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“GOTHIFIED HISTORIES”: EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-
CENTURY WOMEN’S GOTHIC NOVELS AND ENGLIGHTENMENT
HISTORIOGRAPHY
By

Catherine Ann Swender

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCI‘ OR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of English
2003

ABSTRACT

“GOT HIFIED HISTORIES”: EIGHTEENTH— AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY
WOMEN’S GOTHIC NOVELS AND ENLIGHTENMENT HISTORIOGRAPHY

By

Catherine Ann Swender

Beyond the more popularly studied gothic novels by authors like Ann Radcliffe,
Matthew Lewis, and Charles Brockden Brown, exists a considerable but neglected body
of gothic fiction that overtly combines the gothic tale with elements of the historical
romance. While historical gothic novels may seem to be formalistic failures or fledgling,
pre-Walter Scott attempts at the historical novel, more serious study of these popular
fictional works reveals their greater significance within the context of Enlightenment
formulations of national history. This study examines how late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century female gothic novelists portray and explore the idea of history and
how, in doing so, they illuminate period debates about the term “history” and point to an
underlying uneasiness surrounding historiography itself, an uneasiness that stems in part
from a suspicion that Enlightenment methods of historical production do not serve their
proposed function of constructing a coherent national identity.

Set in specific historical time periods and featuring historically important figures,
historical gothics like Sophia Lee’s Ihgfiegess, Ann Radcliffe’s WM;
and Susanna Rowson’s W demonstrate a careful engagement with
Enlightenment historical standards and concerns that were being debated in other forms
of historical discourse. These issues include: the place of the sentimental in historical

writing; the subject matter on which a history ought to focus; the use of classical or

modern methodologies in historical writing; ways to address problems caused by the lack
or corruption of historical evidence; and the power dynamics involved in historical
transmission that can affect a history’s claims to objectivity. Furthermore, each author
explores a specific aspect of historical knowledge and writing. Lee addresses sentimental
portrayals of important historical figures; Radcliffe engages with amateur antiquarianism
and historical tourism; and Rowson investigates the configuration of the Anglo—American
nation as family.

Mm. Wills. and W highlight actual
moments of cultural clash by surrounding them with horror, uncertainty, and the
supernatural. Selecting historiography itself as a locus of terror, these novels continually
rupture their own portrayals of history and dismantle illusions about history’s objectivity,
endurance, and ability to formulate an uncontested national subject. As they “gothify”
history, these women writers show how depicting and organizing the past becomes an
endeavor that can be dangerous; history becomes uncanny, unknowable, and impossible
to control. Combining the two disjointed discourses of the historical and the gothic,
gothified histories provide a unique glimpse into the cultural uneasiness surrounding

attempts at historical representation.

COpyright by
CATHERINE ANN SWENDER
2003

To My Family

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the many people who have helped make this project possible.
First, I would like to thank my doctoral committee for their time and guidance throughout my
years at Michigan State University. My dissertation director, Dr. Ellen Pollak, has mentored,
challenged, and inspired me from the beginning of my program. The other members of my
doctoral committee, Dr. Stephen Arch. Dr. Jennifer Banks, Dr. Clint Goodson, and Dr. Judith
Stoddan, have given me invaluable advice helping me to bring this project to completion. 1
would like to thank the College of Arts and Letters and The Graduate School for providing me
with a Graduate Merit Fellowship and a Dissertation Completion Fellowship, both of which
allowed me the time to dedicate myself fully to my dissertation research and writing.

My gratitude extends also to Dr. Julie Arnold and Dr. Roseanne Hoefel, who first
inspired me to undertake graduate study and who, along with Dr. Bill Palmer, Dr. Carol Bender,
Dr. Ute Stargardt; Dr. Catherine Fobes, and Dr. Chih—Ping Chen, helped me in innumerable
ways as I navigated through graduate school and my first teaching position at Alma College. I
have been blessed by many friends who have helped to make my years in graduate school so
worthwhile and enjoyable, including: Brian Burns, Cathy Burns, Kerry Duff, Karen Erlandson,
Trinna Frever, Anna Goodson, Dawn Gonnan, Amy Nolan, Joy Palmer, Frank Manista, Jay
Rollins, Patty Fayette, Allyson Samuel, Aleticia Tijerina, and Matt Wojack. I especially would
like to tlmnk Jill Anderson, Jennifer Dawson, and Amy Huntley, who have shared this journey
with me since the beginning and have supported, encouraged and inspired me throughout my
doctoral program. Most importantly, I would like to thank my parents, Norman and Rose
Swender, my brothers, Steve, David, and John, and my grandmothers, Leona Swender and

Catherine Pichette. Your love and faith in me have made all this possible.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

“GOTHIFIED HISTOR ” AND ENLIGHTENMENT HISTORIOGRAPHY ............ 1
Choice of Authors and Time Periods ................................................................. 2
Defining Gothic ................................................................................................. 7
Eighteenth-Century Historiography ................................................................. 14
American Historiography ................................................................................. 22
Sentimental History ......................................................................................... 26
Matters of Evidence ........................................................................................ .32
British Women as Readers and Writers of History ......................................... .36
American Women as Readers and Writers of History ..................................... 42
“Gothified Histories” ....................................................................................... 47
Chapter Summary ............................................................................................ 61
Notes to Introduction ....................................................................................... 65

CHAPTER 1

MAKING HISTORY: SOPHIA LEE’S W ............................................. 71
Historical Accuracy of The Recess .................................................................. 73
History and Sentiment in 1131322983 .............................................................. 80
Evidence, Power, and the Historical Record ................................................... 86
Narrative Structure and the Instability of the Historical Record ..................... 95
History’s Gothic Presence .............................................................................. 105
Locations of Cultural Conflict ....................................................................... 113
Notes to Chapter 1 ......................................................................................... 125

CHAPTER 2

“THIS TREW CHRONIQUE”: ANN RADCLIFFE’S
W. ANTIQUARIAN STUDY. AND

WOMEN’S HISTORICAL DISCOURSE ................................................................ 128
Antiquarianism ............................................................................................... 133
The Found Manuscript ................................................................................... 139
The Found Manuscript in Will; .......................................... 150
The Court of Henry III Keeping Festival in Ardenne .................................... 171
The Antiquarian Narrator ............................................................................... 175
Gothic History as Entertainment .................................................................... 180
To Critique a King ......................................................................................... 187
Judging the Artifact. ....................................................................................... 2&3
Notes to Chapter 2 ......................................................................................... 207

vii

CHAPTER 3
THE TERROR OF COMING TOGETHER: SUSANNA ROWSON’S

W ......................................................................................... 213
Rowson’s Life and Background ..................................................................... 216
Family, Nation and History ............................................................................ 219
On Learning History ...................................................................................... 236
Gothified History and the Failure of the Sentimental Narrative .................... 255
Notes to Chapter 3 ......................................................................................... 278

CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................... 282

WOKS CITED ........................................................................................................... 289

viii

Introduction
“Gothified History” and Enlightenment Historiography

Beyond the more popularly studied gothic novels by authors such as Ann Radcliffe,
Matthew Lewis, Charles Brockden Brown, Robert Maturin and Mary Shelley exists a
considerable and neglected body of gothic fiction which overtly combines the gothic tale
with elements of the historical romance. While historical gothic novels may seem to be
forrnalistic failures or fledgling, pre-Walter Scott attempts at the historical novel, closer and
more serious study of these popular fictional works reveals their greater significance within
the context of Enlightenment formulations of national history. Why claim historical
veracity in a tale so obviously full of supernatural and uncanny events? And why were
women writers in the late eighteenth century using this trope of ”gothified history" so
frequently? Arguing for more serious study of the historical gothic, all but absent from
critical discourse, I examine how late eighteenth-century gothic novels write about, dissect,
or portray the idea of history and how, in doing so, they not only illuminate period debates
about the term "history" but also uncover projects of nation-building inherent to history
formation. At the same time, historical gothics also point to an underlying uneasiness
surrounding historiography itself, an uneasiness that stems from a suspicion that
Enlightenment methods of historical production do not serve their proposed function of
constructing a coherent national identity.

Selecting gothic novels set in historically important time periods and featuring
characters concerned with compiling accurate histories, I argue that these works of gothic
fiction by women highlight actual historical moments of cultural clash by surrounding them
with horror, uncertainty, and multiple voices in order to destabilize any semblance of a
unified narrative reflecting a nation's past. Historical gothics like Sophia Lee's mm
(1783, 1785), Ann Radcliffe's WW: (1802, 1824), and Susanna Rowson's
WW (1798) show how multiple or conflicting versions of history coexist,

1

how some histories are deliberately suppressed, and how personal and public histories blur
together in spite of attempts to separate the two. Departing from traditional Enlightenment
histories which emphasize linearity, logical causation, and rational explanations for both
human behavior and cultural progress, these gothic novels continually rupture their own
portrayals of history, emphasize the irrational, and dismantle illusions about history's power,
objectivity, endurance, and ability to formulate an uncontested national subject. Selecting
history itself as a locus of terror and the uncanny, historical gothic novels, through their
strange combination of the supernatural and the historical, provide a unique glimpse into the

cultural uneasiness surrounding attempts at historical representation.

W
In this study, I focus on women’s gothic novels of the 1780s and 17903 that feature

a significant historical presence based upon real historical events and people. I pass over
those novels that simply invoke a generalized past to give a feeling of “Olden Times” and
those novels that may include a vague backdrop of a certain time period, like the reign of
King Henry VIII or the days of the Puritans, but use it mainly for scenery in which to locate
fictional characters. Similarly, I will not use novels that contain historical content but that
lack considerable attention to gothic characteristics and appearances. In the works I
examine, the gothic is central, rather than peripheral, to the novels’ events and narrative
structures, appearing more pervasively than might occur in the form of passing comments
by characters or legends briefly retold for jocular entertainment but never taken seriously or
having much effect in the novel. My focus, aside from drawing attention to a neglected area
of gothic scholarship, allows for a more detailed examination of how “gothified histories”
comment on specific historical maple and events and invoke eighteenth-century
historiography in their own self-conscious constructions of those people and events.
Highlighting how gothic discourse, in particular, deconstructs national history that has been

carefully gathered and conveyed within each novel, I undertake a revaluation of the
seemingly insignificant conjunction of such discourse with historical romance.

I have chosen to focus on novels from the 1780s and the 1790s, a period between
Horace Walpole’s groundbreaking W (1764) on one end and Sir Walter
Scott’s MM! (1814) on the other. The influential Sir Walter Scott, traditionally seen as
the father of the historical novel, brought about such important changes to the way that
history was depicted in British and American fiction as to make the earlier gothic romance’s
portrayal of the past seem outdated, fantastic, and ill-informed. Partly because of Scott’s
important position in the history of the novel, the earlier gothic novels which portray history
have fallen from critical attention and have been accorded inferior status due to the very
traits that mark them as gothic. For example, Nina Baym has argued in her extensive

:.~.0 that Scott’s m
“which established a model for historical fiction and rescued the novel genre from its

 

outcast status, made the Radcliffean gothicism, epistolarism, seduction conventions, and
rhetoric of sensibility in these works look quite obsolete, and they sank from public
consciousness” (153). In her list of early American historical novels that passed from
popularity, she includes gothics like Rowson’s W and Sarah Sayward
Wood’s MW (1800), both of which demonstrate strong British
gothic influences, but she does not return to them again and devotes her study of the
historical novel to those works which came after W. I limit my study to historical
gothic novels before the advent of Scott’s in order to more fully examine them in their own
right, during the time period when they still were popular and numerous.

Within a context of increased scholarly interest in eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century women’s participation in historical discourse, I limit my study to historical gothics
written by women.1 Approaching the gothic novel as a form of historical representation
adopted by women invites a reassessment and expansion of the terms in which “female

gothic” has been defined and analyzed. Gothic fiction has traditionally been divided

according to gender into two categories. In this formulation, male writers such as Edgar
Allan Poe, Matthew Lewis, or Charles Maturin are seen as writing the more graphic and
violent gothics while female authors are seen as writing within a sentimental tradition,
alluding to violence but not explicitly showing it. Ellen Moers first coined the term "female
gothic” in W to describe those suspenseful tales of terror which recreate
woman's fearful position within patriarchy and which, as in the case of W, portray
the uneasiness surrounding woman's experience of the female body and sexuality. Feminist
studies such as Juliann Fleenor's collection of essays W (19$), Kate
Elli8's W (1989). and Eugenia DeLamotte's W
W (1990) continued this trend of studying how
the gothic novel negotiates, decries, or subverts woman's position within patriarchy. Works
typically studied by critics in this tradition include: Ann Radcliffe's W
1151919119 and Wan, Charlotte Bronté's 1mm, Emily Bronté's W,
and Mary Shelley's Wu. Feminist critics in Britain and America have also re-
examined the largely female readership and authorship of gothic novels. Studies such as
Susan Wolstenholme's Wu (1993) or
Vanessa D. Dickerson's W
W (1996) have argued for the importance of studying why women were drawn to
such a form, both as readers and writers. Adopting historical and psycholinguistic
approaches, critics such as Wolstenholme and Dickerson argue that the gothic provided
women writers with an outlet for repressed desire and power, as well as a way of writing
about "the unspeakable."

With the advent in the 1980s of renewed feminist interest in the gothic novel, many
critics of women’s gothic novels have relied on the paradigm of "separate spheres ideology”
that relegates women to the private sphere of domesticity while reserving for men the public
sphere of the world: politics, action, and work. While this ideological perspective can be a

helpful way to examine, at least on the surface, major gothic novels of the eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries, the body of feminist scholarship on the gothic has tended to over-
emphasize this approach, neglecting other important ideas and reproducing the separation of
women's contributions to literary thought from men's. Reliance upon this construct also has
allowed for the neglect of authors who don't fit into the domestic ”female gothic" paradigm.
In examining women’s participation in historical writing and education through a form like
the gothic novel, I view the novels I study as existing in both the public and private sphere,
as these two realms certainly are joined in the production and consumption of history.

Excepting some ghost stories and short fiction, to study nineteenth-century
American gothic traditionally has meant to study Brown, Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne.2
American gothic criticism hasn't developed as solid a body of ”female gothic” works as
British gothic criticism has. As in British feminist scholarship, those studies that do
examine female gothic writers traditionally have focused on domestic ideology and women's
oppressed position within patriarchy. For example, in the 1991 study W
m editors Lynette Carpenter and Wendy Kolman argue for a separate women's
tradition of ghost stories that focuses on concerns about sexuality, women's place in the
home, and women's victimization. It is important to note here that mom of the women
writers commonly associated with the American gothic-Chariotte Perkins Gilman, Mary
Wilkins Freeman, Edith Wharton, Harriet Beecher Stowe-were writing in the mid- to late-
nineteenth century. What about those American gothics written earlier in the century? Why
have they been neglected? Those are questions my study will raise.

In expanding the study of women’s gothic novels to include direct historical
participation and political commentary, 1 add to earlier feminist studies by unearthing
women’s concerns with the horrors outside a circumscribed domestic or sexual realm.
While earlier “female gothic” studies were helpful as projects for recovering women’s
novels and exposing patriarchal oppression, they have also served to simplify the varied
contributions of female gothic novelists. 3 They exclude other novels which do not fit into

the primary definition of “female gothic,” notably, those with more violent and lurid

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content such as Charlotte Dacre’s Zaflqya and, I argue, novels with more explicit political
content and commentary of the sort that can be found in historical gothic novels. In the
novels of Radcliffe, Lee, and Rowson, heroines manipulate political intrigues, undertake
dangerous voyages, participate in battles, and use their historical knowledge to empower and
inspire themselves to carry out great deeds. Rather than reading gothified histories as
fantasies of female power that have no referent in the real world, I link them to women’s
actual education in and writing of history, both of which rose increasingly over the course of
the eighteenth-century. The novels display their authors’ knowledge not just of historical
facts, but also of methods of history gathering, writing, and interpretation. Historical
gothics, whose overt and covert political commentary appears alongside their more
sensational aspects, represent one of many generic forms that women in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries used for the transmission of history and participation in political and
cultural concerns.

Reading women’s gothic novels as contributions to eighteenth-century
conversations about real events of political and national import, I follow in a direction
opened up by recent scholars interested in how the gothic novel registers national or racial

nightmares. These include: Theresa Goddu in W
Nation (1997) and Kari J. Winter inwmmmmm
am e '. to. .' m - ~ :u z - \1 uzr’ 6:: A! r... (1995), who both extend analysis
of the gothic to include the darker moments of America’s past as seen through works such
as Stowe’s W or Jacobs’s WW; and
Cannon Schmiu mummmmmmmmmmmmm
NW (1997) who examines, among other things, how gothic fiction of the late

 

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries both constructs what is “English” and “not-
English” through the portrayal of gothic heroines as stand-ins for a nation besieged by the
foreign, tyrannical Other.‘ My study adds a new facet to examinations of the gothic’s
relationship to nationhood in that it focuses on earlier, lesser-known gothic novels with

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more directly historical narratives (rather than novels that refer generally or symbolically to
such past occurrences as slavery or colonization) and relates gothified histories’
examination of a nation’s past to the practice of historiography itself. Lee’s W,
Radcliffe’s WW, and Rowson’s WM incorporate the quest
for natiomrl identity within their larger historical projects, surrounding such a quest with fear
as well as desire, and interrogate mythologies of national unity and superiority as portrayed
in political history. In these novels, which make conspicuous their own historical function,
the nationalist undertones behind a country’s production of its past come to light, often in
terrible ways.

Recovery of neglected works is one of my purposes in this study. I have chosen to
focus on the well-known authors Sophia Lee, Ann Radcliffe, and Susanna Rowson with the
goal of pointing to other, lesser-known women writers who also wrote in the historical
gothic mode. While Radcliffe and Rowson are famous for other works, and while Lee has
only recently been accorded much scholarly attention, these three women serve as easily
accessible illustrations of women translating their historical knowledge into sensational
fiction. All three women were well—read in British and/or American history. Lee and
Rowson ran well-established schools for girls and included history in the curriculum;
Radcliffe undertook amateur antiquarian studies and historical tours; and Rowson published
books on him! WW. and WW. while not
well-known gothic novels, demonstrate in important ways how the sub-genre of historical
gothic was part of a much larger and more popular eighteenth-century fascination with
history.

mm

In contemporary debates about gothic literature, defining the term ”gothic” poses
several ideological and formal problems. Because my study will challenge some traditional
ways of defining gothic and the privileging of certain texts, both of which have led to a

limited view of the gothic's portrayal of history, it is important to begin here with debates
about definition. How do some definitions exclude authors or texts from study because of
content or status in the canon? How do others break down boundaries such that nearly any
text could be called gothic? Some critics have defined the gothic by saying "I know it when
I see it" and others have refused to define it at all.

The term "gothic” originally described a Germanic tribe, the Goths, who brought
about the fall of Rome in the early Christian era. In the early eighteenth century, this term
came to be associated with anything barbarous or lacking in style; later in the century with
the rising interest in medievalism, ”gothic” could describe a certain type of medieval
architecture or a cultural fascination with Europe's, and particularly Britain’s, feudal past. It
also described a new type of novel by authors such as Sophia Lee and Horace Walpole that
hearkened back to medieval times and featured gloomy settings, aristocratic villains, and
supernatural (or supposed supernatural) thrills. Often criticized as immoral or unrealistic,
gothic romances of this time were nevertheless wildly popular during the period of 1760-
1820. Nineteenth-century definitions of the gothic usually referred to this literature of the
late eighteenth century; it is during the twentieth century that the definitions of the gothic
explode.

In the twentieth century, one of the most common ways to define the gothic has been
to compile a list of typical characteristics, often grouped by time period and country of
authorship. Leslie Fiedler in W is one critic who
divides British and American gothic in his definitions. The early British gothic, in the hands
of authors such as Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis, features such characteristics as
persecuted heroines, descriptions of sublime scenery and ruined castles or abbeys, monks
or patriarchal authority figures as villains, settings in a medieval past (often in southern
Europe) and anti-Catholic and anti-aristocratic sentiments. The early American gothic in the
hands of those like Brown, Hawthorne, Poe and Melville turns inward, exploring the honors
of individual psychology. In American gothic, the castles and ruins are replaced by the

sublimity of the wilderness, the villains are the person's own self or a demonized version of
Indians, and the main character of the novel is no longer a persecuted heroine but a
tormented man, haunted more often by himself than any outside threatening force.
According to Piedler, much of American fiction is gothic, from the early works of Brockden
Brown to the great works of Melville to twentieth-century short fiction of writers like
Flannery O'Connor.

A generation of critics has, for the most part, followed some version of Fredler's
definition. Reference books tend to define the gothic by listing conventions and mentioning
changes over time. For example, W defines the
gothic novel as

A type of romance popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The word

'Gothic' had come to mean 'wild,' 'barbarous' and 'crude,' qualities which writers

found it attractive to cultivate in reaction against the sedate neoclassicism of earlier

18th—century culture. Gothic novels were usually set in the past (most often the

Middle Ages) and in foreign countries (particularly the Catholic countries of

southern Europe); they took place in monasteries, castles, dungeons, and

mountainous landscapes. The plots hinged on suspense and mystery, involving the

fantastic and the supernatural. (383-4)

M. H. Abrams defines the ”gothic novel” similarly in his W and
adds that the term "gothic” has extended to later fictions like Shelley's W or Poe's
short stories which create fearful and gloomy atmospheres, and to works like Dickens'
W, that aren't gothic novels but still contain gothic elements. He includes
American Southern gothic writers like Faulkner and contemporary horror writers like
Stephen King (78-9). "Gothic,” then, can apply to a wide range of novels spanning more
than two hundred years and can cross into other generic boundaries, like the romance, the

sensation novel, and the historical novel.

 

Does this mean that critics are being too sloppy in their definitions or that the gothic
is somehow a failure? Several critics, including Eve K. Sedgwick in W
Won: (1986), have called for a tightening of the definition of gothic. She lists
such conventions as narrative doubling; supernatural appearances; uncanny, dream- or drug-
like states; confessional disclosures, and oppressive environments as important elements in
gothic literature. Though the gothic is difficult to define, according to Sedgwick, critics
need to reign in their recent practice of including almost anything in the circle of the gothic
tradition. Others, like Elizabeth Napier in Wm
MW (1987) find that the gothic's lack of structural
coherence proves it to be an inferior kind of fiction. At best, according the Napier, the
gothic is an earlier working or experiment in novelistic form developed more successfully in
the ”greater” works of (canonical) literature.

Other critics like Teresa Goddu in W (1997) question the motives
behind trying to define gothic as a genre. Goddu is typical of recent critics who find the
gruhic's fragmentation and lack of clear boundaries to be a strength, especially in
deconstructive critical projects. She argues as follows:

Though the gothic foregrounds its generic instability, critics still insist on

categorizing it. The tendency toward 'generic essentializing' in criticism on the

gothic has to do with where this game ranks in the canon's hierarchy. The drive to
order and identify the gothic stems less from a critical desire to discover its
particular essence than from a need to differentiate it from other, 'higher’ literary

forms. (5)

Drawing on Jacques Denida's point in ”The Law of Genre” that the urge to classify stems
from a fear of contagion, Goddu asks whose purposes are served by defining gothic a
certain way and whose ideologies are disrupted by declining to define ”gothic" clearly at all
(8). Instead of listing characteristics or outlining rules the genre follows, she emphasizes its
generic instability, its mutability, its tendency to transgress the boundaries of genre and

10

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period. The gothic's destabilizing effects on a text, a literature, a genre, or a trope become
for Goddu both a strength and an important defining characteristic.

As Goddu shows in her study, defining (or not defining) the gothic has important
implications for the way critics set out to study the literature. Her book's argument
condemns the way in which critics like Fredler have traditionally defined and studied
American gothic~ fixating on the gothic's symbolism and dark inner psychology rather than
its historical, cultural, and political content. This has led to critical neglect of texts which
don‘t fit into that paradigm and, more importantly, the sanitizing of some of the real honors
of slavery and massacre contained both in America's history and its literature. Goddu’s
definition (or lack thereof) highlights the dangers of holding too strongly to the typical
“laundry list” of gothic conventions.

Like Goddu, Cannon Schmitt in W
W states that the gothic is "that genre in which definition is in doubt.
'What am I?’ it asks, echoing the implicit question of its own enigmatic monstrosities" (3).
Her strategy is to deconstruct ways critics have defined gothic in the past. According to
Schmitt, defining gothic literature as those British novels appearing in the 17803 and 90s
and possessing the typical gothic conventions of fearful heroine and twisted passages falls
short for several reasons. It fails to recognize the many sub-categories (horror-gothic,
tenor-gothic, political gothic, oriental gothic), it limits itself to fiction rather than including
other genres, and it forgets the larger cultural and temporal boundaries of the gothic. On the
other hand, she finds it necessary to define the gothic in some way, for "to abandon genre
altogether poses another risk, that of losing sight of important lines of affiliation (intentional
or otherwise) that tie groups of texts together” (6). She calls for a ”recognition that a given
genre functions differentially both in relation to other genres and in relation to itself over
time" (6). Defining the gothic by characteristics can be helpful as long as there is a
”recognition of a genre's difference from itself over time" (8). Aware of the complications
of defining (and thus delimiting) gothic, she adds, ”Such a strategy reveals historicism's

11

dependence upon essentialism, for without an initial essentializing gesture to provide the
ground against which difference can be measured, part of the historicity of a text remains
inaccessible” (8). Schmitt argues that a scholar studying the gothic should thus examine a
gothic work in connection with other similar works and with other genres (romance,
detective story) which it touches. Schmitt calls for an awareness of how no definition can
be an ”exact fit" for this elusive form while maintaining the usefulness of definition as a
starting point for discussion.

My approach to defining the gothic novel will draw strongly from Goddu and
Schmitt. Like Schmitt, I will examine the gothic novel as a genre because this approach
emphasizes the interplay and connection among similar texts, but am careful to recognize
the dynamic nature of the genre, which continually shape-shifts as it interacts with other
types of writing. My study’s focus is more specific; my concern is not with the larger
gothic discourse as it enters a number of genres through several centuries but with one
particular kind of novel, in this case, the historical gothic novel. Recognizing how the gothic
changes over time and how it encapsulates a number of different genres and subgenres, I
will concentrate on those novels from a short time period in the late eighteenth century that
share common characteristics usually associated with the eighteenth-century gothic novel-
with the important addition of significant attention to actual events and people from British
and American history. My definition of the gothic novel thus begins with an essential
reliance upon the basic defining characteristics of the late eighteenth-century gothic novel,
such as suspenseful plots, double narratives, horrible and frightening occurrences,
impending doom or violence, supernatural appearances, oppressive or fearful environments,
explorations of psychological states, destabilizing or disjointed narrative strategies, etc.

At the same time, the unstable boundaries of the larger area of gothic discourse
particularly interest me, and, like Goddu, I will strain against some of the traditional ways of
defining gothic, arguing for more critical awareness about what defining characteristics

scholars have highlighted at the expense of others. As I eXplain above, reliance upon a

12

definitive “female gothic” tradition has led to the neglect of gothic novels, like the historical
gothic novel, which do not fit that category; this neglect has limited how we see women’s
contributions through this form to matters of public and political import. Another important
departure from traditional ways of defining gothic will be my inclusion of American gothic
texts which adopt "British" gothic characteristics, like European (or European-like) settings,
heroines persecuted by white aristocratic villains, and castles or abbeys. Critics still neglect
early American gothic novels, like Susanna Rowson's Wei (1798), Sally
Wood's WWW (1&0), and Isaac Mitchell's mm (1811),
because they are influenced by European models. Louis Gross in W
Gothic (1989) and Donald A. Ringe in W: (1982) both briefly trace how
British gothic novels influenced American writers, but then focus on those works departing
from such influence, works that now make up the American gothic canon. Both critics set
out to explore a distinctly American tradition; links to nationalism appear even in the
language they use. When describing how Brown invented the American gothic, Gross
states, "The American Gothic novel and the American republic share a common birth period;
twenty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the first American to
make his living at writing, Charles Brockden Brown, wrote the fust American novel, the
Gothic tale of the Wieland family” (5). In other words, just as the new country declared its
independence from Britain, so did Brown's new form of the gothic differentiate itself from
British models.

These critical views of the American gothic novel rely upon the nationalist
assumption that to be truly American, the American gothic novel must be separate from
British influence, striking out on its own in the uncharted wilderness of innovation. Not
surprisingly, earlier novels dealing with the idea of America but which also incorporate
European characters, settings and plot devices have been relegated to an inferior sphere in
critical inquiry~~less ”American” or less technically unified. What about the blank spaces in
the history of the American gothic novel filled by books that utilized some combination of

13

American and British influence? I have found that several novels in this group provide a
different kind of glimpse into early ideas about history, national identity and the relationship
between America and Britain than the more canonical American gothics do. By examining
American and British gothic novels side by side, including those novels that show a
blending of influence, I will allow for new ways of understanding how the literatures of
these two countries intermingle in this period. The gothic novel, with its special ability to
destabilize boundaries, seems particrrlarly suited to such a critical approach. As I emphasize
the gothic novel's ability to destabilize boundaries of identity and nationhood within a text
by adopting history as its locus of terror, I will demonstrate how the genre's elusiveness can
destabilize the critical separation between British and American gothic as well. Examining
the interactions among various discourses concerning history, fiction and gothic novels in
Britain and America in the late eighteenth century will allow me room to explore how the
gothic shifts shape, blends into other genres, and destabilizes unified categories of meaning
that scholars and readers have created.

W
In my study of the gothic novel’s intersections with national history, I approach the

subject of eighteenth-century historiographical concerns from the viewpoint of a literary
scholar. While informed by historical scholarship, my main focus centers upon how the
gothic novel portrays the idea of history, its uses, and its transmission. I therefore set out to
examine historyasatropeinasetofliterary texts, ratherthan towriteatheory ofhistory or
to explore the many complexities associated with the rise of historiography in the
eighteenth-century. I will, however, devote this section to a summary of the major issues
germane to my argument, most notably the use of sentimentalisrn in historical portrayal; the
tensions between classical and modern Enlightenment methods of historical composition;
and the place folk culture, artifacts, and legends held in efforts to define historical evidence.’

14

Each novel I study will hearken in some way to these issues in its portrayal of historical
events and in its “lessons” for how to read and react to history.

Their histories full of dramatic events and highly sentimentalized language and
characters, Wfinmdsfllmdflflls. and W adopt 3 m6“
style not unlike that found in histories by men like David Hume and William Robertson.‘
In addition, Lee, Radcliffe, and Rowson devote attention to the accurate portrayal of
character and to the larger “manners and customs” of cultures and ordinary pe0ple, a trend
also seen in the rising modern philosophical method of historiography, which was shifting
away from the classical method’s focus on grand political events and people after the
manner of the Greek and Roman histories. By contextualizing the historical gothic novel
more directly within the eighteenth-century’s shifting historiographical methods,
philosophies, and readerships, I show that it is part of a larger discussion about how history
was to be portrayed and judged; indeed, I show that historical gothic novelists are more
deliberate in both their historiographical methods of composition and their portrayal of
historical events and characters in fiction than has been discussed. I am careful not to claim
that the gothic novel, particularly as written by women, is separate from these larger
movements in its subversion of the unified, linear narrative structure, for indeed, such
ruptures were occurring in other histories written at the time as part of the shift toward
broader subjects and scopes in modern histories. What the three gothic novels in my study
do, however, is draw attention to and surround with horror the tensions between older and
more modern historiographical methods, as well as the power structures involved in them.
Gothic moments undercut the sentimental histories crafted by Lee, Radcliffe, and Rowson
and open up a contested space wherein alternate forms of interpretation, representation, and
transmission of experience throughout history enter.

David Hume’s famous assertion, “I believe this to be the historical age and this the
historical nation” (Hume, Tm 155), points not only to the eighteenth century’s growing

interest in history, but also to history’s importance to a sense of a nation’s distinct identity.

15

Numerous histories were published during this century, such as Edward Gibbon’s popular
WW. Histories about Britain also began more widely to
appear in print. For example, Sir William Temple’s multi-volume WW
England, written by a number of contributors and following the classical historiographical
style, had 780 initial subscribers and enjoyed several reprints as well as a revised edition
(Levine 168). Other histories about Britain included Hume’s W,
William Robertson’s MW, Geoffry Keating’s WM
Ireland, John Lewis’s W, and James Macpherson’s W
W7

The emergence of modern historiography is now commonly located in the
eighteenth century. Eighteenth—century beliefs about historical representation, including that
the past can be accurately discovered and portrayed, that it is culturally important to perform
historical work, that it is the historians’ duty to collect evidence and artifacts in the quest for
history-as well as to edit and critique such evidence-, and that there exists a concrete
“truth” to be discovered about the past have all been aptly depicted by contemporary
historians of history.8 Related ideas which became more important in the century involved
the belief in human progress, the reliance on models of scientific empiricism, and the
description of history as a coherent, linear process moving steadily and clearly onward.
Judith Wilt sums up what she calls “The Universal liberal History of Western Culture”
which “ imagined a human communal pattern moving psychologically from the irrational
toward the rational, and politically from the sacred to the economic, while the horizon of
expectations widened toward the accommodation of moderate change” (301-302). For
Enlightenment historians, impressions of the past ought to be objective, separate from
religious or political bias, and based on reason and realism. As Jayne Lewis points out
about the eighteenth-century, “New British histories prided themselves on their use of
common sense and shared standards of evidence, especially as these diffused the violent
partisan fervor that had surcharged the past” (Mm 120).

16

at.”

4

The development of historiography was, of course, more complicated. Mark Salber
Phillips in his study of eighteenth-century historiography and sympathy, W
Sentimt, argues that history was continually framed and refrarned as different historical
genres interacted with one another and as different understandings of history’s purposes
and representations shifted according to changing cultrual needs. As a starting point, he
describes two major approaches to history’s concerns and purposes, the classical approach
and the modern philosophical approach, pointing out that their coexistence can help explain
the variety of historical writings in the period. The classical approach, based on Greek and
Roman models, presents history as a grand narrative of political events and people, offering
them as models for virtuous public life and valuing truth, order, style, moral instruction, and
impartiality. At the same time, rising public interest in history’s ordinary people, everyday
lives and activities, in short, wider social and cultural aspects, brought about a new approach
to history, which he calls modern “philosophical history” (16).

As the boundaries of classical history expanded to include different subject matter,
“it became increasingly hard to think of history as exclusively concerned with the narrative
of political action” (17). Furthermore, “as a definition of history’s subject matter, ‘action’
itself would need to give way to more inclusive categories of experience” (17). As the
boundaries of what counted as history widened, the “new emphasis on manners and
opinion as the foundation of social experience radically undercut the authority of the
traditional narrative of public events. As a result it became a commonplace to decry the
emptiness of conventional histories with their stories of kings and generals” (56). Classical
models of historiography still held an important place, however, even in modern style
histories, and fulfilled the public’s taste for classical standards of literary composition.
Even in histories with an expanded modern focus and approach to history, the more
traditional Enlightenment historiographical method based on the classical model and
following Enlightenment mores still held precedence. Regarding historical composition and
reading, Phillips explains, “The link between linearity and public life was deeply held and

17

far from trivial. Statecraft provided history with a coherent and dignified subject, while
clarity of form made history a worthy instrument of public instruction” (81). The idealized
conceptionthathistoryfollow alinearcourse ofcause and effect, aswell asthatitreflect
standards of unity and rrrimesis, nevertheless clashed with the variety of forms that arose in
response to newer understandings of historiographical practice. Both approaches to
historical discourse appeared in much of later eighteenth-century histories, creating a
tension that undermined “some of the central assumptions on which classical politics and
historiography were founded. The resulting experimentation with a variety of forms and
modes of historical representation clearly reveals the pressure of new interests not easily
assimilated to a unitary history of public events” (81). Rather than viewing these two
streams of thought as separate, then, Phillips argues that the classical humanist and modern
philosophical approaches to historiography were both at work in the historical writings of
the period, often in the same text.” He contends, “Accepting the idea that both outlooks are,
in fact, characteristic expressions of this time involves some complication, but it surely
offers a more rounded understanding of the expectations that eighteenth-century audiences
brought to their historical reading” (15).

The classical and modern philosophical models of historiography were connected to
larger debates about classical and contemporary politics and culture, as well as how to view
Britain’s own past.lo When looking to the past for models of public life, political systems,
and moral virtue, which histories ought one to study? Hearkening to the ancient Greco—
Roman histories and other writings, those holding to the classical standard viewed these
ancient cultures as the pinnacle of civilization and the arts. For many classically educated
men, “history was read primarily to inform the citizen or the statesman how best to comport
himself in public life. Classical histories embodied the sum of political wisdom and
experience and furnished the perfect models of government, laws, and men. The best
modern histories could merely attempt to imitate them” (Levine 159). Virtue and truth,
because unchanging, could be taught tlnough mimesis and applied to current-day situations;

18

history was less a mapping of progress and more a lesson to be learned, if not a record of
the decline of the present times. Those influenced by Enlightenment ideals and the modem
approach to history emphasized history as a record of human progress, one that showed
mankind’s continuing improvement and that necessitated further study of the manners and
customs of various cultures, not only the great political events and models of ancient times.
These different approaches to studying history placed Britain’s present in relation to the
past in different lights. As Robert Moynihan points out, viewing history as the story of
continuing cultural progress, rather than as a recession from a superior golden age,
particularly suited those moving for political and social change. Not benefiting from
traditional hierarchies and social structures, outsiders, revolutionaries, and social reformers
could look ahead to the inevitable progress and change coming in the future—a future which,
of course, would link their own particular cause with social improvement. By contrast, he
states, writings “celebrating the golden age and the decline of the present has, and had,
social consequences, either by supporting a particular but temporary status quo, by
propagandizing class bias . . . by advocating a hoped for public admiration of monarchical
authority and order, or simply by being overtly reactionary for the sake of property” (180).
He finds that the modern view that history is dynamic clashed with the more conservative
view, wherein “time itself becomes one of the topics of refuge, its essential hypotheses
unvarying from the acceptable ‘ancients’, no matter what the nature of evidence is that may
be introduced for refutation” (180). The modern approach’s expanding subject matter, as
well as its increasing devotion to Enlightenment progress, allowed for greater representation
of those traditionally excluded from high classical histories and for the incorporation of
newer cultural trends, such as the rising importance of trade and commerce.“

Shifting historiographical methodologies and differing uses of the past to describe
contemporary political and cultural positionings had important ramifications for national
identity. One criticism leveled against those privileging classical histories and models was
that the privileging of Greco-Roman history and political structures emphasized other

19

cultures at the expense of Britain’s own historical and cultural foundations. Scholars knew
more about classical languages and artifacts than about Britain’s ancient Celtic or Saxon
languages or historical evidence (Levine 159—60). How could one be a judge of Britain’s
past when so little was known of it and when standards from foreign cultures were applied
to it? Looking into Britain’s Celtic and Roman past, studying the languages of the British,
and examining cultural artifacts to fill in the gaps of recorded history all became concerns of
the modern historian. The eighteenth century saw a renewed fascination with antiquities
from the Middle Ages, as well as writings from and about the period of 11m- 1650, a
fascination wherein “the despised Dark Ages began to assume the sentimental glow of
adventurous, Utopian centuries” (Var-ma, W 24). This interest in specifically
British landmarks, historical sites, and antiquities “nurtured a shared sense of history,
evincing the proud tradition that, presumably, made modern Britain ‘great”’ (Lewis, Mm
107).

As the notion of history representing the progress of a nation took stronger hold on
the British imagination, constructing the past in order to emphasize that progress became
more visible and more important. Just as Enlightenment historiography in general strove to
create a linear, coherent, and accurate narrative, so too did the nationalist impulse following
it. Indeed, “Georgian historiography may be seen as the verbal equivalent of a national
monument-«as an attempt to create a shared and ultimately self-congratulatory impression of
the past” (Lewis, M 120). In order to create this shared past, historical conflicts and
differences needed to be suppressed in favor of the nationalist cause. As Linda Colley
explains in her study of British nationalism, W,
creating and believing in the fiction of national unity based on a shared and unified past
allowed the British to “define themselves as a single people not because of any political or
cultural consensus at home, but rather in reaction to the Other beyond their shores. . . .
Britishness was superimposed over an array of internal differences in response to contact
with the Other, and above all in response to conflict with the Other” (6). In other words, the

20

idea of nation depended upon the fictions of homogeneity and of the “lightness” of the
nation’s shared history. Narratives of cultural and political progress could be invoked to
explain away violent conflicts of the past-the present structures of government could be
said to have evolved away from such mistakes.

One had to be careful not to disparage moments and people from Britain’s history
too much, however, for that might throw doubt upon the foundations of the culture. This
problem could be addressed by calling upon a transcendent British cultural and moral
superiority that had always existed but was continually becoming more evident as it
unfolded in modern—day structures. Maggie Kilgore notes how British histories could
depictconflictsofthepastasstoriesofafall fromgraceremedied byaretumtoamore
original state of harmony that had already existed~a sort of return prophesied by British
history itself (1415). A fundamental “Britishness” reasserts itself and thus also
contributes to the national story of a unified culture and people, as well as the continuing
existence of a Britain marked by a tradition of liberty and justice. The idea of an “ancient
constitution” representing specifically British values is one configuration of this belief in an
essential Britain that had existed throughout history. As Kilgour explains, “The use of the
myth of the ancient constitution throughout the eighteenth century is a manifestation of a
recurrent British argument that a better future is to be found by recovering the past” and
returning to “first principles” (15).

As I place Radcliffe’s We and Lee’s mm: more strongly
within eighteenth-century historiographical concerns, I will emphasize how their gothic
conventions engage in history’s national myth-makin , particularly how gothic conventions,
when combined with the historical content within the novels, highlight apprehensions about
historiography’s functions, connections to national identity, and shifting approaches to
portraying the past. With their emphasis on British history, British artifacts, and larger
social and cultural histories, these two novels follow patterns of modern historiography. In

looking back upon past political conflicts, however, they do not subscribe to Enlightenment

21

l“..“

I

theories of progress which could explain away moments of historical violence under the
aegis of continual cultural advancement; nor do they idealize a golden age of the past in
order to point to current-day moral and political inadequacies, as a more classical approach
might. Instead, they directly engage with the application of modern historiographical values
to narratives of national self-identification that rely upon progress and portray a unified
national people. Conflicts between political figures, such as Elizabeth and Mary Queen of
Scots, or between peoples, such as the Irish and the English, are left unresolved or
unexplained. Characters come to realize directly that whether one’s history is told depends
on one’s political position, and history’s objectivity is continually undercut as several
historical methods and subjects contest one another for primacy. When the various fictional
historians, including the authors, in W, and W discover
moments in history wherein progress is interrupted by political strife or cultural backsliding,
rather than finding refuge in narratives of progress or of a distant golden age, they must face
the glare of national history’s inability to cover its bloody tracks or to advance in any type
of predictable or reliable way.

WW

Later eighteenth-century American writers shared in the historiographical
developments in Britain and were influenced by Enlightenment historians.” In my study, I
rely particularly on these similarities, such as the belief in mankind’s progress and the
shifting importance according to classical and modern historiographical methods. However,
as a background to Rowson’s W and its connection to British historical
gothic writings, some special American developments should be mentioned here, including
the effects of applying American millennialisrn and American exceptionalist rhetoric to
historiography in order to explore or create a distinct American identity. Both developments
color the way in which time and American progress in history were conveyed.‘3

22

In the earlier Puritan tradition of such writers as Cotton Mather or Jonathan
Edwards, history rested in God’s hands and was part of a larger plan outside human
experience or knowledge. As the “city on the hill,” America was part of the unfolding of
God’s millennium, the coming of Christ, and the end of history. Outside time, America
acted within a teleological cycle of repetition leading up to its final fruition in this the New
Israel. The late eighteenth century continued to be influenced by millennial thought, and
histories still reflected a belief that the coming millennium would mark history’s closure.
Baym notes of this closure as seen in divine histories, “From the standpoint of this finality,
narrators of world or national or even local history could assign true meaning to every event.
Students of history saw God’s work; historians played God, momentarily escaping the
temporal, finite sphere” (Baym 46). Biblical time was historically true; the Bible was a real
historical record. Rowson herself states in her 1811 W, “The Bible
is the most authentic history, and should precede the study of all others; it is termed sacred
history. It is different from all other history whatever. It is the history of God himself”
(54—5 qtd. in Baym 47). Under this enduring association of American history and
millennial thought, America represented the continuation, and eventually would be the
culmination, of Christian Scripture.“ America existed outside history, and was thus
immrme from previous countries’ historical patterns, concerns, and, by extension, failures.
As Dorothy Ross explains, “America thus represented a radical break in history and a
radical breakthrough of God’s time into secular history. The country’s progress would be
the unfolding of the millennial seed, rather than a process of historical change” (912).

Another branch of historiography in the early national period, the republican
historical perspecfive grew out of an increasing secularization of history and thought,
influenced by European historians such as Hume and Robertson and incorporating the idea

of human progress and historical causation. Rather than being focused on God’s plan
outside historical time, this view of history relied upon a belief in the universal values of the
people, the polis, throughout history. Eighteenth-century republican historiography in

23

America was still strongly intertwined with the Christian millennial project, though, and
whether in terms of millennial fulfillment or republican destiny, American historical
discourse reflected a continued strategy of exceptionalism, setting America’s place in time
as separate from that of European countries, which were considered sites of moral and/or
political decline. According to Baym, a large number of historical writings from the late
eighteenth-century into the antebellum period follow a particular “master narrative of world
history”, in which “nations are the agents and subjects of history, and the globe is
becoming progressively more Protestant and republican. There have been Protestant
nations, there have been republics; but because the United States is both, it is the world’s
most advanced nation, the most advanced nation the world has ever known” (7). In the face
of Europe’s failure to achieve this pinnacle, the American republic represented a vanguard
for the spread of Protestant republicanism. “Until such time as Protestant republics
covered the face of the earth, the United States stood as the only nation whose existence
guaranteed the validity of the entire scheme” (55). For, the fear of decaying like other
republics in past cycles of history still affected America’s self-conceptions of its position in
the present and the future.

Existing in history meant being part of an inevitable cycle of decline over time. How
to escape this cycle of decay and corruption? As Dorothy Ross explains in her study of
historical consciousness in the early American republic, the republican historical perspective
saw America’s new democratic government model as a rupture and departure from any
other previous historical pattern. “By creating a new kind of democratic republic, America
appeared to have solved the ills that had always destroyed republics in the past. The cyclical
view of history in classical republicanisrn began to give way to the possibility of perpetual
life” (912). Several strategies that attempted to place America outside the cycles of history
allowed for this kind of timeless existence. As discussed above, viewing history in terms of
millennial ideology represented one strategy. Another strategy involved seeing America as
the fulfillment of universal values that had always been present, always would be, and had

24

only been clouded by human interference in the past. In America, these universal values
reach their pinnacle of progress in the establishment of democracy and the establishment of
the Constitution, both of which could be understood as events in Christian and republican
time (912). Moving from the late eighteenth into the early nineteenth century, universal and
more secular values concerned historians, who “were seeking types, not of the coming of
Christ, but of the triumph of ‘liberty.’ Each instance of the struggle between liberty and
tyranny, each emergence of embryonic democracy, could be regarded as a type of the great
culminating example of the victory of liberty over tyrannynthe American Revolution.” (Bell
8). Just as in millennial thought, American republican ideology relied upon exceptionalism
to establish America’s history and to solve problems related to placing America in relation
to European conceptions of time.

