradoxical observation, delight could be extracted from terror if experienced from a safe distance (reading is a supposedly safe distance). This is what Ellena seeks by looking down the abyss as she crosses the bridge, extracting a frisson from the possibility of falling in the overwhelming precipice. If a similar feeling was also experienced by the reader of the novel, then this typical Radcliffean scene would have achieved its purpose.
[1] Ann Radcliffe. The Italian, or the Confessional of Black Penitents. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. All subsequent quotations are taken from this edition. Volumes, chapters and pages references will be given in parentheses. The brackets here indicate my omissions.
[2] 18th century reviewers were in no doubt that gothic novels represented a kind of political literature. Two of the most influential accounts can be found in T.J. Mathias’ The Pursuits of Literature (1796) and in the Marquis de Sade’s, Les Idées sur le romans, preface to the novel Les Crimes de l’Amour (1800). Though both commentators diverge as to what interpretation they should give to the political inferences of these novels.
[3] I am thinking here of the abyssal images in the novels Justine, or the misfortunes of virtue (p.32), 120 Days of Sodom (pp. 37 and 363), Juliette, or the prosperities of Vice (p.76) and The Philosophy in the Bedroom (p.112). References to the editions and publishers are given in the bibliography.
[4] Burke believed that the French monarchy was one of the best in Europe and its mistake was not to make concessions to the uprising bourgeoisie. IN: Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982. (p. 16).
