The fortune of the gothic novel in Italy

 7
                                         
Chapter one 
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOTHIC NOVEL, 
CHRONOLOGY, AUTHORS, WORKS, CONTENTS 
The gothic novel can be defined as the more or less conscious revolt against the realism of 
some writers like, for example, Richardson and Fielding. The aim of the gothic novel was to 
upset the reader more than to amuse or educate him. It is for this reason that the plots of 
these books are set in an imaginary past, usually in the Middle Ages, and in unknown 
countries, with episodes full of horrible murders, extraordinary situations and supernatural 
events, which occur in haunted castles, prisons, convents and in any other kind of “gothic” 
building. These buildings obviously had secret passages, long dark corridors and frightful 
vaults, and they were usually surrounded by thick forests and impenetrable woods. Mario Praz, 
in his book Il patto con il serpente
1
, underlined how horror had become a source for 
amusement and beauty, influencing the concept of this last one. However, the XVIII century 
remains a quite vulnerable century, neither undergoing the charm of brilliance, nor of its 
contrary. In fact, it is attracted by the dark universe and by what forms it: ruins, graveyards 
and forests, being in strong contrast with the Enlightenment conception to rationally explain 
what is not rational, too. The reason for this success of the gothic novel is in the fact that all 
that is similar to fright, terror, produces the greatest and strongest emotion that human mind 
is capable to perceive. All this happens because gothic literature has not to exercise 
persuasion, but to cause wonder, and so it “accarezza perturbanti Doppelgänger e mostri [...] 
costruisce teatrini di tortura”
2
. The gothic genre in general recalls a northern culture in which 
there is a certain prevalence of dark and gloomy elements, which are to be found in the novel 
which takes its name from this architectural style. This was a kind of literature very sensible to 
the charm of ruins and it could not be otherwise because it shared its presence with the 
graveyard poetry. We can say that the gothic causes a sense of attraction towards pleasure 
associated with horror, provoked by dark and night agitation. In particular, this sense of 
attraction is accompanied by the fear and the dismay felt in front of mountains, of violent 
nature and above all of the magnificence of ruins. In particular, in the gothic novel, we can find 
a certain psychological tension which recalls an intellectual one. One of the constant aspects of 
the gothic novel is the castle, which has not precise and definite places, but is made of secret 
passages, of corridors covered in search of an exit, which seems more and more unreachable 
and farther and farther and which, once reached, brings from an opening in the bowels of the 
earth to the width of the sea. In the castle one does not live, but struggles and escapes 
because everyone, both good and evil, is prisoner: it is a mysterious and dangerous place. The 
castle’s distance from the rest of the world makes it the place of a dream where ghosts move 
and where time cannot be measured. The lord of the castle and the castle itself very often are 
identified with the monk and the convent, causing the union of persecution and deceit, 
obviously provoking a doubling of terror. However, both tend to appear as isolated places, 
being in contrast with the nature around them. The castle, in particular, is opposed to society, 
too, of which not only doesn’t it share the rules, but with which it has no kind of relation, 
unless it wants to violate its sacred principles. In the castle, in the place of rules and laws, we 
find arbitrariness and lustful pleasure, in the convent everything is falseness and however both 
appear as prisons. We could affirm that, in the gothic novel, two different atmospheres are 
united: the one of the dream and the one of the nightmare, represented by the difficulty to 
explain the images, by the sense of claustrophobia, and above all by the continuous narrowing 
and dilation of the space. The gothic practically expresses a deep agitation towards nature and 
society. In the gothic novel, supernatural is present everywhere with some differences 
 
1
 Mario Praz, Il patto con il serpente, Milano, Mondadori, 1973. 
2
 Mario Praz, La carne, la morte, il diavolo nella letteratura romantica, Firenze, Sansoni, 1948. 