Recent critics comparatively studying American and European historical discourse
have called for a greater understanding of the influences that connected America to Europe
in a manner that does not rely on a repetition of American exceptionalism wherein American
historical discourse transforms any European influences into a new, unique style or
ideology. Exploring why historicism arrived in America later than it did in Europe, for
example, Ross argues that while the millennial project in the American republic is certainly
foundational to American historical consciousness, “that formulation should be a beginning
rather than the end of our understanding” (913). She points out, for example, that
Americans were reading European historicist literature and questions what effect on
American historicism came about from within because of this transatlantic interaction
(914 ." Karen O’Brien in her study of histories of the American Revolution examines
how a history like David Ramsay’s Won (1789), can
pose “a challenge to this American exceptionalist literary framework by presenting itself as
a part of an Enlightenment European historical tradition” (2) in such a manner that, rather
than declaring independence from European Enlightenment historical traditions, actually
shows that “the United States of America is to have no historical destiny over and above the

25

norms of European political and cultural patterns of development” (2). This strategy, rather
than trying to separate America’s recent history from that of any other republic, “prefers a
generic recasting of American history as an interlude of disorder prior to the recovery of the
civilized, European norm of the centralized state” ( .‘6 Like Ross and O’Brien in their
studies of history, I examine Rowson’s W in terms of how its literary
depiction of history creates an American history that is joined to European history as part of
its longer narrative, not separate from it. The epic family history she creates in order to
depict her larger historical narrative of America’s colonization symbolizes the connection to
the European “family” whole in which her history of the New World participates.
Depicting moments from both English and American history, Rowson does not rely on
American exceptionalist ideology or significantly change her historical methods, themes or
characters as she moves between the two countries. When the gothic’s destabilizing force
enters into this construction, the idealized myth of a connection between America and
Britain is revealed as a fiction. Gothic tenor in this novel results from this rupture between
America and Britain. The comforting and inspiring rhetoric of American exceptionalism
becomes instead a frightening experience of being alone, rather than independent. In
W, Rowson will quickly hide this fear under a continuing narrative of
Protestant republicanism. but to do so, she must emphasize how America’s history of
progress is part of a larger progress encompassing both sides of the Atlantic.

Sanflmtlrlfllsm:

Humanity will draw a veil over this part of her character which it cannot approve, and
may perhaps, prompt some to impute some of her actions to her situation, more than
to her dispositions; and to lament the unhappiness of the former, rather than accuse
the perverseness of the latter. Mary’s sufferings exceed, both in degree and in
duration, those tragical distresses which fancy has feigned to excite sorrow and
commiseration; and while we survey them, we are apt altogether to forget her
frailties, we think of her faults with less indignation, and approve of our tears, as if
they were shed for a person who had attained much nearer to pure virtue.

(Robertson, Wand 3-67)‘7

26

The above quote could very well have come from any number of sentimental
romances in the eighteenth century. Full of lamentation, tears, and sorrow at considering the
sufferings of a woman, the short sampling pulls on the heartstrings of its readers. That it
appeared in Robertson’s W
W and depicts Mary Queen of Scots highlights the presence of sentimental
discourse in both fictional and historical writing. Scholars like April Alliston and Mark
Phillips have brought greater attention to the role sympathy played in the reading and
composition of eighteenth-century histories. While historiographical texts certainly
continued to serve a public and active purpose, in the later half of the eighteenth century,
shifting interest toward interiority and fellow feeling brought about changes in the way
history was approached. More and more historical writers in the eighteenth century
stressed the importance of sympathy as the building block of social bonds and, by
extension, of culture (Phillips, Society 126). Changing requirements in historical subject
matter to include social histories and character study opened up new expectations and
demands for readers and writers of history. “For the first time, evocation became an
important goal of historical narrative, and sympathetic identification came to be seen as one
of the pleasures of historical reading” (xii). While the classical standard of using mimetic
representation to model ideal behavior for public life did not disappear, history
“significantly widened its scope as it created a new social narrative that could stand beside
and even subsume the conventional accormt of political action” (xii). Rather than only
imitating ideal models, history’s educational value rested also in relating the more ordinary
events and people closer to the reader’s experiences, and these in turn would become more
realistic models for morality and behavior (127). When the reader could sympathize with
the historical people about whom he or she read, history could transport that reader into the
past, leading to greater understanding and educational value. Phillips explains:

it is important to see that sympathetic reading was part of a crucial expansion of the

aims of historical writing in the course of which the traditional historical task of

27

1"

mimesis was reinterpreted to include the evocation of past experience. History

enlarged its scope to incorporate the wider spectrum both of actors and experiences

that made up a modern, commercial, and increasingly middle-class society.

Needless to say, much of this expanded scope lay beyond the concerns of traditional

historical narration, with its exclusion of private life or everyday matters. Thus the

reorientation of history to the idea of evocation presumed new ways of representing

the past, as well as new ways of reading the text. (127)

Readers could now involve themselves in the past through feeling, even “experiencing,” not
just reading about, history. This engagement between reader and text led to a new
understanding of history’s function, one that “reconceived the reader’s engagement with
the historical narrative in more inward and sentimental terms” (103).

The reliance upon character as an important aspect of historical portrayal not only
catered to newer interests of readers and writers of history; it also played an important role
in some of the problems opened up by expanding historical method and subject matter in
the eighteenth century. When historical truths of incident did not fully explain the events of
history or did not even exist, historians could fall back upon the truth of character to “fill in
the gaps” of their linear narratives. As Alliston explains in her discussion of these two
different kinds of historical truth, historians like Hume and Robertson could

locate the probability of historiography-4 form of narrative that might, like romance

but unlike the novel, correctly include improbable incidents—primarily in their

descriptions of character. Character occupies a central position in their narratives;
whenever a major historical figure dies, his or her character is described at length, in

a static manner close to what French writers of the previous century had called the

portrait moral. The implied assumption of the stability of character is crucial to

eighteenth-century historiography because whenever doubt arises as to the truth of
incident—as to what exactly did happen (and for want of conclusive evidence such
doubt often does arise) «historians depend upon the truth of character, as they have

28

established it, to make probable judgments of how a particular personage must have

acted. Thus, the truth of character plays an important role in constructing the truth

of incident. (Alliston, “Introduction” xvii).

As Alliston’s words suggest, modern eighteenth-century historians not only faced the
inability of a history to be complete; they also deve10ped a strategy to make it seem
complete. Relying upon logical explanations of behavior and applying parts of a historical
figure’s known behavior to unknown motivations and gaps in historical evidence, historians
could still craft a linear progression of cause and effect. To do this, however, it was
necessary to assume consistency in human actions and construct the “truth of character,”
much like writers of novels and romances were charged to do."

This reliance upon character affected the role of the historian, who, because of the
importance truth of character held for constructing a historical narrative, also had to adopt
the persona of someone who was a good judge of character, one who could, in short, act as a
man or woman of feeling relaying perceptions of past persons and events in a way that
stimulated readers’ emotional connections to history. In “Ev’ry Lost Relation” Jayne E.
Lewis has discussed the concept of the “Humean historian”, a writer who “poses as a man
of feeling, one who does occasionally summon up pathetic episodes in order to install
general narrative paradigms in his readers, and in order to infuse history with the ironic
values of modern sentimental culture” (Lewis, “Lost Relation” 174). Historians must be
sensitive to the nuances of human mofivation and character, not just to recorded facts of
incident, in order to write a true history.

For an example of how a history combines sentimental portrayal with more public
historical events, I turn to one of the most famous eighteenth-century historians, David
Hume. A 1762 piece in W examining Hume’s second volume of Ihe
Wand exemplifies both the sentimental flavor of Hume’s historical discourse
and the role of historian (and reviewer) as the “man of feeling” highlighting for his readers
moments from England’s past arousing pity and sympathy. I include in full the selection

29

from Hume’s History chosen by the reviewer; note how he in turn quotes Hume at length in
order to narrate an entire episode for his readers’ benefit-and emotional response. Also
note the similarities between Hume’s narration of the flight of Margaret, wife of Henry VI,
and a flight of a fictional heroine that might be found in a novel such as Radcliffe’s The
W”
The fate of the unfortunate royal family, after this defeat (at the battle of Hexharn),
was very singular. Margaret, flying with her son into a forest, where she
endeavoured to conceal herself, was beset, during the darkness of the night, by
robbers, who either ignorant or regardless of her quality, despoiled her of her rings
and jewels, and treated her with the utmost indignity. The partition of this rich booty
raised a quarrel among them; and while their attention was thus engaged, she took
the opportunity of making her escape with her son into the thickest of the forest,
where she wandered for some time, over-spent with hunger and fatigue, and sunk
with terror and affliction. While in this wretched condition, she saw a robber
approach with his naked sword; and finding that she had no means of escape, she
suddenly embraced the resolution of trusting entirely for protection to his faith and
generosity. She advanced towards him, and presenting to him the young prince,
called out to him, Here, my friend, I commit to your care the safety of your King ’5
son. The man, whose humanity and generous spirit had been obscured, but not
entirely lost, by his vicious course of life, was struck with the singularity of the
event, and charmed with the confidence reposed in him; and he vowed, not only to
abstain from all injury against the princess, but to devote himself entirely to her
safety and protection. (qtd. in “Review of Hume’s Wand” 92—93)
Robbers, stolen jewels, the flight of a solitary woman in the night, the appeal to a frightening
stranger’s humanity and sensibility—all characteristics of gothic romance, and apparently, of
history as well. Rather than listing only the facts of a queen’s flight (which date, where she
hid, etc.), Hume portrays it as a romance in order to pique the imagination and draw upon

30

’I

reader sympathy. The reviewer, the interpreter of this exciting story, next reminds readers
of the necessary reaction to these events:
Distress, like this, must move our pity, even though the sufferers were in the meanest
station. But when we consider it as the lot of an unfortunate pair, accustomed to the
pomp of royalty, and softened by all the blandishments of ease and luxury, then our
compassion increases in proportion as the extreme reverse of fortune must make
their sense of misery the stronger. (93)
That the reviewer takes up such space in the review to comment favorably upon Hume’s
skill in evoking readers’ emotions points to one of the standards applied to written history:
that it engage the reader’s sympathy. The reviewer offers up his emotional reaction to the
history. In doing so, he imagines a larger audience joining him in pity and compassion;
indeed, he may even be effecting such emotional reactions in that audience.
WW9 and WM 811 ml)! h«Wily 0n
sentimental discourse in their portrayals of history. The novels’ histories are full of highly-
charged events, concern with inner feelings and motivations, “historian characters” who
sigh or shed tears over the events they relate, and strong sympathetic bonds among the
fictional and real people who make up each novel’s world. Self-conscious narrators instruct
the reader on the appropriate way to read and react to history; they also interrupt the
histories with their own emotional responses to it. An understanding of the similarities
between sentimental discourse as found in eighteenthoentury novels and histories lays an
important groundwork for discovering what happens when gothic discourse enters the fray.
In my examination of the way in which Lee, Radcliffe, and Rowson combine history with
the gothic, I will draw upon recent work that explores the interrelatedness of the gothic and
sentimental traditions. For example, Marianne Nobel, in her examination of Susan
Warner’s novel W finds that “a core of perverse, gothic pleasures lies at
the heart of nineteenth-century sentimental fiction” (163) wherein “the sympathizing reader
vicariously experiences a textual victim’s pain” (164). The sympathetic response depends

31

upon another’s suffering to stimulate compassion and, by extension, pleasure at achieving
the proper emotional response-as well as an understanding of being safe from actual pain.
Nobel discovers a similarity in the way that gothic fiction, in its evocation of readerly
shudders “also stimulates pleasure by exploiting the terror of tortured victims” (164). In
applying this comparison to earlier gothic fiction in Britain and America, I will view the
interconnectedness of the gothic and the sentimental from a different angle, one in which
gothic discourse interrupts or even prevents sentimental discourse from functioning. In the
novels I examine, gothic moments have the power to recast the innocent as the dangerous,
the familiar as the unknown, and the loving as the abhorrent.20 Where sentimental
discourse is put to use in the construction of history, gothic discourse breaks history apart
and reveals the textual and cultural disjunctions which lie beneath it, as well as the historical
horror and oppression that are intimately linked with historical transmission (or lack
thereof). Whether by pointing out the failure of relying upon truth of character in its
representations of inconsistent, mad and unstable historical figures, as in Lee’s W;
by illustrating the dangers to historical accuracy and personal safety that “feeling” history
risks, as in Radcliffe’s We; or by presenting historical events so horrific
and unreal that sentimental narratives of family love and intercultural inclusion appear as
meek fantasies with no real-world authority, as in Rowson’s Wire), the gothic
interrupts and eventually overwhelms the sentimental current in historical discourse and the

uses to which sentimentalisrn is dedicated in the writing of history.

W
A final eighteenth-century historiographical issue related to my discussion of the

gothic concerns alternate definitions of historical evidence, definitions still influenced by
pre-Enlightenment assumptions. “History” in the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries could still include legend, folklore and superstition. Sometimes, these “proofs”
were the only way to record or remember the past;21 in the absence of other types of

32

evidence, they could provide historical insight, particularly about a country’s ancient history.
Robert Mayer in his work W
W explains that gossip, fiction, polemic, and marvels could be understood or
incorporated as history or fact. Seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century historical
discourse “featured a taste for the marvelous, a polemical cast, a utilitarian faith, a
dependence upon personal memory and gossip, and a willingness to tolerate dubious
material for practical purposes, all of which led to the allowance of fiction as a means of
historical representation” (4). Sometimes, applying these different tastes to historical
discourse could lead to misunderstandings about what was history and what was fiction;
literary forgeries of history, as well as more innocent mistakes by readers, resulted.22
Works such as Joseph Glanville’ s Wm
zu . '10: u. .. ..~ (1681), Defoe’ sprefacetothe 17275333);
MW and Cotton Mather’s Wattle
W (1693) exemplify late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century’s interest
in and, sometimes, belief in things supernatural. Works on history and research into the

 

customs or literatures of the past could also adopt a distinctly gothic tone. This was
especially apparent in works, fictional or otherwise, concerned with medieval times. One
such work that included the magical, supematural, and intensely emotional effects typical of
the gothic tradition is Bishop Percy’s WW (1765). The
preface to this collection, “An Essay on the Ancient Minstrels,” “embodied original
research into ancient customs, folklore, and the Middle Ages. Percy recommended his little
volume by saying that ‘the poetry of the Scalds chiefly displays itself in images of terror’”
(Varma 26). For a collection like this, reference to terror or the otherworldly could be a
strong selling point. Varma explains in his seminal work on the gothic novel, We
flame, “The literature of the Micklle Ages was deeply imbued with the macabre and its
scenes were full of sinister and terrible import. . . . A widespread belief in witches and
spirits lived on into the eighteenth century, and there was also a steadily intensifying interest

33

in questions of life, death, and immortality; angels, demons, vampires; the occult, magic,
astrology, dreams, omens, and oracles” (26). Varma credits this interest in Elizabethan
literature and medieval artifacts with influencing the gothic tradition; the gothic tradition also
influenced the way in which histories of the medieval period were studied and written.
Enlightenment standards of testing and organizing evidence could be applied to
supernatural events, particularly if those events were of a religious cast. For example, Hume
in his Himdepicts Joan of Arc’s miraculous deeds as clearly evidenced. He notes:
It is the business of history to distinguish between the miraculous and the
marvelous; to reject the first in all narrations merely profane and human; the scruple
the second; and when obliged by undoubted testimony, as in the present case, to
admit of something extraordinary, to receive as little of it as is consistent with the
known facts and circumstances. (qtd. in “Review of W” 91).
Hume allows the marvelous here, but based on evidence, not belief. He is thus able to
explain the supernatural by using modern methods of research.23 The reviewer of Hume’s
History, notes this scene and argues that
The merit of these reflections must be acknowledged by every reader, who has the
least portion of that manly and liberal spirit which distinguishes our author. An
Historian above all others, should never be a dupe to credulity: and he ought not
only to reject incredibilities himself, but it is his duty likewise to warn his readers
against crediting phantastic relations, which often give a wrong bias to enthusiastic
minds, and render them ridiculous to the wise, and dangerous to the weak. (92).
The reviewer notes Hume’s success both in cautioning readers before describing the
historical period of Joan of Arc and in demonstrating how these events were “proven”.
The reviewer compliments Hume by stating, “Of this wonderful girl, our Historian gives the
moa accurate account we remember to have met with” (90). The reviewer also follows

Hume’s technique by including passages in Hume’s history that utilize skepticism toward

34

the testing of marvelous people and events, finding that the supematural or marvelous can be
admitted into a ‘true’ history if it withstands such scrutiny.

Expanding the understanding of what could constitute fact or historical evidence
holds special significance for my discussion of the historical gothic, because an insistence
upon modern standards of evidence and realism, when applied to this form, has led to its
exclusion as an inferior form of historical novel. I agree with Mayer, who finds that modern
historical methodology is an important way to view eighteenth-century historiography, but
that overly focusing on it leads to a neglect of other ways of writing and reading history that
were occurring in that century. He argues,

in the historical discourse of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries a

commitment to the reporting of matters of fact coexisted with a willingness to

tolerate or even actively employ fictional elements in history and also with a

markedly polemical rhetoric that signaled that history was not a disinterested factual

discourse but a means of shaping historical reality. (11)

Those histories that do not fit into the privileged model of Enlightenment historiography fall
by the wayside, as does any examination of how alternate types of historical evidence
interacted with that model (9-10). Gothic novels can highlight these other kinds of accepted
historical sources not based solely on realistic fact. Depending upon such evidence as
secret correspondence, stories of the marvelous and supernatural proven by eye-witness
accounts and characters’ gossip, found manuscripts and ancient artifacts, gothic novels
provide important material for studying the differing tastes for what constituted historical
fact. Characters in the novels who sift for evidence struggle with methods of proof;
sometimes old medieval manuscripts are read with the assumption that they are full of
superstition. Gothic novels, particularly historical gothic novels, thus demonstrate through
their fictional texts another tension between Enlightenment historiography and older

approaches to history.

35

 

. . . since Men being the Historians they seldome condescend to record the
great and good Actions of Women; and when they take notice of them, ‘tis
with this wise Remark, That such Women acted above their sex. By which
one must suppose they would have their Readers understand, That they were
not women who did those Great Actions, but they were Men in Petticoats!

(Mary Astell. Waist) 354-)

As Mary Astell points out in her criticism of the sexist structures surrounding
historical portrayal, the issue of women reading history brought up questions about
“female” subject matter and reading interests. Writers such as Hume urged women to read
history, but also criticized what he saw to be the female interest in gossip, romance and
“secret history” 24 that affected their ability to understand “real” history. Other sources
viewed women as “exemplary perceivers of events, potentially better students of history
than men” (Dora 8). Given the large number of historical gothics written by women in the
late eighteenth century, what led these women to combine history and romance and why
were “gothified histories” so popular among the reading public? One reason stems from
the increasing interest among women in reading history, as well as the rising importance
attributed to women’s education in history. Women like Catharine Macaulay were writing
Enlightenment political histories; other women writers turned to forms such as the religious
history, educational tract, memoir, and travel narrative to explore historical subject matter and
to provide a response to Enlightenment histories by men. The novel and the specific focus
of this study, the gothic romance, provided a popular medium through which to explore and
manipulate historical subject matter and to demonstrate an increasing awareness of the
power dynamics at work in history formation.

From the beginning of the eighteenth century, reformers increasingly called for
girls’ education to include historical knowledge of England, Eumpe, and, following the
more classical education of boys, of Greece and Rome, usually in translation. In the

wealthier boarding schools, more and more young women were reading these histories;

36

mothers were also encouraged to expose their daughters to history in the home. The
commercial market by the mid-eighteenth century had picked up on this new readership, and
as a result, advertisements of popular history books began to appear in periodicals for
women (Davis 155). The same periodicals advocated and facilitated historical study. For
example, WW featured a segment entitled W
W during 1749-50 and Eliza Haywood in W directly
addressed her female readership about history education in her “Study of Philosophy
Recommended”:

History must not be omitted, as it cannot fail in engaging the mind to attention and

affording the strongest precept by example. The rise and fall of monarchies, the fate

of princes, the sources from which their good or ill fortune may be deduced, afford

an ample field for contemplation and, at the same time, too much pleasure to leave

room for any amusements of a low and trifling nature. (60)
For a woman, entrance into fields traditionally reserved for male study was possible partly
due to the changing availability of texts. The kind of study advocated by Haywood and
other reformers became easier “because of a large body of classical texts made newly
accessible through English translations produced during the Restoration, a body of
knowledge of ancient times and of contemporary cultural reference and definition
previously restricted to readers of Greek and Latin, typically university—educated men”
(Ezell 22). This newly available body of knowledge not only educated women on events,
personages, and periods of classical and contemporary history, but also provided models for
the style and subject matter of historical works, models that would be followed by female
historians. It also opened the way to understanding the foundations of British cultural and
political ideas that these texts provided (Ezell 30).

Alongside the educational reformers, female historians, including the famous
Catharine Macaulay, also actively urged other women to undertake serious historical study,

usually as part of a prescription for women’s educational and social rights. Drawing from a

37

plan of education similar to her own, Catharine Macaulay in her 1790 W
recommends “a course of history, beginning with Rollin’s Ancient History, in French; then
one of the best of the English histories in this language. . . . the thread of the Roman history
should be leisurely pursued through livy, Dion, Cassia, Sallust, Tacitus, in Latin, and
Ferguson and Gibbon in English” (Macaulay 129-130). Margaret Ezell has explored the
“conversations” among seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women of letters concerning
reading and writing history in order to discover how women, traditionally barred from
historical writing, reading, and participation, responded to the dominant discourses about
England’s past. She lists exampr such as Mary Chudleigh who urged women to read
both classical and modern histories, who was interested in ancient Britain, and who
undertook amateur excavations of antiquities. Similarly, Anglo—Saxon historian Elizabeth
Elstob wrote about England before the Roman occupation, studied Old English and wrote a
translation of WW (1709)- Elstob was
criticized for her work; she swiftly defended her ability to be a serious scholar in the
W. More interestingly, she both defended herself and claimed the authority to defend
her chosen field of study, ancient British history, openly shaming those who found classical
studies superior to the history of their own English ancestors (Ezell 33).

Examining the writings of women such as these, Ezell finds that women read history
with an eye for the politics of historiography and in order to “master the present” in their
personal lives and in the larger society (30). For women writers and readers, she argues,
“the narrative of history offers not only narratives of power and triumph, but also of
persecution and nobility in suffering; history is the depiction of greatness, but it is also the
representation of power failing, of power being transferred, and of seemingly natural and
inevitable power relationships being dissolved, overturned, and replaced” (31—32).
Sometimes, examples from history gave women analogies by which to criticize the gendered
" dynamics of social power structures. Even the more conservative women incorporated such

examples from history into their writings; the royalist Mary Astell, for emple, used the

38

”‘7‘

historical examples of the Civil War and lnterregnum to exarrrine such issues as absolute
rule, ideal governmental models, and domestic relations (Ezell 36-38). Reading about
history therefore could furnish women with models and analogies to use in their writings
advising present behavior and opinions.

Writings about women’s education in history usually were located in some way
within the strictures of women’s gendered position in society. Calls for women to read
history both could reinforce women’s separation from the world of politics and worldly
endeavors, and could provide a passage into this realm, a passage that women’s historical
writings took advantage of. In her study W
W, Devoney looser points out that educational literature, while it
encouraged historical reading as a proper pursuit for women, also cautioned women against
becoming too learned or specialized in historical study: “The injunction throughout the
conduct literature of the eighteenth century is that women were to become not narrow
specialists but noble generalists of history” (21). Becoming too learned could diminish
female attractiveness, but a knowledge of history in the broader sense could distinguish a
woman from the frivolities of her sex (20). Sometimes seen as a palliative for women’s
circumscribed role, reading history also could become a surrogate for the real-world
experience that the proper lady would not be expected to have. “Reading history provided a
way for women to gain the benefits of understanding aspects of life they were not supposed
to have access to without encountering problems of decorum in experiencing them” (18).
By extension, reading history could become a means of gaining narrative authority in spite
of a lack of real world experience. Looser explains,

Reading history was viewed as a desirable substitute for women’s experience

outside the domestic or social sphere, but writing history . . . began to change its

relation to experience too. Historians needed less ‘real world’ political experience
to succeed in the genre. The distinction between specialist and generalist, then, was

39

ranged themselves against history’s strict identification with public life, with all the
assumptions about audience, gender, and intellectual authority that accompanied the
public domain. \Vrthout ever displacing the national narrative in the hierarchy of
literatures, these other genres offered a variety of alternative histories whose
common ground was their resistance to the assumed priority of politics. (Phillips,
“Reconsiderations” 299)
These forms not only brought the private world of the individual into the realm of history
but also allowed women a space from which to participate in the judgments of the past and
the use of the past to inform present activity.26 In her study of women historical writers,
Natalie Davis explores these various forms and their development up until the early
nineteenth century. Family history and memoir could be considered of political interest to
the public if based on the woman’s status as the wife or family member of someone who
held a political, famous, or aristocratic position. Religious history, another appropriate field
for women, could provide writers with a forum for commentary on political and social
issues under the shield of women’s position as protectors of morality; it also could justify
extensive attention to women of the past as founders of movements, martyrs for causes,
influences on rulers, etc. As the eighteenth century progressed, these two forms continued
to be important while the field of women’s historical activity expanded. Historical research
and reflection became more common and acceptable for learned women who, like Catharine
Macaulay, interrogated how and to what purpose history was written and read (165). The
historical novel, combining fiction with educational and realistic history, could justify that
novel’s existence and make it less vulnerable to attacks that it contributed to readers’,
particularly female readers’, idleness and corruption (Looser 23). Through these several
forms, women writers eventually became involved in “the regularizing by the late eighteenth
century of the learned woman’s relations with the various aspects of the historian’s craft:
with its sources, style, and subjects, if not wholly with its audience” (Davis 157).

41

 

Similar interactions between women and history reading and writing were occurring
in America. Women were encouraged to read and write history; history was taught in girls’
schools and in the home; women utilized numerous forms to convey history; the
combination of history and fiction allowed for more acceptable kinds of novels; and history
writing allowed women a more direct means of contributing to the nation’s historical and
political events. American women’s participation in historiography was also affected by
their position as American women and the different ways that American history could be
understood in the context of women’s role in the new republic.

From the beginnings of the new nation, “the study of history emerged as
particularly appropriate for American women. By the 1830s, advice that women should
learn history was thoroughly conventional, historical subject matter had long since been
installed in female acadenries, and American history in particular was also becoming a
required subject in the common schools of the northeast” (Baym 13). Noting that a
number of female students learned both to read and to write history-~and often learned
history by writing it themselves-Baym points out that even the most casual references to
historical events in a woman’s writing “testifies to her knowledge of history (or at least her
desire to be known as a knower of history)” (24). Preparing women to understand and
teach history “developed from the campaign to install history as the centerpiece of female
education, in order to connect domestic women to the polity, bring civic self-understanding
to the home, and bridge the widening spatial gap between sites of public and private
activity” (11). Women were aware of their role in this project: “their writing shows that
they thought of themselves as a part of the nonofficial public sphere and intended to make
themselves influential in forming public opinion, whether as writers or mothers or spouses
or all of these” (6). Furthermore, historical writing and discussion provided women with a
venue through which they could forward opinions and commentary that might otherwise not

find an audience. As men did more overtly, women could use historical discourse to

42

support specific political arguments, calls for reform, and partisan allegiances under the
guise of educational motives and patriotic duty (8).

Calls for women’s education in history, particularly American history, were linked
to women’s important role in raising and educating the next generation of citizens for the
new republic.” Possessing and transmitting historical knowledge was both a duty for
women and an indication that America of all countries held women in a special and unique
cultural position where they influenced politics and the new nation’s development.
Women’s historical knowledge was translated into historical writings that were valued as
important contributions to national identity. During the days surrounding the Revolution
and its aftermath, women could record the events that men participated in-i.e. while the men
were away creating history, women could organize and comment upon those deeds from the
safety of the home and fulfill their own patriotic duty. While women produced these
historical records, they also assumed an authority to do so. Their positions as republican
mothers and moral guardians especially fitted them for such work; millennial rhetoric which
linked women to the rising spiritual power associated with Christ’s coming continued to
affect their position as well (Baym 93-94). Explaining women’s participation in history
according to the millennial mode, Byam states that this view of history “placed them--
Protestant American womenuat the very vanguard of historical progress” (46). As Baym’s
extensive study of women’s historical writings demonstrates, women’s contributions “both
registered and significantly shaped the enormous general interest in history characteristic of
the antebellum period. It contributed to the vital intellectual tasks of forging and publicizing
national identity by placing the new nation in world history and giving it a history of its
own” (1).

Women like Mercy Otis Warren and Hannah Adams wrote histories in the more
traditional form, but a great number of other women produced historical discourse using a
wide range of forms including biography, travel narrative, personal letters designed for
public consumption, religious history, historical textbooks, poetry and, of course, the

43

historical novel. Many of these forms blend together with others; some, like fictional forms
that include historical content, often deliberately emphasize their blurred boundaries in order
to enter the realm of acceptable and educational reading. Women living during historically
important events could inscribe themselves into histories as participants, and observers
could use their own experiences as touchstones or indications of the times in which they
lived. As Sharon Harris observes in her study of early American women historians, “What
often occurs in early nontraditional historical narratives is an erasure of the boundaries
between history and autobiography. Many writers confronting the immediate past preferred
a fluid sense of narrative that might best be described as historic-autobiographical” (176).
Harris describes different strategies in such histories where the personal and public blend
together: national history as revelation of the self ; personal history as cultural revelation,
particularly during important moments in national history; and history as a reminder of
moments where different cultures clash or seemingly homogenous groups break apart (176-
7).28 Whether by educating the future generation of American citizens, recording their own
connections to larger political and historical events, or participating in nation-formation,
women utilized history as “a means of participating in the production of knowledge for the
present as well as for posterity” (178).

Many post-revolutionary authors emphasized their novels’ educational benefits in
order to counter society’s prevalent attitude that the novel was corruptive; claiming historical
subject matter was one important way to offer one’s novel as educational. In W
Republic, Linda Kerber traces how fiction reading was seen as especially harmful to women
not only because women were "thought to be most vulnerable to the attractions of
irresponsibility and passion as depicted in novels“ (239) and thus more likely to let novels
influence their behavior for the worse, but also because women who read novels might
neglect housework and family duties (251-253). "Proper" novels, however, along with
didactic works eventually came to be seen as suitable for a woman as long as they instructed
her in virtue, obedience and duty to the Republic. Female education and novel readership

44

with educational purpose became more favored as a means of supporting the Republic
through the institution of motherhood. As Kerber explains, ”Motherhood was discussed
almost as if it were a fourth branch of government, a device that ensured social control in the
gentlest possible way. If the Republic indeed rested on responsible motherhood,
prospective mothers needed to be well informed and decently educated" (200). It is
important to note, however, that ”advice to women on what they should read was
accompanied by insistent warnings . . . of what not to read" (235). "What not to read” still
consisted of the majority of novels. Similarly, Cathy Davidson in W
MW provides various examples of how presidents, preachers
and educators opposed the novel because of its potentially dangerous influence. She
explains, ”Sustained misgivings as to the social and moral effects of fiction represent, then,
an attempt by an elite minority to retain a self-proclaimed role as the primary interpreters of
American culture” (42). In the face of this opposition, novelists attached themselves to the
cause of education:

Virtually every American novel written before 1820 . . . at some point includes either

a discourse on the necessity of improved education (often with special attention to

the need for better female education) or a description of then-current education . . .

or, at the very least, a comment on the educational levels and reading habits of the

hero and even more so the heroine. (66)

Novels that could proclaim to champion virtue or to educate their readers tended to
experience less vilification.

The historical novel could represent one acceptable form because it educated readers,
particularly women, about the formation of the new republic as well as the political events of
other countries and times. As Baym argues while examining the American historical novel,
attacks on the novel diminished as the success of historical novels established themselves in
the public reading consciousness. “This suggests that the novel, demonized as history’s
other, escaped its pariah status by becoming historical itself” (23). Novels, “which had

45

.15

J

previously been contrasted to history, were appropriated for historical wo ” (7). Baym
finds that nearly two-thirds of these historical novels are about the United States and argues,
“As a whole, novels of American history imply a familiar nationalist narrative about
winning independence from England and securing territory from the Indians. . . No matter
what their particular focus, they aim to participate in the patriotic work of establishing and
affirming national origins, characters, and values” (155). Baym cautions against seeing
women’s historical novels as subversive or somehow inherently multicultural; such
rebellion would have seemed “both unpatriotic and unsuccessful” (155) at the time. She
points out that for women, the historical record
told a story they liked, one authorizing their performances as historians, a story
wherein only Protestant Christianity accorded women their rightful place in society,
and Protestant Christianity flourished only under the republican form of government
they themselves enjoyed. . . . In context, it looks as though the project of the
American women who wrote historical novels was not to challenge received history
but to show that historical fiction, like other forms of historical writing, was not an
exclusively masculine genre. (153)
Baym discusses historical novels after the advent of Scott’s m and does not include
historical gothic novels in her discussion. Her examination of American women writers and
the historical novel does apply to a novel like W, a novel that certainly
upholds American virtue and progress, and yet Baym’s discussion stops short of explaining
the role that the gothic plays in a historical novel and how it might cast a gloomy shadow
upon the a novel’s more patriotic content. While cautious about ascribing overt radical
tendencies to a mainstream successful writer like Rowson, I do find a tension in gothified
histories like hers between the history valorized and the more unstable, frightening, and
potentially violent aspects of that same history.
For British and American women readers and writers of the late eighteenth-century,

the historical gothic novel enjoyed papularity, a popularity that points to a larger community

45

of readers possessing expectations about historical discourse and eager to explore the
historical past. Educated women readers would also be familiar with the variety of ways
history could be represented and with some of the ways in which female writers cross and
blur generic boundaries set up by traditional Enlightenment historiography. Though a work
of fiction, a historical gothic novel could present and explore history in ways similar to
those espoused by formal female historians such as Macaulay, as well as the myriad authors
of travel journals, family histories, etc. Focusing on individuals, commenting on a person’s
character, portraying history’s more dramatic moments in terms of feeling, including great
women as well as more common ones in the grand tableau of events, and demonstrating an
awareness of political issues surrounding moments in history and history formation itself,
“gothified histories” represent an important but overlooked group of responses by women
writers to more traditional histories. At the same time, through the use of the supernatural,
nightmarish flight scenes, madness, and haunted locales, historical gothics place their
examinations of historic material within a realm further removed from the reality portrayed
by traditional political histories and various other forms of history writing adopted by
women. This particular vantage point allows for historical events and people to appear
unfamiliar, unnattual, or even dangerous; it also involves historiography itself in the horrors
and dangers portrayed by these novels.

W

I borrow the term “gothified history” from Frederick S. Frank, who, in his
catalogue of gothic novels WWW
coins the term to describe a significant grouping of early gothic novels that utilize historical
settings and personages. He explains that “abundant examples of Gothified histories, or
historical novels written in the key of high terror or horror, establish the importance of this
branch of Gothicism” (xiii). Some of these novels describe events and people from a
generalized medieval Europe. Others look back upon British history from its ancient Celtic

47

past to medieval times up through the specific reigns of such monarchs as King John, King
Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth I, and beyond. Rosetta Ballin’s 1790 W
W, for example, traces the theme of the hidden royal child seeking
legitimacy. It depicts the secret daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, born in
hiding after their divorce, and later pursued by Queen Elizabeth, a figure who often appears
as a villain in historical gothics. Some plots become directly involved in political or social
commentary surrounding those historical time periods. The 1795 novel W
mm, which depicts Roman Britain during the reign of Queen Boadicea,
examines the beginnings of Western civilization in Britain. Fighting against Roman rule,
Boadicea serves here as the villainess (certainly a villainess to eighteenth-century
enlightened Britons, the inheritors of Roman civil advancements), not a heroine of Celtic
culture as she is depicted in other later histories. In C.A. Bolen’s 1826 W
W, historical commentary appears directly in the assignment
of the familiar gothic villain role to King John, who represents the lustful pursuer of the
heroine, fictional Ella de Mortimer.

A quick glance at Frank’s compilation reveals the significant number of “gothified
histories” written during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.29 Their frequent
appearance and contemporary popularity makes the absence of any serious critical study of
this sub-genre conspicuous, particularly given the changes in how history and national
identity have been discussed in literary criticism of the past two decades. Part of this
neglect stems from a continuing insistence on modern standards of historical verisirnilitude
and evidence, something which these gothified histories do not always provide, and an
undervaluing of those novels which follow more popular, sensational, and sometimes
technically disjointed narrative paradigms. As B. G. MacCarthy in W
W argues. “It is not that [gothic novels} ignored.
but that they did not conceive the essentials of a historical novel. Prior to Scott, nothing had
been written which could with justice be called a historical novel” (317). Lee’s W,

48

for example, was not historical “unless one is satisfied to accept as a historical novel a tale
without the slightest historical verisimilitude woven around certain historical personages”
(317). The lack of factual correctness seemed less of a concern for the first readers,
however, than it has for contemporary critics of the novel who hold Sir Walter Scott as the
standard: “What readers of early historical fiction in the Gothic mode desired was not
factual accuracy or political verity but a thrilling falsification of the past” (Frank, Em
Gothic: 15-16). Judging and critiquing the early gothic histories solely on the basis of
whether their historical events are portrayed accurately can blind readers to the ways in
which these novels explore just what does constitute accurate historical portrayal and to the
ways in which gothic and sensational effects, specifically, deconstruct Enlightenment
historiography. What did a “thrilling falsification of the past” provide other than
excitement for contemporary readers? To answer this question, one must look beyond the
canonical gothic novels that represent the past in a generalized sense and toward those
novels featuring specific historical events and people.

Very few twentieth-century critics of the gothic novel have taken this approach.
Scholarship which has looked at the historical gothic sub-genre appeared earlier in the
century. One of the earliest studies, Montague Summers’s W provides an
extensive list of historical gothic novels but, while summarizing them, provides little critical
analysis. Another of the most important early studies of the gothic novel, Devranda
Varma’s Wm, devotes a short chapter to the historical gothic and provides
historical background and reception information about these novels, but Varma saves most
of the book’s analysis for canonical works like Horace Walpole’s W.

When discussing representations of history in the gothic novel, most others have
lumped all gothic romances together and pointed to a generalized longing for or distancing
from the past. Gothic novels depicting a specific time in history and featuring real
historical figures rarely enter into these discussions. Typical of such studies, Judith Wilt’s
contribution to W discusses gothic novels’

49

depiction of the past in terms of how contemporary readers compared it to their own times.
According to her examination, readers of gothic novels could look with titillating pleasure at
the misdeeds of such villains as the aristocratic Montoni or the ecclesiastic Schedoni
because of belief in the way history was progressing, advancing linearly, away from such
irrational times. Readers of eighteenth—century gothic novels were able to experience
'history’ as prophecy—a pleasurable consciousness of doom associated with the
painful reign and inevitable fall of the proud and the powerful, and with the
continuing poignant revelation of the inadequacy of reason. For English Gothic
fiction, history was a place where one could explore and experience the disappearing
engines of unbridled wrath, pride, and lust. The barons and clerics of Horace
Walpole and Ann Radcliffe, Clara Reeve and M. G. Lewis, exercised a prepolitical,
ahistorical brand of power drawn in rationalist terms as a kind of madness. The
immense dilation of power and ambition, the pretematural humanity, of the great
Gothic villains could be safely walled off in the past, which because it was the
prerational time could contain an accompanying pretematural apparatus of omens,
tales, and powers prophesying, actually accomplishing, the fall of the pretematural
human and the return of the rest of the world to Christian salvation history. (319-
320)
Here, Wilt reads the gothic novel’s depiction of history as fantasy about a far-distant,
generalized past that features villains who are Other (Italian, Catholic, etc) and that allows
those in the present to enjoy a sense of the their own cultural and political superiority,
clearly separated from the unenlightened past. From a different standpoint, other critics
have explored how the gothic representation of the generalized past could allow for escape
from the turmoil of late eighteenth-century economic, cultural, and political change. Maggie
Kilgore describes this perspective wherein “the gothic is symptomatic of a nostalgia for the
past which idealizes the medieval world as one of organic wholeness, in which individuals
were defined as members of the ‘body politic’, essentially bound by a symbolic system of

50

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analogies and correspondences to their families, societies, and the world around them” (1 1).
Set as many gothic novels are in the feudal era, eighteenth~century British gothics could
serve as nostalgic reminders of a simpler and idealized time, articulating a more conservative
comparison between past and present.30

While both these configurations of the role that the past plays in gothic novels work
well enough when applied to the canonical novels of Radcliffe, Maturin and Lewis, they
neglect the obvious cultural references to eighteenth-century times contained within
historical gothic novels that write about Britain’s and America’s national history more
directly and specifically. Gothified histories move beyond providing a general experience
of an irrational, pro-political or ahistorical past, as Wilt explains above, and instead represent
the past in a way that is both historically specific and deeply involved in the politics of those
historical times. They convey eighteenth-century agendas behind crafting history as well,
and they bring to the forefront the uses to which historiography can be put. Great gothic
villains still appear in these novels, but their deeds stem from direct participation in political
intrigues, ideological conflicts, and historical events, not from their irrationality or exercise
of pretematural power. Indeed, it is partly because of their involvement in such “real”
contexts that these villains are so frightening. Participants in actual British or American
history, villains as well as heroes become implicated in stories and mythmaking about their
respective nations. Rather than studying how gothic novels explore the general idea of “the
past” in terms of nostalgia or progress, I will explore the more specific idea of an
Enlightenment “national history” as portrayed in historical gothics that take as their special
subject matter historically famous people and events from British or American history.
Often with self-conscious narrators or “historians,” these novels contain direct comment
not only on those events and people, but also on how a history is created and used.

Historicist studies have connected British and American gothic novels to each
country’s respective history, but they, too, turn to the canonical novels as they examine their
political and cultural referents as symbolically encoded in the text. The French

51

Revolution’s influence on the gothic is a primary example of this type of reading.31 Critics
have made connections between the eighteenth-century British gothic novel and concerns
about the French Revolution, and they have debated such issues as whether a particular
author—say, Ann Radcliffe-shows politically conservative or radical tendencies in her
fiction. The association of Radcliffe, Lewis, Maturin, Godwin and others with the French
Revolution has proliferated to the degree that participating in or rebelling against
revolutionary tendencies has become a defining characteristic of eighteenth—century gothic
novels. Political content in gothic novels revolving around the desire to overthrow the
aristocracy or antiquated systems of power could be played out fictionally in medieval
Europe, while the explosion of violence in some of these novels paralleled the violence of
the day.

More recently, Markrnan Ellis in W has drawn a closer
connection between gothic novels and history. Considering how the gothic “is itself a
theory of history: a mode for the apprehension and consumption of history” (1 l), he
exanrines specific historical moments and reader responses to gothic publications in order
to discover why certain gothic effects became popular at certain times, as well as “how
some critical assumptions about the gothic, established as timeless or natural, have their
origin in particular events and debates” (12).32 He finds, for example, an underlying terror
about the Illuminati conspiracy in Brown’s Wieland; the philosophy of libertinisrn and
Lewis’s own censorship controversy in W; conflicting approaches to the
eighteenth-century ideology of sensibility in Radclifi'e’s W and the
clashing of Enlightenment rationality with superstition and the unknowable in all of the

above. Similar in his comparison of the novels’ fictional and political content, James Watt

 

chapter to the “Loyalist Gothic Romance”, a group of novels participating in England’s
creation of a new national self-image in the face of the American and French Revolutions

(44). Examining both canonical and non-canonical novels, Watt argues that works such as

52

Clam Reeve’s WW and James White’s mm “were
unambiguously loyalist in the way that they framed supematural incident, and in the way

that they appealed instead to an exemplary medieval era” (42). The loyalist Gothics
support the reinstatement of the proper heir, punish usurpers, and reign in uncontrolled
freedom using a clearly delineated medieval class structure. Ellis’s configuration of the
gothic as history and Watt’s exploration of national identity in loyalist gothic provides an
important background to the following investigation. My study, however, adds a new
dimension to the examination of political content in gothic novels from this period by
focusing on novels which contain direct, not symbolic, representations of historical events
and by highlighting how these novels interrogate the act of history-making and, by
extension, national myth-making."3

While criticism about the role of history in the American gothic shares some of the
above characteristics, it also brings up special issues related to differing constructions of
America’s past Scholars like leslie Fredler traditionally have questioned whether America
even has a past with which the gothic can engage. In W
he states, ”The gothic, after all, had been invented to deal with the past and with history from
a typically Protestant and enlightened point of view; but what could one do with the form in
a country which, however Protestant and enlightened, had (certainly at the end of the
eighteenth century!) neither a proper past nor a history?" (144). According to Fredler, some
early gothics in America may have imitated British models, but the real American gothic
novels, beginning with Brockden Brown, struck out into new, unexplored territory and
abandoned the European ruins of the past. Fredler echoes Nathaniel Hawthorne, who in his
preface to W argues as follows:

No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a Romance about

a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and

gloomy wrong, nor anything but a common-place prosperity, in broad and simple

daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust,

53

before romance-writers may find congenial and easily handled themes either in the

annals of our stalwart Republic, or in any characteristic and probable events of our

individual lives. Romance and poetry, like ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need Ruin

to make them grow. (3)

This viewpoint rests on the assertion that America's history began with the founding fathers
and the WW, if that, and that America’s history is too recent to
count as a past. It also assumes a sanitized version of that recent past.

Nevertheless, “the past”, particularly as it reflects the development of American
literature and national identity, continually haunts early American gothic fiction.
Hawthome’s short stories with their depiction of the Puritans, Robert Bird’s W
M with its location on the Kentucky frontier, Washington Irving’s W
m and W with their supernatural tales and creation of
an American folklore, and Charles Brockden Brown’s mm with its setting of the
1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic all deal in some way with moments in American history. Like
critics of the British gothic novel, critics of the American gothic novel have tended to focus
on a generalized idea of “the past” when discussing gothic novels containing settings with
a historical flavor. Sometimes, references to the past are subsumed within a discussion of
how American gothic novels point to deep psychological issues in the minds of the
characters and authors. Typical of this approach, Louis Gross in W
My finds that “The weight of the past is an oppressive force in Gothic narrative.
Characters either are made to suffer the results of old sins or curses . . . or to replicate the
lives lived in some shadowy past. . . . In either case, the people and events of the past cling
to the minds of those characters, enveloping them in guilt and madness” (29). He describes
the visions of American history as seen in W and other gothics as ones “that
see history as a long nightmare from which we wake only fitfully and tremble” (36). On a
different note, Donald Ringe in I: ~ ‘

WW examines the past in terms of how it is used in American vs.

 

54

British gothic fiction as a technical device, as well as how the past is employed as a means to
explore the horrors of human perception and psychology. For example, Ringe looks at how
some gothic authors avoid British gothic trappings and, instead, use real-life horror such as
the yellow fever epidemic in Brown’s mm or W to create similar effects of
horror and dismay in the reader (42-3). Focused on canonical authors in the gothic
tradition and subscribing to the idea put forward by Fredler and others that American gothic,
because written in a country with no history, tums inward, studies like these that take
historical references into account do not apply gothic conventions to direct historical events
and people, reading gothic novels more in terms of how they symbolically code “the past.”
With their focus on the individual struggling with or against the past, these studies often fit
into the general paradigm that has traditionally been used to define American gothic.

As with other forms of American literature, American gothic novels have engaged
with the question, “What does it mean to be an American?” The gothic novel in its
depiction of an American past is very much concerned with the darker side of this question,
and critics have applied this concern to an individual’s conflict with or experience of
American identity, again relocating gothic horror within the individual. To know the self is
to know the American (and vice versa), and this is not exactly possible or desirable. Eric
Savoy in his study of the gothic speaks of the larger group of gothic images in America that
“suggest the attraction and repulsion of a monstrous history, the desire to ‘know’ the
traumatic Real of American being and yet the flight from that unbearable and remote
knowledge” (“Rise”169). In portraying the past, the gothic novel often creates a

convoluted and blatantly constructed discourse of narratives that circle around

themes and events that are rarely susceptible to direct exposition. Generally, the
sense of the past that pervades Gothic literature does not encourage the writer to
explain origins in clear relation to end-points in a seamless linear narrative. Nor
does the writer seize on history as a coherent field that is subject to authorial control.

Instead, history controls and determines the writer. Gothic texts return obsessively

55

(

to the personal, the familial, and the national pasts to complicate rather than to clarify

them, but mainly to implicate the individual in a deep morass of American desires

and deeds that allow no final escape from or transcendence of them. (1689)

Thus, a novel like Brown’s W features a woman, Clara, obsessed with writing her
history and “who serves as a register for the dreadful course of events she unfoldsuand
whose reluctant, traumatized writing is the novel’s most engaging aspect” (172). Savoy
also describes the individual’s frightening interaction with personal history as a metaphor
for seeing both American identity and America’s past. W as one example, “gestures
frequently toward pervasive anxieties about the individual’s capacity for common sense and
self-control within the unstable social order of the new American republic” (172). The
slipping identity from monstrous to responsible citizen that takes place in the novel belies
“the ideological bedrock of the Enlightenment promise of the free individual’s role in the
common good” and “marks the return of the irrational ‘other’ to dismantle the
fundamental propositions of the national experiment” (172). Using the individual’s
experience of the past as a metaphor for the development of the American republic, gothic
novels can “express a profound anxiety about historical crimes and perverse human desires
that cast their shadow over what many would like to be the sunny American republic”

( 168).

The most recent development in American gothic scholarship has been concerned
with reapplying the gothic to the historical horrors of slavery and Indian massacre, and with
reading gothic novels as registers of those harms, not just of the individual’s uncanny
encounter with his or her personal past. The 1998 study W
W, edited by Robert Martin and Eric Savoy, includes
several essays, including Lesley Ginsberg’s “Slavery and the Gothic Horror of Poe’s ‘The
Black Cat’” and Robert K. Martin’s “Haunted by Jim Crow: Gothic Fictions by
Hawthorne and Faulkner”, that are concerned with recovering the real horrors of American
history. Kathleen Brogan in “American Stories of Cultural Haunting: Tales of Heirs and

56

ur

Ethnographers” examines the use of the supernatural in recovering the missing histories of
African American women. Teresa Goddu’s W also explores this area. In
their recovery of the hidden and horrific moments of American history, these studies
directly refute the older Fiedlerian suggestion that America has no past for the gothic to
exploit.

Most of the studies that look at American history’s real horrors focus either on
canonical gothic novels or those in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Extending that
scope, I will analyze Rowson’s novel with the aim of looking at how earlier women’s gothic
novels that follow a different pattem—one that depends more on the British tradition for its
effects, characters, narrative structure and concerns-grapple with actual history and its
transmission. Again, my focus is on the act of writing not a personal history per se but a
national history, as well as on how that act becomes involved in perpetuating the horrors that
a nation’s history attempts to cover over. More than referring to history in a generalized or
metaphorical sense, I will read Rowson’s depiction of the past as intimately involved in
Enlightenment historiography and will focus my attention on more literal representations of
American history.

So what does it mean to “gothify” history? The short answer is that to gothify
history is to render it terrifying, to reveal its secret horrors, and to rip apart its assumptions,
portrayals, and structures so violently as to make any comparisons between it and a
semblance of “what really happened” unrecognizable. Combined with gothic discourse,
historiography becomes uncanny, uncontrollable, monstrous; historical transmission occurs
in shadow.

The gothic has often been studied in terms of how and what it subverts: traditional
gender roles, patriarchal lines of inheritance, aristocratic or religious hierarchies, stable
notions of selfhood, the role of popular literature in the Canon." Gothic novels will often

use as destabilizing tools such devices as secret stories or manuscripts; horrors hidden

57

beneath the surface of seemingly benevolent buildings or people; atmospheres or
landscapes of fear, gloom and foreboding; madness and the subsequent questions of a
narrative’s veracity; slippages of identity, as in the trope of the double or doppleganger;
moments or states of “unknowing”; and voices of those who are Other. In short, the very
traits that mark a tale as gothic are the ones that may allow for the undermining of power
structures and ideologies. This is not to say that every gothic novel is simply subversive--
Ann Radcliffe’s canonical novels, for example, can be read as reinstatements of traditional
gender roles or as conservative commentary on the French Revolution. What the gothic
novel holds the potential for, however, is the creation of a medium particularly haunting,
foreboding, and uncanny within which to explore specific issues, whether these be of
gender, human psychology, or social or political structures. Involved in portraying cultural
fears or uneasinesses, the gothic novel, almom a secret manuscript of horror itself , reveals
what might otherwise be repressed or surrounded with taboo.

As a literature of transgression, the gothic novel crosses many boundaries: lines of
sexual taboo, divisions of self and other, definitions of genre, boundaries of public and
private spheres, chronological ordering of past and present, categories of the real and unreal,
etc.” The scientific man must face and acknowledge the existence of a ghost haunting his
son. The haunted house reminds those in the present of evils once committed there by a
tyrannical husband. A mad narrator confronts his double. The ghost in the woods savagely
scalping Indians turns out to be a peace-loving Quaker. In all of these instances, the
moment of horror hovers around a conflicted boundary, showing it to be a “both/and”
rather than an “either/or” division. The man in the woods is both Quaker and savage, the
past is in the present, reality includes both science and the non-provable, the self is also the
other. This slippage of boundary lines makes the gothic particularly well-suited to
deconstructive projects, wherein the discourse or appearance of that which is Other breaks
apart coherent significations and definitions. Jacqueline Howard’s Wm

WW connects Bakhtin’s concept of “heteroglossia” with the gothic
mode. Drawing from Bakhtin’s Wm, she argues,

The Gothic novel is a type in which the propensity for multiple discourse is highly

developed and that is dialogic because of its indeterminacy or its open structure.

The Gothic only plays at being totalized or closed, as its supposed ‘unity’

encompasses ‘several heterogeneous stylistic unities, often located on different

linguistic levels and subject to different stylistic controls.’ (16-7)

Following Howard’s configuration, I argue that combining gothic discourse, already
fractured and shifting, with the various histories contained in historical gothic novels results
in a heteroglossic depiction of the past. The ruptures which appear in gothic novels and
which disrupt their narrative structures allow for a greater inclusion of and focus on multiple
versions and uses of history. Fixated upon violence, oppression, and horror, gothic novels
bring to the surface voices often excluded from history. Even more than this, the
interactions between gothic and historical discourse create horror at the sites where these
different voices appear, highlighting the fear surrounding the historiographical project itself.
The gothic novel’s inclusion of multiple histories and shifting boundaries, narratives, and
epistemologies sets up the construction of a coherent national history as a monstrous
endeavor, one that continually deconstructs its own creations.

One of the most important ways by which the gothic novel can do this is through the
use of the supernatural. Glen Calvaliero in W points out
how the supematural destroys absolute definitions:

It is because supematuralism is a rogue element in the house of fiction that it can

function as a shatterer of idols. On the one hand it assaults the tendency to confine

the reading of experience within any one given philosophy or framework; it qualifies
established orthodoxies; it can be both critical and corrective. At the same time it

asserts, and at its finest it demonstrates, an enlargement of possibilities, opening up

epistemological and imaginative horizons, extending the measurements perceptible

to narrowly rationalistic philosophy. (238)

As I examine the conjunction of the gothic and the historical, I will read gothic discourse as
a kind of ghost which, uncontrollable and uncanny itself, interrupts and breaks apart the
linear, rational, and idealized discourse of historical and sentimental narratives that attempt to
contain or cover it. Other versions of history, other methods of historiography, and other
voices enter into these textual ruptures and highlight the very fictionality of what seems to
be a rational reality and a true, unbiased history.

But to do this, these historical gothic novels must first adopt the very characteristics
of Enlightenment historiography in their self-presentation as a history. In this way the
interaction between the gothic novel and Enlightenment ideals (here, of a rational, coherent,
and linear history) is different than that proposed by those who see the gothic’s portrayal of
the past as a largely irrational response to overly rational literary norms. Carefully crafting
histories according to Enlightenment standards only to make them horrifying, historical
gothics undermine the act of history-making itself. Because the fictional content in the
historical gothic novel is so emotionally striking and blatant, the conjunction and clash
between two modes of knowing, the historical and the imaginative, stand in the forefront and
cannot easily be ignored. Frank’s term “gothified history” thus can exist both as a
description of a kind of novel (Frank’s use of the term) and as the naming of a process
which, I argue, changes-gothifiesuthe description of what history is and does. Vividly,
sometimes graphically, historical gothics present history and history-making as fraught with
contradictions, secrets, hidden agendas, and exclusions. Neatly labeling and organizing the
past becomes an endeavor that is dangerous, nearly impossible, caught up in the
victimization of those involved, and, ultimately, doomed to failure. While gothic novels
certainly were not the only kinds of eighteenth-century writings that pointed out the
difficulty, questionings, and failures of writing history, they do provide a particularly

haunting reminder of ways in which literature intertwines with the period’s debates about

what history was and could do.

W
In each of the following chapters I analyze how one author “gothifies” history and

locates her fiction alongside an important historiographical trend or issue, as well as in
relation to actual political and historical events. Each author includes in her novel segments
where characters talk about how to read and react to history, indicating the author’s own
participation in historical education. Different kinds of histories other those based on the
traditional or classical model are given attention and power, even if only temporarily. Quite
often the emergences of these alternate histories are accompanied by supematural or other
gothic occurrences that serve to undermine the well-known and traditional history in order
to make space for neglected voices and experiences. Gothic moments break into the
histories which each novel constructs, interrupt the collection and gathering of information
the characters undertake, and defamiliarize events and people until the very act of historical
transmission becomes caught up in the horror and oppression which dominate the novels.
Chapter one features Sophia Lee’s W, a novel that participates in the cult of
Mary Queen of Scots, who stood as an icon of sentimental feeling. Strongly relying upon
sentimental historiography, Lee imagines the unfortunate queen’s fictional twin daughters
who seek to reclaim their rightful place within the English monarchy. Key players in
political events involving Elizabeth, as well as James 1, Leicester, Essex, and others, Matilda
and Ellinor craft twin histories that throw into doubt the efficacy of relying upon “truth in
character”-—for both young historians continually are duped-- and on history’s objectivity.
Their double narratives relay the same events with opposite interpretations, and all forms of
evidence—written, oral, visual, eyewitness-fail to establish a truthful account or to survive
under the pressures of the girls’ oppressors. Both women allow feeling to interfere with a
clear perception of historical events, and Ellinor’s increasing madness gradually discredits

61

her reliability and eventually leads her to tear apmt the record she compiles. Concerned
throughout the novel with collecting and preserving evidence so that they can at least be
vindicated in the future, the two women nevertheless learn in the end that without sanction
by those in power, their histories will never be told. Gothic moments, including ghostly
guises, subterranean hideouts and prisons, supernatural visits from historical figures, live
burials, obsession with coff’ms and other mementos of death, and gruesome violence that
erupts both in the novel’s history and in the heroines’ tender hearts all throw into doubt the
ability of a sentimental discourse to cover over historical horrors. Surrounding sites of
cultural conflict in England, Scotland and Ireland with gothic events and elements, In:
W belies any attempt at using history to depict a unified national narrative. The
gothic’s ability to turn sympathy into horror graphically undercuts the sentimental
discourse which surrounds historiography in this novel. The act of historiography itself
becomes one of horror and danger for those involved in attempting history’s transmission,
not in the least because historiography possesses the potential to take on a terrifying life of
its own.

In chapter two, I examine antiquarianism and historical tourism as portrayed in Ann
Radclifi‘e’s W. The novel is framed by a lengthy preface in which two
men touring actual English ruins discuss how to test and react to historical evidence. The
novel proper, a manuscript the two men discover that is as full of antiquarian detail as of
fiction, provides an excellent experiment for the main character, Willoughton, to try out his
methods of experiencing history with feeling and imagination, as well as with a thorough
knowledge of the period’s historical evidence. The novel features both literary and non-
literary forms of historical transmission, including tapestries, songs, oral stories, and the
monk-narrator’s personal accormts, to portray the events of King Henry III’s visit to
Kenilworth. As Sophia Lee does in W, Radcliffe, in a novel that portrays both
fictional and actual history, juxtaposes the historical narrative privileged by those in power
with alternate forms of recording and using history. A merchant charged with slandering

62

4.,

the King’s favorite, Gaston, as a murderer srffers wrongfully for narrating a sequence of
events surrounding the Crusades that goes against the King’s accepted version. In spite of
a night of festivities where pageants and songs tell stories uncannily similar to the
merchant’s and where an ominous Crusader ghost appears, only a rencontre at the secret
tomb of the murdered man, where the ghost points to the wound in the corpse and other
objects of physical evidence, saves the merchant. While supernatural events punctuate the
novel’s history, the plot’s reliance upon them to save the day points out how, in reality, only
that evidence which those in power want to believe will have any authority. That the
combination of the King’s gullibility and authority leads both to wrongs against the
innocent and to his dangerous susceptibility to French influence directly points to a horror
in encountering the foreign other. Added to this horror throughout the novel is the fluidity
of boundaries of national loyalty and the inability to ascribe virtuous or traitorous character
based on a person’s nationality.

In chapter three, I read Susanna Rowson’s W as an example of the
nationalist agenda behind the depiction of national history as family history. Tracing nine
generations of Christopher Columbus’s family, Rowson attempts to encompass British,
Anglo-American, and Native American blood within a highly sentimentalized family, the
history of which emphasizes the loving connections among these groups of people. Gothic
moments interrupt the idealized version of intercultural harmony, however, and reveal the
real historical horrors surrounding American colonization. The failure of the sentimental
historical narrative becomes a main source of gothic terror in this novel, as it becomes more
and more evident that the loving international family cannot survive the impending violence
of the outside world. Whether appearing as monsters dripping blood in Peru, ghosts of
murdered children, torturous machinations of royalty and the clergy, or the violence and
gore so prevalent in the novel, gothic elements emphasize the cultural conflict that the
sentimental narrative attempts to cover over with personal bonds of sympathy and affection.

Historical transmission is caught up in the tension between sentimental and gothic discourse

63

and is continually emphasized as family artifacts, letters, and other documents are passed
from generation to generation. Through folklore, oral storytelling, and eye-witness accounts,
alternate and less sanitized versions of history, as well as the voices of those not usually
sanctioned by official histories, enter into the larger narrative, often accompanied by gothic
interruptions as well.

“ I 0 O ” , O O I
Ht '.'0 .H‘." IHI‘I H.‘.'II-=Itkt"'nr- "Its in!

W calls for a more serious examination of how
historical gothic novels portray the idea of a national history and the historiographical
strategies involved in transmitting it. A privileging, because of their greater historical
accuracy, of historical novels written after (and including) Scott’s Kandy; a tendency to
read gothic novels’ depiction of “the past” in a general sense; a devaluing of early
American gothics that hybridize British and American gothic effects (castles in Connecticut,
heroines saved from aristocratic villains by Washington’s ghost); and a misunderstanding
of the role women’s direct participation in historical discourse plays in popular eighteenth-
century novels with historical content all have contributed to the critical neglect of a
significant body of fictional work, an entire sub-genre of the gothic novel. By highlighting
ways in which Sophia Lee, Ann Radcliffe, and Susanna Rowson utilize gothic conventions
to explore Enlightenment historiography, I argue for more study of historical gothics and
greater attention to the ways in which they participate in the larger eighteenth-century
conversations and debates about history.

Notes to Introduction

 

‘ Two important recent works on the subject of women’s historical writing are Nina
Baym’ s AWWWSQ (1995) and
Devoney Looser’ s ' ' ' (

2 That more women’s gothic novels, including the 1976 and 1995 republication of Louisa
May Alcott's gothic thrillers

Am and the American Women Writers Series’ 1988 publication of EDEN.
Southworth's wildly popular W (1859), are being reprinted points to
growing critical interest in American women’s gothic fiction.

3 Challenging traditional generalizations about both the proper lady novelist and the gothic
novel, EJ. Clery asks, “[W]hat happens if we lay aside our assumptions about women’s
writing and look again at women’s Gothic?” W 2). She includes wild
passion, violent conflict, murder, torture, and sexual excess as some of the discoveries.
While such characteristics are not uncommon in gothic novels, their role in women’s gothic
novels has been distorted. Clery adds that while critics rely on the stereotype of the
reclusive, demure lady author, in their own time, Ann Radcliffe, Joanna Baillie, Charlotte
Dacre, Mary Shelley, Sophia Lee, and Clara Reeve “all achieved either respectable critical
success, or in the cases of Radcliffe and Baillie, fame and adulation. All of them signed
their works with their own names at some stage in their careers, and in any case their
authorship soon became common knowledge. All of them were successful professional
writers, ambitious and innovative, openly courting the public with sensational material” (2).

‘ See alsoAmy Gottfried’s .2 ‘ c ' - '
Wags (1998). Kathleen Brogan, in her study of twentieth—century African-
American ghost stories, points out that these stories of‘ ‘cultural haunting” signal an
attempt to recover and make social use of a poorly documented, partially erased cultural
history” (150). Attention to alternate inscriptions of the past in American women’s
literature, particularly in terms of how they recover the past of slavery and Native American
removal, have broadened the scope of American gothic as it has been seen by critics in the

pat.

5] spend more time discussing Enlightenment historiography in Britain than in America
because of the strong line of British philosophical influence that crossed the Atlantic,
particularly that of Hume and Adam Smith. I will discuss some specific American
conceptions of history below, but will apply many of the critical discussions of British
Enlightenment historiography to my study of Rowson’s W.

6 See April Alliston’s notes to her edition of Lee’s W, where she includes parallels
between the language Lee uses to portray some of her novel’s historical events, and similar
passages in eighteenth-century histories depicting those same events.

 

7 For a more extensive listing of histories written in Britain, see Ian Haywood’ s Ihe
WM, 212-220

8 See, for example, John Kenyon’ 3

W
W Joseph M Levine’ SHumamsmandHiW
Madmfinglrshlhstonomnhr and Barbara Shapiro’ s W

#11. .l \‘?"||'~'\"|\lr’ "J‘il

W.

65

 

9 He points to Hume as an example of a historian who balanced the two approaches.
Talking of Hume’s W, Phillips notes that for Hume, the goal “was not so
much whether he would model his work on classical lines, but how successfully he could
adapt the conventions of ancient historiography to the needs of a society whose commitment
to commerce and modern manners rendered the task of the historian decisively different
from what it had once been” (40).

'° See, for example, Jonathan Swift’s WM, William Temple’s Essay
,and William Wotton’ s
. See Levine for an examination of these and other works and their
intergofins with one another, particularly in terms of the “Battle between the Ancients and
the ems”.

“ As Phillips points out, the rising importance of trade and commerce required new stories
of British identity: “The most easily identifiable reason for the eighteenth century’s
reframing of historical narrative came from the self-evident power of commerce in
contemporary Britain” (Sagan 15). A specifically British identity could be more easily
discovered by focusing on the modern subject of history. “Inherited traditions of historical
narrative needed to be reshaped so that the political class of a commercial empire could
examine and celebrate a history recognizably its own” (16).

‘2 Baym provides a brief catalogue of British historical writings that were available and/or
republished rn America and that would have been available to young women in elite school
libraries. including Gibbon’ s WWI: and
Hume’s Wand (32-33). Ross notes in her study of American historical
consciousness that European historicist literature was studied in America (914), and
O’Brien, studying the Americanization of American history, notes that histories written in
the latter half of the eighteenth century drew upon British models of Enlightenment
historiography and philosophy (1). In my discussion of Rowson’s W, I
emphasize this novel’s connection to British Enlightenment historiography, particularly
because the novel shows the strong literary influence of British gothic novels. However, as
chapter three will explore in more detail, certain configurations of American national history,
particularly that of national history as family history, become major concerns in Rowson’s
novel and affect the way that she utilizes the British models.

'3 My purpose here rs a brief summary rather than an in-depth examination of the
complexities of American historical discourse. For more comprehensive studies, see andPerry
Miller’s WWW Sacvan Bercovitch’s Wand

Earnest Tuveson’ s Wanda that examine Puritan millennialism and its effects on
American history and nation—building. The foundational work by J. G. A. Pocock, In:
W analyzes Christian and republican treatments of history, including
their different explanations for historical change. Pocock also makes connections between
American and European, particularly Scottish, philosophies of historical progress, as does
Trevor Colboum rn I. - .= -
WW Lester Cohen’s '
WWW discusses the growing secularism rn eighteenth-
century histories. These works, as well as those by Ross and O’Brien, contribute to my

summary.

” There was also a darker side to this millennialist ideology, particularly as it was
transformed m the eighteenth century. Emily Burdick, in her study

Conscignsngss, examines how the historical novel registers uneasiness about American
history, including that it “was doomed to become nothing more than a repetition of poorly

 

66

 

understood archetypes of destructive tendencies” (20). In her analysis of Brown’s
Edam, Burdick finds a connection between the Puritan view of biblical history and an
Enlightenment view of history dependent on reason and rationality, both of which locate
America ahistorically (27). She argues that “Enlightenment reason, in Brown’s view, is a
direct descendant of the most troubling feature of Puritan orthodoxy: its belief in visible
sanctity, in the possibility of judging the condition of a human soul on the basis of external
appearances in order to construct a community of saints” (27). Both adopt a literal
understanding of evidence and of history “that would interpret human events as
unambiguous and visible evidences of another reality (natural or supernatural), the
dimensions of which are known and to which American history can be made to conform”
(36).

‘5 See also Cohen, to whom Ross refers.

’6 Ramsay’s approach to placing American history alongside Europe’s was not unique, and,
as Burdick shows, was registered as fearful in American historical novels like Cooper’s The,
, which demonstrates a concern that “without a proper consciousness of the subjectivity
historical narratives and an appropriate commitment to acting out the specificity of the
uniquely American situation, American history might simply become an imitation of some
other--namely, British--history” (19).

‘7 Quoted in Alliston’s notes to W (332). Alliston’s edition of the novel includes
an extensive listing of places in Lee’s novel that parallel historical records written by
eighteenth-century historians such as Hume and Robertson. She also notes where Lee
makes choices departing from such historical records.

'3 Phillips argues that, while scholars have often compared history’s and fiction’s audiences
as if they were two separate entities, “they must, in fact have been very largely the same,
thus ensuring that both literatures would respond to the same broad interests and
questions” (5:291:11 128). While readers of history would have maintained that “the first
quality of the historian continued to be justice and impartiality, deeper insight into
personality and experience would be needed for history to remain truly interesting” (128).

‘9 See, for example, Emily’s escape from Montoni and flight through the woods, fearing
attacks from banditti at any moment (448-452). See also Radcliffe’s W
E9331 where the heroine Adeline flees the house of the Marquis only to be accosted in the
woods (165-8) or when she is pursued by a stranger and in desperation, seeks the
protection of other men she had previously hidden from (298-301).

2° For an example of how this dynamic works, see Gottfried, who looks at gothic inversions
of sentimental effects (37-43). She finds that rn novels like W or

,the happy, safe home becomes the haunted site of
slavery’ s abuses. Likewise, the figure of the protective mother becomes the child-murderer,
as can be seen in a novel like Morrison’s Wed.

2' In her study WW Linda Colley exoiains how
conflicts such as those between Scotland and England had a long history and were kept
alive mainly through folklore and traditions. She states, “Memories of rape, slaughter and
pillage ran deep on both sides of the border and were kept alive in folklore and children’s
games. Well into the nineteenth century, boys in the Scottish Lowlands pla ed at ‘English
and Scotch’, a tug-of-war in which one team tried to drag the other across a ' e, the victors
snatching up the losers’ coats and hats in the process” (117).

67

 

2’ See Ian Haywood’s study of literary forgeries and history rn W

to s r‘ 't:‘ 0 ~ g 0 2" ‘u. r‘aormt 't.":.l:l'10||:' to):

El l-C II [II' IE .

’3 Radcliffe’s famous technique of the “explained supernatural” can be seen not only as a
female writer’s attempt to avoid the explicitly violent, horrifying, or non-Christian gothic
characteristics, but also as a parallel impulse to explore and test evidence of supposed
marvelous events. See, for example, the scene in Wang where a hideous
corpse ‘jumping’ out at the heroine turns out later upon further investigation to be a wax
icon for Inspiring sinners’ repentance. See also the scene in the same novel where a
haunted chamber full of ghostly moans later rs found merely to contain a secret and windy
passage hidden behind a tapestry and used by banditti.

2“ See Judith Dom, who discusses Lennox’s W within the context of
Hume’s and other writers’ views on women reading history.

2’ Travel narratives were an increasingly popular medium of historical information and
education among female readers. Travel writers like Mary Wortley Montagu were
including political and historical subject matter in their writings and presenting this
infomiation in formats such as the letter that have traditionally been associated with
women’s writing (Davis 166). Travel narratives could also lend authority to a woman’s
first-person participation in history and present-day events. For example, Helen Maria
Williams, author of the er ght-volume

,,states “In the serious annals of history, all rs told with calm and with method;
but I am not a historian, I have only hazarded in the preceding pages to express my own
sentiments during the course of the revolution. Many others will search for the revolution
in books, but I remember it; the incidents of this recital are in my memory and the emotions
that they produced are also in my heart. (199-200, qtd. in Kennedy 328). Announcing her
role as participant/observer of history in the making, Williams’ above statement represents
one of several innovations adopted by women writers to proffer historical research and
commentary under different formats from that espoused by typical Enlightenment histories.
Women such as Williams demonstrate an awareness of their position in the midst of
history-of-the-present and of future readers who might peruse their writings in order to
learn about history. Utilizing the more personal and private formats of the letter, memoir,
and travel narrative to do so also weakens divisions set up between public and private as set
forth by traditional separate spheres ideology. In their study of women writers’
participation in discourse on the French Revolution, Adriana Craciun and Kari Lokke point
out that “rather than simply reinforcing women’s association with the sentimental and
domestic, the epistolary genres. . . were powerful polemical tools that allowed women to
redefine the terms of their political and intellectual engagement with the most pressing
concerns of that historical moment” ( 18). The letter, the travel journal, and the memoir all
offered special opportunities to transcend boundaries of private history/public history and
became a vehicle through which women could write on politics, philosophy and history
(19). See Deborah Kennedy, “Benevolent Historian: Helen Maria Williams and Her
British Readers” for a full discussion of Williarns’ role as historian and her awareness of
present events as later history. For a discussion of how the letter form joined public and
private modes of writing, see Mary Favret’ s '
W

2‘ Some histories written by women included more examples of women and often more
commentary on the moral character of famous people and the religious implications of
historical events than might be found in the more traditional histories written by men. As
Ezell explains, “Although women of these generations preserved the model of narrative

68

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history which had traditionally excluded them, i.e., the lives of great men, what they did do
was create narratives which highlight the transient nature of masculine empire and male
rulers while simultaneously offering parallel histories of powerful, learned women who were
publicly active and acknowledged in their own cultures” (34). Women’s responses to
reading the more traditional histories included transforming historical writing to incorporate
more women and to add educational comment about how to use the past to inform present
behaviors and actions. Ezell finds that this way of reading and writing history represents an
important and unifying feature of women’s writings about history and history education
(34). At the same time, Looser cautions against seeing all works by female historians as
essentially “subversive” or as foundations for the twentieth-century conception of

“ herstory” (7-8). Though I emphasize the potential some forms of women’s historical
discourse possess to rupture traditional historiography as a means to set up my argument
about how three “gothified histories” do so, I recognize the diversity of women’s historical
writings, even within the subgenre of the historical gothic.

 

’7 Some of these works encouraging women to study history include: Benjamin Rush’s
“Thoughts upon Female Education, Accommodated to the Present State of Society,
Manners and Government in the United States of America” (1787); Lydia Maria Child’s
WOSBI); Emma Willard’ SW (1819): and
Judith Sargent Murray Manna: (1798). Novels like Hannah Foster’s W
(1797) also portrayed scenes of women reading history and urged readers to imitate such
study. For discussion of these and other educational works supporting women’s education
in history, see Baym, 11-28, 283-4. See Kerber for a full discussion of women’s role in the
development of the new republic.

’3 As I will show, Rowson includes the latter two strategies in her novel as she blends
history with fiction through the “biographies” of her characters; including gothic traits in
her historical fiction makes her novel particularly well suited to highlight cultural clash and
strongly links her fiction to a major strategy used in non-traditional historical discourse.

’9 Many of these “gothified histories” have long been out of print; some exist only on
microfilm or in specialized collections like the Sadleir—Black Collection at the University of
Virginia. During their time, however, these novels enjoyed great popularity among the
largely female reading audience. See Montague Summers, Wigwam, J. M. S.
Tomnkins W and Devranda P Varma. Ihefinthi:
flame for information on their reception.

3° Kilgour argues that the gothic was associated both with the nostalgic and the critical
views of the past during this time. She points out, “During the eighteenth-century both
positive and pejorative connotations co-existed. But the word [gothic] was used also for the
antithetical political purposes of condemnation and praise: to depict both an oppressive
feudal past and a golden age of liberty.” (14). Either way, the gothic novel is linked to
British nationalism in its relation to the past.

3‘ See, for example, Ronald Paulson’s “Gothic Fiction and the French Revolution”. See
also David Richter who challenges the linkage between gothic novels and revolutionary
tendencies, stating that the gothic novel pre-dated the French Revolution. Kil gore draws the
connection between gothic fiction’s portrayal of the past and the revolution of 1688, rather
than the French Revolution (13).

3’ Markman Ellis links the reception of gothic fiction itself to changing interpretations by

eighteenth-century Britons of the Goths and their relationship to contemporary culture. He
argues that to eighteenth-century readers “the term ‘ gothic’ identified a complicated and

69

 

slippery topic connoting a number of related but distinct judgments about medieval culture,
national history, civic virtue and the enlightenment” (17). At first seen as barbaric, the
Goths came to represent “the source and repository of some of the unique, valuable and
essential elements in English culture and politics”(24). Opposed to the Augustan age’s
neoclassicism, which came to be associated with vice and corruption, the gothic became a
way to value Britain’s own cultural and political roots. In the renewed interest in medieval
culture, artifacts, architecture, and political systems, “the term gothic was revised and
transformed from a term connoting the unfavorable, unhappy and ruined, to a more positive
and confident understanding. The emergence of gothic fiction represents one of the
defining moments when an older chivalric past was idealized at the expense of the classical
present. The gothic is then a conscious anachronism presented not as an error of taste or a
corrupting influence, but as a positive attribute. The past is revalued and found to be
superior to the present, a process that wears a nostalgic aspect” (23).

33 I will extend Watt’s argument in other ways as well by looking at gothic novels that, in
their reference to history, serve other functions than supporting loyalist agendas. In these
novels, I argue, the supernatural and other gothic conventions break down rather than
support institutions like the monarchy.

3‘ See Robert Miles, Maggie Kilgore, and Kate Ellis.

3’ See Kenneth Graham’s collection of essays, W.

70

Chapter 1
Making History: Sophia Lee’s mm

Sophia Lee’s W features two women who are not only fictional
daughters of Mary Queen of Scots but also two budding historians concerned as much
with their portrayal of history as with their rightful claim to the throne. The two discover,
however, that to “make” history--both in terms of creating a record of it and in terms of
entering into it as key figures--is an activity fraught with danger and horror. Though they
may use all the tools and evidence available to them and may follow various approaches
to historiography, the young women eventually become hopelessly embroiled in their
historical endeavors, largely because of their reliance upon Enlightenment
historiographical theory to build their case and portray their lives. In the end, they learn
to their misfortune that making history is not as simple as recording objective “truths”
backed up with evidence or even crafting a sentimentalized version of history to elicit
reader response. Instead, making history requires official sanction to have any kind of
power. A novel made up of correspondence from several narrators who relate the same
events differently, W features numerous textual ruptures and involves
sentimental, historical, and gothic discourse, all of which complicate each other. In this
chapter, I will focus on what role the gothic plays in the novel, particularly how gothic
effects surround with horror scenes where “making history” fails and where history
cannot contain or smooth over cultural conflict using the guise of sympathy. With an
examination of how the gothic elements in the novel serve to emphasize larger problems

of historical method, I show that sentimental discourse is as dangerous as the traditional

71

linear Enlightenment historical narrative, particularly when a historian or reader depends
on one to solve the narrative and ideological problems of the other. Both types of writing
are also intricately linked in the transmission of national identity; gothic conventions
serve to highlight the real horror of history’s failure to enforce categories of difference.
Certain locations in the novel where different cultural groups meet in conflict--such as
the recess which once hid oppressed Catholics, the English portrait gallery where Essex’s
conquest of Cadiz “comes to life” or the Irish battlefield where Ellinor’s corpse is
reanimatedware portrayed using the gothic conventions of gloom, terror, and the
supernatural, all of which draw attention to moments when history cannot adequately
cover over intranational discord.

Also in this chapter, I challenge earlier readings of W that censure its
lack of factual correctness and that compare it unfavorably to the historical novel as
written by Sir Walter Scott. While some dates are confused and while Lee includes
fictional characters alongside real figures from history, W3 is quite accurate in its
alignment with eighteenth-century historiographical issues, subjects, and methods.
Arguing for the greater significance of the novel’s historical content, I therefore begin by
examining how W portrays history and sets up its concern with controlling the
process of historical transmission. Lee’s “Advertisement” to W announces her
interest in portraying history according to eighteenthocentury standards; the novel itself
continually draws attention to its various types of historical documents, evidence and
approaches. Before moving onto a closer examination of the gothic conventions of In;
Ems, I will show how the novel crafts its history according to eighteenth—century

standards of sentimental discourse and Enlightenment ideals of historical proof. Far from

negating the novel’s attempts at historical representation, the gothic content in Ihg
amass is intimately involved in it, exploring the darker side of eighteenth-century
historiography, as well as historiography’s role in the constructions of a national past. In
its ruptures of meaning and narrative, its extreme images and events, and its anxieties
about evidence, the gothic adds a particularly frightening tone to W’s

examination of historical reading and writing, an examination that lies at the heart of this

historical gothic.

 

W serves as a good example of how critics have relegated historical
gothic novels in general to an inferior sphere and have allowed these novels’ sometimes
dubious factual accuracy to distract critical discussions from closer attention to how these
works actually participate in eighteenth-century explorations of history’s composition
and functions.‘ In the early to middle twentieth-century criticism of W,
concerns about whether the novel accurately portrayed history and whether its form fit
anachronistically applied criteria for historical fiction took precedence over deeper
textual analysis and led to an emphasis on the novel’s fictionality and primitive qualities.

Critics such as Montague Summers in W, 8.6. MacCarthy in W

 

1-; and Devendra P. Varma in W;
flame, list W as a historical gothic, provide plot summaries, trace influences, and
offer judgments about its artistic quality, often in relation to Scott; they do not, however,
move into deeper analysis of the novel’s use of history. Even praise of the novel is linked

to its relationship to Scott. Varma, for example, recommends the novel as a forerunner to

Scott, noting that “Scott eclipsed all previous attempts to such a degree that one is apt to
forget his indebtedness to his predecessors” (Gothigflamg 84). Concern with how well
the novel accurately portrayed historical events by twentieth-century standards continues
in the criticism that follows the 1972 reprinting of W. Varma, in the
introduction to this edition, notes that Lee’s novel appeared during “the days when
historical knowledge was rather fragmentary and thinly spread. The impressive relics of
the past still filled the eye with wonder and served as a focus for wild imaginings. The
fascination of these works, therefore, lay in suggestive mystery and not in reality of tru ”
(xlvii). According to Varma, “the proper historical novel was yet to be born” (xlviii). J.
M. S. Tompkins’s forward to the same edition of M again notes the
incorrectness of Lee’s history and points out that her novel portrays the eighteenth
century more than the sixteenth: because of the incomplete nature of the period’s
historical records, “we should not then be surprised to find, in the work of the
enthusiastic but far from learned, Sophia Lee, traits, manners and conditions which are
not drawn from the records of the sixteenth century, but from the tastes, dreams, and
reveries of the late eighwenth” (iv). Until the mid-1970s, in—depth analysis of W
was rare; the criticism of Lee’s novel that did appear focused on its truthfulness (or lack
thereof) and its relation to Scott’s historical novels. This privileging of realism in
historical fiction inevitably marked Lee’s novel as inferior and her historical content as
but fanciful coloring. Not surprisingly, like so many other historical gothics, W
slipped from serious critical study.

In sharp contrast to twentieth-century readings of W, the earlier reviews

of the novel were concerned that W might come too close to historical accuracy.

74

That during Lee’s day the novel stimulated discussion on the use of history according to
Enlightenment standards points to Mama’s larger significance as a register of
eighteenth-century questions about historiography. Favorable comparisons of Lee’s
novel with the histories of Hume and Robertson appeared in the same reviews that voiced
suspicion about the combination of fiction and history in general; some assessments also
observed the larger danger that readers might confuse the two forms of writing. For

example, a 1786 review appearing in la -

 

lauds Lee’s abilities in the fictional craft at the same time that it finds her “well
acquainted with the times she describes” (327). In praising her depiction of historical
subjects, the anonymous reviewer notes that “the truth of character is rigidly preserved,
for the peculiarities of Elizabeth and James are not delineated with more exactness in
Hume or Robertson. The imagination is indeed transported into other times, and we find
ourselves in the midst of the court of Elizabeth” (327). Rigid preservation of character,
exact portrayal of history comparable to Hume and Robertson, and the transportation of
the reader to other timesuall standards that were typically applied to eighteenth-century
histories. Viewed from the standards of Lee’s contemporaries, history as it appears in
1111329231 places the novel more firmly within eighteenth-century readings of and
conversations about history. The reviewer’s later statement that ‘Vve cannot entirely
approve the custom of interweaving fiction with historic truth” is followed by the reason
for this disapproval: “as the events related approach nearer the area we live in, the
impropriety increases; for the mind, preoccupied with the real facts, rejects, not without
disgust, the embellishments of fable” (327). The comments of this reviewer address the

problem of sorting out fiction from history, a difficulty endemic to historical fiction’s

75

form. More importantly, they point to a larger concern with how to keep pure a
specifically British history. W may be a tale of other times, but it is not a tale of
another place or of another nation.

In a later review, Anna Laeticia Barbauld communicates a similar concern about
how Lee’s novel, with its combination of fiction and British history, could affect readers’
interpretation of their own country’s past. She states, quite correctly actually, that Lee’s
romance has led to “a prejudice against the character of our Elizabeth, arising from her
cruelty to two imaginary daughters of Mary, Queen of Scots, who never existed but in the
pages of a novel” (qtd. in Varma 74). Noting the novel’s potential for reversing or
polluting nationally sanctioned versions and heroes of history, Barbauld attacks not
simply Lee’s combination of fiction and history, but, more specifically, Lee’s
manipulation of readers’ interpretation of “our Elizabeth”, one of the greatest political
figures in British history. Like the reviewer in We, Barbauld
disapproves of Lee’s combination of history and fiction not simply because of how the
novel portrays history in general but because of how it portrays British history in
particular. This disapproval points to a larger desire to protect an agreed-upon national
story. In these reviews, I pull out the specific concern with national history from the
broader one about combining history and fiction in general in order to emphasize what is
at stake when an author chooses as her setting for gothic horror her own country’s history
rather than the past of another country. As my study shows, one of the larger fears in the
novel relates to approaching national history; early reviews of W demonstrate

this uneasiness as critics examined the history-fiction problematic in her novel.2

76

Viewing W within the context of these early reviews serves to emphasize
Lee’s closer participation in conversations about eighteenth-century history, as well as
her novel’s stronger ties to historical discourse. In her “Advertisement” to M,
Sophia Lee outlines some of the major issues concerning historiography that she will
explore in the novel and thus introduces her novel as one that directly engages with
British history. Following an eighteenth-century convention of placing her work within
larger conversations among historians, she calls upon the authority of “an eminent
historian” who describes Elizabethan times as the age of romance and Elizabeth’s line as
“one distinguished alike by splendor and misery” (5). Adopting the position of
historian/antiquarian herself, she adds, “Not being permitted to publish the means which
enriched me with the manuscript from whence the following tale is extracted, its
simplicity alone can authenticate it” (5). This device of the found manuscript is common
in the gothic novel; Lee uses the device, however, to comment directly on history and on
what constitutes proper historical evidence. One evidentiary requirement is that of
simplicity, something not normally claimed in gothic novels but which Lee incorporates--
or says she incorporates--in her novel. Another is probability. Lee describes the
narrative as stamped with probability and adds,

The characters interwoven in this story agree, in the outline, with history; and if

love, or friendship, veil a fault or irradiate a virtue, it is but reasonable to allow of

a weakness all seek in some particular instance. As painting can only preserve the

most striking characteristics of the form, history perpetuates only those of the

soul; while too often the best and worst actions of princes proceed from

partialities and prejudices, which live in their hearts, and are buried with them. (5)

These statements bring up the issue of “probability of character” exemplified in
eighteenth-century histories and draw links between Lee’s fictionality and the kind of
fictionality which those histories could employ in order to portray the motivations of
people who are long dead.3

Finally, Lee directs attention both to the gaps in her history and to the changes she
has and has not made to the original. She states, “I make no apology for altering the
language to that of the present age, since the obsolete stile of the author would be
frequently unintelligible” (5). Other changes she eschews, however. ‘The depredations
of time have left chasms in the story, which sometimes only heightens the pathos. An
inviolable respect for the truth would not permit me to attempt connecting these, even
where they appeared faulty” (5). Unlike eighteenth-century historians adopting the
method of creating a linear and complete sequence of events, even if this means covering
over any missing pieces of that history, Lee presents a history that contains physical gaps
in the manuscript, gaps that point to lack of complete evidence and yet also contribute to
the credibility of her “historical document”. At the beginning of the novel, then, Lee
highlights the existence of empty spaces in the history.

What the above examples show is not that Lee is attempting to trick her readers
into believing this is a historical document, but that, by calling upon the discourse and
definitions of history in this advertisement, Lee is placing herself within several of the
issues being debated about eighteentheentury historiography and is appropriating the
narrative authority to do so. Bringing up the question of probability of character, the
difficulty of filling in the gaps of recorded history, the importance of sympathy in

historical writings, and the practice of using other historians and histories as evidence,

Lee demonstrates an awareness of problems and strategies of modern historians.
Beginning here with her own thoughts about how to gather and present a history, Lee
both demonstrates her own familiarity with historiography and sets the stage for a novel
that will continue to explore their significance.

Sophia Lee’s Bram, published in three volumes in 1783 and 1785, tells the
history of twin daughters separated at birth from their mother, Mary Queen of Scots.‘
Told for the most part in epistolary format by the daughters, Matilda and Elinor, the
novel poses as a real history faithfully documented in order to prove the two regal
daughters’ claims to the throne and rightful place in history. They grow up in secrecy,
hidden in a cave-like recess beneath the ruins of an old monastery. Upon the death of
their foster mother, the girls leave their refuge in hopes of entering the world. They ally
themselves with important historical men in hopes of gaining support for their claim:
Matilda marries Leicester, Elinor falls in love with Essex. The two men show interest in
helping the heroines, but prove to be useless due to their dependence on Eizabeth’s favor
and fear of her power. Constantly thwarted by Queen Elizabeth and her minions, the
girls live through a series of adventures in Ireland, Scotland, France, the West Indies, and
the Court. Matilda’s and Elinor’s paths separate early in the novel. Matilda lives to see
her husband murdered when they flee to France and herself betrayed by her brother
James I of Scotland. Elinor takes the full brunt of Eizabeth’s rage and ends her days in
madness. When Matilda’s daughter Mary dies, the aging Matilda passes on their history
in hopes that she and Elinor will live on in the memory of a friend. Though the heroines
are fictional, Lee surrounds their escapades with actual historical events and involves real

historical figures in the twins’ struggle for legitimacy. Examining this novel for its

 

 

interplay with eighteenth-century ideas about history rather than for its historical
accuracy reveals Lee’s familiarity with and involvement in modern historical
methodology and her use of its tools to examine the nation’s mythmaking about its past.
Combining gothic conventions with sentimental ones, Lee illuminates problems with
belief in a linear, unified narrative of history’s and the nation’s progress. Transforming
the loving and familiar into the horrifying and dangerous, Lee also points out how
sentimental discourse can be complicit in formulating that linear narrative and can make

vulnerable those readers and writers who depend upon it.

 

One of the more important ways in which W connects with actual
eighteenth-century histories is in its use of sentimental language to portray historical
events and characters.’ Indeed, most of the history documented in the novel is
sentimentalized history, and Lee aligns the heroines’ various political concerns with the
desire to kindle affection and sympathy in the hearts of those they encounter and those
whom the heroines imagine will read their history in the future. Matilda writes her
history with the aim of using it to gain sympathy from powerful people like Leicester and
Pembroke who might help her to gain both political power and historical justification.
Characters who learn about history follow their readings with appropriate emotional
reactions of tears and/or love, such as when Mrs. Marlowe educates the girls on the
history of Mary and Norfolk. Lady Pembroke imagines future readers of history who
look back with sympathy upon people like Eizabeth. The examples of tears, sighs,

heartfelt moments of fellow feeling, and stories of shared suffering that make up the

history are too numerous to explore here, but one locus of sympathy, the twins’
imprisoned mother, dominates the novel. For example, in a heart-wrenching scene,
Matilda and Elinor gaze through a grated window at their mother passing by. Matilda
exclaims,
oh, how changed, and yet how lovely! Damp rooms had weakened her limbs-~her
charming arms were thrown round the necks of two maids, without whose
assistance she could not move-a pale resignation sat on her still beautiful features:
her regal mien could not be eclipsed by a habit of plain purple, nor her fine hair by
the veil which touched her forehead. . . . She raised her fine eyes, with their usual
divine composure, to the window. . . Alas! that blessed--that benignant glance, was
the first, the last, the only one we ever received from a mother.—-When she
withdrew her eyes, she carried my very soul with her; all my strength failed at
once, and I sunk in a swoon in my sister’s arms. (75-76)
The above scene, with its highly drawn emotional spectacle centered upon Mary Queen
of Scots, was not of the type solely to be found in romance. Sophia Lee, in her choice to
locate her novel in the era of Mary Queen of Scots, joins a larger eighteenth-century
movement, the “Cult of Mary.”