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according to the various authors: in the first gothic novels, supernatural has a double function: 
1) to add mystery to the plot, giving rise to emotions, 2) to stimulate imagination. Afterwards, 
we will find the “explained supernatural” (of which Mrs. Radcliffe is the symbol). It will surely 
involve intellect, being able, at the same time, to satisfy also the need for pleasure and terror, 
presenting a puzzle, capable to defy and put one’s own rationality to the test. In the gothic 
novel, we find an opposition between nature and culture, represented by the persecuted 
maiden and by the villain, the former representing a natural principle of life and continuity, the 
latter assuming the connotation and the symbolism of a negative and past culture, in which all 
the worst and refused sides of a system, become by now inacceptable, had joined together. In 
the gothic novel, the heroine replaces the hero in the role of the main character, aiming at the 
happy end, which is obviously represented by life continuity. The victory of the persecuted 
maiden in gothic novels makes possible the affirmation of virtue superiority, to which the prize 
of happiness is due, and it represents a reassuring picture on which human life should be 
settled. The theme of the persecuted maiden allows us to see how the signifier, in gothic 
novels, is linked to the meaning. Another aspect, which is almost always present in the gothic 
novel, is the one concerning “taking monastic vows”: in this genre, it always takes a negative 
value as it is considered as unnatural. Besides, it is seen by the heroine as the closing of that 
life cycle that she is urged to continue. The gothic represents a way to express man’s 
existential suffering, being half-way between the supernatural, which his rationality doubts of, 
and a universe he is afraid of, between the good he aspires to and the sense of guilt he is 
crushed by. This agitation is also expressed in the oppositions between high and low, always 
present in the gothic novel, as we will see afterwards. The reasons for the success of the 
gothic novel are to be searched not so much in the structure of the novel and in its contents, 
as rather in the society in which it appeared: in fact, the world of supernatural is not upsetting 
in itself, but it becomes so when it is violently introduced into a framework, which does not 
want to receive it. The supernatural and the fantastic, in fact, are configured as an inopportune 
and, above all, unexpected interference of different codes and levels of reading. It represents a 
literary transgression; it is not so much the denial of what is normal or domestic, as rather the 
distortion of the Order, the destruction of the Model. In practice, the gothic novel tries to 
remedy to those defects of the XVIII-century novel which, according to its conception, had 
depreciated human experience. At the same time, it is also displeased by the results obtained 
by the ancient authors of romances; it is for this reason that it tries to make the two genres be 
in touch, through the adoption of the mimetic criterion (nature) and the transformational one 
(imagination). The beginning of the gothic novel can be set in 1746 (this is also the birth year 
of Mrs. Ann Ward, who will then become Mrs. Radcliffe), the year of the publication of The 
Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1717-1797), whose name had reached a fame that, with 
time passing, has greatly decreased, partly because of the instability influencing also his works 
and partly because of the censorship by some critics. Horace Walpole was born in his father’s 
house in Arlington Street on September 24
th
, 1717. After studying for two years with a tutor, 
he moved to Eton in April 1727, where he remained until spring 1735 when he entered the 
King’s College in Cambridge. When he was elected member of the Parliament, he moved to 
Dover on September 12
th
, 1741 and remained in the Parliament until 1768. In 1747 what can 
be considered the great event of his life occurred, that is to say his move near Twickenham, 
where he took the remaining part of the lease of a little house which was on the left bank of 
the Thames, at the corner of the upper road of Teddington, which even then was not without 
history. Walpole gave his house the historical name of Strawberry Hill. It had remained for 
many years the main occupation of his life, as he started to enlarge and alter the structure 
itself so much that he affirmed: “I am going to build a little gothic castle at Strawberry Hill”. 