Eighteenth-century histories, like George Ballard’s MQMW
W and Hume’s W portrayed Mary in sentimental terms, and
readers reacted accordingly. Paintings of Mary supported by her crying ladies-in-waiting
as she bent to the block or abdicated the throne; supposed secret letters between her and
her lover; and historical tours of places where Mary had been imprisoned or had lived all

registered an eighteenth—century fascination with this queen, a fascination also registered

81

 

in Lee’s novel.‘S Jayne Eizabeth Lewis has explored the widespread “Cult of Mary,” this
idolization of the unfortunate queen, and describes her as an absent or blank figure upon
whom fictions of British history and, by extension, national identity could be inscribed.
Histories of Mary had less to do with her “real” history, much of which was unknown,
than with eighteenth-century configurations of the national past. She explains that
Mary’s
endless, and endlessly disempowering, tribulations made her seem very much a
creature of the present day. Her story summoned tears bound to display the moral
authenticity and fellow feeling of those who shed themutears that also reminded
modern Scots and Englishmen, Protestants and Catholics, Jacobites and
Hanoverian Whigs, of their ostensibly shared history. In short Mary offered a
common object of sympathy in a mercifully receding past. (Mag 105-6)
Sentimental discourse could allow for a covering up of the more dangerous aspects of
Mary Queen of Scotsuher Catholicism, her sexuality, her maternity, her political
connections to Europe, her threat to the English throne-and the religious, economic, and
political conflicts of the Eizabethan era. It allowed for a unified view of the
Eizabethans and also supported the comparison between the more moral, sympathetic,
and progressive eighteenth century and the less enlightened times of earlier centuries.
However, as Lewis explains, “since in reality the past had been bitterly divisive, with the
Queen of Scots one conspicuous reason why, sentimental investment in her was always
risky” (Mary 106). During a time when historians relied on the stability or truth of
character-and indeed, used it to fill in the gaps of recorded history-~the contradictory

figure of Mary posed particular problems for the project of recording a nation’s sense of

its past, partly because Mary was both a victim of political intrigues and a participant in
them. The transformation of the real Mary Queen of Scots into a one-sided,
sentimentalized character removed the Queen’s threatening aspects and allowed readers
to react to her with sympathy rather than uneasiness. As Lewis explains, “Now more
visible as the victim of another woman than as a Stuart, Mary Queen of Scots supplied
proof positive of Britain’s climb out of moral darkness to a state in which no one, surely,
would ever have injured her” (Mary 107).

Addressing W’s depiction of Mary Queen of Scots, Lewis examines “the
point where modern historiography meets sentimental discourse” (“Relation” 166). As
portrayed in Lee’s novel, Mary Queen of Scots comes from “a cultural cache where Mary
Stuart already both exemplified and potentially complicated the role that the sentimental,
the private, and the feminine played in the construction of British history” (“Relation”
182). Studying the function Mary Stuart serves as a complex mediating figure between
historical and sentimental discourse, Lewis finds that W reveals “how fictions of
cultural coherence-particularly historiographical ones-~at once commission and
denigrate sentimental details” (“Relation” 184). Historiography itself thus becomes a
constraining fiction not only because it devalues the sentimental, but also “because it
constantly invokes that realm” to contribute to a nation’s story about itself (“Relation”
184).

Building upon Lewis’s work on the relationship between sentimental discourse
and historiography, particularly as seen in the figure of Mary Queen of Scots, I argue that
the gothic adds significant complications to the combination of Enlightenment

historiography and sentimentalisrn in W. Like Lewis, I find in Lee’s novel a

critique of the uses to which sentiment and sympathy have been put in the construction of
a national history.7 My interest moves in a different direction and rests in bringing to the
forefront how gothic discourse when combined with the sentimentalized history in The
Regss emphasizes the conflicts between differing versions of history and the clash
between cultures. I also find that the gothic reveals how combining sentimental feeling
with historical fact can be a means to cover up these clashes in the process of historical
transmission. As ’1th Recgss’s major disruptive force, the gothic intervenes in the
novel’s treatment of history by undercutting the sentimental discourse that is bound up in
stories of Britain’s past, whether those stories are created by a character like Matilda or
are drawn from a reserve of eighteenth-century historical stereotypes like those of Mary
Queen of Scots. Gothic moments and conventions do not allow the novel’s sentimental
discourse to smooth over the more violent and contentious aspects of Britain’s past as
portrayed in this novel; they also continually remind one of the dangers lurking beneath
the surface of Matilda’s and Elinor’s sentimental narratives. For example, while Elinor,
Matilda and Queen Mary are portrayed as suffering yet noble victims, the ghostly effects
of the recess of the novel’s title bring to mind how these heroines also hold the haunting
potential for violent political usurpation. The recess, the girls’ first home and continued
refuge, previously functioned as a hiding place for beleaguered Catholics; the recess’s
own past points to the religious and political conflicts between Catholics and Protestants
plaguing the Eizabethan period. Much as they surround themselves with sentimental
language in their histories, Matilda and Elinor still represent a threat to the English
throne. Later in the chapter, I will address in more detail the interplay between the

sentimental and gothic narratives. At this point, what I wish to emphasize is the fact that

an examination of Them in terms of its conjunction of the sentimental and the
historical is incomplete without the addition of careful attention to the gothic.

The instability of the historical record in 39.89933. highlighted by gothic
conventions of madness, rupture, and the uncanny, points out how historiography,
sentimentalized, linear, or otherwise, is an uncontrollable and unknowable force. One
may carefully adopt the methods of creating an Enlightenment history and may indeed
gain reader sympathy, but, as we will see in the hands of the two “historians” Matilda and
Elinor, there is more involved in making history than meets the eye. I examine Matilda
and Elinor as historians who follow, for the most part, mainstream historiographical
conventions, including that of sentimentality, only to find that history has a monstrous
and uncontrollable life of its own. Lee’s novel throws into question which, if any,
methods of historical writings can survive without a corresponding validation by those
wielding political power; and yet, those benefiting from that political power also
experience their own nightmares of history’s uncanny nature. For, at the same time, Ina
Rags-as approaches gothic horror from a different direction and speaks to a culture’s fears
that the stories it tells about itself cannot be maintained with any kind of integrity by the
acts of writing them and transmitting them. In its ruptures of meaning and narrative
structures and in its extreme images and events, the gothic adds a particularly frightening
element to the examination of historical reading and writing in Merges- Gothic
conventions transforrn the process of historiography such that sentimental discourse
cannot adequately function in its role to control and unify fictions of British national
identity, particularly as might be depicted in the purely sympathetic portrayal of Mary

Queen of Scots and her hidden twin daughters. Where the sentimental romance attempts

to palliate history’s violent conflicts, the gothic narrative highlights them, creating an
unforgettable record of horror and despair. Lee makes this record all the more striking
because she harnesses both sentimental discourse and Enlightenment methods of
gathering evidence and crafting a historical narrative in order to set the foundation for her

gothic novel. It is to this foundation that I now turn.

 

W demonstrates a self-consciousness about what history is and can do
through frequent mention and exploration of history throughout the novel. This concern
multiplies through the various narratives making up this single history--the novel-~and its
questions about what counts as evidence, how feeling plays a role in politics, and how to
distinguish the real from the imaginary. Debates about the power of visual vs. written
evidence; the veracity of eye-witness accounts vs. false documents and forced
confessions; and the authenticating force of the truth vs. political power all complicate
the quest for history in the novel. Throughout W, Lee frequently throws these
questions and problems into the forefront but does not offer definitive answers. Instead,
she invokes gothic conventions to highlight the slippery nature of historical proof and to
depict the uneasiness that results when events are uncontrollable by or when history itself
becomes unknowable in historical writing. Each type of evidence that Matilda and
Elinor try to use fails them; their sufferings not only result in their oppression by
Eizabeth but also follow from their continued belief that their evidence will prove the

truth in the endnif not in their lifetime, then in future history.

The novel frequently includes actual historical content and talks about history
openly. Readers learn about the achievements of Sir Walter Raleigh, the political
intrigues surrounding Sir Phillip Sidney, Queen Mary’s marriage to Bothwell and flight
to England, and the succession of James I to the throne. Matilda and Elinor pore over
portraits of historical scenes and people. In the midst of these events, characters draw
attention to the fact that they are recording or telling histories, both personal and political.
Matilda includes in her epistolary narrative exact quotes from other characters, in order to
be more accurate. Lady Pembroke, describing herself as a historian implicated in the
history of the royal daughters Matilda and Elinor, takes up the pen to record the life of
Ellinor, who “will never more be her own historian” (256). Here, personal and political
history merge, as Pembroke is aware, because the history these women record involves a
Queen’s daughters who both hope to use this history as evidence for their claim to the
throne. The same combination occurs early in the novel when Mrs. Marlow, the foster
mother of the princesses, explains their history as the history of the Stuart dynasty (25-
32). The heroines’ search for selfhood thus involves being educated about both personal
and political history; indeed, the two are inseparable. This combination represents a
significant departure from other gothic novels that, while focusing on the heroine’s
search for her secret identity, do not tie that search to any particular position within or
concern about actual, recorded national history.

Comments about the past and its connections to the present and future concern
characters as well. Sometimes, characters use history’s lessons to inspire future action,
particularly political action.8 Essex urges his love Elinor to adopt his plan to take the

throne, exclaiming, “How many instances does our own history supply where courage

)3!

" a

o

and popularity have dethroned monarchs in full possession of every advantage!” (215).
Matilda’s words to her daughter teach her not only to hOpe but also to use history to
guide that hope. During one of her several imprisonments, Elinor, too, finds that her
spirit has “gathered courage to retrace the past, and look into the future” (175). At other
moments, characters look at history in a sentimental light, expounding upon how all
passes away—yet also linking it in particular to historical records. Feeling sorry for the
dying Queen Eizabeth, Lady Pembroke looks at her as a historical figure: “Thou couldst
not without pity behold the imperial Eizabeth, lost to the common comforts of light, air,
nourishment, and pleasure; that mighty mind which will be the object of future, as it has
been of past, wonder, presenting now but a breathing memento of the frailty of humanity”
(269). As Lady Pembroke’s words exemplify, characters also see themselves as part of
these passing historical moments and draw attention to their own eye-witness accounts.
The idea of history thus weaves throughout these characters’ lives, adventures,
development, and concerns.

Concern about visual evidence begins and ends the novel. When Elinor and
Mary find that the portrait over which they sigh is the portrait of their mother Mary
Queen of Scots, Mrs. Marlow disarrns their denials and disbelief by saying, “Look in the
glass, Matilda, and you will see her perfect image” (27). The faces of the girls exist as
important evidence of their royal pedigree; the girls come to realize the power this
evidence holds. Throughout the novel, the girls worry about others noticing the
resemblance and discovering prematurely their plans for the throne. They also try to use
this visual evidence to their advantage, as Matilda does when visiting for the first time

her brother James I to forward their cause: “I made no addition to my servants, nor any

Q 11‘.

 

alteration in the weeds I usually wore, than that of forming them to the model of my
mother’s dress; which ever rendered the likeness I bore her from my very birth striking
and obvious” (300). James does indeed believe the likeness is proof, though does not
react in the way Matilda has anticipated.

Visual evidence also can hide the truth, however, and does not remain as
permanent as one might hope. Cross-dressing and disguises often appear in the novel.
Ellinor dresses as a man when pursuing her lover Essex to Ireland and ends up on the
battlefield; she is discovered as a woman only when Irish women, shipping the dead, find
the unconscious Ellinor to be alive and female (220-225). Elinor again adopts male
clothing while fleeing to Scotland, poses as her friend’s husband, and, to both her delight
and embmssment, draws another woman’s passionate love (240). While at Kenilworth,
Matilda and Elinor disguise themselves, as they often do, in the presence of the Court
(77—80). These instances help reinforce the slippages of identity and instability of
character that occur throughout the novel, revealing the “truth in character” to be difficult
to trace and showing eye-witness evidence to be faulty. Consequences of misreadings
also appear. In one scene, Elinor escapes the watchful spies of Eizabeth by switching
places with a corpse about to be buried. Essex’s men witness the burial and, thinking
Elinor is really dead, report the news to her lover Essex. This news causes Essex such
grief that he cannot fight in Ireland, and Elinor almost does die due to the weakness of
his army’s position (218-225). Events such as these reinforce the narrative strategy of
misreading and disagreement so evident in this novel. They also emphasize how hard it

can be to control that evidence and its interpretations.

Additionally, visual evidence or eye-witness accounts can fade away or be
dismissed. Matilda depends upon two witnesses of her secret marriage to Leicester in
order to validate her position in society when she emerges. When one of the witnesses
dies, Matilda worries that “with her died one of the witnesses to my marriage” (74), and
though at the time the other witness, Father Anthony, remains in good health, it is not
long before he dies, too. Losing her witnesses, Matilda has now lost her main financial
and social route for her quest for the throne. First-person evidence provides a substitute
strategy for professing the truth, but even this proves to be vulnerable to misreading or
invalidation, particularly in the presence of those in power. Only Matilda’s close friends
believe in her marriage, and Matilda never receives public recognition for it. When
weighing personal evidence against written evidence, written evidence takes precedence.
After being forced to sign a confession, Elinor hopes that “while I yet lived I had yet a
chance of justifying my intention, in an act which reflected alike on myself and all dear to
me. . . . I suddenly became more willing to support all the evils of a life thus prolonged,
than the idea of an unknown and unhonored grave” (180). Living in order to tell the truth
does not prove to be a good option for Elinor, however, who soon is denounced as mad
and undergoes forced imprisonment due to concocted papers attesting to that fact.

Characters throughout the novel demand or discover written proof of various
claims, yet these methods of evidence also emerge as susceptible to falsehood or
impermanence. Disguised alternately as Leicester’s illegitimate daughters and the secret
twin daughters of Lady Jane Grey, Matilda and Elinor trust Leicester’s plans to evade
the watchful eyes of Eizabeth. When he tells the Queen the false story of their

background, Matilda worries about the fact that they don’t have evidence of this

counterfeit royal birth, saying, “Her mode of conduct convinced me at once that she
utterly discredited the whole of this fiction; which placed us, by another branch, almost as
near to the throne as we really stood. Would not a jealous, selfish soul, like hers, have
demanded facts, testimonials, and witnesses?” (82). Eizabeth does not demand proof
yet, but when she comes upon the actual papers on Elinor’s person attesting to the
daughters’ real birth as daughters of Mary, she tears them to pieces and imprisons Elinor,
thus destroying the written evidence for the girls’ birth and secreting away the physical
evidence of Ellinor (119). Furthermore, she forces Elinor to marry Lord Arlington, who
calls Elinor’s documents “forged testimonials of an impossible marriage [that of Mary
Queen of Scots], and suppositious birth” (177). Ellinor retorts, “Forged testimonials? . . .
why then did she so carefully destroy them?” (177). The question of evidence becomes
further complicated when Eizabeth forces Elinor to sign a confession, included in full
detail and at full length in the novel and complete with legal jargon and names of
witnesses (178—9). Ellinor gives in to the demands and signs the statement that the twins’
claims are fictitious, hoping to spare her mother Mary from death: “holding before my
eyes an order for the execution of the Queen of Scots, signed, dated, authentic, complete
in every form, my shuddering nature could not endure the conflict. I rashly signed my
name, and snatching that tremendous mandate he yet held before me, tore it into a
thousand atoms” (179). Unlike Elizabeth’s similar destruction of written testimony,
Elinor’s destruction of the warrant does nothing to stop Mary’s execution. Similarly,
when Matilda shows her brother James of Scotland the evidence of her birth, he pretends
to welcome her claim, but then tricks her, keeps her papers, the only other evidence of the

girls’ birthright, and imprisons both Matilda and her daughter Mary. As proof, he points

91

out Elinor’s statement that the claims are false. Matilda, upon seeing Elinor’s forced
confession, walls, “The King, in sending this, only added insult to injury, since the
testimonials I had delivered to him might have invalidated a thousand such vague and
artificial falsehoods” (305). Her papers, however, do not have such power, and Matilda
loses her claim to the throne. Though she has proper evidence, that evidence lacks
official sanction and thus does not fit into the larger historical narrative that Matilda
wishes to enter. She loses control of that evidence; this loss contributes to the gothic
horror in the novel.

What all these instances have in common is the way in which eye-witness,
physical or written evidence does not really count unless sanctioned by those in power.
Matilda and Elinor depend upon recognition for their ascendance to high rank; they do
not, for example, gather their own army and take the throne by force. Several
sympathetic alliances seem to allow for this aid and recognition, but in the end,
affectionate connections do not help the women’s cause. Leicester and Essex, the
women’s lovers, both hold political and financial power, but they prove to be too
dependent upon the favors of Eizabeth and too vulnerable to the intrigues at court to be
effective. King James of Scotland, another potential ally because of the family bond,
summarily rejects his sisters Elinor and Matilda, viewing them as a threat whether or not
their claim is truthful. The only alliance holding potential is the one between Matilda’s
daughter Mary and Henry, Prince of Wales; he dies, however, before helping them.
Relying solely upon the sympathies of political allies, Matilda and Ellinor find they

cannot transmit meaning, let alone history.

’1

Lee links the successful transmission of meaning through evidence and recorded
history to the' will of those already in power; this connection highlights the myth of
historical objectivity or authority unaffected by preexisting power dynamics. Even
though the women understand how to create and use history, adopting the methods and
language of historiography, they have not completely understood how to make history
because they do not quite understand the role of political force. Elinor’s documents fail
because the queen says they are false and destroys them. On the other hand, Elinor’s
coerced written confession takes precedence over her spoken word or bodily evidence
because that confession is sanctioned by the Queen. At the death of Elinor’s husband
Arlington, Elinor believes she is at last free from his tyranny, only to find that he has
called her insane in his will and confined her to the care of nuns in St. Vincent’s Abbey.
Not only his power as a husband but also his participation in the Queen’s plot to cover up
the sisters’ evidence continues after his death. Matilda fares no better. James tricks and
then imprisons Matilda and Mary after seeing and destroying Matilda’s evidence of her
birth. He has the power both as a man and as a ruler to do so, regardless of Matilda’s
position.

What is important in each of the above examples is not only the oppression of
Matilda and Elinor as women, though that is certainly an important part of the novel.
The addition of the historical setting to a gothic heroine’s hysterical quest for self-
preservation relocates the gothic exploration of tyranny into the realm of history and
history writing. Elizabeth’s and her followers’ tyranny takes place both on a personal
level (imprisonment, threats of bodily harm, etc.) and on an epistemological level-—in the

questions of who knows the real history, and who gets to say what is the real history. The

act of writing history and depending upon it as a politically-empowering force, as the
twins do, proves to be a dangerous gamble, one that is doomed to failure unless the twins
can first wrest political power for themselves. History will not, and in the end does not,
do that for them. Instead, the evidence upon which they rely to “make” history is turned
against them, and historiography proves to be an uncontrollable project for those who
attempt to grasp its elusive power in order to gain entrance into the political world. The
twins’ more general role as outsiders from recorded history who fail time and again to
elicit belief or to enter the larger political discourse draws attention past the realm of the
personal and into the public realm where personal and political mingle. Because Lee
combines Matilda’s and Elinor’s disenfranchisement, so typical of heroines in gothic
novels, with their Specific historical positions as the daughters of Mary Queen of Scots,
the usual quest for inheritance takes on new meaning. In canonical gothic novels such as
Radcliffe’s mm, the heroine finds the secret of her identity by
discovering outside evidence protected by someone else that explains all and sets things
right. In this novel, however, the heroines do not “come into their own” at the end, nor
does any secret evidence finally solve their problems. Partly, this is because the twins
are in charge of protecting their own evidence and using it from the beginning to make
history, to make their own identities. Taking their proof of who they are outside the
private self and into the realm of historical and political recognition proves to be the
difference between the twins and their gothic sisters in other novels. Even though
Matilda, Elinor, and minor characters like Lady Pembroke write history, it remains

invalid and impotent at the end of the novel. History as crafted by those in power has

already passed on; the elderly and dying Matilda at the end of the novel, now with no

offspring, has been left behind unknown.

 

Lee adopts a narrative structure modeled on the compilation of historical evidence
and documents. Indeed, papers and letters from various people stand as the evidence
forming the basis of the historical novel. Addressed to a woman named Adelaide Marie
de Montmorenci, whom Matilda meets near the end of her life, the novel consists of a
collection of letters, documents, and various narrative accounts of events from differently
biased people. Matilda entrusts this collection to Adelaide and ends the novel by
addressing her as a kind of antiquarian tourist retracing the historic steps of Matilda’s
life:

Dear and lovely friend, you are now in England.--Already perhaps your feet have

trod lightly over those spots where my happiness withered—Ah! If sensibility

should lead you more thoughtfully to retrace them, check every painful emotion,
by recollecting that I shall then be past the power of suffering. . . linger once more
on the spot where we met. . . drop on it a few of those holy tears with which

virtue consecrates misfortune. (326)

Yet again marking herself as an actor in history, this time by imagining Adelaide visiting
the important sites of her life, Matilda attempts one more time to effect and control
historical, not just personal, remembrance. To the end of the novel, Matilda sees herself
as an important historical person deserving of remembrance and validation, not simply

because she is a sentimental heroine, but because she has been involved in history. Aside

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from the self-consciousness about the manuscript serving as history and proof of a
struggle for the royal heirs’ legitimacy, examining the different accounts from different
narrators reveals fundamental problems with Matilda’s configuration of herself as a
historical figure and with the efficacy of historiography in general.

The novel consists of three main narrators, Matilda, Elinor, and Lady Pembroke,
as well as letters and accounts from other characters like Essex and Leicester. Matilda’s
narrative discounts sections of Ellinor’s; Elinor’s discounts sections of Matilda’s; Lady
Pembroke casts doubt upon both of those; and through all the accusations of lies and bias,
who knows about the contributions of Essex and Leicester? Lee makes use of both the
epistolary format and the gothic mode to highlight the different biases of the same events
and to throw into question whose version of history is the most accurate. That this novel
centers upon historical subject matter and characters who plan to use their records as
proof of their place in history, a history to leave to future generations, highlights Lee’s
concern about the uses and objectivity of recorded history. The instability of the
narrative record highlights the difficulty of controlling historical writing and anxiety
about not being able to do so.

The novel begins with Matilda: her love of Leicester, her separation from her
sister Elinor during her flight to France, and her return to England after years of
imprisonment in Jamaica. Elinor’s narrative begins in Part IV, immediately throwing
into question the narrative before it. She writes: “Oh you! much loved, but little trusted,
dear sister of my heart, whom it fondly pursues through unknown climes, where yet
perhaps you wander, the victim of a fatal attachment” (155). She refers here to her

sister’s ill choice in loving Leicester, whom Elinor never trusted or liked. She continues,

“On the memorable day, when Heaven decided the destiny of the one sister, and
perplexed that of the other, by presenting to the eyes of both the favorite of Eizabeth,
how diametrically opposite were the impressions each took of his character! Astonishing
that two agreeing in every instance till that moment, should for the first time differ in so
decided a manner!” ( 155). In comparison to Matilda’s adoration for Leicester, Elinor
finds
His heart, not warm by nature, had been rendered in a great degree callous, from
its having expanded in the chilling atmosphere of a Court. Unbounded in his
projects, timid and subtle in his actions, tyrannic in his pursuits, the object he
could not govern, never long attached him. Ambition, pride, and vanity, those
leading traits in almost every character were in his so exquisitely blended, and
corrected by the frost of his nature, that they might often be mistaken for nobler
passions. ( 155-6)
Her distrust of Leicester and her very different interpretation of his character influence
the rest of Ellinor’s narrative as she rewrites the events that she and Matilda shared. She
demonstrates an awareness of how politics at Court work, and she interprets Leicester’s
actions through this awareness. Leicester constantly avoids acknowledging his marriage
to Matilda at Court. Elinor explains the complicated motiveswfrom Eizabeth’s favor to
his enemies’ plots at Court to his desire for even closer connections to Elizabeth.
Whereas Matilda explains Leicester’s constant failure to bring her out of hiding by
lamenting the villainy of Eizabeth and forces beyond his control, Elinor points out his
political machinations and corrupt character. Both narrators differ in their opinions of

this man, and their biases also affect how they relate historical people and events.

Lady Pembroke enters as a third narrator who continues to throw the
interpretation of people and political events into question. The focus on Elinor’s lover
again connects political events to the interpretation of character and again describes a
different series of motives behind the same characters’ actions. Ellinor, like Matilda, has
been blinded by love: “the sweet mistress of Essex had a very partial knowledge of his
character, or information of his actions” (256). In contrast to Matilda, who barely seems
to notice her sister’s attachment while with him, Lady Pembroke shows concern about
Ellinor’s choice. She describes Essex as possessing generosity, but also ambition and
lust for power. She believes he aligns himself alternately with Eizabeth and then Elinor
in hopes of gaining the crown. He lacks, however, political skill and ultimately falls prey
to his enemies (256-261). Like Elinor before her, then, Lady Pembroke gives yet
another version of the historical events surrounding Essex and assigns different
motivations to his words and actions.

The competing narratives include concern about being accurate, yet even as they
protest their objectivity, they reveal their own inadequacies. For example, when
introducing Leicester’s narrative, Matilda states, “Lord Leicester did not delay to gratify
our curiosity, but began his story thus: (for to prevent the coldness a relater always gives
to events, and as almost the very words are familiar to my memory, whenever a narration
occurs, 1, in justice to the person concerned, shall give him the power of speaking for
himself)” (43). The parenthesis reminds the reader that Matilda the historian is quite
concerned both with accuracy and with readers’ emotional connection to the history she
crafts. This justification, however, abruptly breaks the narrative flow and highlights the

reliance upon Matilda’s memory that “almost” recalls every word. Matilda further

interrupts Leicester’s narrative and throws into question her objectivity with descriptions
of her fainting at hearing certain parts of his narrative and misreading it due to not
knowing the whole of his history (54-55). Again calling attention to herself as audience
as well as (faulty) interpreter, Matilda complicates the historian’s authority that she
claims. The textual ruptures reveal her ability to be the type of historian who can evoke
sympathy both in herself and in the readers for whom she “poses” as a model listener and
reader of history herself. Yet, because Matilda is a person who “feels” history, her
narrative loses strength in accuracy as well as linearity. Lee reveals through this incident
that one of the failures of the more sentimental approach to historiography is that, in spite
of the attempts to reach the reader more fully through the emotions, those very emotions
threaten to overwhelm reader and writer, replicate the gaps in available history that the
sentimental narrau've may be invoked to take care of , or even create gaps in knowledge
where none previously existed.

In linking each narrator’s judgment of character with the way she writes history,
Lee critiques the eighteenth-century reliance upon “truth in character” as an adequate tool
for writing history objectively.9 Each narration seems quite plausible, yet by the end of
the novel, it is difficult to select one or some combination of the narratives to show what
really happened and why. Because of their na'r'veté in judging character, especially the
characters of Essex and Leicester, Matilda and Elinor continually fall into danger and
suffering. The twins, who see themselves as both historians and actors in history, live
their lives based upon the same concept of “truth in character” that they rely upon in their
written histories. Aside from pointing out the inherent bias in human interpretation,

Lee’s connection between the twins’ failures in writing and living history contribute to a

growing sense of the danger concerning historical transmission that builds throughout the
novel. This danger involves Elinor’s and Matilda’s eventual recognition that, in spite of
being both accurate and sympathetic in their presentation, they have not created a history
that can survive. In other words, because they lack the political power and machinations
to make a successful history, they must remain victims of it. Matilda faces this fear by
continuing her narrative anyway and by couching it in terms that at least allow her to win
sympathy. Elinor, however, adopts a different strategy, one that reveals historiography
as the horror that it is and one that, using gothic conventions, points to a way to overcome
it.

The novel includes physical representations (asterisks, blank lines, etc.) in the text
to mark narrative ruptures; nearly all of these places involve Elinor’s madness. Such
interruptions serve as frequent reminders of this history’s incompleteness and the
vulnerability of any narrative’s reliability. Fascination with madness-~a decidedly gothic
trait--dominates Elinor’s history as she succumbs to insanity due to persistent
oppression. Her madness breaks up the text after instances of abuse and suffering:
worrying whether her sister is dead due to Elizabeth’s machinations (185, 219); hearing
of Essex’s marriage to Lady Sidney (185); living in enforced solitude when not at her
oppressive husband Arlington’s side (200); and enduring imprisonment and attempted
seduction by the Irish General Tyrone which forces Essex to bargain with him during the
war (227). After her forced midnight marriage to Lord Arlington, another rupture in the
writing occurs. Resurrring her narrative a short time after, Elinor finds,

my intellects strangely blackened and confused, frequently realized scenes and

objects that never existed, annihilating many which daily passed before my eyes.

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. . . Alas! my sister, look no more in this sad recital for the equal—minded rational
Ellinor you once saw me; sensations too acute for either endurance or expression,
from this fatal period blotted every noble faculty, often substituting impulse for
judgment. ( 182-3)
Suddenly the question of whether this loss of equal-minded rationality has continued in
her writing begins to be a major concern. \Vrthin a novel where the different writers
contradict each other, Elinor’s madness throws a further complication into any sensible
conclusions about the historical record that she helps create. Through the character of
Ellinor, the irrational breaks upon the rational, further throwing this “history” into
question at the same time that it records historical “truths” of oppression and exclusion.lo
Several instances of Elinor’s madness appear at the same time that concerns over
evidence and historical transmission occur; sometimes the psychotic episode occurs when
Elinor’s attempts to make history are thwarted. The linkage between Elinor’s madness
and historical transmission further connects historiography with horror, as it is the twins’
constant attempt to make history that leads them to suffering. Madness first surfaces
during the scene of Elinor’s forced confession:
It was surely at this tremendous crisis in my life, my fermented blood first
adopted and cherished those exuberances of passion, which ever after warped the
equality and merit of my character; that blood now boiling in my veins, joined
with a disordered imagination to call around me a thousand visionary inconsistent
forms. ( 178)
Forced to sign a piece of evidence that will be used against her, Elinor loses authorial

control of the proof of her birth that she was using to assure her place in history; madness

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occurs immediately after history slips out of her hands. At times Elinor is aware of her
madness as she writes, and she laments the effect on her narrative: “I fear I begin again
to wander, for my hand-writing appears to my own eyes that of Essex.--Oh, how tight is
my head, my heart seems bound!--will no one loosen the shrunk fibres?—-Hark! Is that
not the Queen?--No--It was but the deep voice of the Winter’s wind” (196). Essex, the
main subject of Ellinor’s history and the man she loves, seems to take over Elinor’s
writing; once again, she loses control of her history and also loses control of her mind.
When she comes back to reality, she again speaks in terms of her writing and her need to
control it: “Let me snatch a moment of reason and recollection to forward my story”
(197). Combining historiography and madness through the person of Elinor, Lee shows
not only the way in which madness is a logical the result of women’s oppression, but also
how madness surrounds the myth that historiography in itself lends one power or, indeed,
is even something that can be controlled by the individual who exists outside the larger
narrative of a nation’s history.

Ellinor’s worsening madness and oppression finally and abruptly shut down her
narrative, yet the use of madness surrounding the previous interruptions highlights the
inadequacy of the historical document to contain the events and emotions of its
author/participant. One way that Lee shows this inadequacy is by allowing strong feeling
in the first place to enter Elinor’s writings. Describing the fragmentary nature of
Ellinor’s narrative and its relationship to the sentimental voice used in the novel, Lewis
states,

Arranged in pieces that are connected only by asterisks, Elinor’s manuscript not

only fuses historical and psychological destiny but also transposes them into the

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field of letters that both share. The page in turn becomes a charismatic image of
the atomizing losses that at once produce and are engendered by historiographical
convention; it guides written words into an alternative, and uniquely illuminating,
mode of “historical” evidence, one whose pathetic force is inseparable from the
sociocultural imperative behind it. (“Relation” 180)
Elinor’s manuscript does indeed draw sympathy, but her more violent and uncontrollable
words and actions color the narrative in darker tones as well. Because Elinor’s highly
charged psychological drama really does stem from madness, not just exaggerated
feelings of the suffering heroine in an ordinary sentimental narrative, Lee moves closer to
the gothic mode and does more than critique the absence of women and their
stereotypical world of feelings from the historical record. Ellinor’s narrative, like
Matilda’s, details a life overwhehned by injustice. Unlike Matilda’s narrative, however,
Elinor’s history surrounds some of the worst instances of oppression with outbreaks of
madness and violence, further calling attention to these injustices. Unlike Matilda’s
anger, which regularly transforms and disperses itself into sentimental sighs and tears,
Elinor’s anger comes through clearly during these moments of madness and represents
the reality of their situation more forcefully." She becomes more violent and sees things
around her to be more violent as well. When talking of Arlington, she says, “he drags me
about with him still, and calls me-his, Oh Heavens!--But I am nobody’s else, mark that--
mark that, or we shall perhaps have murder” (197). Gaining a daring in her madness that
abnost overcomes Elizabeth, Elinor is the sister who finally confronts the Queen with the
intent to harm her (267-8). Her madness refuses to allow the reader to lapse into

acceptance or understanding, as happens in Matilda’s narrative, which relies upon

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sympathetic connection with the reader. Indeed, at the very point where Elinor retreats
to safety at last, feels her sanity return, and believes she can forget the past, the madness
returns with full force and stops her from writing again:
A thunder-bolt falls on my brain! avenging heaven, why does it not wholly split
it? Tried--sentenced--condemned--while I entombed in a now detested solitude,
gaily dreamt of endless happiness.»0h! let me once more rush madly into the
world, overwhehn my agonized senses with the shouts of armies--the groans of
the dying--fountains of blood-«rivers of tears--find if possible a horror in nature
may counteract that now raging in my soul.--The wreck of the universe alone can
equal it.-But let me give the ruin scope-wherefore should I wish it lesseneduOh!
Lady Pembroke! (256)
This quote ends Ellinor’s narrative and can be said to point out her failure as an adequate
historian due to mental illness. In another sense, it can point out historiography’s
inability to record, to find language for, the gore of history. Elinor’s madness will not
allow her to forget this failure or the oppression she has experienced. Including narrative
ruptures and outbursts of chaos, madness, and terror in a history which, according to
classic Enlightenment historiography, should follow a linear and rational line, Lee
implies that the very project of historiography necessarily excludes such “irrational”
responses to the events occurring within history, particularly events caught up in the
repression of those outside the power structures of official sanction. After all, Elinor
does not suffer from madness until she has experienced overwhelming personal and
political Oppression. The gothic mode is particularly well-suited for this kind of textual

transgression and has often been studied in terms of its links to the irrational and the

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dialogic.12 Indeed, as one critic argues, “there is broad agreement that the Gothic
represents the subject in a state of deracination, of the self finding itself dispossessed in
its own house, in a condition of rupture, disjunction, fragmentation” (Miles, Qatajg
Waiting 3). A rational and linear narrative style cannot “contain” the history Elinor
writes and must break apart at certain places in the text. Gothic conventions, with their
highly charged and horrifying scenes, draw especial attention to the gaps and absences

within traditional Enlightenment historiography.

W

The gothic mode does not allow readers the self-congratulatory stance allowed by
the sentimental mode.l3 Readers of this “gothified history” both within and outside the
novel cannot simply look back on past times and know that they have the sympathy in
their own era that was lacking in the past. The call for pity in 111M occurs in the
novel to an extent, yet the addition of the gothic complicates the sentimental response by
involving readers in not only a sympathetic reaction but also a horrified reaction. This
reaction is potentially subversive as well as dangerous, particularly when the villain in the
novel is a great figure in national history.“ Ellinor and Matilda do more than feel sorrow;
they feel horror and the desire to commit violence, if not to seize the throne outright by
force. This impending violence and shift in power is not only escapist fantasy for women
readers; nor does it merely support eighteenth-century culture’s modern belief in
progress. Instead, with its close connections to eighteenth-century manners,
historiography, writing style and culture, the novel’s violent emotions and ghastly scenes

--not the sorrowful or pitiful once-point to a violence within the text, a violence upon the

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very historiography that would appear on the surface only to be affected by the
sentimental tradition and only innocently concerned with events and customs. The
jarringly “modern feel” of W, noted since the early reviews and criticized as
historical inaccuracy, actually strengthens the novel’s relevance to an eighteenth-century
uneasiness surrounding the uses and methods of history writing."

On a surface level, W has all the trappings of the more canonical gothic
novels by Radcliffe and Lewis: the appearance of banditti threatening the heroine’s
virtue (100-102, 172); the notorious room with two doors which the heroine can’t lock or
escape through (172); imprisonment in a Catholic convent (124-129); secret chests (208);
tyrannical father figures (36, 112-113); mysterious singers and speakers (131); frequent
“appearances” of and appeals to ghost and spirits (32, 100, 184); portentous thunder and
dreams (101-102, 248), and scenes involving corpses and coffins (29—30,l32-136, 218).
Such “gothic trappings” provide a gloomy and frightening atmosphere; they also allow
Lee special tools for examining the darker side of national myth as crafted by history.

Characters tend to focus on the more gory events of the past, which, along with
the fascination of madness, increase the gothic presence in the novel. Elinor imagines
the bloody death of her father Norfolk: “The premature fate of my much-honored father-
-Norfolk, returned upon my memory-~the tower, the dismal tower, scaffolds, axes, a
bleeding lover, and a broken heart, daily passed in a long array before me” ( 176). They
use language to highlight horror. Matilda is haunted by “the gastly body of Williams
[which] seemed forever to impede our footsteps, floating the path with blood” (106).
Hearing about her mother’s death, Matilda is “agast with horror” as she imagines her

heart sinking “into a sea of blood.” (117). Emphasizing again the failure of language or

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sympathy to help, Matilda finds herself “unable to reduce the torrent of my ideas into
language” (117) and asks everyone to leave her to her morbid thoughts, including “the
savage hand of Eizabeth dipt in the blood of an annointed sister sovereign” (117); the
image of Mary on the block, “every agony of death doubled, by the knowledge that her
daughter brought her there” (118); her wish to be destroyed by lightening or “entombed
in the sea” (118). At Leicester’s murder scene, Matilda “bathed my bosom in the blessed
crimson which still flowed from his” (123) and develops an obsession with keeping his
coffin with her wherever she goes. Descriptions such as these transform the sentimental
response, with its sympathetic connection between reader and object, into the horrified
response, with its terrible dis-connection.“S Several of these gory images describe events
that happened in actual history. Exaggerating the language to depict them in all their
horror is threatening not only because of the images they bring to the reader’s
contemplation but also because of the implicit potential these descriptions poses to
cause the reader to turn away from his or her own nation’s history with fear and loathing,
just as the princesses do.

By providing an outlet for the supernatural and for the unknown, the gothic
provides an additional way within the novel to talk about and experience history.
Reminiscent of the not-too—distant past when historiography could include the marvelous,
characters in the novel sometimes seem torn between what would be called “modern”
views of history and those less developed methods of writing the past. How does one
react to and read history? When sharing written or oral histories, characters sometimes
react incredulously, adding wonder to their reading of history. At one point when

describing to Lady Arundel the historical events in which she has participated, Matilda

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states, “The astonishment its incidents every moment excited in Lady Arundel, seemed to
make it more wonderful even to myself” (153). Reader reaction colors the historical
narrative Matilda relates. Such notes about history and reactions to history occur within a
context wherein the novel, aided by gothic conventions, co-mingles the real with the
imaginary. Matilda describes her complicated and very real political schemes as “vague
imaginary joys” (64). Essex’s man Tracy later finds that the fiction he told Essex about
Elinor’s safety actually is truth, a truth presaged by a “visitation” in a dream (248). In
various places throughout the novel, Elinor and Matilda are described as specters (199)
or illusions (157) or ghosts of their mother (167—8). Both there and not there, present and
not (of the) present, the figure of the ghost is an appropriate way to describe two women
who are part of history, but also outside it (both in the novel and in the real world)"

In a way reminiscent of eighteenth-century lessons about how to use history to
influence present-day political actions, both women also call upon dead figures from
history to show them how to act in the present. Matilda teaches her daughter to learn
from the past to help her as she attempts to gain the throne; she also looks to the dead
figures of her mother and father to teach and inspire her how to act. Not knowing the
identities of their parents Queen Mary and Norfolk, Matilda and Elinor, as young girls
living in the recess, nevertheless become fascinated by two strange portraits of a man and
a woman surrounded by mementos of their nobility, rank, and honor. The portraits take
on an almost supernatural presence as the girls become more influenced by the imagined
power of the figures in the paintings. Even before learning that these pictures portray
their parents, the young princesses adopt them as role models. In their limited world,

Matilda and Elinor “lived in the presence of these pictures as if they understood us, and

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blushed when we were guilty of the slightest folly” (10). Mrs. Marlow also calls upon
Norfolk and Mary: “Shades of the honoured Howard and amiable Mary, I have fulfilled
your injunctions. . . your words have been ever present to my memory” (32). People
from the past take on a very real presence in the novel and affect the actions of those in
the present who seek these models of behavior. In addition, linking themselves to actual
historical figures becomes a way for the girls to enter into history; they do so by using
imagination and sympathy.

Adopting figurative death and ghostliness, as well as acknowledging the presence
of those who have passed over, becomes a means of empowerment for the two women.
Sometimes this strategy succeeds, and sometimes it fails, but in either case, the action
represents an attempt to make the past and its representations exist in a present that
Matilda and Elinor can control-0r at least think they can control. This creates yet
another instance where the boundary between past and present blurs and shows how
fragile such orderings can be. Elinor calls upon the shade of Matilda to visit her (184)
and upon that of Mrs. Marlow to aid her while in the clutches of Eizabeth (177). When
she and Leicester are imprisoned in the recess, Matilda calls upon Providence and knows
that “the shades of those who reared me will surely rise in . . . defense” of her innocence
(100). Though Leicester disagrees and sighs that at least “these visionary hopes may
soothe the mind ‘till that sad moment nothing can avert” (100), a flash of lightning shows
the two a secret way to escape their prison (101). In scenes such as these where the girls
must depend on supernatural interference to save or guide them, Lee highlights the twins’

vulnerability.

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The ghostly guise gives Elinor the power to speak the unspeakable; in a similar
fashion, Lee uses the gothic to critique the rational methods of historiography. In Lee’s
novel, the supernatural and the historical explicitly involve one another. As Kathleen
Brogan explains of gothic novels in general,

The turn to the supernatural in the process of recovering history emphasizes the

difficulty of gaining access to a lost or denied past, as well as the degree to which

any such historical reconstruction is essentially an imaginative act. Centrally
concerned with the issues of communal memory, cultural transmission, and group
inheritance, stories of cultural haunting share the plot device and master metaphor
of the ghost as go-between, an enigmatic transitional figure moving between past

and present, death and life, one culture and another. (152)

On the one hand, Lee’s use of the gothic, including the twins’ ghostliness and madness,
to empower the princesses reiterates their powerlessness; without the fantasy, such brave
deeds and life-saving interventions could not occur. On the other hand, Lee’s choice to
involve the gothic and the supernatural in her examination of Britain’s history allows her
to emphasize the irrational, the conflicted, the extra-historical and to highlight those
moments, spaces and events that exist “in-between”--between recorded fact and fiction,
between past and present, between the powerful and the powerless. Locating her
examination of historiography within a novel that breaks apart the linear, rational,
objective Enlightenment history, Lee emphasizes the failure of Enlightenment
historiography to contain or smooth over the oppressions and horrors of a nation’s past.

Throughout the novel, Matilda and Elinor attempt to use sympathy to enter into

the political world; they also depend upon historiographical practice to gain justification

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Throughout the novel, Matilda and Elinor attempt to use sympathy to enter into
the political world; they also depend upon historiographical practice to gain justification
and recognition in history. Neither of these actions succeeds, and the twins’ failure
points to a larger anxiety about historiography’s efficacy, particularly for those who do
not possess the power to dictate the larger ideological narrative. Only when Elinor
abandons sympathy and historical transmission does she finally “make” history.
Ironically, it is breaking out of the rational historical record that allows Elinor the real
physical and linguistic power to overcome the Queen. Her madness and association with
death and the supernatural succeed where the twins’ earlier attempts to use the tools of
politically-approved history for themselves fail.18 By associating real political power
with gothic discourse, Lee provides a solution to historiography’s horrible tendency to
slip from the twins’ control. Elinor herself slips from history’s control--she is no longer
confined by evidence turned against her, she is no longer constricted by a dependence on
objectivity, she is no longer involved in a mission to gain the sympathy of those in her
own era or in the future, and she is no longer bewitched by a belief that she can break into
history as a key player. Instead, she turns physical violence directly at the source of her
oppression, that great figure in English history, Queen Eizabeth. Rebellion becomes
more important than making history.

The subversive energy behind the gothic’s transformation of history occurs when

the mad Elinor rushes into Queen Eizabeth’s bedcharnber. Elinor swings between
sentimental sighs and vindictive judgments of the queen, pleas for forgiveness and
intimations of violence. She at last charges the queen with her murderous crimes and

gives full vent to her anger. Taking Eizabeth’s hand, she shrieks with horror:

lll

Oh, you have dipt mine in blood! a mother’s blood! I am all contaminated—4t
runs cold to my very heart-Ah, no, --it is--it is the blood of Essex; and have you
murdered him at last, in spite of your dotage, and your promises? . . . all because
he could not love you. How have we laughed at such preposterous folly! But I
have done with laughing now-wwe will talk of graves, and shrouds, and church-
yards. (267-8)
Having thought that Elinor was dead, the ailing Queen believes she sees a specter, drags
the attending lady Pembroke to her, and, convulsing, cries, “‘Save meusave me--oh,
Pembroke, save me from this gastly spectre’” (266). Eizabeth, elsewhere described as
all-powerful, becomes a fainting, terrified, vulnerable creature in the face of the ghostly
Elinor. In this guise, Elinor accomplishes what the twins have spent most of the novel
attempting-overcoming the queen: “So--so--so. . . would one have thought it possible to
break that hard heart, after all? and yet I have done it” (268). As Pembroke relates of
Eizabeth’s senses, “the terror she had endured has shook them for ever. Shuddering with
apprehensions for which only I can account, she often holds incomprehensible
conferences; complains of an ideal visitor; commands every door to be shut; yet still
fancies she sees her, and orders her to be kept out in vain” (268). In actual history,
Eizabeth did experience a sinking depression until her death; in this moment, Lee
portrays Elinor as effecting the real historical event, not reacting to it, suffering from it,
or trying to record it. Here at last, Elinor makes history. In order to do this, though,
Ellinor herself must become a part of history’s horror; she must adopt the monstrous
guise in order to appropriate power. Beneath the supematural trappings and power that

madness gives Elinor, Lee explores a deeper issue related to historiography’s association

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with horror. Throughout the novel, Elinor and Matilda are oppressed and excluded; their
attempts to tell their own personal and political histories are continually thwarted. The
end result of this exclusion is Elinor’s madness and violence, which in turn allow her to
appropriate historical power. Could actual histories that fail to contain or cover up
history’s horrors, as happens in W, lead to similar rebellious deeds? This is a

question that the novel’s gothic presence brings to light and surrounds with fear.

WW

Another way in which Lee utilizes the gothic to point out the horrors lurking
beneath the surface of Enlightenment historiography involves surrounding with gothic
moments certain locations and objects connected to cultural conflicts within a nation’s
own history. This technique highlights the historical narrative’s inability to cover over
any such reminders of national disunity and intra-cultural violence by depicting those
moments of cultural clash in graphic relief. Gothic conventions surround these sites with
two horrors: they give voice to those suffering the real violence and oppression in a
nation’s history whose experiences might otherwise be suppressed, and, from another
angle, they show the fearful dread that a nation’s violent past cannot be contained by a
traditional historical narrative.

The recess itself, perhaps the most important location in the novel, serves not only
as a hiding place for the princesses, but also, historically, as a hiding place for Catholics
during the Reformation. Mrs. Marlowe tells the girls the history of the Reformation and
the abolition of the convents that links actual historical conflict to the recess. When

Matilda hears tales of the monks and nuns who fled to the recess and hid until the

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government changed, she states that the history “appeared to me almost fabulous. . . I
impatiently desired to explore the whole romantic secret” (23). The recess does play an
“almost fabulous” role throughout the novel, with its “hauntings” by various ghosts, its
headless guard statues that seem real, its visitations by sentient forces of nature, its
similarity to a tomb with “ghosts” (Matilda and Ellinor) who come and go from it.
Through the recess, Lee aligns Mary’s suffering daughters with the oppressed Catholics,
both victims of Protestant England and, though they both represent threats to the English
throne, both are covered over, at least initially, by being crafted as loci of pity and sorrow
in the novel. Surrounding it with seemingly supematural occurrences and selecting it as
the setting for some of the novel’s most frightening scenes, however, Lee marks the
recess as a space of cultural conflict and a constant, frightening reminder of political
tension hiding beneath the surface.

Because it can be a place of fear and horror as well as of refuge, the recess
provides a reminder of a danger hiding within the deeper comers of the novel’s narrative,
a danger represented by the figure of Mary Queen of Scots that Lee associates with the
place. In her study of the cultural significations of Mary Queen of Scots, Lewis states
that almost from the beginning, the queen

summoned tears bound to display the moral authenticity and fellow feeling of

those who shed them--tears that also reminded modern Scots and Englishmen,

Protestants and Catholics, Jacobites and Hanoverian Whigs, of their ostensibly

shared history. In short Mary offered a common object of sympathy in a

mercifully receding past. But since in reality that past had been bitterly divisive,

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with the Queen of Scots one conspicuous reason why, sentimental investment in

her was always risky. (Lewis, Mag 104-105)

E ghteenth—century fascination with Mary Queen of Scots depended upon covering up the
turmoil and political machinations surrounding her actual life and instead crafting her as
the ultimate suffering heroine. At the same time, “to those francophobic, anti-Catholic,
and anti-Stuart members of English society who were evidently bent on economic,
political and affective unity, the half-French, devoutly Catholic mother of the disgraced
and exiled Stuart dynasty threatened to expose collective self-approval as a convenient
fantasy” (Lewis, Mary 107). In her novel, Lee’s use of gothic conventions pushes this
exposure over the edge. The sentimental narrative urges pity even for those who may be
Other, like Mary, and, using the guise of sympathetic feeling, covers over her real threat.
The gothic narrative ruptures this sentimental mandate with scenes of violence, madness,
and horror and reminds readers of the danger existing alongside or beneath the
sentimental version of this historical figure. Her very real threat, and by extension, her
daughters’ threat, as a Catholic and a Scot, comes through only in glimpses, but those
glimpses are made more striking by the symbolism of the recess and another staple of
gothic fiction to which it is linked, the convent.

Comparing the recess with the convent reveals a fundamental contradiction in the
way Lee portrays religious conflict within a country and between countries. Later in the
novel, Lee will demonstrate strong anti-Catholic sentiments when talking of the French
nuns’ attempts to convert Matilda (who is somehow now safely a Protestant-mo need to
make a Catholic threat to the throne too real) to her mother’s religion. This seemingly

inconsistent portrayal of Catholics actually emphasizes the difference between the danger

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lurking within a nation’s own past and the past of a foreign nation. Again, examining
the gothic location of this conflict lends particular attention to eighteenth-century
political conflicts. Like the recess, the convent, a place of religious and political discord,
features gothic elements. Matilda and Leicester flee to France in hopes of gaining
political support from Queen Mary’s allies and relatives. Lady Mortimer, however,
betrays them, takes their riches, murders Leicester and imprisons Matilda in a convent.
The lady does, indeed, wish to use Matilda to gain the English throne, but not without
converting her to the Catholic religion ( 127). The nuns, whom Matilda calls “the
bigotted dictators in religion” (125) follow stereotypes of eighteenth-century anti-
Catholicism so often shown in traditional gothic novels. Matilda suffers at the hands of
one nun who
denounced eternal perdition on me if I longer thought of a heretic (Leicester) who
seduced me from the true faith, and who of consequence became a dreadful
example of vengeance; charging me to adore the holy Virgin Mother, who had by
so gentle a punishment recalled me to the Catholick church. Yes, sainted
Leicester, in the infatuation of her bigotry she dared to term thy death a gentle
punishment. (124)
Viewing him as an outcast, the nuns refuse to inter Leicester’s corpse and urge Matilda to
be grateful that her sin of marrying outside the Church could be expiated now through
prayer and penance. Feeling entombed alive, Matilda deveIOps an obsession with her
husband’s coffin, which has been secreted away in an unhallowed vault, and she conducts
nightly visits to the dark and dismal place. With the aid of the much more sympathetic

Mr. Mortimer, Matilda flees from the place one night, but not without taking her

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husband’s coffin with her. All these images-~tomb, coffin, vault--point back to the recess
and create a strong connection between the convent and the recess.

Occurring later in the novel, this religious and political intrigue in a French
convent reinforces the conflict hinted at in the recess, showing that turmoil from the past
cannot be erased so simply. Lee transforms the typical gothic heroine imprisoned for her
sexuality into the heroine imprisoned for religio-political reasons and adds to this event
details of schemes against England. Here, the danger that France represents links Lee’s
novel with the histories of her period. For, like Lee’s novel does, British histories of the
time translated current apprehension of Catholic states like France into their depictions of
their own past. As Linda Colley explains in her study WW

1812.
the prospect in the first half of the eighteenth century of a Catholic monarchy

being restored in Britain by force, together with recurrent wars with Catholic

states, and especially with France, ensured that the vision that so many Britons

cherished of their own history became fused in an extraordinary way with their

current experience. To many of them, it seemed that the old popish enemy was

still at the gates, more threatening than ever before. The struggles of the Protestant

Reformation had not ended, but were to be fought out over and over again. (25)
Furthermore, these histories helped to create the myth of a united and powerful Britain by
focusing on the battle between Protestantism and Catholicism rather than on political
dissension at home. As Colley observes, “Protestantism was the foundation that made
the invention of Great Britain possible in the eighteenth-century” by uniting Scotland,

Wales, and England against common enemies-~those of the Catholic states of Europe,

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particularly France (54). By making Matilda a Protestant Scottish woman victimized by
French Catholics, Lee follows this prescription for British unity and identity. She uses
the French as a distraction from the buried Catholic threat inside Britain and even
transforms that threat by representing Matilda as a victim, thus emphasizing the
powerlessness of Matilda and the Catholic Scottish threat with which she is associated.
Yet, as the gloomy recess and the French convent call to mind, Matilda still represents a
threat from within Britain because of her lineage as the daughter of the Catholic Mary
Queen of Scots. That the novel also explicitly details conflicts with Scotland and Ireland,
including war and espionage, further complicates a merely sentimental reading of Mary
Queen of Scots and of history as written by Lee. W exposes the sentimental and
nationalist myth of a united British front, not simply because of religion (strangely,
Matilda and Elinor are not Catholic like their mother), but because of political struggle
from within-~the real threat posed by Matilda and Ellinor as usurpers of the throne. The
recess, a spot marked by horror and ghostly visits from the past, must be linked with the
convent, another spot of gothic fear, to complete this exposure.

The castle at Kenilworth, also surrounded with gothic gloom and ruin, provides
Matilda with another inspiration to ponder the passing of time and Lee with another
opportunity to highlight internal struggles in the progress of history. Lee transforms the
typical gothic castle where a heroine must protect her virtue into a different kind of castle
where the heroine must claim and protect her political and financial power. Lee replaces
the obstacle of the lustful monk/uncle/father with the obstacle of industrialization.
Matilda comes to this place to recover Leicester’s secret treasure caskets hidden behind a

tapestry only to find that his once glorious residence has fallen into ruin at the hands of a

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miser who has let out the land to manufacturers. She calls the building a “mausoleum”

(274) because it reminds her of her dead Leicester and, once inside, discovers that “a

change which jarred every feeling had taken place” (274). The gay pageantry of

Eizabeth’s visits and Leicester’s careful management is replaced by distressful signs of

progress:
A numerous body of diligent mechanics were plodding in those halls in which
Elizabeth had feasted, and their battered sides hardly now informed us where the
rich tapestry used to hang. My ears were suddenly stunned with the noise of a
hundred looms; and the distant lake once covered with gay pageants, and
resounding only to the voice of pleasure, presented us another scene of industry
not less busy, strange, and surprising. (274)

The ruin of her former life here also moves Matilda to sigh over the passage of time. She

takes action to reclaim the residence and gather her funds to aid her and her daughter in

their quest for the throne, but she still sorrows over how something so glorious could fall:
By incidents of this kind, one becomes painftu and instantaneously sensible of
advancing into life. When first we find ourselves sailing with the imperceptible
current of time, engrossed either by the danger of our situation, or enchanted with
its prospects, we glide swiftly on, scarce sensible of our progress, till the stream
revisits some favorite spot: alas, so visible is the desolation of the shortest
interval, that we grow old in a moment, and submit once more to the tide, willing
rather to share the ruin than review it. (274)

Matilda speaks the language of progress but also weeps over it. Here, Lee combines

Matilda’s sentimental tears at the passage of time with an actual location where past and

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I...

present clash. Lee surrounds this conflicted space with gothic conventions, transforming
both those conventions and the sentimental scene they surround in order to criticize the
effects of progress--in this case, the increasing importance of manufacture.

Another place where gothic conventions affect how Lee portrays historical
documents and places appears in the portrait gallery of Lady Pembroke. This ghostly
midnight scene, where Elinor views the portrait of Essex during the storming of Cadiz in
1596, creates an opportunity for characters consciously to view themselves within
history. The portrait room involves the reader of the novel as a reader of history, just as
Ellinor is a reader of history. The tableau, a visual scene that the gothic so often focuses
on, forces both a sentimental and a horrified reading. The lovelom Elinor, aided by Lady
Pembroke, sneaks into Pembroke’s portrait hall to view the recently purchased and
displayed picture of the storming of Cadiz. Ellinor explains that this painting, featuring
the heroism of Essex, “attracted the curiosity of all ranks of people, and the gallery it was
placed in was scarcely ever empty. It was so much the topic of discourse, that fashion
must have excited a desire in me to see it, had my heart been uninterested” (200). This
painting that excites so much popular attention is no mere portrait of her lover, but one
that shows Britain’s triumph over the Spanish and Britain’s moral superiority in this
conquest: “In the act of wresting a sword (the inflamed eye of him who held it, shewed
[sic] had a moment before been pointed at the English General’s bosom) Essex proudly
looked down on the surrounding Spaniards; whose impassioned gestures supplicated for
the life of him who had thus immediately attacked the conqueror” (201). The painting
captures the highly dramatic moment of Essex’s victory and portrays him as the hero who

saves the general from violent death and as the lord, if not the god, who doles out mercy

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to his Spanish enemies. Elinor is so moved by this highly sentimentalized scene that she
bursts into tears even as she imagines her own struggle for power. “‘Ah, Heaven,’ cried I
fearfully bursting into tears, ‘have I thus long dreampt of glory--honor--immortality--nor
considered the dangers by which thou must acquire them?’” (201). Inspired by this
painting, Elinor relates herself and her cause to history as well. This consciousness of
the self within history becomes even more apparent when the real Essex steps from
behind a curtain and “comes to life” from the portrait. The focal point of what turns out
to be a supposed ghostly visitation, this painting of historical conquest inspires more than
patriotic pride and sentimental sighs. The scene is one of several in the novel where Lee
surrounds conquest or cultural clash with the gothic and undercuts attempts to
sentimentalize such spaces or moments. In so doing, she refuses to be satisfied with the
sentimental version of recorded history as it appears through documents and artifacts in
the novel.

At first surprised by this securing ghost of Essex stepping out from history,
Elinor, realizing she is locked in the same room with the actual man who is her now
married ex-lover, next fears for her virtue. Like Ann Radcliffe’s secret rooms and secret
doors covered by tapestries or curtains, the portrait room reveals a ghost to be an actual
person, one who nevertheless is still potentially dangerous. The historical portrait of
Essex, the “ 0st” of Essex, and the real Essex all appear in one moment, making
tangible the conjunction of past and present, absence and presence, and truth and fiction.
Such a moment of the blurring of disparate entities is surrounded by gloom, mystery, and,
later, violence as Essex, Elinor and Ellinor’s husband Arlington seem to replay the very

violence depicted in the painting. Elinor throws herself between the dueling men and

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suffers a sword wound from her husband while Essex wounds and disarms him. Aside
from the fact that the two men are political as well as romantic rivals, the three end the
scene in a pose much like the one in the painting above them. Essex disarms Lord
Arlington, takes his sword, and looms over him, as Elinor tries to serve as the supplicant
between the two (203-204). Explaining the scene later, Elinor says, “then raising my
eyes to the pale statue of Essex, who resting on the two swords, hung in silent agony over
me, I adjured him to vindicate my fame” (204). In the symbolic parallel between this
scene and the painting’s scene, international conquest is retold as a political conquest
within England. Both men are political schemers, both in some way are connected to
Elinor and her claim to the throne, and both in some way are fighting for that power she
represents. As the scene brings to mind, all three characters are involved in some way
with grasping for political power, a struggle in which the romantic triangle only plays a
part. Yet, unlike the painting, the violence and horror of this real—life scene drown out
any streaming heavenly lights, heroic poses, or clearly defined victory. Recalling the
incident later (she interrupts her tale as she tells it), Elinor wonders if any of it really
occurred. She exclaims, “Good Heavens, while I relate this it appears a mere vision!—
Did I really see Essex?--Were my senses really revived by that voice so long forgotten,
except when fancy recalled it?--Ah! I have had but too sad a conviction that this has
been, however strange and impossible it appears” (202). Lee surrounds with horror, the
explained supernatural, and violence what began as a sentimental scene of viewing an
idealized history. In her symbolic replay of the painting’s battle, Lee provides a dark
“double” of the historical representation, one that, at the same time that it provokes pity

for poor Elinor and her streaming torrents of blood, disarms the easy heroism of political

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appropriation that much of the novel supports in the sympathetic portrayal of the twins
and their mission to wrest the throne from Eizabeth.

The scene in the portrait gallery provides a good ending point for this chapter on
Lee’s Mass, as it represents the several comparisons that occur in the novel and that
are “gothified” in order to point out the horrible, uncontrolled nature of historiography
and its application to stories of national or political power and progress. A painting that
portrays heroic and sentimentalized conquest involving another country turns bloody and
violent when applied to the current political struggles within England as represented by
Elinor and Essex; likewise, throughout the novel, sites of intra-national conflict and
oppression from British history come to the forefront when gothic moments break
through the palliative sentimental or adventurous narrations. Ellinor connects the scene
of a real English victory in the portrait with her own struggle for political legitimacy,
learning from it and desiring to follow its precepts, only to find that she cannot control
history any more than she can control events once Leicester’s “ghost” steps through the
curtain. Similarly, the twins learn that no matter how much they follow the precepts for
accurate historical transmission, without official sanction, their “portrait” in the halls of
the kings and queens of England will never be hung because they never gain political
force or sanction. In the twins’ hands throughout the novel, Enlightenment
historiography becomes a dangerous tool to play with, and their suffering, in large part,
results from their desire to “make” history and from their na'r‘ve belief that, by providing
objective evidence and drawing sympathy from readers and friends alike, they inevitably
will succeed. At the same time, their attempts and Elinor’s madness bring up a more

haunting uneasiness that lies at the heart of Enlightenment historiography as portrayed in

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the novel. Just as the recess hides a growing threat to the English throne in the guise of
the two daughters of Mary Queen of Scots, so too does the historical narrative attempt to
hide history’s horrors. The girls leave the recess, and Elinor’s madness leads to
successful political action. What might happen if historiography cannot hold together the
narrative of a nation’s successful progress and unified people? The novel remains a
narrative of impending doom, all the more frightening because it doesn’t answer this
question. Matilda and Elinor fail, but the history they write is passed on. It doesn’t have
any real power in the world of the novel, and yet in the real world of the eighteenth-
century, as Barbauld notes in her review, it affected people’s prejudices about Eizabeth
and Mary. In a novel that continually shifts perspectives and throws into question what is
real, objective, or complete, the gothic elements continually bring the fear and horror

surrounding historical representation to the forefront.

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Notes to Chapter One

 

‘ The criticism of the first half of the twentieth century most directly takes up the issue of
factual historical content in historical gothic novels like 1th Recess; thus, the works of
scholars like Summers and Varma are most pertinent to my larger argument about how
the historical gothic has been relegated to an inferior sphere due to its historical
inconsistencies. More recently, feminist scholars have examined the use of history in
W in a different light, often in conjunction with how the novel crafts an alternate
“herstory.” Jane Spencer calls Mags: “romance’s revenge on recorded history” that,
in its fantasy of female power and escape, “asserts that the ‘truth’ of history is a lie, based
on denying women their rightful place” (200). Similarly, in her study of the twins’
double narratives, Margaret Doody asserts, “It is in the gothic novel that women writers
could first accuse the ‘real world’ of falsehood and deep disorder. Or perhaps, they
rather asked whether masculine control is not just another delusion in the nightmare of
absurd historical reality” (560). Alliston posits a special, female method of creating
history through women’s writing and speech where women personally pass down history
to one another. This “form of female intergenerational transmission. . . avoid[s] the
patriarchal strategy of ‘cloning’ or ‘possession”’ so common in men’s histories
(“Transmission” 202). Lewis finds that Lee’s “penchant for turning history into a cache
of small but touching things may be seen as a feminizing strategy” (“Relation” 169). See
also Kate Elis, Delamotte, Roberts, and Spender for other feminist studies of In;
Rm. While my overall project examines women in relation to historical education,
reading, and writing, my concern here is not with exploring a specifically female history
or a secret tale of women’s real historical oppression. Instead, I will look at how women
writers like Lee engage directly with Enlightenment historiography and how they use
their awareness of eighteenth-century historiographical methods and standards to
comment on Britain’s national past and current political ideology.

2For another early review examining Lee’s combination of history and fiction, see 11;;
WW (1786). where the writer criticizes Lee’s
combination of history and fiction, particularly as it relates to British history. The
reviewer says that the novel is one “in which fiction is indeed too lavishly employed to
heighten and embellish some well-known and distinguished facts in the English history”
(135).

3 See Alliston, who explains how eighteenth-century historians “depend upon truth of
character, as they have established it, to make probable judgments of how a particular
personage must have acted. Thus, the truth of character plays an important role in
constructing the truth of incident” (“Introduction” xvii).

" Except where noted differently, in my analysis of Sophia Lee’s W, I will be
using Alliston’s 2000 edition of the novel.

5 Alliston’s edition of 1mm provides excellent evidence linking historical events
and people as portrayed in Lee’s novel with those depicted in the histories of men such as

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Hume and Robertson. A number of historical events in Lee’s novel are written in a
sentimental and emotive style found similarly in the more traditional histories above.
These parallels will be helpful in some of my discussions of how the fictional twin
daughters Matilda and Mary interact with “real” history.

6 See Lewis’s Mary for a full examination of painting, poetry, letters, tours, and other
works demonstrating the fascination with Mary that began in the queen’s own lifetime
and continues into the present day.

7 Alliston also reads W as a critique of the eighteenth century’s ideology of
sympathy (“Introduction” xxii).

8 In the midst of eighteenth-century debates about historiography, the educational use of
history to inform future political action was typically something that could be agreed
upon by differently positioned historians and philosophers.

9 Alliston describes this concept of “truth in character” in her introduction to Kansas, pg.
xvii. Of Lee’s use of truth in character, Alliston writes that the dissonance among the
novel’s narrations “dramatizes the inevitable partialities of point of view in the perception
and construction of historical character” (“lntroduction” xxiii).

‘° See “The Laugh of the Medusa,” where Helene Cixous outlines the concept of “in-
between-ness” which counters the phallologocentrism of the linear, singular, logical
narrative. Cixous argues: “Woman un-thinks the unifying, regulating history that
homogenizes and channels forces, herding contradictions into a single battlefield” (252).
Ellinor’s madness is one of many gothic effects in this novel that create Spaces of “in-
between-ness” and that discount history as a unified, linear narrative.

“ Modern feminists have examined women’s madness as a response to oppression,
sometimes as a means of escaping or subverting that oppression and sometimes as a
poignant reminder of woman’s hopeless position within patriarchy. For discussion of this
trOpe in literature, see, for example, Jane Spencer W (199-200),
and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar WW. Examining the work
of Julia Kristeva, Toril Moi links the feminist strategy of fragmenting language’s logical
constructions of meaning to a greater risk of madness in the speaking subject even as it
holds powerful subversive potential ( l l).

  

’2 See Jacqueline Howard’s' t, 1;- ° - ,_ ‘ =._ ‘ -

connects Bakhtin’s “heteroglossia” with the gothic mode. Quoting from Bakhtin’ s
Wan, she argues that "T he Gothic novel rs a type in which the propensity
for multiple discourse rs highly developed and that rs dialogic because of rts
indeterminacy or its open structure. The Gothic only plays at being totalized or closed, as
its supposed ‘unity’ encompasses ‘several heterogeneous stylistic unities, often located
on different linguistic levels and subject to different stylistic controls.’ Although
discourses are ‘subject to an artistic reworking’ as they enter the novel and there is a

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synthesizing voice, no one voice is the novel’s decisive voice” (16-7).

‘3 See Judith Wilt for discussion of the historical gothic as escapist. In W
59913:. Jane E. Lewis explores how historical figures like Mary Queen of Scots were
crafted in the “real” histories to exemplify the period’s values and fantasies of self and
nation.

“ The early reviewers were well aware of this threat. In particular, see Barbauld (74).

‘5 B.G. MacCarthy, for example, argues that “Sophia Lee makes no attempt to create the
atmosphere of Eizabethan times, or to reproduce the customs or language of the period. .
. . Evidently she also considered her readers incapable of understanding the outlook and
the behaviour of the Eizabethan age, and felt it necessary to make her characters
conform to eighteenth century fictional standards. Indeed, it is probable that she was
honestly unaware of any differences in relation to period, and was unconscious of the
anomaly of an Eizabethan age peopled with etiolated beings and speaking the jargon of
sensibility” (382).

‘6 See Ann Racliffe’s “On the Supernatural in Poetry” where she describes the response
to horror as that which “contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates the senses” (168).

‘7 Lewis speaks of the girls’ ghostliness as linked to the ghostliness of their mother Mary,
both in the novel and in the larger eighteenth-century culture where Mary Queen of Scots
became a figure that who was both real and imagined. She states, "Their [Matilda’s and
Ellinor’s] ghostliness is of course exactly what marks Elinor and Matilda as Mary’s own.
And it is around Mary’s absence and the perpetual longing to be with her that Elinor and
Matilda become who they are (not).” (Mary 141). Mary haunts them throughout the
novel. The images of Mary mark their bodies; the reflected bodily images mark their
identity.

‘8 Elinor’s association with death, and the power it gives her, appears earlier in the novel
when she adapts the body of a corpse in order to escape twice, once from the asylum
where her husband imprisons her (218), and once from death on the battlefield in Ireland
(224). Being “undead” in these scenes presages the later scene where she will once again
consciously adopt the guise of ghostliness to gain real power.

127

(1‘

Chapter 2
“This Trew Chroniqne”: Arm Radcliffe’s W Antiquarian

Study, and Women’s Hhtorical Discourse.

Ann Radcliffe, one of the most important early gothic novelists, has stood at the
head of the “female gothic” tradition explored by feminist scholars in the last 25 years.1
Set against novels such as Matthew Lewis’s W that overtly depict violence and
sexuality, Radcliffe’s romances only hint at these as they follow a heroine’s perilous
encounters with patriarchal institutions and figureheads threatening to entrap, define, and
violate her. Similarly, in Radcliffe’s own time period, critics and readers understood her
work in terms of its differences from other gothic writers like Lewis, emphasizing how
her position as “lady novelist” allowed her to avoid the excesses of “horror novels” and
to focus instead on the powers of imagination and description, for which she was well
admired.2 Her best known and most frequently studied novels, W
E91931 (1791). W (1794). and Ineltalian (1797). have
contributed to the critical definitions for, understandings of , and fascination with the
British gothic tradition and have dominated discussions of female gothic romance writers
as well as of the gothic tradition in general. In this chapter, I turn to one of Radcliffe’s
lesser-known gothic works, W (1802, 1824), a novel which departs
from the typical Radcliffean fare of imperiled heroines and villainous European
patriarchs in its use of actual English historical material.3 Taking place during a specific
time period during Henry III’s reign, this novel utilizes the gothic apparatus in

conjunction with antiquarianism in order to explore England’s past and Enlightenment

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historiography. Framed by a fictional discussion of how to read history and test historical
evidence, Qastgn continually interrogates power structures involved in historical
transmission and the hierarchies that privilege some forms of historical discourse over
others. Using this novel, I include Radcliffe not only in the female gothic novel tradition
as delineated by Elen Moers, Jane Spencer and other feminist critics, but also within a
larger tradition of historical interest and inquiry among later eighteenth-century women.
As seen not only in this novel but also in her travel journals, Radcliffe shows an interest
in historical sites and objects and demonstrates both knowledge about England’s
historical past and an imaginative response to that past. She also provides a political
response to it, referencing specific past horrors like Cromwell’s destruction of the abbeys
and criticizing policies of past monarchs like Richard I. Expanding the Radcliffe canon
to include the lesser known W112 not only illuminates Radcliffe’s
concerns outside domestic politics but also points to the larger body of female gothic
novelists who write about historical concerns and English national identity and who,
largely, have been left out of studies of the “female gothic”.

The previous chapter examined how Sophia Lee’s W portrays
historiography itself as a locus of horror. Using both traditional and non-traditional
historical evidence such as legal papers, letters, oral discourse, etc., Lee questions the
validity of “objective” histories and demonstrates how evidence without official sanction
will not be transmitted. Rather than supporting a nationalist narrative of progress and
English superiority, Lee’s novel highlights moments of cultural clash, of individual
suffering, and of rulers’ failures. At the same time that she shows how the traditional

historical record attempts to cover over a nation’s more conflict-ridden past, Lee also

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uses gothic conventions to show a parallel horror, one that emphasizes how frightening it
is to realize historiography’s failure to craft a narrative supporting a nation’s stories about
itself. Sophia Lee, an educated woman running a boarding school, demonstrates in her
novel a familiarity with England’s historical past even as she manipulates her story line to
craft a sentimental and gothic narrative. Reading Lee’s gothic novel within the context of
women’s education in history and participation in writing history emphasizes the author’s
own activity within a larger community of women readers and writers exploring
historical discourse.

In this chapter, I will examine Ann Radcliffe’s W1; in terms of
the language and methods of antiquarianism, which play central roles in her historical
gothic as she explores how to verify and respond to historical scenes and objects.
Radcliffe, a historical tourist and amateur antiquarian herself, applies her experiences,
judgments, and writings from her travels into a novel which interrogates amateur
antiquarian activity and its relationship to dominant historical discourse. More than
simply invoking antiquarianism to provide descriptive details inspiring a melancholic
longing for idealized medieval days, Radcliffe directly engages her novel with larger
eighteenth-century conversations about antiquarian activity: its interest to amateurs and
professionals alike, its relationship to Enlightenment histories, its attention to discrete
detail rather than an overarching national narrative, and its sometimes dubious role as
evidence in conflicting ideological projects. Like other women writers of gothified
histories, then, Radcliffe purposefully participates in a larger public discourse debating

the uses and methods of historical writing.

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In W, Radcliffe blends several types of writing, the gothic
romance, the history, the antiquarian catalogue, and the travel narrative, to make an
alternate response to traditional Erlightenment historiography. The novel begins with a
lengthy, 75-page introduction where two historical tourists from the present time visit the
ruins of Kenilworth and discuss how one ought to experience history and its artifacts.
Folklore, empirical evidence, book learning, imagination, and even superstition play a
role in the men’s quest for knowledge about the past. The novel itself, an object
excavated by a local historian, provides a sort of proving ground to test the men’ s
historiographical theories. Set in specific historical sites in England and dealing with
specific moments in England’s past, Radcliffe’s examination of history in Czastga leads to
more serious historiographical questions than those stimulated by the typical “found
manuscript” device of canonical gothic novels. Within the novel proper, the gothic
devices of hidden manuscripts, ghostly appearances, magic items, and secret
passageways all contribute to an alternate historical record and serve to discredit both the
official history sanctioned by King Henry and traditional historical records. It is through
non-traditional historical discourses and evidence-songs, pageants, tapestries, bones, and
artifacts--that the “real” history is known in fiastQa. Textual interruptions in the form of
antiquarian cataloging and supematural occurrences contribute to an overall instability of
historical evidence and records and set up some of Radcliffe’s critiques of political power
structures and historical figures. Appearing as they do in a document passing itself off as
a genuine written history and following traditional historiographical methods, such
instabilities also reflect history’s inability to cover over or contain such threats to the

dominant power structures that history writing supports. The role the gothic plays in this

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novel points to a dual fear affecting both the powerful and the disenfranchised: that
traditional power structures supported by history can be broken down and that, without
supernatural intervention, the histories outside a nation’s narrative about itself would not
be told.

The first half of this chapter explores Radcliffe’s engagement with antiquarianism
and the way in which she weaves this form of historical study into her novel. After a
brief background on eighteenth-century antiquarianism and its relationship to
constructing a national past, I discuss how Radcliffe crafts W11; in the
introduction as an antiquarian discovery, a secret manuscript--but one strikingly different
from those featured in most canonical gothic novels. The second half of this chapter
looks more closely at how the gothic contributes to Radcliffe’s own commentary on
political events, historical transmission, and the creation of a national identity. During
the festivities that take place while King Henry stays at Arlen, history becomes
entertainment and the resulting spectacle of historical portrayal becomes a means to
transform officially sanctioned versions of the past. Boundaries between French,
English, and Welsh are blurred in this novel; uncanny appearances and events point to a
central uneasiness in the novel with national borders and identity. Throughout the novel,
antiquarianism is strongly linked to the gothic, and both become caught up in the larger
destabilization of historical transmission, the invalidation of historical objectivity, and the

revelation of underlying power structures involved in historiography.

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AW

With their own focus on ruins, hidden objects, and tokens from past ages, gothic
novels immediately call to mind antiquarian study, which took its modern shape in the
second half of the eighteenth century. While the gothic novel’ s, like the sentimental
novel’s, fictional crafting of its own real-life validity is well known, less critical attention
has been paid to ways in which the gothic novel, particularly as written by women,
participates in the period’s discourse about antiquarianism and its importance to national
self-definition.4 Rising in both professional and popular interest and changing its earlier,
sometimes dubious investigative methods into more scientific ones, antiquarianism began
to include British as well as the usual classical subject matter during this period. Much
satire and criticism surrounded the discipline; in comparison with historiography,
antiquarian study was seen as dull, obsessed with trivial detail, and given to too much
speculation. Focused on discrete material artifacts, it was also less open to dominant
narratives of national identity espoused by mainstream historiography. In its position
outside the dominant discourse and in its appeal to amateurs, antiquarianism, like gothic
fiction, opened up the study of the past to those often excluded from the privileged
position of the university-educated historian.

Even today, the antiquarian figure can bring up stereotyped images of crusty, dry
old men bent over their crumbling manuscripts and surrounded by dusty shelves
containing objects such as saints’ bones, medieval helmets, Roman pottery, and old coins.
Satires of antiquarians existed in eighteenth-century writings like Pope’s The Dangiad

and Smollet’s I; c -1 . It and continued into the

 

nineteenth century in such novels as Scott’s Magnum and Dickens’s Ihgflld

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'J

W§ Such antiquaries did exist and the discipline did have its share of fraud,
obsessive attention to detail, and greed over insignificant objects. Yet, as the eighteenth
century progressed, this satire circulated within the context of increased interest and
participation among literate non-professionals familiar enough with antiquarian activity
to appreciate the humor in this stereotype even as they themselves were involved in
antiquarian activity. Antiquarian study did not simply or only take place in the dusty
study pouring over papers but involved travel and sightseeing where tourists were
especially encouraged to look at monuments of the past, particularly of their own
country’s past (Peltz and Myrone 3). Amateur antiquarians from the leisured classes,
clergy, and the gentry took an interest in collecting objects, visiting ruins, and writing
treatises on their findings. The public’s interest in antiquarian research, reading, and
other methods of participation is seen in the commercial investment in antiquarian
publications, which were marketed to the larger public and not just the specialists in such
groups as the Society of Antiquaries founded in 1718 (Peltz and Myrone 3). Professional
antiquaries, noting the commercial possibilities of their work, attempted to find a way to
both remain faithful to their scholarly practices and to interest the public when publishing
their findings.6

In some ways, antiquarian activity could feed into England’s larger historical
narratives and could be used to bolster a sense of national identity. It could clarify
mysteries of the past by providing new evidence; in addition, it could support patriotism
and lend credence to some of the national myths of English superiority.7 People
challenged their countrymen to study English antiquities and history in order to be better

patriots. Yet, antiquarian research was seen as having less validity than “history” and

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was often criticized for its attention to specific objects separate from an overlying
historical narrative (Y oon Sun Lee 538-9). Collecting, owning, and selling antiquities
had little to do with theorizing about Britain’s history, and, in addition to highlighting the
commercial ramifications explained above, such activities emphasized the fragmentary
nature of Britain’s past. Artifacts provided pieces to the puzzle, yet they also emphasized
the gaps in the puzzle and English history’s vulnerability in the face of forgeries,
misrepresentations, and myth-making.8

As discrete objects from the past, artifacts and ruins were often open, undefined
signifiers that could be put into the service of interpretations popular or important at the
time; this shiftiness of the historical object points to the instability of the historical

narrative. For example, as Ian Ousby explains in ., - -

 

Warn, Stonehenge became identified with an array of ancestors
and uses over the course of time. It was first described as a Roman ruin during a period
when England was turning to its classical roots in order to separate from its earlier
barbaric ones. Later, William Stukeley in the eighteenth century classified the ruins as
ancient British and associated them with Druids. Lacking much definitive information
about the Druids and newly interested in Britain’s own ancient history, people were
fascinated by them. Thus, as Ousby observes, “Stonehenge was no longer a dry enigma
for antiquarians to fuss over but a richly brooding icon into which the tourist could read
all his fantasies and imaginings about the ancient British past” (95).

Yet, even such conflicting readings emphasized their status as “mere” readings
and ultimately revealed the divisions within Britain, undermining any notions of a unified

national history or identity. In his study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century histories

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of ancient Britain, Sam Smiles finds that with the diverse cultural ancestors in Britain’s
past-~the Celts, Saxons, Caledonians—-historica1 and antiquarian study of ancient Britain
could be used to perpetuate political separations between England and its periphery:
Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.9 Between England and its periphery nations, there was a
constant shifting of view of the ancient Britons. This blurring of ancestral alliances
extended to the artifacts and historical figures appropriated for different ideological
purposes. A heroine like Boadicea might be celebrated as an example of fighting for
“Britishness” against foreign invaders at the same time that she could be a model for
Welsh resistance to English rule (17). A ruin such as Stonehenge did not simply provide
evidence for one historical narrative or another; instead, it existed as a contested space for
conflicting historical narratives and as a constant reminder of those opposing narratives.
As these examples show, a ruin or object studied in itself, as an antiquary might do,
separate from history’s theorizing narratives, held dangerous potential culturally and
politically. As Yoon Sun Lee has argued, antiquarianism is “tacitly opposed to this
theory of the nation’s undivided inheritance, and averse to the trope of voice that
typically sustained the popular rhetoric of nationalist historicism” (539). The
simultaneous existence of conflicting approaches to British history belies the validity of
an artifact or ancient monument as unbiased proof supporting one larger national
narrative of a unified past leading up to the progress of the present. Rather than hiding it,
antiquarian knowledge relies on prior division, conflict, and rupture of the nation’s
culture (539).

Their physicality a constant reminder, ruins and artifacts recall conflicts within a

nation-state, the fall of empires and the passing of cultures. Rather than simply

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supporting a sentimental melancholy about time passing, however, eighteenth-century
antiquarian activity relocated study of the past into the realm of science and discovery.
Because it focuses on and values the discrete object over the larger philosophical
narrative, antiquarianism differs from national patriotic history-writing. Not surprisingly,
antiquarians were criticized because of their
untheorized attitudes toward history behind its characteristic activities of
gathering, collecting, and compiling. While those activities could be interpreted
as proceeding from a sentimental desire to restore a national patrimony, the very
egregiousness of this antiquarian foraging drew attention to the troubling
processes of loss and extinction that made the retrieval necessary. (Lee 538-9)
Because of its methods of finding and piecing disparate objects together, “antiquarian
foraging” also drew attention to the fragmentary nature of any historical narrative.
Antiquarian relics and study are by definition fragmentary, diverse, and marked by the
danger of fading over time. While both antiquarian and historical discourses examine the
past, the latter is much more wrapped up in the project of nationalism. According to Lee,
If the patriotic discourse of history constructed that nation as self -inheriting,
continuously bequeathing institutions and national character to itself, antiquarian
discourse and practice unobtrusively belied those assumptions: like the curiosity
that greets it, the existence of the antiquarian object is contingent on processes of
obsolescence and fragmentation as these afflict cultures, institutions, and nations.
(539)
Rather than supporting a narrative of a unified national identity progressing as a whole

toward the present, antiquarian research and discourse can serve as disturbing reminders

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of the precariousness of power structures, which can be reversed, can fall, or can be
obliterated by time.

Following such critics as Lee, I will read antiquarian discourse as distinct from
historical discourse, even though one may be put in the service of another. Suspect and
outside the traditional historiographical narratives of nation, antiquarian discourse
provides another option for examining the past, one that was also open to use by amateurs
and women in such forms as the historical tour and travel narrative. Antiquarian research
and writing transcend normative boundaries of narrative, genre, and discipline and
highlight the artificiality of such frameworks. “The source of [antiquarianism’s] power,
and of its instabilities, was its emergence in multiple spheres of activity: the private
spaces of the study and the library; the middle- ground of the club, and the public sphere
of the metropolitan market for the printed work and image” (PeltzJMyrone 8). This
ability to exist in multiple spaces of genteel and mercantile life allowed for other
transgressions, notably the participation of women in this enterprise (8). Valuing
individual objects as well as the everyday life represented by them, antiquarian discourse
and study can challenge history’s focus on the grand narrative of political events and
dominant power structures. It also points to the culture’s shifting interest in learning
about a culture’s manners, customs, and ordinary people, demonstrated in the shift from
the classical to the modern method of historiography.

As I move to analysis of Radcliffe’s W, I wish to emphasize
the novel’s blending of travel narrative, romance, and antiquarian discourse as an
alternate response to traditional Enlightenment historiography. In her novel, Radcliffe

demonstrates, first of all, a familiarity with antiquarian discovery and discourse in the

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way she crafts the novel and the conversations of her historical tourists in the
introduction. Herself a woman who travelled through England on trips such as the one
she portrays, Radcliffe was familiar with the antiquarian enterprise and transferred some
of the details from her travel journals into the novel, an interesting use of fust—person
discovery and transmission across generic boundaries. As I study the example of
Radcliffe’s Willa, 1 will look at instances where ruins and artifacts
signify division, rupture, and conflict from within Britain, thereby discrediting the notion
of Britain’s unified historical inheritance and progress. Throughout the novel, extensive
details about individual artifacts, objects, and ruins interrupt the narrative; antiquarian
concerns as to dates, purposes, locations, and uses of these objects dominate the pages of
fiastga such that it reads, at times, like a catalogue. Rather than simply applying it
toward a general feeling of melancholic longing for the past, Radcliffe makes specific use
of the antiquarian discourse she invokes in order to respond to the larger public discourse
about history and national identity. She begins by framing her entire narrative with that

staple of gothic fiction and that coveted artifact, the found manuscript.

WW
Whether as a character’s discovery within the plot line, as the overall work’s

framing narrative, or as an author’ 8 (or presumed author’s) preface, the “found
manuscript” represents one of gothic fiction’s more commonly used devices. Partly in
reaction to the demand for veracity in the novel proper, partly to separate the gothic
novelist from his or her sometimes dubious creation, and partly to increase the thrill of

reading the tale within, writers have incorporated this device into their gothic novels

139

since Horace Walpole’s W. Often, the found manuscript serves
merely to suspend readers’ disbelief or to tie up loose plot ends; however, it also can pose
questions about authenticity, particularly authenticity of documents from the past and
their role in the present. Ann Radcliffe’s novel WM uses the found
manuscript in a manner different from other gothic novels, including Radcliffe’s more
canonical novels. Discovered not in a mysterious abbey or castle sometime in the past
and somewhere in EurOpe but at a specific, actual historic site in England during the
present, the manuscript Willoughton and his companion Simpson come across during a
sightseeing tour addresses more specific issues surrounding the rise of antiquarianism in
England during the eighteenth century. Unlike other novelists, Radcliffe does not
surround the manuscript’s discovery with excitement, urgency, danger or mystery.
Unlike characters in other gothic novels who immediately believe what they read, make
conclusions and act upon them, Willoughton and his companion spend a significant
amount of time questioning how historical artifacts in general and this one in Mcular
could be tested for authenticity. Radcliffe maneuvers her concerns in this preface away
from drawing her believing readers into the unbelievable events of her gothic novel and
instead toward preparing them to read and question the historical content of the
“gothified history” which this prologue frames. In so doing, she departs from the
conventional uses of the found manuscript in order to comment more directly on Britons’
current fascination with antiquarianism and the uses to which it may be put when
(de)constructing narratives of nationhood.

The device of the found manuscript appears most frequently as one of the typical

“gothic trappings” which form the basis of the narrative, move the plotline along and

140

contribute to the novel’s sense of gloom and mystery. For example, while nearly a
captive herself, Adelaide in Radcliffe’s The Romance gt tag Eorgst discovers next to a
stained and rusted dagger a crumbling manuscript detailing the imprisonment and murder
of a man later shown to be her father. A novel might be written in the form of a secret
confession as found in a work like Charlotte Dacre’s MW
where the packet of papers documenting her life is addressed to her illicit son, to be read
only upon her death. The device can both form the basis for the novel’s existence and
tempt readers to read onward along with the characters, as in Charles Robert MaLuginfis
MW. John Melmouth, upon inheriting his uncle’s property, also
receives the injunction in his will to find and destroy a manuscript hidden in a chest
beneath a mysterious portrait. The will states that “he will distinguish it by its being tied
round with black tape, and the paper being very mouldy and discolored. He may read it
if he will;--I think he had better not. At all events, I adjure him, if there be any power in
the adjuration of a dying man, to burn it.” (21). John, of course, immediately becomes
consumed with the desire to read the manuscript, as does, presumably, the reader.
Likewise, in Radcliffe’s In; Mystgn'es gf Udglpho St. Aubert asks his daughter Emily to
burn papers hidden under the floorboards, without looking at them. She does destroy
them-~and only glances at them a little hit, an act that begins her quest for identity.

These hidden manuscripts serve a larger purpose beyond providing thrills; they
also bring up important questions about legitimacy and authority. In each of the above
examples, reading becomes a transgressive act, writing originates in the desire to confess,
and inevitable misreadings and/or corruptions of the documents destabilize the very acts

of reading and writing upon which the characters depend to show the “truth.” Emily’s

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mistaken reading in IthystsflgsgLHdglphg leads her to question her status of as St.
Aubert’s legitimate daughter when, in reality, the papers document the fall of her
kinswoman. The manuscripts read by John Melmouth and Adelaide are incomplete or
unreadable in places, and both are involved in and parallel these characters’ incomplete
family histories. Eventually bound up in dispelling secrets of identity, the misreadings
and/or unreadability of manuscripts such as these solve the mysteries of the plotlines only
after highlighting problems both with reading and with establishing and transmitting
familial lines of descent.

1 turn now to two well-known gothic novels, Horace Walpole’s W
m and Ann Radcliffe’s Ihejtalian, in order to highlight in more detail differences
between how these two canonical gothic novels utilize the hidden manuscript device and
how Wk utilizes it. All three novels begin with prefaces announcing
the novel to be a “found manuscript,” name a monk as the author of the manuscript, and
create characters interested in using the manuscript to learn about the past. Whereas 113;
[Minn stays within the usual prescriptions of subject, time and place for a gothic novel
and MW introduces itself first as a translation from Italian and then, in
the second edition, as an experiment in fiction, W119 locates the action
in a very un-gothic, English present and introduces the narrative to come only after
extensive pontificating about history on the part of the pref ace’s characters. While both
Man and 9931119 contain in their prefaces nationalist attitudes, only Qastan will
connect them specifically to the writing of Britain’s past.

Radcliffe’s Ihgjtalian begins with two eighteenth-century English travelers who,

upon entering an Italian cathedral, view a brooding and dangerous individual slipping

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into the shadows of the confessional. A priest/tour guide informs them that the man is
one of many assassins in that country who seek sanctuary in Italian churches and that the
confessional has witnessed even graver sins than his. He then promises to send to the
Englishman the manuscript written by one who broke the sacred seal of the confessional
by transcribing a penitent’s horrible deeds. The Englishman finishes his tour plans for
the day and then returns to his hotel where he reads the manuscript that makes up the
novel mm.

Full of deprecatory judgments of Italian laws and customs, this prologue depicts
in typical gothic fashion the difference between the Protestant, refined, moral Englishman
and the uncivilized, violent European Other caught up in priestcraft. A special feature of
this novel is the prologue’s use of the English traveler in Italy undertaking the “Grand
Tour.” As Diego Saglia points out in his study of the traveler’s gaze in Inflgljan, the
prologue sets up the combination between gothic romance and travel narrative that will
be used to define Englishness throughout the novel. The gaze that attempts to order,
define, and control marks the novel’s characters as English and creates Italy as “a mirror
standing over and against another cultural system that the prologue identifies with
England and its civilization” (30). Radcliffe imposes a system of Englishness upon the
novel in which all characters are Italian but whose “good” characters act English. 10 The
prologue sets up a dynamic in which English morals and customs “invade” the novel.
The conquest of the foreign Other is not complete, however. While the Englishmen in
the prologue and the “English” characters in the novel attempt to order the foreign Other
using the language of the travel narrative, Italians like the villainous monk Schedoni or

the glaring assassin in the prologue “gaze back” and destabilize constructs of English

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self-identity created by such attempts to order and control (27). Even though
Enlightenment rationality wins in the end, Radcliffe has created a system of English
superiority at the same time that she shows the shaky foundation upon which it is built.
This move is typical of Radcliffe in her other novels, where, for example, she ends a
novel like Udglphg with romance’s typical happy marriage only after establishing
throughout the novel the dangers of patriarchal domination perpetuated through
institutions of Church, aristocracy and family.‘1
The directed English gaze is also important in her other novels and travel
writings. Known for her powers of description by her early reviewers as well as by
critics of the present day, Radcliffe uses a similar aesthetics of the picturesque in both her
novels and her tourist narratives. In Radcliffe’s works as well as other travel accounts,
the visual impression takes precedence. Discussing the visual imagination and
eighteenth-century aesthetics, Ingrid Kuczynski points out:
To privilege the eye as the primary organ of sensual perception is, of course,
typical in the lSth-century’s mental and aesthetic exploration of the world. Of all
the other organs of sense, the eye was not only believed to be the most reliable
and precise witness in order to ascertain facts and to provide truthful reflections of
reality as well as insights. Visual perception alone could even be thought
sufficient for comprehending rather complex objects. (245)
Stimulating imagination and asserting interpretive independence, the act of looking sets
the gazer in the subject position and emphasizes the individual’s power to order the
world. “Seeing was understood as an enriching activity of comprehension and

acquisition by the individual encountering the Other. It was certainly not seen as a

144

 

 

process of interaction, and remained a one-sided concept of individualist supremacy”
(246). Furthermore, visual perception becomes “the means of a productive appropriation
and of mentally changing and mastering the world” (246) as can be seen particularly in
English travel narratives (246).