But his most important effort occurred in 1764, with the publication of his gothic novel The 
Castle of Otranto, described in the title page as “translated by William Marshall from the 
original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto”. Its 
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success was considerable; in a second edition, which was rapidly requested, Walpole dropped 
the mask and revealed his design in an ingenious preface. He had tried to mix the ancient and 
the modern novel, that is to say to combine the supernatural mechanism and the daily 
characters. Walpole was above all a virtuous and a quality man; as a politician, he had a poor 
relevance, but, as a man of letters, he was always, and affirmed to be, an amateur. The Castle 
of Otranto, however, shows a literary capability only requiring a little bit stronger stimulus 
than amateurism to produce durable results. As we saw, the decisive moment of his life was 
the purchase of Strawberry Hill. The building, its gardens and its collection of artistic curiosities 
immediately attracted Walpole’s interest, who took inspiration from this building for the 
description of the castle of his work. In fact, Walpole was so proud of Strawberry Hill to 
mention it often in his letters and to put, at its entrance, a sign on which it was written “The 
gothic castle”. All this must not amaze because Walpole, in his first years of life, was not very 
different from most men of XVIII-century high society, proud of their social position. The 
enthralling principle of his life was the love and pride he felt for his father: in fact, Walpole 
started his life with a sincere and enthusiastic character, but afterwards he became more and 
more disinterested and colder and colder towards new knowledge, keeping himself only for his 
closest friends. He died on March 2
nd
, 1797 in his house in Berkeley Square, where he had 
moved from his previous house. As to Walpole’s attitude towards other writers, he could not 
admire Fielding as he went round with bad company and he condemned his character’s 
vulgarity, nor did he appreciate Richardson’s genius. A very important aspect of Walpole’s life 
and character, that we have to keep in mind, is that he had always had a natural inclination for 
horrid and fantastic. When he wrote his novel, at first he pretended to have translated it from 
Italian. However, he immediately admitted his paternity when, against his expectations, the 
book met an immediate success, in spite of a meaningless plot. The book, in fact, tells how 
Manfred, prince of Otranto, in order to have a new heir and save his kingdom, in vain tries to 
marry Isabella, his son Conrad’s former fiancée, after this one has been killed by a mysterious 
helmet. Walpole himself tells us that the model from whom he got inspiration for the 
description and the behaviour of his characters and of nature was Shakespeare and this 
statement is confirmed by the mix of styles (tragic and comic) we find in his work. Besides, in 
Walpole’s work we find a perfect symmetry in the construction of the acts, as every word, 
every object, every chapter is united to the following according to a wave-motion rhythm: in 
fact, we can find a recall in every end and every beginning. Symmetry is underlined also by 
the presence, in the novel, of two fathers opposed to two daughters to whom they want to 
impose unnatural and unrealizable weddings. Manfred’s attempts to start an incestuous-like 
relation with Isabella is punished with the murder by him of his own daughter by a dagger, an 
obvious sexual symbol. And this is not the only sexual symbol present in the novel. Sexual 
symbolism is to be found also in the lock that Isabella shows to Theodore, in her refusal to 
follow him into the cave (which is the proof of the maiden’s virtue), etc. In this work, in some 
scenes, the themes taken from fable and romantic-fantastic literature are joined up, 
introduced into a theatrical framework and into a structure which recalls the sentimental 
drama. As it is clear since the plot, the story of this novel is a unique, huge anachronism and 
events are absurd. In fact, as Mario Praz keenly observes, The Castle of Otranto in the end 
looks like Strawberry Hill. The scholar concludes affirming that “è soltanto rococò camuffato da 
gotico”
3
, because afterwards authors would do differently to give rise to terror (in particular 
with Mary Shelley), a kind of terror which in Frankenstein is going to become a real sense of 
obsession. However, in spite of these evident faults, with this novel, a completely new turn is 
given to the genre. We can say, in fact, and without being contradicted, that The Castle of 
Otranto is today unanimously considered the first example of the gothic novel, that is to say 
the first fantastic story of modern English literature. In this work in fact we find, for the first 
 
3
 Mario Praz, Il patto con il serpente, Milano, Mondadori, 1973.