Arranging her surroundings into artistic portraits, Radcliffe follows these ideas in

her I, 0 4.!) uit‘ 1 Ac llnrt‘ 0 794 tu ‘t. :0 LU -.rr. -r‘ '1 'u 7 url'
W. The work includes the usual description

and commentary on the sites and everyday people as perceived by the English tourist, but
it also contains observations upon Germany’s war with Revolutionary France as
Radcliffe and her husband travel through Southern Germany on their way to Switzerland.
They are, at one point, held captive in a military camp due to problems with their
passports, and they are overwhelmed several times by children pressing in and begging
for money, by the destruction of landscape occasioned by war, and by the less-than-
friendly ways of people they meet along the way. The ideal, leisurely tour is possible
only by keeping a distance from the people and events of the country they tour; losing
that distance disturbs the traveler’s ordering gaze and destabilizes their privileged
position (Kuczynski 248-9). Just as the heroines in her novels frequently calm
themselves by looking at nature, so, too, does Radcliffe in her travel narrative rely on
distance to make order out of the chaos and to make a beautiful, unified scene out of
fragmented disorder. Radcliffe’s travel narrative ends as the relieved couple cut their trip
short and return to the safety of Britain, a country depicted throughout the narrative as
superior to the European countries. Radcliffe again relies on the safe ending, but not

before portraying how tenuous the subject position of the English traveler can be. As in

145

Ihghalian, Radcliffe sets up and explores the English/European dyad; location in Europe
is central to the assertion of English superiority, however tentative.

References to “Englishness” do appear in the introduction and in the novel proper
of Ihgjtalian, but they do so on foreign soil, without specific reference as to dates and
historical events, and without the kind of national self-reflexivity that Radcliffe will
provide in Gaston While certainly containing nationalist impulses, Man’s short
introduction to the novel portrays the manuscript less as a history, much less a national
history, and more as a secret confession about someone’s sins surreptitiously passed on to
others for their reading pleasure. The found manuscript’s purpose in W
therefore, is to appeal to the reader’s curiosity and to introduce the kind of tale-macabre,
violent, and fearful-40 follow. With the notable exception of Walpole’s W
thantg, the reference to history in many gothic “found manuscripts” such as this one
occurs on a more generalized level. Such references call to mind issues of legitimacy,
transmission, and truthfulness, but they fall short of examining more fully and directly
such histories’ relationship to “real” history and the values bound up in its creation.

The preface to Horace Walpole’s first edition of W features a
translator who has found the manuscript “in the library of an ancient Catholic family in
the north of Englan ” (3). Written in the black letter in Naples and printed around 1529,
this manuscript refers the readers back to medieval, Catholic Europe. Demonstrating a
taste for antiquarian research, the translator attempts to describe the methods for dating
the manuscript, contextualizing it within other collections of letters from that time period,
and commenting upon the particular writing style and what it might tell about the author

and the times in which he lived. The necessary derision of the superstitions sanctioned

146

by the Catholic Church and the comparison to present times where people don’t place
credence in the supernatural both appear; both ideas are typical of eighteenth-century
gothic romances.

Horace Walpole was well known for his passion for collecting and for his
residence, Strawberry Hill, a castle built and improved upon in the medieval style and
one of the most famous houses in Europe during his day. M’s preface reflects this
antiquarian interest through its language and its posturing as a note introducing this
bibliographic find. Like most gothic novels following nggs example, however, the
referent exists in Italy, and the commentary about the novel’s content and style reflects
judgments on the people and manners of a foreign country through stories of that
country’s past. For example, regarding the original purpose of this medieval work, the
preface states,

Letters were then in their most flourishing state in Italy, and contributed to dispel

the empire of superstition, at that time so forcibly attacked by the reformers. It is

not unlikely that an artful priest might endeavour to turn their own arms on the
innovators; and might avail himself of his abilities as an author to confirm the

populace in their ancient errors and superstitions. (3)

While the translator praises the Italian language as more elegant and better at storytelling
than English, he also laments the lack of a useful moral in the Italian manuscript.

1 could wish he had grounded his plan on a more useful moral than this; that the

sins of fathers are visited on their children to the third and fourth generation. I

doubt whether in his time, any more than at present, ambition curbed its appetite

of dominion from the dread of so remote a punishment. And yet this moral is

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kg

weakened by that less direct insinuation, that even such anathema may be diverted

by devotion to saint Nicholas. Here the interest of the monk plainly gets the

better of the judgment of the author. (5)
The Catholic Italian monk is clearly biased and unable to maintain a distance between
authorial objectivity and personal superstition. English readers, however, are more
SOphisticated and, as they separate out the piety, purity and lessons of virtue from the
narrative, they are able to enjoy doing so (5). Like Radcliffe in mm Walpole sets
the English reader in a position above the European object and describes it in visual
terms: “However, with all its faults, I have no doubt but the English reader will be
pleased with a sight of this performance,” the novel (5). Safely separate from the foreign
past, the English translator and reader can look at this manuscript as a product from
Italy’s history and culture. Furthermore, the reading standards of the present—day English
reader, standards including accurate portrayal of character and manners, play a significant
role in this interpretive distancing. Apologizing for the supernatural instances in this
manuscript, the translator states, “Belief in every kind of prodigy was so established in
those dark ages, that an author would not be faithful to the manners of the times who
should omit all mention of them. He is not bound to believe them himself, but he must
represent his actors as believing them” (4). This first preface, then, includes the anti-
European and anti-Catholic condescension common in many gothic novels. In providing
the mediating figure of the translator, Walpole also highlights how reading standards and
antiquarian posturing can be put to use in creating these sentiments.

The second edition’s preface exposes the first edition as a sham, a fictional

representation of other real-life antiquarian forgeries appearing not uncommonly in the

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eighteenth century.12 In this preface, Walpole also outlines his successful innovation, an
“attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern” (7).
Reconciling these two modes, Walpole explains he “wished to conduct the mortal agents
in his drama according to the rules of probability; in short, to make them think, speak and
act, as it might be supposed mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions”
(8). To justify his invention, Walpole admits his imitation of the English genius,
Shakespeare, the “great master of nature” (8). Placing himself in the lineage of great
English literature, Walpole then turns to the question of national literary identity by
comparing English and French literature. He soundly refutes Voltaire’s arguments
concerning literary criticism, the value of Shakespeare, and the precedence of France’s
judgment of literature. He sneers at Voltaire’s presumption at comparing French
expertise favorably over that of the Greeks themselves (10-11). He derides French poetry
as cramped by the fetters of “Paris et notre parterre” satisfying their poetry standards is
enough to “reduce poetry from the lofty effort of imagination, to a puerile and most
contemptible labour-~difi‘iciles nugae ” (11). He then singles out a couplet by Racine
“which, to my English ears always sounded as the flattest and most trifling instance of
circumstantial propriety” (l 1). Carefully aligning himself with his honored countryman
Shakespeare and framing his literary criticisms with his position as an Englishman,
Walpole emphasizes the boundary between French and English literature; in doing so, he
continues to define Englishness in terms of the foreign Other already highlighted in his
first preface.

While Walpole’s prefaces contain references both to British nationalism and to

antiquarianism, his focus remains on Europe-Europe’s inferiority, Europe’s past,

149

Europe’s Catholicism. What marks Radcliffe’s preface to We as
different is its location in and focus on England--England’s past, England’s ruins,
England’s historians, England’s artifacts. While this may seem to be a simple change of
locale, it is that change which marks Gaston’s “hidden manuscript” as different from
those more commonly found in gothic novels because it turns the idea of English history
back upon itself. In its concern with England’s own past and the English reading of that
past, the preface shifts its concern from defining modern England through comparison
with the European past to defining modern England through reading its own past. More
lengthy and detailed than gang’s preface, and more “ordinary” than the gloomy and
sinister found-manuscripts typical of novels like 111213111111. the preface of Mn looks

directly at constructs of British identity occurring congruently with an interest in

antiquarianism’s impact on reading that identity.

 

The introduction to W features two English travelers, Mr.
“filloughton and Mr. Simpson, who travel between Coventry and Warwick on their way
to visit Kenilworth. Mr. Willoughton represents the more sentimental and imaginative of
the two while the practical Mr. Simpson would rather arrive in time at the in for dinner
than explore ruins and sigh over the landscape. The two happen upon an elderly 10cm
who takes them around the ruins of Kenilworth, telling them stories about historical and
not-so—historical happenings. Eventually, Willoughton buys from him an old manuscript

found buried beneath the chapel, a manuscript that is the novel proper.

150

As she does in W, Radcliffe crafts her preface’s characters as tourists. In
fiastgn, Willoughton and Simpson are specific kinds of tourists, however: historical
tourists. After the Reformation, travel became not only a sign of one’s class and leisure,
but also of one’s desire to gain empirical knowledge about culture and history. At first,
most travel took place in Europe with “The Grand Tour”, but in the middle of the
eighteenth-century, travel within England rose as writers began to lament the lack of
attention paid to England’s own history and antiquities. Writers such as Thomas

Pownall, author of Will; urged the value of looking at
the history and antiquities of one’s own country. William Stukeley in his mm
uo' n .1 2.! t o n . -ge tr. nus ~ Lu. 1.1.115“, b~ ui ! s 21- r‘ o ‘1.

’ i v ’ r t ' ' u : “It was ever my opinion that a more
intimate knowledge of Brittan more become us, is more useful and as worthy a part of
education for our young nobility and gentry as the view of any transmarin parts”
(Stukeley 3, qtd. in Haycock 70). In his study of the rise of English tourism from the
mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, Ian Ousby explains that travel inside
England rose in popularity due to the increased feasibility of English tourism with its
lower cost and shorter time commitment; the growing mistrust of and denunciation of all
things French and Italian; and the technical advances in travel which made it easier to go
about the countryside in greater numbers and at greater speed. These advances included
coaches, roads, and better communication systems (Ousby 10). The eighteenth century
saw more published guides to English sites and ruins; such guides often included

antiquarian study of these places. These books were written by travelers in the form of

first-person narratives depicting the travellers’ thoughts and experiences, but also, as

151

Ousby points out, the books were “clearly written more and more with an eye to helping
subsequent travelers along the same road, offering recommendations, warnings and
information that range from practical details of prices to potted local history” (12).
Additionally, these guides provided the traveler with amateur instruction in antiquarian
methods: “Travel guides to these areas [of archaeological and historical significance]
tended increasingly to provide the tourist with a succinct digest of relevant antiquarian
theories and often included a small engraving of any substantial remains as part of the
area’s notable curiosities” (Smiles 22). While certainly not all travelers undertook
historical tours, “Gothic ruins and, above all, the ruins of the great monasteries ceased to
be merely antiquarian curiosities and became major features on a redrawn tourist map of
England” (Ousby 100). Begun in the spirit of cultural and national inquiry and guided by
tour books written by fellow travelers, tours of English ruins and antiquities opened
England’s historical treasury to the middle classes and women; they also gave locals,
often uneducated and of the lower classes, a participatory role as guides and experts on
local history and folklore. Historical tours could thus became a way for ordinary people
to experience, craft, and/or interpret history outside the dominant power structures
represented by formal education or aristocratic privilege.

Radcliffe herself undertook historical tours, both in Europe and in England, as her

travel journals demonstrate. In his a; . '

 

prefixed to W upon its first publication, Thomas Noon Talfourd
includes excerpts from Radcliffe’s private travel journals. These entries trace her visits to
country houses, seaside towns, stunning landscapes, and historically important sites. She

visits Penshurst, where she imagines Sir Philip Sydney and his knights standing around

152

the same fire pit in the great hall where she stands and where she sees Sir Philip’s armor
that “stands like a spectre at arms, watching over the scene it once inhabited” (qtd. in
Talfourd 83). She notes the historical portraits she sees in various places they visit, such
as at Knole House where portraits of Luther, Queen Elizabeth, Salisbury, Burleigh, and
Leicester hang (70). She describes tapestries displaying historical scenes, like at
Blenheim where an immense tapestry covers the state room’s walls and, in its several
compartments, displays different historical scenes and battles, such that “the whole seems
almost a living prospect, and that you might step into the scene” (63). As Talfourd notes,
Radcliffe paired her tours of historical sites with research into their background. For
example, she “was much attached to St. Alban’s, the antiquities of which she explored
with unwearied zeal, and the historical dignity of which she has vindicated in her longest
poem” (96).

St. Alban’s is not the only historical site that inspired Radcliffe to combine her
travel notes with artistic production. Including journal entries from her visit to
Kenilworth, Talfourd explains, “Mrs. Radcliffe was particularly interested by Kenilworth
Castle, and spent much time in exploring its history after she had visited its ruins” (89).
Indeed, several journal passages distinctly parallel those she develops in her novel; some
objects and descriptions are placed directly into the novel. She describes the banqueting
room of Caesar’s Tower, the “noble masses of ruin that still stand proudly, and form
three broken and irregular sides of what was once the inner court” (57), and a suit of
armor at the end of the gallery in Warwick Castle which seems to guard the passage with

its sword in hand (59). Looking upon the ruins at Kenilworth, she writes words that she

153

will repeat almost exactly in her novel and that emphasize the imaginative response to
historical ruins that she will outline in the novel’s preface:

This view of the ruin was very striking; the three chief masses great and solemn,

without being beautiful. They spoke at once to the imagination, with the force

and simplicity of truth, that nothingness and brevity of this lif --“generations have
beheld us and passed away, as you now behold us, and shall pass away: they
thought of the generations before them, as you now think of them, and as future
ages shall think of you. We have witnessed this; yet we remain; the voices that
reveled beneath us are heard no more, yet the winds of Heaven still sound in our

ivy.” (58)

Combining actual encounter, historical research, personal impression, and, later,
imaginative creation, Radcliffe’s interaction with the historical experience transcends
generic boundaries. This transgeneric emphasis shapes Wile, both in
the novel proper, which includes several different levels of experiencing and transmitting
history, and in the preface, which introduces this concept.

Throughout the preface, Radcliffe includes numerous references to antiquarian
concerns, practices, and standards, showing at least an amateur familiarity with the
eighteenth-century fascination with gathering and interpreting artifacts from Britain’s
past. The two historical tourists, Willoughton and Simpson, set out specifically to
explore Kenilworth. They examine the walls, the stone bench, and other physical aspects
of the site for what these ruins can tell the men about Kenilworth’s role in history and the
people who used to live there. They imagine what might have happened in the various

platforms, chambers, and courtyards, always with an eye to historical accuracy. For

154

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example, when Mr. Simpson imagines the wonderful food and drink that yeomen must

have carried beneath the arch of the great banqueting hall of Henry III, Mr. Willoughton

corrects him:
I doubt whether by yeoman, for, though yeomen of the household are mentioned,
about this time, yeomen of the guard, a part of whose office it afterwards became
to carry certain dishes to the king’s table, do not occur till the reign of Henry the
Seventh. However, it is probable, that, before the appointment of the latter,
yeomen of the household might perform this business on state occasions, and in
that very hall may have stood before the long tables, in double row, with wine
ewers in their hands. (1.17)

Willoughton’s expertise on court practices extends to dating other objects that they come

upon. Comparing the chimney they have found to the one they saw at Penshurst,

Willoughton, again correcting Simpson, explains:
that style was of a later date than the chimneys in English halls. It came in, I
apprehend, with the castellated mansion, of which style is Penshurst, the more
ancient part of the building at least. In the hall of the older castle, a chimney
sloped back from the line of the wall into the thickness of it, and let out the smoke
through a loop above. Thus, the raised hearth, on which the wood-fire blazed,
projected into the chamber, and was sometimes overhung by a canopy of stone-
work supported by pillars, that gave it a resemblance to a gothic porch, such as
adorn some of our finest cathedrals. (1.44-5)

Lengthy descriptions such as these dot the preface as the two travelers continue through

Kenilworth. Simpson and especially Willoughton constantly view the physical world

155

 

ttt.

 

with an eye not just to the past, but also to an accurate dating and description of that past.
The frequency and detail of these descriptions emphasize the importance of antiquarian
reading methods within the preface.

During their tour, “Willoughton and Simpson, helped by their local tour guide,
encounter several artifacts that they, likewise, date, test for accuracy, and covet. The
most important find, is, of course, the manuscript of the novel, which the local man once
dug up from underneath the chapel while hoping to find treasure. He took out the
manuscript and a few other books before burying the rest of the contents again.
Willoughton laments that he can’t now see the old letter seals, parchments, and other
objects, but he also eagerly awaits his examination of the main text. Economic concerns
play an important part in reading the manuscript, emphasizing the connection between
antiquarian concerns and history’s commodification.13 The old man finds the manuscript
but doesn’t read it; he does understand its value as an artifact, however. Willoughton
acquires the manuscript not by examining a secret cache of letters by candlelight, but by
purchasing it with a handsome sum of money. As Paul Baines explains, the exchange
value of British artifacts was an important part of the rising interest in antiquarianism
during the eighteenth century: “Antiquarian knowledge and technique form a kind of
‘meta—economy’ , intersecting with the dominant practice of acquisition and private study
at the point of an object’s reception, either in a collection or publication, and operating a
privileged, retentive and sometimes fraudulent exchange of ideas” (36). Just as
antiquarian acquisition can represent “knowledge itself taking an economic form” (46),
so too does the exchange of Willoughton’s manuscript in the novel transform knowledge

from a secret or confessional revelation into an actual piece of history for sale. Radcliffe

156

emphasizes this economic aspect of the hidden manuscript device and in doing so, links
the gothic object closely to the antiquarian concerns she develops throughout the novel.
Radcliffe first describes the manuscript in terms of its physical appearance as it
might appear to one interested in the authenticity of an artifact. “It was written on
vellulm, and richly illuminated, and purported to be an account of what passed at
Kenilworth, when Henry the Third there kept the feast of Saint Michael, and of some
wonderful accident that there befel” (1.49). They exarrrine the title page, try to make out
the date of the manuscript, and carefully try to read the old style of the language:
“Willoughton turned over the leaves near the drawing; the language, the orthography and
the characters were all so ancient, that he hesitated much. What he did make out,
however, fixed his attention so deeply” (1.54). They also use the beautifully engraved
pictures to help them make the connections between the ruins of the present and their
imaginings of the past--imaginings that are based on evidence. The engravings rebuild
the ruins to what Kenilworth would have looked like during Henry’s reign. Using the
crumbling manuscript as a kind of tour book, the men find the book also “gave vivid
ideas of the customs and manners of that period, and were traced, with more knowledge
of perspective and more attention to proportion, than Willoughton expected” (1.50).
Unlike the local man who “rea ” the book for the pictures because they are entertaining,
Willoughton and Simpson examine the engravings for their use in adding to their
knowledge of British history.14 Using the manuscript in this way inevitably leads to a
discussion of its authenticity. The cynical Simpson mocks both the manuscript and the
local man’s story of its discovery. The more knowledgeable Willoughton, however, has

already examined this manuscript along with another manuscript they have found, the

157

W, and finds them to be genuine based on the place of discovery, the
method of their composition, and the context of other such finds:
It does not seem probable that the old man should have invented the story he has
related of the discovery of them; but, be that as it may, the books themselves
announce their own genuine antiquity. The manuscript is laboriously illuminated,
and it is well known, that such works were chiefly performed by the inhabitants of
monasteries. The W even was likely to have served the purposes of
the monks. We know that the libraries of monasteries contained a most
heterogeneous assemblage. . . . You may recollect, that Warton, in the interesting
sketches of ancient manners which he gives in his WW1,
mentions this very fully (1.61-62).
Additionally, Willoughton offers as proof of its authenticity the manuscript’s departure
from current popular opinion. Though in his day the times of Henry III are known for
lawlessness, the manuscript depicts the time period differently, focusing on the feasts,
justice and courtly manners of Henry’s time (1.63). A forgery would most likely follow
contemporary beliefs of the past; a genuine manuscript would not necessarily do so.
Here, Willoughton addresses the concern of forgery by not only applying antiquarian
methods but also by understanding the interrelation of public opinion and history writing,
an intertwining that could potentially corrupt the understanding of the past just as a
forged document could.
Set within this detailed and elaborate context of antiquarian activity and historical
tourism, Radcliffe presents various views on how to read the past in general and

England’s history in particular. In the introduction, readers do not learn of the past from

158

the ruins and artifacts without the present-day mediation of the two travelers and their
guide. Indeed, Radcliffe focuses less on the historical people and events brought to mind
by the various artifacts or ruins than on the present-day debates about how to gather and
interpret historical research. Willoughton demonstrates how to read the past
sentimentally and imaginatively while basing such readings on facts; Simpson represents
the impatient, less imaginative, and more cynical spectator who views ruins and
antiquities merely as objects; the guide represents the common man possessing local
historical knowledge but needing a mediator to determine truth from fable. As Radcliffe
takes readers through Kenilworth, she not only offers a description of historical sites; she
also suggests how to read them by privileging Willoughton’s method. The other two do
play a role, however, and sometimes serve to point out some of the problems with
approaching historical sites as Mlloughton does. In this heteroglossia of approaches
toward and perspectives on reading historical sites and objects, then, Radcliffe presents
historical epistemologies and evidence as up for discussion and vulnerable to personal
bias. The debates and discussions contained within the preface serve to prepare readers
for the novel that comes next, almost as if this introduction is meant to give them a short
lesson on how to use artifacts and manuscripts to create a picture of the past. The
“hidden manuscript” of W, then, becomes more of an exercise in
practicing antiquarian methods than, as in more traditional gothic novels, a revelation of a
secret or an example of middle-aged barbarity.

Simpson and Willoughton are aware of their roles in the antiquarian project.
Impatient with Willoughton’s lengthy examinations and investigations, Simpson frets,

“They talk of the patience of a painful antiquary; think what the patience of his friend

159

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must be” (1.46). While Willoughton modestly objects that he has not the honor to
deserve that title, he does admit, “I have all possible inclination to deserve the title, in its
best sense” (1.47). Willoughton then expounds upon the importance of antiquarian study,
preparing readers for his (and their) study of the manuscript. The true antiquary is one
involved in
cherishing those inquiries, which make us intimate with the characters and habits
of our fellow creatures in past ages, which show them to us in their halls, their
ceremonies, their tournaments, their banquets, their domestic usages and even in
their monastic retirement. These picturesque visions, in which the imagination so
much delights, and every discovery, however remote, awaken a peculiar kind of
interest and of sentiment no less delightful, which render antiquity, of all studies,
the least liable to the epithet of dry, though dull and dry people so liberally bestow
it. Antiquity is one of the favourite regions of poetry. (1.47)
Disagreeing with Simpson’s portrayal of the antiquary as a dry man pursuing details of
his subject matter ad infinitum, Willoughton defines the antiquary as one not only
interested in study, but also in imaginative experience and poetic expression. Indeed,
throughout the introduction, Radcliffe portrays Willoughton as a sentimental man of
feeling with poetic sensibilities. He imagines himself wandering through the woods of
Shakespeare’s Arden (1.3-6), and tears fill his eyes when he overhears some of the bard’s
stanzas sung by pe0ple in a passing barge (1.71). The landscape moves him deeply:
“Willoughton, at least, was no less affected by the withered sinews and grey locks of this
most forlorn and aged tree, which had itself become a ruin, while adorning another”

(1.18). These same sentiments appear when perceiving Kenilworth’s ruins. As he first

160

comes upon the ruins, Willoughton’s impatience becomes “tempered with a gentle and
luxurious melancholy” (1.12). Viewing the ruins often moves Willoughton’s
imagination, even such that poetry comes to mind: “To Willoughton’s recollection this
spectacle of the remains of ages past, now glimmering under the soft shadows of
moonlight, brought those touching lines of Beattie--‘Hail, awful scenes, that calm the
troubled breast. . .”’ (1.65). Willoughton’s shifts in narrative style from recitation to
inspiration separates the distinct ways of knowing even as they occur together. After
straightforwardly listing several of the people who once lived at Kenilworth,
scientifically noting that its domain “included a circuit of nearly twenty miles” and
casually remarking that during the reign of James I the castle was valued at twenty
thousand pounds (1.10-11), Willoughton experiences the scene with deep feeling:
Recollections of the long and varied history of this castle, crowded upon the mind
of Willoughton, and he looked out, with impatience for a glimpse of its
mouldering gateways, in the sungleam, beneath the woods that now rose round
him with majestic shade. . . . and, when he first caught a view of the grey walls
and turrets oertopping the woods, lighted up by the evening sun, whose long
beams, slanting now under the boughs, touched with a golden flush the bending
trunk of many an old beech standing deep within the shade, he uttered a note of
admiration and curiosity that discomposed Mr. Simpson, who immediately
directed the postilion to make his way to the nearest gate. (1.31)
Willoughton expresses his emotional responses at the same time that he registers details
of the actual historical events, further demonstrating how, for the proper reader of

antiquities, both must come into play. Of the three men, Willoughton portrays a balance

161

of both antiquarian expertise and emotional response; his judgments and interpretations
take up most of the space in the preface. That he is also the one who collects artifacts,
has his historical facts straight, and ends up as the reader and translator of the novel
points out Radcliffe’s preference for his method.

Radcliffe sets up Mr. Simpson as a foil to Willoughton; many of Willoughton’s
opinions come forth in response to Simpson’s. Simpson views the antiquarian and poetic
projects as separate by definition. Unlike his friend, Simpson sees no use in connecting
the two realms. In response to Willoughton’s inclusion of antiquarian research in the
realm of poetry, he states, “Nay, your woods and your meadows are the region for that.
Who ever thought of looking for a muse in an old castle?” (1.47). Whereas Willoughton
often uses the landscape or his historical discoveries to rise to poetic heights, Simpson
mocks him and tries to hurry him on. Every once in a while, Simpson does demonstrate
his own powers of imagination, such as above when he thinks about the banquet hall, but
his pictures are incomplete and his facts usually are not accurate. Simpson’s reactions
stem in part from to his impatience to move on to the next stop on their tour rather than to
remain and learn about and feel each place deeply. Simpson represents the amateur
historical tourist who sees the sights merely to check them off his list of things to do. Not
taking the time to learn from or be moved by the objects and places he encounters,
Simpson lacks the proper motivation and poetic sensibility necessary for a true
connections with the past as seen in Radcliffe’s instructive introduction.

The old guide demonstrates the third method of reading historical evidence:
listening to folklore and oral tales. Not able to read the letters of the manuscript, this man

has contented himself with looking at the pictures. Indeed, he did not find this book due

162

to any antiquarian project but due to an accident that occurred while he was looking for
treasure. The irony is that his disappointing find is in reality a treasure for Willoughton,
who pays the guide well for it. While illiterate, this “aged historian”, as he is called, does
posses a considerable knowledge of the folklore surrounding the ruins and of the basic
architectural design of the castle and its environs. Not valuing this type of knowledge,
however, Simpson mocks the aged historian just as he mocks Willoughton. After hearing
some of the strange stories of ghostly sightings, Simpson gives his friend, “a look of sly
congratulation, on his having met with a person of taste seemingly so congenial with his
own” (1.30). Not immediately dismissing the man’s tales, however, Willoughton listens
and discems the kernels of truth contained within. He knows the difference between
stories of the supernatural and those feelings which would make one seem to experience
the supernatural. In this respect, Simpson has indeed found a kinship between the two
men. The important difference, however, lies in Willoughton’s expertise in reading the
past and directing his feelings in the present. He allows for the effects historical
knowledge can have on an individual, but he also locates these effects within the
individual’s imagination, not in any outside supernatural occurrence. Defending the old
man without fully believing him, Willoughton reminds Simpson that “if you remain in
this ruin, half an hour longer, till you can scarcely distinguish the walls, you will feel less
inclined to laugh at Queen Elizabeth’s ghost in a ruff and farthingale” (1.31). Later,
while reading one of the manuscripts in his room, Willoughton himself feels the effects
that reading or hearing about superstition and the marvelous can inspire:

As he turned over the leaves, curious to see the thraldom of superstition to which

the people of a remote age were liable, he often smiled at the artless absurdities he

163

discovered, the clumsy inventions practised upon the fears of the ignorant by the

venality of the monks. Yet he sometimes found his attention seized, in spite of

himself, by the marvellous narratives before him; till, at length, he began to feel
that he was alone, to recollect that it was past midnight, to observe that all around
him was still as death; and gradually to think he might as well lay aside the “Boke
of Sprites” till day-1i ght should return and the world again sound busily around

him. ( 1.74)

Willoughton’s sensation, like his other transports at Kenilworth, resides in his
imagination, and he is always aware that it is just that--a sensation. Radcliffe portrays
Willoughton, then, as a kind of arbiter of the facts, like the schoolmaster to whom the old
man first brought the book in order to validate or deny the truth of the tales within (1.35).
In portraying the “aged historian” as she does, Radcliffe implies the need for a certain
degree of professional expertise in order to accurately sift out the past and its meaning.
While imagination and the ability to feel strong emotion at the site of ruins and the
surrounding landscape are important parts of reading the past, they must not interfere
with the facts and evidence as they sometimes do for the “aged historian.”

The preface is, moreover, full of facts about people and events in history
associated with Kenilworth. We learn about Cromwell’s invasion of the monasteries,
Edward the Second’s imprisonment in Mortimer’s Tower, and Queen Elizabeth’s
execution of Queen Mary. A history of Kenilworth and its inhabitants appears at the
beginning and is elaborated upon throughout the introduction. Again, the expert

Willoughton uses every opportunity to make connections between site and fact. Through

164

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him, readers learn English history as well as how to react to that history aided by
sentimentalisrn and poetic imagination.

There are also certain places in the preface where one cannot forget the violence
of the past, no matter how decorous and inspiring the ruins might be. Radcliffe marks
these places by surrounding them with supernatural moments that serve to draw attention
to these sites of conflict. While no actual supernatural events occur in the preface,
Willoughton, through his imaginative sensibilities, and the aged historian, through his
connections to local folklore, call up images of ghosts and gloom. Incvitably, these
images are linked to spaces and moments of British political conflict. Kenilworth’s
hauntings provide not only specific commentary about past English politics but also, due
to their rupturing of the largely dry and descriptive preface, prevent the smooth and
simple historical tour of the ruins so desired by Simpson. British history, and its artifacts
and ruins, do not always contribute to the myth of British unity espoused by modern
Enlightenment historiography. Instead, as these moments in the introduction show,
conflicts from within the nation-state are not so easily covered over. The choice to use
the supernatural and, often, to nervously laugh it off allows Radcliffe to emphasize these
moments. With no foreign Other against which to define Britishness, the introduction
shows the insecurity involved in looking back on Britain’s own past to support nationalist
ideals of unity and progress. Thinking of , talking about, and mocking supernatural
feelings and occurrences serve to distract the characters from the real fears and conflicts
these ruins might otherwise inspire. Radcliffe thus adds an under-layer of instability even

as she creates the ideal reader of antiquities in Willoughton.

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Willoughton examines historical events and persons mainly in terms of how they
fit in with eighteenth-century sentimental standards; thus, the facts are often followed by
or interwoven with commentary on the lessons of the ruins and artifacts before the men.
On viewing and learning the history of a place called Queen Elizabeth’s Turret, known
for its frequent visitations by the Queen’s ghost, Willoughton and Simpson enter into a
dialogue about the Queen. Willoughton, the man of feeling who has found great pleasure
in everything from a dead tree to a view of the castle towers finds “no pleasure in
remembering Elizabeth”; indeed, “she inspires me only with aversion and horror” (1.29).
The practical Simpson calls her “the wisest princess that ever reigned,” but Willoughton
argues that “her wisdom partook too much of craft, and her policy of treachery; and her
cruelty to poor Mary is a bloody hand in her escutcheon, that will for ever haunt the
memory of her” (29). Typical of eighteenth-century idolizations of the persecuted
heroine Mary Queen of Scots, Willoughton’s preference for the tear-inspiring victim
marks his cultural discernment. The representation of past tyranny in direct opposition to
traditional national readings of this great queen, Elizabeth’s ghost haunts the scene in
many places and touches the imaginations of Willoughton, the villagers, and even
Simpson. The tendency of emotions to transform into frightening supernatural
intimations happens often in this introduction and marks the man of feeling’s sense of
past wrongs, wrongs not committed by any outside enemy but from corruption within.
Aesthetic and imaginative readings of England’s past proffered by Willoughton, rather
than the purely logical and factual readings of Simpson, make one more likely to know
and, more importantly, to feel such historical horrors. Radcliffe marks this scene with the

ghost figure in order to highlight it as a site of past violence. The ghost also serves as a

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symbol frequently employed by Radcliffe to mark a ruin’s interpretive space as conflicted
and shifting, as her characters assign different evidence and analysis to their history-
making and reading of that locale.

Similarly, when discussing Cromwell and his destruction of historically important
sites, Willoughton states, “What had the venerable scenes of Kenilworth to do with
politics, or freedom? But thus it is; if even the leaders in political agitations have a better
taste themselves than to destroy, for the mere sake of destruction, they let the envy and
malice of their followers rage away against whatsoever is beautiful, or grand” (1.25-6).15
Here he speaks of the English Revolution and lnterregnum primarily in terms of taste,
juxtaposing sentiment against politics. Emotional and imaginative reading of the past
leads not just to a general sorrow over things past, but to a more focused mourning also
over things destroyed due to specific and distinct political agitation. Indeed, the one
necessarily follows the other. In this example of past oppression viewed through the
aesthetic lens, Willoughton deflates belief in the grand sweep of history’s progress by
describing how the English Revolution took the nation backward, even to the days when
such ruins were standing. His words mark more than simply a longing for the olden
days; because he uses the present tense of what “thus is”, he implies that this could
happen again-~it is not something that the English have “grown out of .” Given the
context of the French and American Revolutions, this possible recurrence is a frightening
prospect indeed. Ruins like these emphasize that the “barbarous and uncivilized past”
does not necessarily exist separate from the present’s political conflicts. Indeed, the very

appearance of such ruins serves as a reminder that these present conflicts exist, capecially

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given the frequency with which eighteenth-century historians and writers were drawing
parallels between current political conflict and that of the 16403 and 50s (Hill 50-51).
When the men encounter such reminders of historical conflict, Radcliffe depicts a
process that Willoughton goes through in order to deal with the uneasy memories these
reminders bring up. This process, which involves a movement from historical fact to
otherworldly intrusion to poetic sentiment, covers up a real fear about facing England’s
past. The supernatural occurrence, with its use of vivid language and immediate links to
terror draws attention to the underlying insecurities of historical reading. One of these
instances where a supernatural experience surrounds the retelling of the past occurs when
the men visit ruins where the hall would have stood. Speaking on the history of the
castle, Willoughton states, “A great part of the castle which then existed, is now gone;
and much that we look at, stands in its place; but that noble hall, and Caesar’s tower and
several other towers, such as those where the moonlight falls, beheld the very court of
Henry the Third, ay, and Montfort, on whom he had bestowed Kenilworth, and who
added in gratitude to treason, by holding the fortress against his benefactor and liege
lord” (1.63—4). Immediately after his historical recitation, gloom and fear descend upon
them.
The pauses of solemn stillness, that followed these sighings of air among the old
branches, were very solemn, and the sound itself-~30 still, uncertain, and sudden,
Willoughton could have fancied to have been the warning murmurs of one, who,
in his mortal-state, had lived within these walls, and now haunted the scene where

it had once reveled, or, perhaps, suffered. It seemed like a voice imperfectly

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uttering forth some dark prophecy, and telling of the illusion of life and the

certainty of death. (1.64-5)

The scene next inspires Willoughton to turn to poetry for consolation and distraction,
reflecting on “those touching lines of Beattie” (1.65), before moving on.

Soon after, the aged guide tells the men, in a quivering voice, that they are
standing on the very site where Mortimer’s tower stood, the place where, Willoughton
remembers, “the unhappy Edward the Second was, for a while, imprisoned, before he
was removed to Corfe and Berkeley Castles, his last abodes” ( 1.66). This time both the
guide and the disbelieving Simpson become fearful as the guide tells the men about
Edward’s spectre who is sometimes seen there with a mask upon his face and a drawn
sword. Willoughton uses Simpson’s rare moment of vulnerability to congratulate
Simpson on proving his point about the powerful effects “of solitude and obscurity on the
imagination” (1.67). In both these examples, Willoughton moves from recitation of
historical fact to gloomy forebodings of supernatural presences to the consolations of his
own imagination which calls up and then disperses these frightening images. He
effectively turns his attention away from a historical moment of betrayal within the
English monarchy and instead creates an aesthetic experience from it. While this serves
to discredit the actual existence of the supernatural, something Radcliffe is known for
doing, it also serves to underline the fear and foreboding lying beneath the surface. At
sites not marked by betrayal of a monarch or courtier, Willoughton’s imagination directly
leads him to contemplate the ruins in the role of either an antiquarian or a man with
poetic sensibilities. In the places of past political conflict, fear in the form of gloomy

spectres and visions interrupts this pathway.

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The instigator of these ghostly visions, the aged historian holds a special place in
Radcliffe’s examination of the different approaches to history and the class bias
associated with them. The aged historian becomes the source of supernatural tales and
the destabilizing force of the underclass with a folk memory that does not allow the
mainstream patriotic narrative to cover up Britain’s religious and political infighting. He
continually interrupts Simpson and prevents his smooth progress through the ruins and
the history they represent; likewise, he surprises Willoughton while he is enjoying his
poetic reveries. He also transforms Willoughton’s sentimental reactions to history by
making them include superstition and gothic chills. Again, he brings forth his ghost
stories in very specific places, like Queen Elizabeth’s turret or the haunted tower, all of
which are associated with political and/or religious crisis. While Willoughton displays
the appropriate reactions of interest and feeling to the visiting and contemplation of
historically famous ruins and while he possesses the antiquarian knowledge to process
those sites objectively and accurately, the aged historian locates that knowledge within
the local physical and political landscape. He owns the coveted book, he holds the on-
site answers to the travelers’ specific questions, and he remembers the horrors of the
past’s “troublesome times” (1.39), encapsulated in folklore, which firmly links the fearful
feelings associated with superstition to the site of actual historical conflict. In addition to
being the character most moved by the past’s terror, he passes these stories on and adds a
different kind of knowledge and collection of remembrances to Willoughton’s arsenal of
official historical and archival knowledge. Using the aged historian as an important
resource, then, Radcliffe upholds Willoughton’s ways of reading the past at the same

time that she allows the more excluded historical discourses-~folklore, local history, oral

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transmission-—to play a role as well. Not surprisingly, she also initiates her most vivid
critical portrayals of certain political events via a lower-class character whose type of
historical knowledge, with its connections to folklore and personal experience, was
falling by the wayside during the rise of traditional Enlightenment historiography with its
focus on grand political events and a rational, linear narrative. Existing in a peripheral
space because of his age, class, and education, the aged historian with his approach to
historical discourse repeatedly interrupts the tourists’ ordinary visit to ruins and has the
ability to transform the way that Willougton looks at history. Empowering the aged
historian through his very connection to the uncanny parts of history, Radcliffe portrays
his methods as a necessary addition to Willoughton’s experience of the sentimental,
poetic, and factual aspects of historical and antiquarian reading. Through Willoughton,
who possesses the imaginative ability as well as the antiquarian’s discernment to blend
these different historical epistemologies, this local man’s supematural stories which

highlight political and religious conflict in English history bleed into the larger traditional

narrative of Kenilworth’s history.

 

After introducing readers to amateur antiquarian activity and its relationship to
historical transmission, Radcliffe begins the novel proper. Issues already brought up in
the preface-ways of reading different kinds of historical discourse and artifacts,
questions about formulating an English national heritage, and means of criticizing
England’s own rulers, politics, and power hierarchies-develop more fully in the novel.

Radcliffe links the preface’s concern about dating and quantifying the past to the novel

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by including numerous, lengthy passages of antiquarian examination and description such
that, like the preface, it can often read like a catalogue. Throughout the novel, she relies
on different kinds of historical evidence and discourse, including tapestries, songs and
pageants, to portray history, both of King Henry’s time and of what would constitute the
past in that time period. Quite often, these alternate forms of history tell the “real tru ,”
directly confuting historical narratives proffered by those in power; indeed, their very
position as outsider “narratives” lends them the necessary vantage point from which to
critique both the dominant historical narratives and the politics of those who benefit from
them. For, Radcliffe includes in this novel direct critiques of King Henry and other
major historical figures as well as the political strategies adopted by them. One of the
most significant and frequent techniques Radcliffe utilizes in her critiques is gothic
machinery. Supematural appearances highlight cultural conflicts, gaps in historical truth,
and the failings of the monarchy within England. While the appearances of ghosts save
the day, they serve to highlight how, without these interventions, abuses of power would
continue unchecked and unwritten. The trope of the ghost which figures prominently in
the novel becomes a symbol of the categorical liminality between the English and Welsh
or French and highlights through its uncanny presence how Englishness cannot be
separated from these other cultures. Concerns about national identity occur throughout
the novel, but an easy self-definition of Englishness through portraying England’s
opposition to France or Wales cannot occur because of the continual blending of
opposites that occurs throughout Gaston. Again, the use of gothic characteristics makes
this possible. Blending concerns about historical evidence and discourse with gothic

trappings allows Radcliffe to transform a supernatural novel into a “gothified history”

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directly concerned with debates about power structures surrounding historical discourse
and the national narratives contained within them.

The three-volume Gaston d9 Blondeville opens with the pageantry surrounding
King Henry III’s arrival at Kenilworth. As the King enters the gates, a stranger pushes
his way through the crowds to demand justice for the robbery and murder of his kinsman
in the woods of Arden. The man, Hugh Woodreeve, a merchant of Bristol, accuses the
King’s favorite, Gaston dc Blondeville, a French knight who gained his position in the
English Court due to his service in the King’s dominions overseas. Shocked at the
accusation, the King orders the merchant to remain in a prison cell until such time that
the truth may come forth, and he reassures Gaston of his continued favor. Meanwhile,
the Court prepares for the upcoming marriage celebration of Gaston and the Lady
Barbara. Nightly feasts, songs, and pageants entertain the courtiers, but some of the
diversions foreshadow trouble to come. At the wedding ceremony, a mysterious ghost-
knight appears in the chapel, nearly preventing the marriage. The ghost appears again at
the wedding feast. After a play about the Crusades that also relates the merchant’s tale of
his murdered kinsman, Reginald de Folville, the ghost appears again and points his
accusing sword at Gaston. Disturbed by these mysterious appearances, the King again
summons the merchant to tell his tale and arranges for messengers to go forth checking
his story. Influenced and deceived by the Prior and other advisors, the King concludes
that the merchant has unjustly accused Gaston and recommits him to his cell. The Prior
and Gaston plot to steal away the merchant and murder him quietly, lest the King change

his mind about the man’s guilt.

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The festivities at Kenilworth continue during the next two days while the
Archbishop, who supports the merchant’s claim, repairs to Coventry to check on the
Prior’s claim. Seizing the opportunity, the Prior sneaks into the merchant’s cell, telling
Woodreeve he is there to rescue him. After some suspicion and resistance, the merchant
reluctantly agrees. It soon appears clear, though, that he is in mortal danger and that the
Prior bears a strange resemblance to one of the robbers who killed de Folville. Only the
ghost’s reappearance saves him from the Prior’s dagger. The merchant then seeks
sanctuary in the Priory’s chapel and discovers a mysterious necklace around the Prior’s
neck that belonged to his kinsman. By means of a hidden device, the necklace shows
varying pictures of de Folville and his wife. The Prior uses this as evidence of the
merchant’s unnatural magic to hide his crimes, and the King, persuaded of the merchant’s
guilt, condemns him to death. The next day at an international jousting tournament, the
mysterious knight again appears and, this time, kills the Baron de Blondeville. Later that
night, the Baron’s sword appears and drips blood before his ghostly eyes. The
mysterious knight’s ghost appears again, ordering the King to release the innocent man.
Gaston’s ghost follows and confirms his own guilt. Rushing to the Priory, the King finds
the Prior dead of unknown causes. The knight’s ghost points out de Folville’s hidden
grave; upon exhumation, the corpse displays the very death wound described by the
merchant before crumbling into dust. The merchant is freed and sent back to his guild
with gifts. With the grieving Lady Barbara, the King’s company departs Kenilworth the

next day.

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Wm:

W119 contains numerous and lengthy passages of antiquarian and
historical interest. These passages change the tone of the romance and interrupt the
novel’s progress, making noticeable the disjointedness of these two forms conring
together. While one might look at this as a structural flaw, this strategy of including a
distinctly antiquarian voice that insists on painstaking detail, repeated examples, and
ample evidence serves to preclude the overarching narrative from continuing
uninterrupted. Aside from the fact that they appear in the textual world of the novel,
most of these passages exist separately from any explanation or appropriation into the
larger whole. Footnotes and endnotes further document the existence, purpose, and uses
of the discrete objects listed throughout these passages and lend to the novel’s appearance
as an annalistic repository. For example, when depicting a tapestry of the fall of Troy,
the note which follows states that the “‘Tale of Troy’ appears to have been a very favorite
subject in ancient tapestry. It occurs often in old castles, and is mentioned twice in this
‘Trew Chronique,’ as adorning the walls of stately chambers” (1.162). Notes like these
and the similarly depicted objects, chambers, and artifacts throughout novel contribute to
a more specific purpose than mere description; instead, they become intimately involved
in a strategy of gathering, dating, detailing, and evidencing—-the activities of the
antiquarian.

Many of the objects Radcliffe outlines have to do with the culture’s everyday
activities of eating, dressing, etc. as seen through the objects of the period. During the
dinners and meals, readers repeatedly hear of the gold and silver cups and spiceplates, the

splendid cupboards, the silver lights, the designs of the chamber and the surrounding

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architecture, all of which are reinforced as authentic by the notes which date the objects
or sights, link them to other sources, and eXplain in more detail the customs surrounding
them.“5 Even within the world of the novel, artifacts for the characters to see dot the
landscape and the castle. In the great gallery stand figures of armor surrounded by
weapons. “Amongst these was one shape of black steel, larger than the rest and higher by
the head; said to have been the very harness worn by the King’s great uncle, Richard the
Lion, in some battle in Palestine” (1.25). The chapel in the castle houses the bones of
Geoffrey de Clinton (2.8-9), described, surprisingly for a gothic novel, not in a terror-
inducing way but in terms of their historical value. Setting up this context, Radcliffe
demonstrates her knowledge antiquarian activity, placing her concerns as a female author
outside the typical domestic politics of her other more canonical gothic novels. She also
clearly marks the subject matter against which she will craft her gothic romance; this time
the typical gothic conventions will be put to use against power structures involved in
history making rather than patriarchal hierarchies dominating the domestic sphere.
Radcliffe’s narrator also interrupts the novel to include discussion about history
making and its uses. As shown above, Radcliffe includes several different forms of
historical representation--tapestries, dining utensils, armor, etc. Through her narrator, she
adds to this inclusive practice instructions on how to view history, similar to the lessons
provided in the novel’s preface. At the beginning of the novel, she uses the symbol of the
Roman aqueduct to call attention to the necessarily ruptured and incomplete narrative in
any history. Beginning the history with the King’s procession to Kenilworth, the narrator
attempts several times to give readers a full account of the sight, finally saying that

readers could get a picture of the whole by using their imagination to fill in the gaps “like

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as you may the broken lines of the great aqueduct, stretching over the plains of our dear
father of Rome; which, as we perceive its distant points athwart those solitudes, we
connect in our minds into one great whole, grander in its sweep than it might have shown
when it stood complete” (1.80-81). That she chooses a metaphor of ruin and
fragmentation needing the imagination to complete it recalls the process outlined in the
preface through Willoughton where the individual reader’s imagination plays an
important role in creating a historical reading. Rather than serving as a one-way
transmission of knowledge to the reader, history becomes a dialectical process, a process
seen repeatedly in the novel. For example, the artists at the festival use their imagination
to add to their own reading of history and then present the whole to a new audience. The
monk-narrator includes certain details in order that they “may tell what might be seen in
the King’s court, at this time” (2.7), serving as examples and evidence from which the
reader might draw a larger picture. In the middle of the novel, Radcliffe breaks in with a
short interlude where readers can see Willoughton reacting to the history, drawing
parallels to the ruins he sees out his windows, and using his imagination to bring scenes
to life (2.107). Radcliffe and her narrator present the history in this novel at the same
time that they point out through the examples of their characters how reading history is
necessarily an act involving the imagination and personal reaction to fill in the openings
of recorded history.

Radcliffe also makes evident the narrator’s own process of gathering information
from first-hand accounts and organizing them into his narrative, a process that further
emphasizes his role as antiquarian and gatherer of historical knowledge. He explains his

reasoning behind what he includes (2.256—7; 2.352). Sometimes he describes an event

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which “was reported by those present” (2.139), highlighting the difference between the
narrator’s authority and others’ first-person knowledge, upon which he depends. When
describing the merchant’s trial that finally occurs near the end of the novel, he explains,
“We vouch not for the truth of all here told; we only repeat what others have said and
their selves credited” (2.257). Besides showing the sometimes dubious nature of his
sources’ accuracy, the narrator’s interruptions highlight his bias as well as how it affects
his source material. He reminds readers that the Prior was no true son of the Church,
which he knew all along (3.40) and adds as asides some bits about his own order and his
own time (2.13; 2.54). He quotes from a source, the venerable monk of St. Albans, to
support his own opinion about the King’s wasteful extravagance (2.30). He also slips in
some opinions of his own time, inspired by the events he narrates. For example, after
quoting from the monk of St. Albans, he adds, “But what would such have said, had they
lived now, in our King Richard’s days; who, the second of his name, is first in every kind
of new extravagance, the like of which was never seen afore, and what it may end in,
there is no one that dare yet say. But now, to go back to the past King Henry. . .” (2.30).
Using the word “our” invites audience participation to link the past to their shared
present. In a similar instance, he brings up another criticism of the traitor brought up in
the preface, Simon de Montfort. After pointing out how many favors the King showered
upon the man, he adds, “how worthily it needs not for this history to declare, since it is
known to all, that he armed this very fortress against his King and benefactor” (2.353).
Here, the narrator brings in the audience, assuming they share a common knowledge with
him and again emphasizing the dialectic nature of this history: because he and they all

know about the Earl’s deeds, there is no need to discuss it any further in the history. He

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does bring it up, though, in effect urging readers to fill in the blank with their own
knowledge, hearkening to lessons of \Vrlloughton and the aqueduct--that imagination is
necessary to complete the gaps in the historical record. In addition to providing Radcliffe
with a venue in which to include political opinion, comments such as these make more
transparent the process of writing history, along with the idiosyncrasies that accompany
it. Such interruptions highlight Radcliffe’s concern with exploring historiography, not
simply with creating a novel with an interesting context.

This goal becomes especially evident in her narrator’s comments regarding the
historian’s power. After interrupting the novel for another monkish comment, he says,
“But now I must return, and so must ye that hear, or read” (1.176). Comparing himself to
the novel’s artists and their talents, he numbers himself among them, though in a different
way. “But those do so who can. Some are famous one way, some another; for mine own
part, I must be circumstantial, or else nothing, as this ‘Trew Chronique’ in due time must
show” (1.141). Aware of his readers, his control over the text which they read, and the
potential for future fame as his history lives on, the narrator also compares his written
history to the novel’s artworks, many of them historical, to emphasize how his historical
contribution is based on facts and events. The supernatural events, the frequent attention
drawn to his reliance on second-hand information, and the numerous opinions he slips
into the history belie this claim to be so separate from the other historical creations. The
binary the narrator sets up between factual document and artistic creation does not hold
up in the novel, where the two forms constantly internringle. The question of fictionality
that Radcliffe foregrounds in her preface applies as much to the monk’s narrative as to

such forms of historical discourse as ballads and folk tales.

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WW

Like the pageants in Gaston dc Blnndgvillg which envelope history and political
dissension with entertaining fictions, so too does Radcliffe’s novel as a whole include
commentary on England’s history and on the process of historiography by offering it side
by side with ample chills and supernatural appearances. With mummers, magic charms,
banditti in the woods, midnight escapes through gloomy subterranean passages, ghostly
swords and armor covered in blood, threats of torture, ghostly visitations, and other
staples of gothic fiction, GasLQn is as much a gothic novel as it is a historical novel. Like
the minstrel’s songs at Kenilworth, these entertaining characteristics allow for the
dissemination of Radcliffe’s subversive ideology even as they draw attention away from
such transgressions by means of their heightened emotional effects.l7 Through its
immateriality, the ghost figure that appears several times in the novel throws into
question boundaries separating past from present, French from English, reading from
creating. Moments during which characters come face to face with the supernatural are
also moments during which they must face their own fears regarding cultural difference
and unstable English identity. Throughout GnLth, gothic moments such as these rupture
the text, such that a novel already disunited by antiquarian cataloguing and conflicting
historical depictions continually deconstructs itself. This is a move Radcliffe repeats in
her other novels, as Scott Mackenzie argues, where she examines gender and power
dynamics. Mackenzie finds that Radcliffe’s continual use of lacunae, “hidden and
missing elements which both drive the narrative, and determine its overall shape” defines

her narrative structure as one that “deliberately sets up its first reading as qualitatively

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different from any subsequent re-readings” (4). Gothic techniques help Radcliffe to
create narrative spaces that double-signify and allow the text to both hide and reveal, to
both create and destroy, to both provide explanation and destabilize it. “Radcliffe’s
deliberately fissured narrative style is important because of its capacity to accommodate
nominally separate discursive spheres within its figural range. The spaces opened by her
lacunae multiply the valences of the narrative so that political, national, and oppositional
voices can be heard playing through it” (5). That Radcliffe uses this narrative style
within a novel masquerading as English history has special ramifications for
understanding Radcliffe’s use of the supernatural.

One of the most significant ways in which Radcliffe departs from traditional
Enlightenment histories is through her inclusion of non-literary histories, like tapestries,
pageants and songs. The narrator—monk incorporates them into his document as historical
evidence, and the characters themselves show a great fascination with these forms, as
seen in the number of historical tapestries hanging in the castle, the many songs relating
historical events which the courtiers listen to as part of each evening’s entertainment, and
the pageants which bring history to life.18 The non-traditional forms of historical
representation in the world of King Henry are read as histories and are valued specifically
for their historical subjects. Time and again, they capture the audience’s rapt attention.

The novel depicts some forms that are sanctioned as official history and are
presented as such in the world of King Henry. For example, in the great hall hangs a
massive tapestry

which setteth forth the story of our famous King Richard, Cmur de Lion, his

deeds in Palestine; and be it remembered, that King Henry loved nothing better

181

 

‘.l

than to see on his walls the noble achievements of his ancestors and others, as the

Queen’s chamber here at Kenilworth showeth, where he had caused to be pictured

forth, Merlin, King of Britain, and his three sons; the sailing of William from

Normandy; the submission of Griffin ap Conan to Henry the First, and several

other things. (2.23-4)

Notably, these tapestries don’t simply depict any historical event; the histories the King
privileges by displaying in the above tapestries relate to England’s historical conquests:
King Richard’s Crusades, William the Conqueror’s invasion of England, etc. While not
written historical documents, under the power of the King these tapestries hold a
privileged position as historical discourse and are specifically related to the heroic deeds
of English rulers. These visual displays of English power in which the King both
physically and historically situates himself align historical depiction firmly with a
national identity based on conquest and appropriation. They also form a backdrop for the
specific inter- and intra—cultural conflicts involving Wales and France that occur later in
the novel. Monuments to heroic Englishness, these tapestries chosen by the King within
the monk’s “Trew Chronique” give witness to the way some histories are selected and
celebrated according to the ruler’s desire, approval, and definition of nation.

On the other hand, the novel’s non-traditional and non-sanctioned histories
portray the past from a more ordinary point of view and usually provide the real truth
about the past’s events as they come up for debate in the novel. These different forms of
history, like the pageant and folk song, that Radcliffe includes and favors as more truthful
than royally sanctioned forms are all associated with the supernatural. They interrupt the

larger narrative with their ability to stimulate uneasiness on a number of levels. In

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addition to casting gloom upon the revelries at Kenilworth and antagonizing Gaston’s
guilty conscience, they open up spaces of unknowing, into which Radcliffe injects
conflicting historiographical and epistemological discourses. These liminal spaces in the
narrative, sites made up of different kinds of historical composition existing at the same
time, also allow Radcliffe to examine English history from within the narrative structure.
One of the more important examples of a non—sanctioned history taking
precedence in the novel appears in the form of a song performed one evening about a
man going on the Crusades and leaving his wife behind, a song which brings tears to the
eyes of all (270-80). The nrinstrels craft a tale so moving and full of historical details
that the royal guests are suddenly surprised when their evening’s entertainment becomes
a cause for uneasiness. In the beginning, the pageant depicting the Crusades appears so
lifelike that the King exclaims, “Who is there, would not think that show were living
truth?” (2.734). The pageant includes battles with the Saracens, scenery from the
battlefield, and authentic weaponry, appearing seemingly out of nowhere (and all
described in antiquarian detail by the narrator). Indeed, the King associates the
mysterious appearance and disappearance of the historic scenes with some sort of Eastern
magic summoned up for his entertainment. Once it has involved the audience in the
story, the pageant takes a different turn and depicts the heroic man once more arriving
home, only to be murdered by robbers on English soil. Startlingly similar to the
merchant’s tale of his kinsman’s death, the night’s entertainment does indeed show “the
living truth,” but not the truth the king expects or accepts. Framed by outside
appearances of the ghost in armor, which only add to the spectacle, this pageant connects

personal history with the past’s larger political movements in order to gain entrance; then

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it reasserts justice and corrects inaccurate depictions of the past. History-as~
entertainment becomes history-as-transformative force, disputing the King’s judgment
about what happened to the merchant’s kinsman and re-asserting the importance of the
ordinary individual within history. Gaston trembles at the spectacle. The King becomes
disordered. He expected the character of King Richard I to appear as usual in the familiar
scene; instead, the play highlights an unknown man who participates in the Crusades and
tells a tale not exactly flattering to the King’s taste for English heroic superiority in its
depiction of Englishmen fighting against Englishmen. In a symbolic move, this pageant
also transforms, through the supernatural, conquest from without, as represented by the
Crusades, to conflict from within, one Englishman killing another. This move parallels
the novel’s strategy of looking at English disunity within the homeland.

This pageant is only one of several that invoke the merchant’s murdered kinsman,
some more historically factual than others, and all with similar disrupting effects on the
King and his courtiers. That the minstrels, artists and jongleurs create history as art
emphasizes the very artfulness of historical representation. For example, later in the
novel, the narrator reminds readers how Gaston recognized his infamous deeds contained
within a ballad Pierre sang in the Queen’s bower (1.148-171). In doing so, the narrator
highlights the tenuous boundary between fiction and history. Though the ballad involves
mysteriously appearing drops of blood which mark the villain, a lady’s portrait which
comes to life to condemn the man, and a bound who relentlessly follows the guilty knight
and mauls him to death, it faithfully recreates the scene of the kinsman’s murder and
warns of justice yet to come. Characters and the narrator reflect on this intertwining of

historical and fictional representations. The narrator notes that the minstrel Pierre knew

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the real story behind the song he sang and “darkly told it on his harp, enwrapping and
disguising truth with fiction. There the Baron de Blondeville had heard it, and he alone
knew how to separate one from the other; he had heard it, and with such consternation,
that he stayed not in the bower to inquire how Pierre drew the line between them”
(2.394). In another instance a French Poetess gives the King a book of histories which
“were not all true, nathless she had said to the contrary in the preamble to her book”
(2.110—11), and which immediately bring up the concern of historical forgeries and the
authority of the historian-including the historian compiling this “Trew Chronique.” In
her song about a famous knight in France, she, too, tells symbolically the real history of
the merchant’s kinsman; the song’s troubling effect is demonstrated by questions that
arise as to its authenticity after the song’s ending. The narrator wonders if Gaston’s
fiancee will heed the tale’s obvious warning against marrying a villain, “but most surely
some ladies would not; for, they scrupled not to take pains to say, that this was one of
those lays of Maria, which were not true. They would not give it credence for a moment”
(2.114). Whether true or not, this ballad echoes the other songs and pageants in the novel
and again causes consternation among the royal audience, particularly as they wonder if
this is true history or not and, notwithstanding their uncertainty, firmly deny its
importance due to its uncanny effects. All forms of history in this novel are somehow
linked to artistic creation--the tapestries, the songs, the pageants, even the narrator’s
chronicle. That the ones most blatantly unrealistic with their inclusion of ghosts and
other supernatural effects are the ones that tell the real story flips reader expectations as
to fiction and history, emphasizing how the one is involved in the other and belying the

claim to historical objectivity based on logical evidence.

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The ballads and pageants in their various interconnected forms all have a way of
contradicting dominant versions of history even as they make use of some of its subject
matter. The characters’ appropriation of and desire for history as entertainment is key to
this dynamic. Their entertainment value allows these alternate histories entrance into the
Court; once there, the song or pageant disturbs the royal audience and disrupts their
complacent acceptance of the King’s judgment of events and his decrees as to their
significance. As each performance declines from chivalrous portrayal of historical events
into the reminder of the recent past injustice, the King and certain members of his
household become more and more angry, seeing the oppositional design behind them.
Sometimes the histories are fictional in the way they are presented to the royalty, yet even
within their fictionality, these songs and pageants hold more truth in the novel than those
“histories” accepted by the king and his nrinisters. In other words, the interpretation of
past events accepted as true by the dominant group, represented by the King’s authority,
can be disqualified or at least shaken by those interpretations from another, less-powerful
group, represented by the merchant and his sympathizers. That each group relies on a
different method of depicting and interpreting the past highlights the inherent power
dynamics behind favoring one method over another. Allowing these different methods of
historical transmission veracity and importance, Radcliffe questions whether one form of
historical discourse, particularly one sanctioned by those in power, can tell the whole
truth; in doing so, she reinscribes the importance of lesser forms of historical evidence,
those of craft and folklore, which have their own truth to contribute. Her own “history”
in the form of the novel includes these different kinds of historical representation. The

novel as a whole, with its combination of historical and gothic, plays under the same

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dynamic where entertaining subject matter in the form of gothic romance combines with
historical and political content such that subversion of the historical conventions the

novel portrays slips into the reader’s consciousness.

W

In her larger gothic novel, Radcliffe combines critiques of King Henry and his
politics with a gothic romance which itself could be valued as mere entertainment and
antiquarian curiosity. She thus acts out on a macro level what the alternate forms of
history within the novel accomplish. Through her narrator’s words as well as the
characters and events she constructs, Radcliffe includes political commentary on the
power of the monarchy, various policies from past governments, and the importance of
character for political leaders, all the while using gothic conventions to draw these issues
in darker terms. By no means is the King portrayed as a tyrant or villain, as in other
gothic novels, yet his powerful position can have dangerous impact on his subjects even
when he believes he is acting justly. Examining Radcliffe’s portrayal of individual and
institutional power in her novels, Kim Ian Michasiw argues that Radcliffe’s writings in
general show a concern about how private emotions overlap with public deeds, leading
up to a “paranoid fantasy about the personal basis of power, a fantasy which Radcliffe’s
novels finally decompose” (329). Similarly, I argue that throughout Gastnn, a number of
passages appear where Radcliffe critiques the combination of institutional power and
personal weakness in the figure of King Henry. Radcliffe voices this critique mainly in

terms of character, a major concern in the eighteenth-century’s portrayal of historical

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figures, and in terms of education, a subject concerning much of the historical discourse
written by women.

The King’s emotions and misjudgment of character leave him vulnerable to false
ministers as well as his own misguided inclinations. Radcliffe links these weaknesses
specifically with the King’s inadequate education, weakness of mind, and bias toward
those he favors. The novel’s narrator-monk explains directly the danger of combining
power with ignorance in his portrayal of the King “who now, with the intention, as he
persuaded himself, of preventing further evil, was about to execute an act of injustice and
stem cruelty. And thus it is, if kingly power pertain to a weak head, not carefully warned
by early instructions against the dangers, which must beset all power, whether public or
private, whether in Prince or subject” (3 .392). As the narrator states, the King’s peeple
who were more aware of this than the King himself and who knew that “the King’s heart
was good, in many respects” all lament his “weaknesses, and that his passions too often
carried him away” (2.18). When the merchant first accuses Gaston as his kinsman’s
murderer, the King is surprised that one of his own favorites could be accused (1.113),
and, noting the merchant’s lower-class background, dismisses him as a man without
name and therefore without a claim against a courtier the king has chosen as his own
( 1.125). As the narrator explains, the merchant’s danger arises

not from any indifference of the King to do what was right, but from the want of

steadiness in his mind, and from that mis—directed kindness of heart, which made

even a suspicion of guilt in one he had esteemed and trusted so painful, that a

conviction of it seemed not to be endured. It is well-known, that a weak mind,

rather than have such a suffering, will turn aside, and take shelter in willing

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credulity to its first opinion; a strong one, meeting the worst at once, will proceed
straight forward, and, freeing itself from any uncertainty, will do both that, which
is just towards others, and, in the end, best for its own case. Which of these ways
King Henry took will be more fully set forth hereafter. (2.156)
Throughout the novel, as more and more evidence mounts against the King’s favorite, he
continues in his determination to disbelieve the merchant and only changes his opinion
after multiple supernatural interferences and the Baron’s death. His courtiers lament his
favoritism to foreigners (2.251), and the narrator often notes how the King is misguided
by the wrong advisers: “it was ever his weakness to be ruled by those nearest at hand
rather than by fixed principles either of his own, or of those wiser in council than
himself” (2.246), and he was “often baffled by his humours and by the arts of cunning
men” (2.273). In her history of King Henry and his days at Kenilworth, Radcliffe pays
much attention to his character and its relationship to the way he carries out his power.
While her history does focus on the lives of great men, it also includes outsiders and
lower class subjects, and gives them voice as to the results and causes of corruption. The
people’s opinions regarding instances of the King’s weaknesses and ineptitude remind
readers that these criticisms are not just localized but part of a larger movement where
individual subjects examine the King’s actions and character. Examination of character
opens up the history for interpretation by individuals, both inside and outside the novel.
Radcliffe critiques King Henry not only in terms of character and the use of
kingly power, but also in terms of related specific laws and policies that, through the
narrator, represent Radcliffe’s interaction with and commentary on history even as she

writes it. When the King can’t believe that a robbery such as the one that the merchant

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claims befell his kinsman de Folville could occur on royal lands, the narrator snidely
comments that “he might have bethought him of the law he had himself found it
expedient to make heretofore at Kenilworth, respecting robberies then committed in a
very extraordinary manner on the highways” (1.113), a law which in this instance as well
as others does nothing to quell a problem affecting all his subjects in the neighborhood.
The King’s own naive surprise distances him from the concerns of his people and betrays
a rather cavalier attitude toward their distress, doubly so in the case of the merchant.
Radcliffe also brings up financial concerns related to the King’s policies of
taxation, spending and favoritism, often comparing these policies to those of other
historical figures. For example, in the midst of describing the pomp surrounding the
King’s presence at Kenilworth, the narrator states,
Then he received homage of his tenants in chief, knights, and others; levied fines,
and with the help of his justicier, barons, and prelates, managed his revenues.
How far his Highness was governed by their council, when he was so hard upon
the golden citizens of London, who, in his reign paid in fines for his favour,
twenty thousand pounds, I know not. But, never did he practise such cruel means
of extortion as did his father, King John. (2.251-2)
Criticizing the extravagance of the court even as he describes it in painstaking detail, the
narrator notes that Crown Prince Edward is displeased by the high expenses at a time
when the King really could not afford them. The narrator adds, “With this King Henry it
was ever so, on the score of money; good as he was, on many other points, he ever lived

for the present hour, and suffered the next shift for itself” (2.306).

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Addressing some of these fiduciary concerns leads the narrator to mention other
connected problems, moments of political dissension and corruption within England. For
example, the narrator compares Henry to his brother, the Earl of Cornwall, who was more
careful with his money, saved for the future, and had a cooler head and heart. Alas, King
Henry “spared neither trouble nor money, to advance him to the height, which he had
obtained for him, and had caused him to be chosen King of the Romans, although he had
once nearly raised a rebellion, with no better motive than that he wished to possess the
manor of Berkhamstead; and so no more of such matters” (2.307). Even within the
King’s own personal circle, rebellion marks the flow of English power; that this is not a
special circumstance of gothic tyranny but an instance of typical English politics in the
novel highlights Radcliffe’s use of this material not simply for gothic chills but instead
for political commentary. This example also contains one of several self-conscious
interruptions by the narrator marking specific observations on politics and historical
representation and drawing attention to Radcliffe’s own criticisms through a final opinion
slipped in, then suppressed. This technique follows on a micro—level her larger strategy
of slipping in political commentary between the pages of romance.

While much of the novel’s political critique appears quite plainly, other occasions
make use of the supernatural to do so, providing Radcliffe with an equally effective way
to deconstruct the uncontested power of the monarchy. The primary function of the
ghost-knight is to move along the plot by avenging his death and assuring the merchant’s
innocence. Radcliffe uses him with little subtlety and does not attempt to explain away
his ghostly appearances as she does in her other novels. 19 At the same time, his very

existence as a supernatural being implies that it takes supematural means to assure that

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the merchant receives justice from a weak and misguided king. In this respect I differ
from critics like James Watt, who see in Radcliffe’s focus on medieval feudalism and
celebration of its customs a strong loyalist affiliation.20 The King remains in power
throughout the novel, learns his lesson by the end, and doesn’t make unfair judgments on
purpose; the noblemen and Prince Edward are indeed portrayed in a favorable light and
medieval chivalry is idealized. However, when these pieces are examined in conjunction
with Radcliffe’s political commentary against not only traitors to the Throne but also the
monarchs themselves, and, as we shall see, when Radcliffe mixes Englishness and
Frenchness favorably in a novel written during a time of great anxiety about
Revolutionary France, loyalist paradigms become a bit more ambiguous. Her narrative
strategy ruptured by antiquarian cataloguing and supernatural spectacle opens the text to
both the construction and deconstruction of the idealized medieval past and makes
conspicuous the means by which historical discourses (including this novel) attempt to
support ideals of national superiority, English unity, or political progress through history.
The ghostly knight and the other instances of supernatural machinery are just as involved
in highlighting moments of cultural, historical, and national instability as in restoring
property and position to rightful owners. Significantly, this restoration involves the
property of middle class men, the merchant and his kinsman, of which the aristocracy, in
the form of Gaston and the King, deprived them. The ghost appears not only to rid the
King’s Court of Gaston but also to support the middle class merchant, who, it is
repeatedly said, “could expect little justice against so great a favorite” ( 1.135). The

restoration narrative, then, twists such that the focus rests on the middle-class merchant,

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not the King, and highlights that the subversion of class identity is made possible only

through supernatural intervention.

BMW
One of the most significant issues Radcliffe addresses in Gnntnnfiefilgnnfljug is

the role of national identity in historical discourse. As her title implies, the villain Gaston
is French, as are a number of courtiers, entertainers, and the Queen herself. The monk-
narrator frequently mentions the anti-French prejudices of the people in King Henry’s
Court. Unlike gothic novels set in Europe, however, a clear boundary of “Us versus
Them” cannot sustain itself in a novel where some English are villains while some
French are not and where people of both nationalities freely enter the English Court.
Because this novel is set entirely in England, no safe geographical distance separates the
English from the foreign Other; likewise, cultural closeness precludes easy groupings
among the courtiers and commoners. For, with the exception of the Prior, all the
characters act English with English manners and sympathies. At the same time, the
narrator frequently calls attention to specifically French costumes, dances, songs, and
other cultural differences in the interest of learning about the French and in the interest of
showing how the people enjoy the Queen’s French culture, which brings these customs
into the court in the first place. For example, Pierre, the Queen’s chief minstrel, sings (in
French) ditties from his native land of Normandy and, to the Queen’s great pleasure,
songs from her native Provence. In this respect, Gnntnn is unlike canonical gothic novels
like mm, which, while all its characters are Italian, assigns “Englishness” to the

good characters and “Italianness” to the villains. In Gastgn, one’s nationality does not

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automatically assign hero or villain status. What does appear, however, is uneasiness
with this blending of nationalities occurring within England, an uneasiness exacerbated
by the difficulty of separating them from each other. Radcliffe employs the symbol of
the ghost to represent both the fluidity and the uncanniness of cultural blending within the
highest levels of the monarchy.

By blending the two cultures and surrounding such blending with the
supernatural, Radcliffe doesn’t simply reveal nationalist sympathies, however. Her real
villains are corruption and ineptitude, whether they occur at the hands of foreigners or, as
happens more frequently than one might expect, at the hands of the English. Gngtnn’s
inclusion of English national prejudice and fear of French influence must be read in
conjunction with her heroic depictions of some Frenchmen, the people’s love of their
French Queen and the narrator’s equal fascination with French custom. Radcliffe uses
gothic conventions to draw attention to moments when attempts to maintain a national
history of a clearly unified people break down, allowing for re-examination of England’s
position along its various geographical boundaries. As seen when she criticizes the King,
some of his policies, and his judgment, Radcliffe’s concerns lie with looking at
Englishness from within, not with supporting English superiority based on opposition
without. In this respect, the English history that Radcliffe represents in GasQn becomes
in her hands an alternate approach to traditional historical discourse, one that is more
inclusive of outside cultures, more introspective about Englishness, and more concerned
with individual character than nationalist narrative.

The narrator often mentions characters’ anti-French prejudices in his history.

They usually come from a generalized mob or from an anonymous courtier; in each case,

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they assert the strong presence of anti-French attitudes in the history. The crowds cry,
“Away with the foreigners!” (1.94), one of the plays makes fun of the typical French
buffoon (2.64), the Earl of Huntington doesn’t approve his daughter’s marriage to a
Frenchman because “neither his English heart, nor his pride of ancient blood” could
approve (1.131), and even the narrator singles out a character’s nationality when he or
she is French (2.353; 1.147; 2.110). The King is aware of the prejudices around him
(1.111); to some extent his staunch defense of his favorite stems from his disgust for
these prejudices. Misguided though his judgment might be, he acts from good intentions:
he wants to make the merchant an example to those who would conspire against Gaston,
not simply because Gaston is his favorite, but because the King wishes to quell his
people’s prejudices, of which he sees ample evidence indeed (1.132).

The fact that the villains, Gaston and the Prior, are French would seem to indicate
that Radcliffe follows an anti-French paradigm, yet other French men and women play
significant and heroic roles in the novel. Rather than banding together to defend their
countryman, the French minstrels and storytellers who somehow have gained entrance
into the Court actually support the merchant’s cause, bring forth through their work the
real story of his kinsman’s death and point to the real villain. A Frenchwoman produces
a book of “histories,” some true and some not, one of which Pierre sings and which offers
particular warning to the Baronness de Blondeville about her husband (2.110-114).
Pierre captures his audience with a dark tale of vengeance and supematural intervention
uncannily relevant to the merchant’s accusation of Gaston (1.150-171). His tale brings
tears to some ladies and darts “dread into the heart of one there present” (1.150), Gaston.

It has the power to make everyone listen, “as if the shadows of prophecy were moving

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over the strings, and calling from them some strange and fearful story yet to be” (1.150).
Radcliffe links supernatural tale with truth and proffers it through this man who is both
inside the Court due to his position as a musician and outside the Court due to his
nationality and class. Combining these three-the supernatural, French nationality, and a
true history hidden in fable-through Pierre, a man of conflicted status, and allowing his
voice to be one of the few defending the merchant, Radcliffe juxtaposes the easy
prejudice against the French seen in some characters with the heroic truth-tellin g of other
French characters. That the minstrel clothes the defense in an entertaining, supernatural
tale allows its entrance into the Court in a way that cannot be immediately dismissed,
prevented, or refuted, as is the case with the merchant’s own direct pleas. In this respect,
supernatural occurrences possess a special power in Radcliffe’s tale, highlight ways other
types of discourses can bleed into otherwise closed spaces, and allow foreigners an
important role in the novel’s struggle against injustice.

Additionally, the narrator makes several references to French customs and
traditions that delight the people and educate the reader. He makes a point of saying that
the songs were originally presented and understood in French but have been translated
into English for his history; one of Pierre’s ballads which the narrator translates into
English, “The Bridal”, rings out joyfully on the occasion of lady Barbara’s marriage
(1.147-8). In addition to including French music, the narrator also describes in his usual
detailed manner other French practices, like the outdoor feast that the King arranges
specifically to please his wife by surrounding her with scenes similar to those found in

Provence. The narrator describes the amenable scene linking its joys to France:

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I guess it brought back to her mind the festivals of her father’s court, in that
pleasant land of Southern France, called Provence, where they love to sport in the
open air, nigh the shade of woods, and will pass a summer’s day to the sound of
flutes and viols; their banquets being of fruit, fresh gathered from the orange-trees
and the vines, and being laid forth on the grass, beside some windling brook. And
it was to pleasure the Queen, with a banquet like to what she had been ‘customed
to in her own country, that King Henry had thus come forth into these forest—
shades. (2.140)
He describes the French Countess of Cornwall who “according to fashion of her country,
danced on the green-award under the trees” with a noble grace which “showed off all the
gaiety of her own lan ” (2.139). During this feast, the eating, dancing and sporting
please them all, including the foreign lords and ladies from the Queen’s country who
partake in the festivities alongside the English. French-made objects also have their own
place in the novel, like the golden baskets fashioned by a French craftsman and given to
Lady Barbara from the Queen (2.62). The narrator also describes stylish French fashions
and manners that fit well with the dictates of chivalry. Far from depicting the French as
dirty, uncivilized, and crafty, Radcliffe’s narrator portrays them as beautiful and well-
mannered. The narrator describes French customs in detail just as he does the English
customs, and he does so in a favorable light. His concern with social history based on
such evidence as artwork, clothing, song, and other objects serves as a medium for
countering anti-French sympathies as well as allowing for cultural difference in his

history.

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The Queen, silent for much of the novel, nevertheless plays an important role in
the assignment of cultural space and value. The King’s marriage to her might seem like a
symbolic appropriation of and domination over the French, but in actuality, her marriage
allows Frenchness to move unfettered into the English Court and even to be valued, for
her sake. Her dual positions as female and ruler, English monarch and French woman,
make her presence a very fitting one through which to blend the two cultures and
destabilize a unified definition of English nationhood in opposition to others. Perhaps the
most vivid example of her conflicted position occurs when she first arrives at Kenilworth.
The narrator describes how, in the midst of the people’s cheers for their Queen, some few
were heard to say “Away with the foreigners!” (1.94). Like a much suffering sentimental
heroine, “the good Queen seemed not to hear, though she guessed in her heart what they
said; and many a noble knight and lady near her knew well. She, with unchanged
countenance, showed only sweet smiles to those numberless eyes, darting from the walls
and battlements, all turned upon her litter, as it passed over the bridge” (1.94).
Worshipped yet disdained, powerful yet victimized by prejudice, the Queen nevertheless
acts throughout the novel with similar poise, sympathy, and goodness, graciously giving
gifts to her young protege and showing sweet approval to those who come before her.
Rather than using the sentimental heroine figure to delineate proper English womanhood
as might be seen in her depictions of heroines like Ellena in W, Radcliffe makes
use of this figure in the person of the Queen to break down nationalist ideology which
would make such a heroine the sole province of Englishness, an Englishness set in
opposition to other cultures like the French. The Queen, even as she is an English

heroine by virtue of her physical location and virtuous behavior, is also very distinctly

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French, as the narrator’s frequent descriptions of her French manners, customs and
preferences constantly show. In the person of the Queen, the blending of French and
English does not appear uncanny or sinister; instead, Radcliffe carefully crafts her in such
a way that her in—betweenness becomes acceptable, even beneficial.

The Queen’s position points to other times in the novel where English and French
are banded together and where separating the one from the other is either impossible or of
no importance. Implying one sort of physical connection between the two, the English
countryside is likened to France’s (2.140). King Henry’s court demonstrates a very
cosmopolitan make-up, with characters from other countries who gained their position
due to marriage or service to the King; with such varied cultural activities as described
above; and with a marvelous international gathering of knights, including those from
Europe and Scotland, for a chivalric jousting tournament. Englishman and foreigner
interact freely in the environment protected by the King and inspired by the Queen.

Because of such intercultural mingling, it can be hard to determine on the surface
who might be a threat to the throne; this question requires careful examination of
character, not reliance upon nationality. Gaston, for example, appears as one of the best-
loved and most elegant and chivalrous characters in the novel. A man of feeling, he dotes
on the ladies, he faints when overwrought, he draws pale when frightened, and he does
not at all appear to be a villain. The narrator describes him as “of comely person and
gallant air” who “managed his proud charger with such easy grace, as a lady might, with
a silken bandage, guide a fawn. . . he was of the Queen’s country, and had all the gaiety
of her nation in his countenance and ‘haviour” (1.83). Significantly, Gaston’s threat to

the throne does not have international schemes behind it, nor does Radcliffe assign his

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plot to any specifically French trait. Other false advisors to the King are, after all,
English. Instead, she locates Gaston’s crime to his individual greed and villainy. This
individual immorality is worsened and allowed to flourish because of the King’s
ineptitude in judging character and because of the ease with which his own faulty or
devious advisors can influence him. The corruption within the English Court is more at
issue here. In a novel which mentions several domestic traitorous deeds from within
English history, Radcliffe uses Gaston not as an example of how the French are invading
and polluting England but as a catalyst for larger injustices already existing within the
monarchy. Radcliffe examines these injustices through attention to individual character;
in doing so, she emphasizes how important character study is to historical discourse
describing the “deeds of great men.” Eschewing national stereotypes, she creates her
villains and heroes based on their own behavior. This is not to say that she ignores
nationality. Instead, she reimagines boundaries between Britain and France to allow for
the one to exist in, mingle with, and affect the other, all without clearly circumscribed
demarcations.

The conventions of the gothic, with its fascination with the immaterial, the
unknowable, the unrestrained and the uncanny, provide Radcliffe with an especially well-
suited framework with which to explore these reimaginings. Gothic moments and
conventions serve to underline an uneasiness that results when English identity is not
seen as separate from or superior to other countries’ and when the historical narrative of
England’s progress is seen to cover up moments of political dissension at home. Physical
location and political affinity associated with the gothic moment give it special force in

Radcliffe’s destabilization of a unified English character. For example, the King and his

courtiers associate the fearful pageants and the ghostly appearances with Eastern
magicians who call up these spectacles using powers unknown by the English. Magic
can be a difficult force for a king to control, however, particularly when in the hands of
Eastern magicians whom the King assumes are under his rule. Radcliffe links magic
repeatedly to subversions of the King’s assumptions about history and his own authority;
in this respect, the novel’s specifically gothic content represents a significantly
subversive force. In a novel with repeated reminders of the Crusades, this reference to
magicians who are necessarily Eastern betrays an uneasiness about England’s past
conquest and a fear that the invasion might be turned back upon itself. The knight’s first
ghostly appearance makes conspicuous this fear. The specter stands next to the armor of
the Crusader Richard the Lion-Hearted and takes on the form so closely that the King
thinks that it is the real Richard who comes so menacingly toward him. The King now
becomes the seeming victim of the Crusading sword; even though the ghost is that of de
Folville and not Richard, this event associates the King with the Easterner. Radcliffe
surrounds this moment of blurred national identity with mystery and fear and highlights
the King’s inability to appropriate or control this spectacle.

Elsewhere, Radcliffe associates some of the supematural terrors with England’s
tensions with Wales.21 The King, more and more suspicions that the merchant is the
source of all the strange ghostly appearances and supernatural frights, begins to worry
whether the merchant “might not be an agent of his bitter enemy, Lewellyn of Wales; by
whose evil arts he had, as he deemed, been formerly robbed of that precious ring, which
was to render him invincible in war” (2.275). Supposedly, this ring was previously stolen

by a Welsh agent through supernatural means, “conjured away from under the bolts and

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locks of his casket (those remaining unbroken) and was conveyed away by the Earl of
Kent, as his Highness had declared, and given to his dire enemy, Llewellyn of Wales,
then in arms against him” (2.88). The King associates his neighboring enemy with the
supernatural; this association further emphasizes how Radcliffe uses gothic conventions
to emphasize English uneasiness about losing control over its national interests and
boundaries. The only way England could be fallible, after all, would be due to
supematural intervention in such forms as that ring, at least according to the King. Easily
dismissed as the King’s superstition, this instance nevertheless supports Radcliffe’s
strategy of combining the supernatural with England’s uneasinesses about its national
borders and identity.

These are only a few of several places where an uncanny appearance coincides
with a physical reminder of or a character’s experience of uneasiness about the mixture of
Englishness and other cultures. The supernatural effects that make the pageant possible,
that change the chivalric tournament into a horrible nightmare, and that transform the
King’s heroic artifact (the knight’s armor) into a menacing threat within his own castle,
become necessary to Radcliffe’s strategy of rupturing the narrator’s history of the King
and make overt its nationalist underpinnings that might otherwise remain unchecked
because practically unnoticed. The gothic’s entertainment value and strong emotional
effects ensure that these moments stand out from the rest of the narrative. Whether
believable or not to the history’s readers, they bring up the conflict and uneasiness the
characters in political power feel when reminded that England is not separate from,

impermeable to, or unified against the foreign Other.

W

The end of the novel and its concluding frame focus on the discrete artifact, as
well as all the questions of objective truth, historical knowledge, and political power that
have marked the novel’s exploration of antiquarianism. Surrounded by gothic
conventions and foreboding feelings, these objects provide a final study of the uncanny
nature of historical transmission. Near the end of the novel appears the piece of evidence
that finally leads to the merchant’s exoneration, a mysterious necklace, found on the Prior
who claims it is a charm against the evil eye. By means of a secret spring, the merchant
reveals pictures of his murdered kinsman and his wife inside the necklace, exhibiting it as
evidence that his accusation is true and that the Prior was involved in the murder. The
Prior uses the same necklace to prove that the merchant is a magician. The King
possesses the privilege to say which interpretation of the object is correct, and he sides
with his advisors against the merchant. To this scene where the object has no link to the
past except that defined by the King, Radcliffe juxtaposes other scenes of antiquarian
activity that are defined by supernatural powers. Near the end of the novel, the ghost
leads the King to the hidden grave of de Folville, kept secret by the Prior. The ghost
points to the grave, which, when exhumed, reveals de Folville’s namestone and corpse.
The corpse is preserved enough to still show the head wound the merchant described;
moments later it shrinks and fades away (3.28-30). This scene has already been marked
by previous ghostly sightings and warnings. As with the necklace, these bodily proofs of
the merchant’s claim have been thwarted by the Prior’s secrecy, both in the past when the
murder first occurred and in the present when he terrorizes his monks to keep the recent

ghostly sightings secret (2.115—8). At the very end, however, with the insistent words and

203

sightings of both the knight’s ghost and Gaston’s ghost, there is no longer any doubt of
what happened years ago and who the murderer was. Both the necklace and the bones
serve as artifacts from the past lending evidence about that past to future judgment; both
also pose problematic questions about how to interpret and transmit the history these
objects seem to support. That Radcliffe needs to use the supematural in order to
differentiate the real interpretation of evidence from the one sanctioned by those in power
highlights the shifty signification artifacts provide. Without supernatural intervention,
the institutionally-sanctioned interpretation would hold sway. Again, the ghost figure
appears and dominates a scene of conflicting historical interpretation and, in its own
shiftiness, marks that site with fear and the uncanny. Antiquarian discoveries of bones
and old jewelry cannot directly prove anything or even be discovered when needed--
unless of course the real ghosts of the past appear and facilitate. Not exactly a feasible
option outside the gothic novel, this ending provides a final comment about the difficulty
of producing an accurate and unbiased historical record, even with evidence found in
discrete objects from the past.

In its conclusion, the novel retums to its framing narrative with Willoughton
closing the novel and musing over the history he has just read. There is some confusion
about how to date the manuscript: “Perhaps, one better versed in antiquities would have
found out, that several of the ceremonies of the court here exhibited, were more certainly
those of the fourth Edward, than of the third Henry, or the second Richard, and would
have assigned the manuscript to a later period than that of the title, or than that afterwards
alluded to in the boo ” (3.52). There is also some doubt about who wrote the book:

“And though that same title said this chronicle was translated from the Norman tongue,

by Grymbald, a monk of Saint Mary’s Priory, it said nothing of its having been composed
by one” (3 .52). Readers also find that the manuscript they have just read was next
translated by Willoughton from the Norman tongue, and that he also selected what to
include and what to leave out of his translation. Was “Willoughton correct in his
assumptions and choices? Was the monk really writing about his own times and the life
and superstitions of the monastery? Was something lost in the transmission? These
questions, brought up but not really answered in the end, serve to highlight the
subjectivity of historical discourse, the question of how to read or sift it, and who has the
power to choose what is passed on. Willoughton “with the enthusiasm of an antiquary. . .
was willing to suppose it a real manuscript of the monks, in spite of some contradictory
circumstances” (3.51). Indeed, “Willoughton was so willing to think he had met with a
specimen of elder times, that he refused to dwell on the evidence, which went against its
stated origin” (3.53). At the end of the novel, Willoughton’s readings bring up all the
anxieties of fraud accompanying eighteenth-century antiquarianism and highlight the
susceptibility of even antiquarians to believe what they want to believe.22

In W, Radcliffe uses the language of antiquarianism to
transform a typical gothic trapping of the found manuscript into a more detailed socio-
political tool so that she can explore forces involved in historiography. She joins a
community of female historical writers and readers who revise classical Enlightenment
historiography by demonstrating and valuing various ways of reading the past, all of
which involve some kind of dialectical process to create history. She makes character an
important part of her history and weighs character against politics in the ways that she

explores national identity. Much like the entertainers in the novel itself, Radcliffe crafts

 

.s

gothic entertainment to surround her political commentary on English history and
changes history as entertainment into history as transforrnative force, particularly in the
way she uses gothic machinery to highlight cultural and historical clash within England.
Under the guise of romance, the gothic allows a woman writer to portray the monarchy,
as well as English history, in a less than flattering light. Its glaring fictionality challenges
the factual basis that history claims and relies upon, especially when, as in Gnstnn, so
many different art forms are read as history and when supernatural occurrences are read
or written as true history. It makes obvious that which traditional, patriotic histories
attempt to gloss over: the disjointedness of reading and making history, the difficulty of
filling in gaps in the historical record, and the use of the imagination in any reading of the
past. That a history with critique about the English royalty and its abuse of power is a
hidden history, regarded as inferior due to its inclusion of the supernatural and over-
attention to antiquarian detail, and easily set aside as entertainment, recalls the idea
presented in Sophia Lee’s Ihefigggss that the transmission of history has less to do with
truth than with acceptance by dominant power structures. The novel’s conclusion
wonders whether this history might not belong to a different time period than the one it
claims to belong to; outside the novel’s frame, readers can also see that the Radcliffe’s
history actually has more to do with eighteenth—century historiography than that of a
previous time, in spite of the her narrator’s claims to the contrary as he offers “This Trew

Chronique.”

Notes to Chapter 2

 

lEllen Moers first coined the term “female gothic” in her W. Julian

Fleenor’ s collection of essays flfhe Female Gothic, Kate Ellis’ 8 W,
Jane Spencer’ 8 MW and Ann K Mellor’ s anandcisrnand
@5153, among many others, examine the female gothic rn terms of rts subversion of
domestic ideology.

2 Separating her kind of gothic fiction from Walpole’s and Lewis’s, Radcliffe set up a
distinction between “horror” and “terror” in fictional writings. See her essay “On the
Supernatrual in Poetry” which argues, “Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the
first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other
contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them” (163). Anna Letitia Barbauld points

out that Radcliffe avoids the horrors of common novels and instead “alarms the soul
with terror; agitates it with suspense, prolonged and wrought up to the most intense
feeling by mysterious hints and obscure intimations of unseen danger” (96). Sir Walter
Scott’s “Prefatory Memoir to Mrs. Ann Radcliffe” praises her poetic descriptions,
powerful imagination, calls her “the first poetess of romantic fiction” and states that

she “has the most decided claim to take her place among the favoured few, who have
been distinguished as the founder of a class, or school” (118). Even before Talford’s
memoir that described Radcliffe as a reclusive woman afraid of the public eye, her
reviewers and readers noted her dislike of mixing in literary society, preferring the

title of gentlewoman to author. For example, the reviewer in the W
explained that she “was ready to sink in the earth at the bare suspicion of any one taking
her for an author; her chief ambition to be thought a lady!” (76). See also Richard Dana
who points out her aversion to being talked about and her preference for seclusion (82).
For full- -length studies of Radcliffe’ 3 life, works, and reception, see Rictor Norton’s Iii:
W Robert MileS’ s AnnRadCJifchIhc
W. and Deborah Roger-9’ 8 compilation WW
Radcliffe.

3Written in 1802, the novel was published posthumously in 1824. Early reviewers
noticed its difference from her earlier gothic novels, and showed interest in her use of
English history. The 1826 review in the WM; praises its setting in
England with its depiction of “old English manners and courtly splendor” (80). Other
reviewers showed disappointment that Gantnn didn’t satisfy like her more famous novels.
Suspecting that Gnntgn’s concern with historical evidence may be Radcliffe’s response to
criticism of her earlier works and their lack of factual accuracy, critic Julia Kavanagh
finds that “from a complete disregard of historic truth, she indulged herself with an
amount of architecture and costume which sat awkwardly on her story, and injured it”
(161). Several others note its dullness and link it to her use of historical subject matter,

among other causes. See the review of Wile cm the 1826 m
Mcnthlstscdm A review of Warm states that

 

“expanded into three volumes, narrated in the obsolete style of a chronicle, and filled
with antiquarian descriptions (in which, by the by, we greatly doubt the accuracy of the
chronology). the story drags most heavily” (90). Richard Dana complains that her
novel’s lack of energy results from “her plan, her attempt to make fiction a vehicle for
true history. . . . Any one, who is pleased with getting a knowledge of some of the
dresses and ceremonies of those times in this way, will take a deeper interest in the work
than we have done. For our part, we had rather dig in the dust of the old chroniclers”
(82-3).

4A notable exception is Katie Trumpener’ s 3 a. n a -
W. Trumpener briefly describes gothic novels like Gnstnn as
influenced by Ossianic poetry’ s sense of place and retrojection (103-105). She reads
Gnstnn within the context of other late eighteenth-century novels which demonstrate
“similar slippages from landscape to text, from bardic reverie to antiquarian debate”

(105).

 

5For discussion of these and other works satirizing antiquaries, see Paul Baines, “‘Our
Annius’: Antiquaries and Fraud in the Eighteenth Century.” See also Lucy Peltz and
Martin Myrone “‘Mine are the Subjects Rejected by the Historian’: Antiquarianism,
History and the Making of Modern Culture.” In addition to discussing print satire, Peltz
and Myrone also examine engravings, such as Thomas Rowlandson’s 1795 “Death and
the Antiquaries” that depicts antiquarians hungrily hanging over the exhumed corpse of a
king, poking around its coffin and even snapping off a finger bone.

6 Exploring the publication of antiquarian studies, Rosemary Sweet finds that for an
antiquary like Richard Gough (1745-1809), following empirical standards of accuracy
while at the same time making the material accessible to the purchasing public required
careful balancing. This balancing held special promise, though, as it points to the
increasing public participation in antiquarian discourse, seen in more populist periodicals
such as the W. See her “Antiquaries and Antiquities in Eighteenth-
Century England.”

7See Rosemary Sweet for discussion of the importance of antiquarian studies in the
development of national identity. She finds that individual antiquarians like Richard
Gough saw themselves as part of a republic of letters and their contributions as important
for the national heritage and identity (190-198). She does not view antiquarianism as
simply or implicitly nationalistic, but notes several instances where antiquarian findings
could be put to such purposes.

8Ian Haywood in W finds that forgeries in the eighteenth century
had the potential as subversive objects or documents to highlight breaking points in

ideologies, political systems, etc. Both an embarrassment and a concern for antiquarians,
forgeries nevertheless belied history’s claims of authority and faith in its authenticity.
That physical evidence might not be evidence at all and, even worse, that people could
believe and therefore read or buy such “evidence” held great destabilizing power. See

208

 

also Paul Baines who finds that forgery “was in the first place a conceptual tool in the
service of economic power, and this is especially so given the new types of credit and
paper currency available in the eighteenth century” (36).

9 Aligning themselves with the Celts, these peripheral nations could justify a historical
separation, politically and culturally, from England; England, in turn, eventually aligned
itself with the “less savage” Saxons. The periphery nations could use their Celtic
heritage of resistance to Roman occupation in order to contest English hegemony;
likewise, the English could look at ancient Celts, define them as savage, link them to the
Welsh or Irish, and justify colonization of those regions (39). Even such divisions are
generalizations, though, and were often glossed over by an overarching patriotism or
“Britishness,” which separated modern Britons from their multifaceted ancient histories.
England would still examine the Celtic past as belonging to Britishness, but only on a
general level; likewise, some in the periphery nations would embrace the larger national
narrative in order to foster a sense of belonging. As Ousby sums up, “Within England,
celebration of the Britons tended to be orchestrated such that it worked at a high level of
national generalization with little more involved than a hazy appeal to patriotism” (40).

l0Cannon Schmitt in “Techniques of Terror, Technologies of Nationality: Ann
Radcliffe’s Man” argues that the fact that Ellena, the novel’s heroine, acts English
in spite of her Italian birth serves to emphasize throughout the novel the ideal of English
womanhood that good women everywhere follow. “This very naturalness, however,
promotes English nationalism on a more subtle, and thus more effective, level than
outright partisanship” (858). Her heroines “incarnate a national archetype rather than
espouse nationalist (or anti-nationalist) beliefs” (858). See also Ellen Moers who argues
that Radcliffe’s heroines resemble English ladies traveling to places like India and Africa,
“ill—equipped for vicissitudes of travel, climate, and native mutiny, but well-equipped to
preserve their identity as proper Englishwomen” (139).

" The importance of this dynamic is evidenced in part by the number of critics who have
debated the role Radcliffe’s endings play in the question of whether her domestic politics
are conservative or subversive. Ann Ronald calls the marriage of Emily and Valancourt a
fairy tale ending with “no sense of maturity, no suggestion of a heroine tempered by
experience” (180) and points out how Radcliffe’s heroic husbands are safe because
emasculated. Cynthia Griffin Wolff argues that Radcliffe’s romances offer a “safe”
marriage at the end after allowing for adventurous fantasies for women readers. Kate
Ferguson Ellis finds that Radcliffe proffers a more matrilineal model in that “the husband
joins his wife’s kin group rather than her joining his” (124). Claire Kahane points out
that Emily’s marriage and return to La Vallée allows a reader “first to enjoy and then to
repress the sexual and aggressive center of Udglnhn” (340). See also Kim Ian
Michasiw’s “Ann Radcliffe and the Terrors of Power,” which examines the
contradictions inherent in Radcliffe’s exploration of individual vs. institutional power.

’2 Some well-known examples of forgeries are James MacPherson’ s W
(1796) Thomas Peroy’ s RehaucscfAncianEnglishfim (1765) and Thomas

209

 

Chatterton’s ' or“ u _ o m ‘t 0 i 1‘" n' “r r r. to; a :1 t r, ._I_ .r' A _ "r .1. er 1-.-;
(1777). Ian Haywood in ’1th Making of mstog examines such forgeries in detail and
outlines the connections between forgeries and ideas about history and fiction. For a
discussion of forged artifacts and literature, as well as writers’ reaction to such imposture,
see Paul Baines. As Baines points out, Walpole was a well- known and active collector of
artifacts. oSee Walpole’ s - -

for listingsof Walsolo S collection.

‘3 Indeed, antiquarian activity itself was inherently commercial with its focus on
acquiring, displaying, and valuing artifacts. Numerous scholars have explored this
connection, noting that antiquarianism marks the conjunction of historicism and
commercialism. See, for example, Paul Baines who examines not only the various ways
in which objects were acquired, sold, or collected but also the role such institutions as the
public museum played in market exchange. He also examines property rights and the
conflict that could result from owning land containing a great ruin like Stonehenge (43-
6). The rarer and more historically important the artifact, the higher the price it could
fetch. People could sell their collections at good prices to dealers and other collectors;
locals could sell “found artifacts” to historical tourists. Men like Horace Walpole-whose
home Strawberry Hill was toured by an average of 250-300 people a year during 1784-96
(Ousby 86)-became famous for their collections, and these very collections helped
perpetuate domestic tourism undertaken for educational purposes. Antiquarianism’s very
links to commercialism-for a price, you could own a piece of history-could undermine a
nation’s patriotic unity in which history glossed over distinct categories of class.
Individuals participated in the market for history through the market for artifacts; to do
so, however, they needed money and leisure. Due to their special positions as consumers
and sellers of history, “antiquarians provided, however unconsciously, the inadmissible
link between national legacy and class interest, between history and profit” (Yoon Sun
he: 548).

 

“ Rosemary Sweet points out how important engravings were to antiquarian book sales,
noting that some people bought the books solely for their engravings (194). Because they
could make these scholarly books more palatable to the reading public, engravings were
an important factor in the rising popularity of antiquarian activity; their use highlights
antiquarian study’s economic concerns and its shift into the popular realm.

‘5 Blaming Cromwell for the destruction of monasteries and other historically important
sites characterized numerous eighteenth-century accounts of English ruins. Many of
these sites, however, actually were despoiled during the reign of Henry VIII. See Ousby
107-109.

"5 For in-depth examples of the dinners of state, see 1.143-7 and 2.24-2.42.
1“’The gothic novel’s ability to distract even as it provides a “secret language” of

dissension has been identified as one of its special characteristics. Feminist critics have
noted that gothic novels allow women writers to depict women suffering at the hands of

210

 

domestic despots while hiding behind the shield of the work’s fictionality and blatant

improbability. For example, Eugenia DeLamotte rn mm
mm 91 Nineteenth-Gentury Go thic cargues that “the subject of fear in women’s Gothic

is, again and again, a disguise for that of anger” which draws its source from the
perception that the evil Other 18 “profoundly alien, and hostile, to women and their
concerns” (viii). Susan Wolstoneholme 1n W3
Rm find that the gothic form helps women writers navigate through their conflicted
positions as women and authors. She notes that it also provides tools not only to subvert
power hierarchies such as those depicted in these novels, but also “to deal with the issues
of writing and reading as a woman” (xi).

‘8 See, for example, Maister Henry’s songs about the Giant of Cornwall, and his famous
Chronicle of Charlemagne (1.141). See also the scene in which some of the courtiers
leave the loud revelry of the hall and instead “delighted themselves with histories of
times past” (1.179).

'9 Radcliffe is known for her use of “the explained supernatural” where a seemingly
supernatural experience is later attributed to logical causes. For example, in The
Mysteries of Udnlnhn, the ghostly movement and visage rising from the Marchioness’s
deathbed that terrifies the fleeing Emily is really someone coming through a secret trap
door behind her bed (536). Some critics and reviewers see this technique as a strength,
some as a weakness. Quite often it is associated with her status as a lady author: by
explaining such things away, Radcliffe can keep her respectability and avoid charges of
immorality.

1”Looking at a grouping of loyalist novels among which he groups Gngtgn, Watt argues,
“Many of the works which are now regarded as Gothic, and nearly all of those which
explicitly invoked the term, were unambiguously loyalist in the way that they framed
supernatural incident, and in the way that they appealed instead to an exemplary medieval
era, and to real historical figures and events” (68). Watt’ 8 book W
W contains one of the very few inoosth
discussions of historical gothic novels (which he labels loyalist gothics) available rn
recent criticism. In addition to including in his analysis a number of neglected works, he
emphasizes the political concerns, usually inspired by the French Revolution, that these
novels undertake in their histories. Finding that most gothic novels containing historical
content were strongly patriotic, he argues that “such works privilege the didactic
potential of romance, and allow the supernatural only the benign role of punishing
usurpers and restoring the property claims of rightful heirs. Though Loyalist Gothic
romances are in effect structurally bound to describe an act of usurpation, therefore, this
act is nearly always presented as a fait accompli, and such works concentrate instead on
the purging of corruption, staging the providentially inspired process by which legitimate
hierarchies are reestablished” (7-8). Watt’s analysis points to an intriguing body of
novels that deserve further study. In the case of Radcliffe, however, I find that the
supernatural devices used to punish Gaston do more than excise the usurper. The very

211

 

existence of supernatural justice highlights the lack of it in “real” history, particularly in a
novel already unstable in terms of its power hierarchies.

2' Lewellyn of Wales (1173-1240) served as king of Wales from 1194. He ousted the
English from North Wales in 1212, and battled with English armies several times during
the early reign of Henry III. This reference to Llewellyn brings to mind the tensions
between England and Wales that make up the history of the British nation. The
supernatural marks the place where a bitterly decisive past haunts the history of England
and its periphery nations.

’2 See Sweet, Haywood, and Baines who discuss historical fraud in the eighteenth
century.

212

Chapter 3

The Terror of Coming Together: Susanna Rowson’s W

Many gothic heroines and heroes must face their perils alone: Edgar Huntly in
caves and forests outside Solebury, Young Goodman Brown at the witches’ Sabbath,
Emily St Aubert in the castle of Udolpho, Victor Frankenstein in his lonely workshop.
In Susanna Rowson’s W, gothic horror is a family affair, one that
involves not simply a family but an international family that must come face to face with
the inefficacy of its sympathetic bonds in the face of intercultural violence. The
sentimental narrative that is the foundation of WW posits nine generations
of a loving family made up of members from different races and cultures. Gothic
moments interfere with the ideal vision of intercultural harmony as symbolized by these
relatives’ relationships, however, and tear at the bonds that seem to blend them
affectionately together. Nearly every instance where Rowson uses the gothic apparatus
accompanies an encounter or clash between two different cultures, and each instance is
experienced as part of a famous family’s history, that of Christopher Columbus.
Particularly because Rowson features the Columbus family as her model of international
and interculttual coexistence, WW holds special significance in its symbolic
portrayal of the “family” of the new American nation. The novel’s gothic component
resists the novel’s sentimental strand and sets up a dynanric wherein the gothic enforces

the difference that the sentimental narrative attempts to blend away. The resulting

213

disjunction and disillusionment caused by the failure of the familial ideal are the sources of
the novel’s gothic terror. Occurring within a novel concerned with history, these ruptures
in the family point to gaps and secrets within the historical record of New World
colonization.

In my discussion of how the gothic disrupts the sentimental family history in
W, I will be following a metaphor used by Julia Stern in her study of
early American novels, W
W.‘ Examining how the sentimental mode shares certain characteristics
with the gothic mode, she argues that “the two exist in a hierarchical relationship, like
geological strata, the gothic bedrock masked by a sentimental topsoil. In this respect,
sentimentalism is vitally related to fetishistic practices of disavowal and substitution,
enabling the presence of violence to be disclaimed and covered over by an outpouring of
feeling that carries only positive valence” (9). I show that the violent and terrifying
moments that occur in W are palliated both by characters’ outpourings of
sympathetic feeling and by their repression of the gruesome nature of interracial conflict.
At the same time that colonizers brutalize natives and the settlers and Indians massacre
each other, Rowson repeatedly designs loving interracial marriages to cover over any such
conflicts. To study the use and meaning of the gothic in this novel is to study the failure
of the sentimental, for the gothic rises up from beneath it to portray the horrors of
colonization, to bring forward excluded voices, and to rupture any unified narrative of

homogenous national identity.

214

This chapter begins with a discussion of Rowson’s involvement in larger
eighteenth-century conversations about women writing and studying history. Herself an
author of historical works and head of a girls’ school, Rowson’s investment in historical
education appears prominently in her novel. To set up my discussion of the gothic’s
nightmare-like transformation of history, I next examine how Rowson crafts the
sentimental strand in W by fashioning an epic history that participates in
eighteenth-century constructs of national-family identity. Attempting to create a national
subject that includes the English and the Anglo-American, the settler and the native,
Rowson extends her family across the Atlantic and incorporates Peruvian, Spanish,
English, and Native American blood bonds. Characters from different races learn from
each other and interrnarry; children of mixed heritage are fascinated with the different
cultures and histories to which they belong. Within the extended family of the novel,
Rowson thus creates an idealized Euro-American history. In the early framing of
Columbus’s history, Rowson utilizes her characters to create a lesson about how to read
and convey history. This lesson interrogates what information counts as history and
what emotions are suitable for understanding it. As with her family line, Rowson
attempts to blend difl‘erent voices in the historiography, but the conflicts arising among
the speakers and highlighted by gothic conventions serve to interrupt and subvert the
attempt. In the last segment of this chapter I focus on the gothic moments throughout the
text that undercut the fantasy of peaceful international and intercultural coexistence.

Ghostly appearances, sublime tempests, gothic gore and spectacles of death all serve to

215

“gothify” the history of this happy family and of the New World colonization in which

they participate.

WWII

Dubbed America’s first best-selling novelist for her work W
(1794), Susanna Haswell Rowson (1762-1824) authored not only novels but also
dramatic pieces, musical compositions, and educational works.2 Daughter of a lieutenant
in the British navy, Rowson lived in both Britain and America. Her family resided in
America during the Revolutionary War, when they were placed under house arrest and
later sent to England because of her father’s perceived loyalist sympathies. Rowson
worked as an actress and wrote four of her novels in England, including W
(1739), MW (1791), W (1791).
and W (1792), before returning to America in 1794 as an actress. Not
surprisingly, considering her own dual nationality, a number of her works, including
W and W, contain both British and American settings. In
her preface to W (1794), she asserts her double attachment to
both Britain. and America (Parker 32). Herself a figure in between two nationalities,
Rowson held a position interesting for its combined allegiance and identity, something
that she would duplicate in her novel WW.

Rowson’s role as an educator influenced her writing; this and her work as a

historian influenced W. Rowson dedicated herself directly to women’s

216

education, including education in history. In 1797, she opened Mrs. Rowson’s Young
Ladies’ Academy in Boston; this school became so popular that by the second year, it
enrolled one hundred young women (Parker 35). In addition to the usual ornamental
subjects for women, Rowson included in her curriculum subjects such as geography,

history, and biography. She herself wrate MW

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include biographies of great women as well as men in history.3 Her collection of poems,
dialogues and advice to young women, AW (1811) also contains
historical instruction and urges women to undertake the study of history, for “history has
always been considered as the light of the ages, the faithfiil depository of true evidence of
past events” (Present 52).

Rowson’s novels clearly broadcast their instructive content. For example, the
motherly narrator’s desire in W to educate young women so that they
could avoid seduction is well known.‘ Similarly, in her preface to m,
Rowson announces her educational motives for writing the novel--this time to instruct her

readers in history. She states,

217

When I first started the idea of writing "Tales of Old Times," it was with a fervent
wish to awaken in the minds of my young readers, a curiosity that might lead
them to the attentive penrsal of history in general, but more especially the history
of their native country. It has ever been my opinion, that when instruction is
blended with amusement, the youthful mind receives and retains it almost
involuntarily. (iii)
In this preface, Rowson makes clear that her novel was written for laudable educational
purposes, not to titillate her readers. Instead, the fictional content exists to increase the
“history lesson’s” interest for, and thus its educational power over, young readers.
Interestingly, she emphasizes that she wants to inspire her readers to know more about
their native country’s history. This intention points out Rowson’s participation in the
development and transmission of a specifically American history and her awareness of
her role as a woman educating the next generation of citizens in the new republic.
Rowson’s background as an educator and her intention to use W as an
inspiration for her readers to study history more extensively both play out in Wand
W in the way that the fictional mothers instruct their daughters in history, the way
that daughters select from various methods of learning about the past, and the way that
Rowson sets up scenes in the novel where characters participate in “history lessons.”
The sentimental strand of W is intimately tied to the novel’s didactic
function. When gothic conventions interrupt and destabilize the idealization of the

American family and, by extension, the American nation, they also implicate Rowson’s

218

educative enterprise and convey more information about history than perhaps Rowson

intended.

E 'I H |° I n. |
Before examining how the gothic aspects of WW form a counter-

narrative to the sentimentalized version of history proffered by Rowson, I wish to turn to
the novel’s overall historical fiamework and examine how Rowson utilizes historical
discourse to set up her model of nationhood Like other historical and political writers in
her period, Rowson depicts America and Britain in familial terms and portrays Euro-
American history as a family drama. The most common familial metaphor in early
American writings, one used in such works as Thomas Paine’s W, portrays
Britain as a bad parent, usually a mother, and America as a child escaping from parental
tyranny-Revolution as family infighting. Shirley Sarnuels in W

. mm m nu ma ' at. - ' r Ix-wr —. u .: sum.” u - explores
these and other familial metaphors and images that appear in eighteenth— and nineteenth-
century American writings and that address anxieties about the American Revolution and
the new nation’s birth.5 For example, “fraternal violence can appear as at once a
symbolic and an actual problem of democracy,” since one revolution might set the
precedence for others (13). Similarly, the languages and images of national and sexual
“infidelity” can stand in for each other, pointing to the fear that neither liberty nor

democracy can be controlled any more than a lustful woman’s desires can (23-26).

219

Changes in family metaphors signified changes in governmental structures and were often
used to compare America and Britain. In the shift posed by America’s new democracy,
the “patriarchal system of familial and state governments was challenged when the
eighteenth century began to explain power in terms of the rights of all members of a
family rather than justifying it, as in medieval times, by the divine rights of kings, a nearly
irrefutable buttress of the patriarchal system” (47). America’s separation from Britain
could be understood in these terms.

Family metaphors standing in for nations and national concerns clearly play out in
the historical fiction of the time, as Samuels explains: “Telling the story of revolution and
political upheavals as the story of the family, historical novels of the early republic
repeatedly make politics and domesticity the same story” (62). In sentimental novels,
anxiety about disorder in the family reflects back to anxiety about disorder in the new
republic. Often turning political events into family ones, historical romances and
sentimental novels give new political importance to private concerns. Marriage, for
example, can stand not only for a choice in spouse, but also for an espousal of the
political sympathies represented by that choice--especially if that marriage should
happen to be a companionate marriage, a true marker of republican social progress.
Marriage, an integral part of the romance plot, makes central to a novel’s ideology the
political implications of reproduction, both of the body and of the state. In historical

romances,

220

questions of political and national identity become attached to female bodies, and

a national subject is formed through the coordination of citizenship and family

ideology. The historical romance presents sexual and familial accounts of national

identity that perform a political function; the pressure in these discourses is to
locate forms of the national body, or rather to produce, historically and politically,

a mtional body and a national family that could reproduce that body. Such a

concentration on reproduction opens the intimately related questions concerning

the links between the reproduction of bodily states and the reproductions of

nation states. (19)

Bodies without clearly delineated boundaries, such as between animal and hmnan or
between native and white, complicate attempts to form any such national body and open
up the possibility that bodies and the state are made up of diverse and sometimes
conflicting parts (19).

Samuels’s discussion of the farrrily’s signifying role for the American nation
provides a helpful configuration for understanding how Rowson links the history of the
Columbus family with the history of American colonization and development Selecting
Columbus, a popular icon for American writings in this period, as her foundational father
of the novel, Rowson immediately links political and personal history.6 Using the
extended Columbus family as a focus, she associates her characters with different
nationalities and races: Orrabella as Peru, Columbus as Europe, Reuben as early America;

and characters like Columbia, Isabella and William as mixed national subjects who

221

contribute to Rowson’s vision of an America (and a Britain) that allows for the
harmonizing of all these difi‘erent peoples. Because these different races become more
strongly intertwined with each generation, bodily reproduction becomes a means for
Rowson to blur boundaries separating them in order to create a unified national subject.
Such a blurring is seen as desirable inW; indeed, because ofthe ease with
which characters transgress borders, the different peoples are able to better appreciate and
learn fi'om one another. However, the gothic reappears in this novel to show that such
amicable connections cannot survive outside a sentimentalized familial space. Rowson
thus idealizes a national body made up of diverse members only to show its failure. In
the context of using history to tell the story of a nation’s identity, this failure reveals
several differences between Win} and novels discussed in Samuels’s study.
In Rowson’s novel, miscegenation is figured not as taboo but as a desirable means for
creating the nation. Britain is not the abusive parent and America is not the child
declaring independence, but the two and their histories continue to support and reinforce
each other. Fear in the novel does not surround the commingling of races or nationalities
but the realization that such interconnections could not exist detached from the outside
world that enforces difference through violence.

Rowson’s epic history of New World colonization includes important historical
moments from both British and American historynand Rowson’s commentary on those
events. In addition to including various types of history through oral, epistolary, and

literary discourse, Rowson portrays history as multivocal through her various European,

222

Native, and American narrators, most of whom are women. Throughout the novel,
Rowson portrays history through the lens of family lineage and relationships. Using both
fictional and non-fictional characters, Rowson incorporates diverse nationalities into the
larger family as a means of smoothing over conflict and dissension. She thus builds a
nation-model based upon mutual afl‘ection, familial connection, and idealized virtue. As
the narrative crosses back and forth across the Atlantic and as the New World transforms
into the New Republic, Rowson maintains strong connections between Europe and
America, never falling into divisive rhetoric against England or emphasizing America’s
special political or religious destiny. Instead, she crafts a narrative where America’s
history represents a new chapter in a larger Anglo-American history and where virtues
like independence, self-sufficiency, sympathy, and liberty flourish on both sides of the
Atlantic.

In two volumes, Rowson’s W covers almost three hundred years
and several countries as she traces a family history beginning with Columbus and his wife
Beatina and ending with the twins Reuben and Rachel. The story opens with the young
Columbia, great-granddaughter of Christopher Columbus, learning through her Peruvian
servant Cora and several letters in her mother's possession about her family history,
which is inextricably intertwined with the discovery of the New World She learns of the
initially peaceful conring together of the Old and New Worlds, of the corruption and
tyranny of greedy colonists and governors, of the heroism of people like Columbus and

Queen Isabella who tried to maintain justice, of her Peruvian grandmother Orabella who

223

came to Europe to live with Columbia’s grandfather, of her own mother's childhood in
Spain and marriage to the Protestant Englishman Arundel who was later executed
Columbia experiences her own trial of religious prosecution under Queen Mary, but
escapes and eventually marries Sir Gorges. Several generations later, the descendant of
these two, William Dudley, sails to America with his wife Arabella Their two children,
William and Rachel, are kidnapped by Indians and grow up under the guidance of a kind
squaw and the tribe's sachem Otooganoo. William grows up to marry Oberea and become
chief of the tribe; Rachel falls in love with the Indian Yankoo. When a war between the
Indians and settlers begins, the two grown children struggle with their torn loyalties.
William dies saving his long lost father Dudley from a hatchet blow, during which time
both cultures come together and lament the honors of violence.

The second volume of the novel begins in England and focuses on the twins
Reuben and Rachel, the grandchildren of William and the Oberea At the death of their
father on his way home from buying property in America, the twins are left destitute.
Reuben sails to America to recover his father’s good name and property fiom the
villainous Jacob Holmes. Rachel stays behind; turned out on the streets by her aunt
Tabitha, she wanders in London, nearly escaping seduction and secretly marrying
Hamden Auberry. Abandoned by him, Rachel and her fiiend Jessy Oliver sail to America
where they reunite with Reuben, who marries Jessy, and with Hamden, who reconciles
with Rachel. At the end of the novel, the pairs settle happily on their father’s land and

continue to lead a virtuous life in America.

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As most critics MW have noted, the novel is made up of a
conglomerate of several literary forms: the sentimental romance, the captivity narrative,
the historical novel, the seduction plot, and, my focus, the gothic tale.7 Within the gothic
tale, she includes both what have traditionally been called “American” gothic traits (the
horrors of the wilderness, Indian violence, etc.) and “British” gothic traits (the heroine’s
imprisonment in a castle, sadistic clergy, ghostly appearances, explicit threats to female
sexuality, etc.), and in so doing she combines yet again British and American influences.
While the novel turns inward upon itself as the different forms interact, the gothic
moments play a particular role as they continually focus on moments where two different
cultures clash. These moments, including ghostly appearances at a homestead,
mysterious footsteps and voices in the night, monstrous convulsions of the earth,
graphically detailed murders, and bloody death-bed scenes, do not allow for a comfortable
narrative that unifies both American and British history but instead point to fears about
the New Republic being unable to keep itself together in spite of all its factions, its
diverse population, and its erasure of women, Native—Americans, and slaves from full
citizenship. Avoiding the rupture of America from Britain does not allow for escape from
this fear, nor does the incorporation of all peoples through intermarriage. Rowson ends
her novel with marriage and the main characters’ financial security, but this marriage at the
end does not erase the gothic rupturing of the fantasy of national cohesion that has gone

before it.

In W, Rowson uses family lineage through nine generations to
portray the history of the New World’s colonization and settlement, as well as parts of
the histories of England and Europe, during the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries.
Reproduction in this epic tale creates people in the New World as well as in Europe
whose genealogies are made up of different races and nationalities. In this manner,
Rowson undertakes her most important linkage of European, Native, and American
national and political systems by creating an extended international family. Early in the
novel, the “pure” races and countrymen come to stand for their separate cultures and
races, but from the next generation onward, all future branches are “mix ” in an intricate
and continuous repetition of ambiguous pairings. To complicate the national body even
further, the characters live, come flora and reproduce in both Europe and America, but a
character’s country of residence shows nothing of his or her nationality—often quite the
opposite as many of the characters move back and forth. The family line, based on
mutual love between races, sets up the idealized sentimental narrative which dominates
the novel’s history, a history which will later be ruptured and made uncanny through the
appearance of gothic moments and violence.

The family dynasty begins with Columbus and his wife Beatina When their son,
purebred European Ferdinando, marries the purebred American native Orrabella,
Orrozombo’s daughter, Rowson makes explicit the political motivation behind this

marriage; she also emphasizes the love that makes possible this bond:

During the time Colmnbus and his followers tarried at the Peruvian court,
Ferdinando had numberless opportunities of improving the favourable impression
his first appearance made on the lovely Orrabella. He soon instructed her in the
Spanish tongue; and with equal facility, became himself a proficient in her native
language. He found her possessed of strong powers of mind, quick perception,
ready wit; in short an understanding capable of the highest improvement. The
mutual passion that subsisted between them was early discovered, and encouraged
by their parents. Columbus looked forward to the union as a means of insuring
wealth and power to his posterity, and Orrozombo imagined, by resigning his
daughter to this young stranger, he secured to himself a powerful friend and ally in
Columbus. For the Spaniards had taught his subjects many of the useful arts; and
Science, by their means, began to unfold her beauties to the delighted monarch and

his court. (24)

In her novel’s first important cross-cultural connection, Rowson creates a family bond

strengthened by mutual affection and parental sanction; with Orrabella’s and

Ferdinando’s union, their respective nations also become joined through mutually

beneficial educational and trade activities. The first of many companionate marriages in

the novel, this marriage indicates Rowson’s attempt to emphasize love and sympathy

across racial lines. Orrabella and Ferdinando name their mixed-blood daughter Isabelle

after the Spanish Queen who aided Columbus’s voyage, doubling the first mixed-blood

offspring in this family with a European Queen who funded the colonization of

227

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Orrabella’s nation In Isabelle, through her name as well as her blood, Rowson crafts a
daughter who confounds the bormdaries of subject and ruler; colonized native and
colonizing European; and Native American and white. At the same time, Isabelle easily
blends into the European upper classes and spends most of her life in England. This easy
transition, both in terms of geography and in terms of racial blending, might suggest an
elision of racial difference, one in which the Native is engulfed by the white European
The union of white and Native American blood emigrates, as it were, to England where it
thrives and reproduces an English national subject that appears no more different or
threatening than one that is not “mix ” At the same time, Isabelle’s genealogy points
back to both her parents, and her mixed heritage does not disappear from the novel’s
concerns. Indeed, it appears even more strongly in the next generation. From the Spanish
upper class herself, Isabelle marries into the English aristocracy through her union with
Sir Thomas Arundel. They, in turn, name their daughter, in an appropriate reference to
her great-grandfather and to the country he “discovered,” Columbia Because of this
reference both to her grandmother’s homeland and to her great-grandfather who colonized
it, Columbia stands as a reminder of the dual nature of her lineage and of her nation-body.
She and her mother might “pass” as white and European, but Columbia, through her
name, makes obvious both her family’s and her countries’ colonial histories and
complicates any easy elision of difference. Rowson does not set up this difference as

conflictual; rather, she sets both backgrounds side by side in an easy cohabitation.

228

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Columbia marries the English Egbert Gorges, and in their offspring, they
reproduce both the names and the colonial interests of the previous generations. In this
the fourth generation, a new kind of American blood (Quaker) enters the mixture, and
incest appears for the first time in the lineage. Among Columbia’s and Egbert’s children
are: Edward Gorges, who sails to St. Domingo with Sir Francis Drake; Beatina Gorges
(named after Columbus’s wife) who marries into the Quaker family of the Perms; and
Ferdinando Gorges, whose daughter Isabelle ends up not only in an incestuous love affair
with her cousin Henry Dudley, but also bears him a son, Edward Dudley. While marriage
between first cousins was not legally incestuous in Rowson’s time, the novel makes clear
that the pairing of Isabelle and Henry is marked by taboo:

As the children grew up, Henry regarded his little cousin Isabelle with more than

fratemal affection; but the tenets of the reformed religion forbidding a union

between two persons so nearly related by the ties of blood, neither Sir Ferdinando
nor lady Dudley encouraged an affection, which in their ideas was a crime; and
with a design to prevent its progress, at the age of nineteen, Henry was sent to
travel, and finish his education by gaining a competent knowledge of foreign courts

and manners. (126)

Elizabeth Barnes has examined the incest theme in early American fiction and points out
that the period’s “preoccupation with familial feeling as the foundation for sympathy,
and sympathy as the basis of a democratic republic, ultimately confounds the difference

between familial and social bonds” (xi). Rather than viewing the incest trope in early

229

American fiction as evidence of anxieties about political corruption in the republic, she
argues that “incest and seduction represent the ‘natural’ consequence of American
culture’s most deeply held values” (xi). By utilizing the family “as a model for
sociopolitical union, sentimental rhetoric conflates the bormdaries between familial and
social ties” (3). As novels with this trope demonstrate, this “conflation of familial and
social ties results in an eroticisation of familial feeling, of which incest is the ‘natural’
result” (19). Writing Euro-American history as family history, Rowson takes the
familial-social dynamic one step further, I contend, and applies it not just to the American
nation by itself, but instead to her imagined union of Old and New World, America and
England together. In a move surprising in a novel with gothic content, Rowson does not
portray this incestuous affair as frightening, monstrous, or dangerous; indeed, as Barnes
theorizes, the affair comes across as a “natural” result of amicable family and cultural
relations. Henry and Isabelle are portrayed more as star-crossed lovers than anything
else, and, excepting some parental disapproval and the need for secrecy, their love for
each other appears to be little different from other affectionate bonds in the novel.
Interestingly, Rowson’s solution to the incest difficulty is not to end that “unnatural”
branch of the family tree as a story like Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” might do, but
to continue it--and to continue her absorption of different races and nationalities within
the sympathetic family structure. For, importantly, she continues the branch by moving
the family to America and re-infusing the family stock with Native American blood after

three generations of European marriage, as if to avoid any further dilution of the Native-

230

 

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American-European blood bond she created in the family’s origins. The case here is not
one of corrupt English aristocrats inbreeding and needing American blood to purify their
line, particularly since it is not simply American blood but Native American blood, with
all its connotations of impurity, that enters into the next generation. Instead, Rowson
emphasizes a particular kind of a familial-social-national structure that must maintain its
function by continuing to include racial and national difference from across the Atlantic
such that they continue to exist side by side.

Edward, the child of incest, moves to America, marries Arrabella Ruthven, and
fathers two children, William and Rachel. William and Rachel are captured as children by
the Indians, who end up raising them with love. Rowson negates the hostility of killing
and kidnapping by enveloping it within a loving family. Rachel fills in love with the
savage Yankoo, and William marries chief Otooganoo’s daughter Oberea; he even gains
entrance into the Indian lineage as Otooganoo’s heir. Rowson makes clear that his
inheritance stems from the affection of Oberea, though; his rise to power derives more
from his position as husband, that is, than as white man.

In the next generation, William’s son Reuben marries the Quaker Cassiah Penn, a
descendant of Beatina Gorges fiom several generations earlier. Their twin children, the
Reuben and Rachel of the novel’s title, are raised by their Aunt Rachel and their father.
One day the young Reuben discovers a trunk filled with his grandfather William’s Indian
artifacts. Thrilled to discover that his father would be a sachem and so would he if they

lived in America, Reuben becomes fascinated with the idea of seeing the country of his

231

father’s birth and returning to the tribe. Rather than being aslmmed of his mixed heritage,
Reuben feels pride and curiosity about his roots, again demonstrating the family’s success
at blending races together.

In this final nuclear family, Rowson intimates the pain of separation that could
happen if a rift were allowed to occur between America and England Reuben senior goes
to America to find his fortune, but loses touch with his children in England, much to their
dismay and financial hardship. This is the first intra-familial separation across the ocean
since Columbus that Rowson portrays as painful breakage. Rowson repeats it almost
immediately when Reuben junior leaves Rachel behind to discover his father’s business.
Rachel is overwhelmed with grief, falls into financial hardship, and, importantly, familial
difficulty. As soon as the Euro-American family starts to fall apart geographically, so too
does it fall apart in terms of affection and family bonds across cultural lines. Tabitha
Penn, a Quaker and Rachel’s great aunt, becomes Rachel’s guardian and tormentor, driving
Rachel outside the family home onto the streets. Whereas in earlier generations family
members easily accommodate difference, in this one it is specifically because of difference
that the family fails. Tabitha demands that Rachel become a Quaker against her will; she
also fails to sympathize with Rachel’s beliefs and suffering. Wandering as if an orphan,
Rachel laments her loss of family and looks across the ocean with the hope of
reconnecting with them. By the end of the novel, the next generation is brought back
together and the story concludes with the marriage of Reuben and Jessy Oliver and the

reunion of Rachel and her husband Hamden

232

Throughout the novel, Rowson writes national history as family history,
incorporating famous figures into her genealogy and leading her families through various
well-known events from the past As a history concerned with national as well as
personal identity--indeed, national identity as personal identity-W
conflates nation-formation with familial love and reproduction. She uses this strategy to
reinforce the strong bond between America and England, as well as their respective
histories. Family reunion at the novel’s end covers over the brief horror of separation
affecting the Dudley family and the international “family” the Dudleys represent. Ending
as it does before the American Revolution, the novel recaptures the fantasy of amicable
relations across the Atlantic and figmes an Indian-Anglo-American subject, not just an
American subject, based on self-replicating unions of difference. Throughout Reuhenmd
Rahal, Rowson eschews any divisive anti-English or American exceptionalist rhetoric. In
writing a history of the New World as a narrative unified with that of European history,
Rowson avoids political, historical, or personal separation from England After all, at the
end of the novel, the family does not move to America to escape religious or political
oppression, or to search for liberty in its more universal sense; even trade and financial
Opportunity are not solely to be found in America Rather, the main purpose of this
cross-Atlantic journey is reunion, family rermion, one in which nationalities are combined

As in many eighteenth-century historical writings, sympathy plays an important
role in the Columbus family’s history. Fellow feeling becomes the binding force among

the novel’s different characters and by extension, peoples, and it is intimately caught up

233

in Rowson’s idealized construction of the nation-family that the gothic will break apart.
Sympathy plays a dual function in W when viewed alongside gothic
conventions. It both hides and reveals problems endemic to the Columbus family’s
attempts to include difference without erasing it, as can often happen in sentimental
narratives. Elizabeth Barnes has studied the various constructions of sympathy and
seduction in the early American novel, and she argues that sympathy, while it connects
individuals and seemingly creates a democratic mtion where all people exist
harmoniously, can also be used to erase difference.8 She explains that sympathy, the
very idea that underpins Americans’ self-portrayal, has a

dangerous capacity to undermine the democratic principles it ostensibly means to

reinforce. By displacing a democratic model that values diversity with a fanrilial

model that seeks to elide it, sentimental literature subordinates democratic politics
to a politics of affinity, employing a method of affective representation that

dissolves the boundaries between “self” and “other”. (4)

Thus, portraying others sympathetically-was part of the same familynrelies on
homogeneity.

As shown above, Rowson’s novel does link different peoples together and relies
on mutual sympathy to do so throughout the generations. But, Rowson also includes
moments in the novel where a family’s attempts to enforce homogeneity lead to ruin. As
noted above, when Rachel’s aunt Tabitha compels her to conform to the strict code of the

Quaker religion rather than allowing for Rachel’s different beliefs as other Quaker relatives

and fiiends do, the family no longer functions and Rachel experiences potential financial
and moral ruin. Similarly, when Beatina, a loving mother, requires in her will tint her
daughter Isabelle not marry a Protestant on the pain of disinheritance, her intentions to
guide her daughter lead instead to Isabelle’s ruin and sorrow when she marries a
Protestant, Thomas Arundel. While Rowson relies upon idealized family relations as she
traces the novel’s history, she keeps reminding readers of the ability of the families to
include, not erase, difference. For example, just as Orrabella learns from the Spanish
colonists, so too does Ferdinando learn fi'om Orrabella. William teaches Otooganoo and
Oberea English as he teaches his own white sister; William also learns specific cultural
lessons from his “adopted” Indian family. In terms of culture and race, Rowson draws
attention not just to the way sympathy links the characters, but also to how these
characters actually are different even though similar enough in their sympathy for each
other. She notes the physical characteristics of the biracial children or Indian forebears,
such as when she describes Rachel as a “lively brown girl” (173) or Orrabella as lovely
Indian maid with gorgeous black tresses of hair (10), not only drawing attention to racial
difference but also accepting it without prejudice throughout the generations. Children
learn of their parents’ racial heritage with interest, such as when Reuben discovers his
father’s trunk of Indian artifacts or when Columbia sees the picture of her Peruvian
grandmother (10). Interweaving her family romance with historical and gothic discourse
opens other avenues along which Rowson interrogates the sympathy. As a closer

examination of the novel’s actual historical events will show, Rowson’s use of sympathy

235

in the novel, rather than eliding difference, attempts to show how different peoples can
come together while maintaining those differences. Idealistic in nature, this sentimental
narrative nevertheless breaks apart in the face of actual historical horrors and reveals the
failure of the fantasy of intercultural and interracial harmony at the level of either the
family or the nation. Within her narrative, Rowson uses sympathy, the defining force of
her familial and national relations, not to cover up difference under the guise of
homogeneity, but to sugarcoat the failure of her idealized vision of peaceful international

and intercultural coexistence.

William

Rowson crafts the novel’s first major historical segment using the typically gothic
device of the hidden manuscript—in this case, the group of letters and documents locked
away in Isabelle’s private drawer. Rowson also includes the secret history Cora
possesses in the form of her previously undisclosed oral narrative; Cora’s presence as
source of and guide through history further emphasizes the importance of personal
connection with another (sympathetic) person in order to understand the past.
Containing as it does the record of colonization’s horrors and of the personal suffering
experienced by major historical figures, this secret history possesses the key to the
heroine’s identity, and, as it reveals her true past, it reveals the dark secrets of the Euro-
American past as well. The original sources, letters, and oral narrative depict others’

personal experience of historical events; for these individuals, the past is violent. In spite

236

 

of the larger narrative’s trend to increasingly cover up such disjunctive moments under the
feeling of mutual love and affection, these hidden original sources speak the unspeakable.
That these historical expressions remain secret in the larger world of the novel points to
their speakers’ continued exclusion fi'om the historical record That the histories which
are passed on to Columbia affect her future conduct and self-development, however,
places value on the person-to-person historical transmission experienced by Columbia in
her historical education and points to the possibility that historical education can be a
way to gain fortitude in the face of future tribulations.

As Radcliffe does in W, Rowson begins her history with a
lesson about how to read history. Reflecting back to the preface of W
where Rowson announces her intention to inspire the study of history, the early scenes
involving Columbia’s education about her famous family’s past provide not only a
recitation of famous events and people to study but also guidance for approaching
historical reading. Through Columbia’s reactions to what she learns, the conflicts among
the various historical sources she uses, and the purposes for which she studies history,
Rowson interrogates the creation and uses of historical narratives. Gothic moments
appear within this larger frame of the history and serve to create questions of narrator
reliability and objectivity. They also appear at moments of textual disjunction, where
horrors of history become real in the reader’s experience.

In the beginning of the novel, Columbia yearns to know about the past in order to

understand her mother’s current sorrows. Showing her daughter a picture of her

237

grandmother, Isabelle begins the family history by drawing attention to intercultural and

political conflict that from the outset sets up questions about the intercultural family’s

viability. Holding Orrabella’s picture, she points out to Columbia that this

“is the portrait of your grandmother, by birth a queen the only child of a monarch
whose wealth had no bounds, and who, far from the haunts of those who call
themselves civilized people, reigned unmolested, till the adventurous spirit of
your great ancestor Columbus prompted him to seek in distant seas for unknown
worlds. Oh, sublime and too daring spirit,” she continued, whilst her raised eyes
glistened with the tear of extorted remembrance, “why wert thou endowed with
qualities, which served but to stir up in the breasts of thine enemies the malignant
fiend Envy. Why! whilst thou wert labouring to benefit and enlighten posterity,

wert thou sealing thy own ruin!” (IO-11)

When her mother can no longer continue, Columbia turns to her mother’s Peruvian

servant Cora, who echoes Isabelle’s sentiments. Seeing Orrabella’s portrait, Cora says

that

it is the figure of my queen, my mistress, in the dress she wore on the day she was
espoused by Don Ferdinando. Oh fatal day! unhappy hour! by that union she
sealed her own wretchedness, the ruin of her father, the slavery of his pe0ple, and
brought destruction on the heads of her adored husband and his respected parent!
Ah! my sweet young mistress, I can no longer forbear; I must tell you the fatal

story of your father’s wrongs. (11)

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While the letters and documents Columbia is about to read will portray Orrabella’s and
Ferdinando’s marriage as loving and beneficial to both European and Peruvian, this early
framing of the historical narrative to follow emphasizes the destruction resulting from
intercultural contact. The family’s foundational love story is not without its tragedy, a
tragedy wherein biracial marriage cannot prevent abuses brought about by European
colonization-indeed, the marriage may well have hastened these abuses by assuring the
Peruvian’s fatal trust in and generosity toward future colonizers. Both Isabelle and Cora
problematize the moment the two cultures come together, whether through Columbus’s
discovery or Orrabella’s marriage to Ferdinando—two seemingly happy and innocent
events. In bewailing and blaming those particular moments, rather than such more
obviously brutal events as when the Castillians come, these introductory comments upon
the family’s history call into question the ease with which the family seems to envelope
cultural and racial difference contained within the history. In this instance, Rowson
presages the failure of the novel’s primary fantasy--that two cultures can avoid, through
creating bonds of sympathy, colonization’s inherent violence and appropriation

To fully understand history, Columbia must rely on both written records and
Cora’s oral recitation of her first-hand experiences. Columbia and Cora interrupt each
other and argue about the best way to learn about the past, but in the end, both written
and oral evidence are needed to piece together history. Furthermore, both cultural
perspectives, European and Peruvian, and the historical recording methods used by each,

are necessary for Columbia if she wishes to know all. The two women’s arguments

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interrupt the history throughout, as if to remind readers of the conflicts inherent in
historical learning and transmission.

In the chapter entitled “An Old Woman’s Tale Interrupted,” a title which alludes
to the discrepancies to come, Cora begins the history in a storytelling pose, “her right
hand spread out, as commanding attention, and every feature of her aged countenance
beaming with the satisfaction which the liberty of repeating tales of old times gave her”
(12). Columbia immediately interrupts her, wishing to look at the letters first, for they
“may serve to elucidate your relation, and explain events which happened antecedent to
the time of your remembering” (12). Furthermore, “they must contain facts necessary for
me to know, or they would not be thus carefully preserved” (13). Cora insists, “I am
sure there is nothing worth attending to, till the time of Don Ferdinando’s arrival in Peru
and becoming enamoured of my royal mistress Orrabella” (12), but then she concedes to
Columbia. The letters do pre-date Cora’s participation in the history, but once they
reach the time when Orrabella enters the history, Columbia turns to Cora again, urging her
to “tell me all; for in listening to the recital of a person who was present whilst the events
they relate happened, it seems as if you were transported to the very scene, and witness
to the incidents recited” (21). Once Cora starts, however, Columbia interrupts again,
frustrated by Cora’s elaborate storytelling style: “If you are thus particular, you will
never get to the end of your story” (23). Cora responds that she likes “to tell a story in
my own way. If I am not allowed to tell all the particulars, I shall never be able to tell it

at all” (23). While Columbia acquiesces, the novel’s narrator does not: “Cora again began,

but she so ofien interrupted herself telling the same incidents several times over, and
dwelling on each with a tiresome minuteness, that Columbia, though anxious, could
scarcely command her attention to the end of the story. From it she gathered the
following circumstances” (23).

Because of Cora’s method of transmitting her history, her actual words are erased
in the above scene, yet her information is still indispensable and enters into the narrative
at last. Later in the novel when Columbia again runs into a gap in the written record, she
turns once more to Cora, who by this time is aggravated at Columbia’s refusal to listen to
her. Columbia begs Cora to tell her the story of her mother, saying she didn’t find any of
it written down. Cora says haughtily, “I did not suppose they would.” (61). Columbia
states that she knows Cora will tell her. “‘Oh not I,”’ she replied, putting from her with a
rejecting motion the lovely arm that encircled her neck; ‘not I, indeed I tell a story so
badly, and make so many repetitions, and am so tedious and minute, you would lmve no
patience to listen; so you and Mina may go and walk, and I’ll go to bed, and then, you
know, we shall both be satisfied’” (61-2). Columbia asks for forgiveness and promises
not to interrupt. Cora responds,

Aye, to be sure . . . we are mighty condescending now. 0 my conscience, there is

nothing like curiosity to make a young lady gentle and complying. This morning it

was, Be quiet, Cora, and pray hold your tongue. Hold my tongue indeed; why I

warrant I could have told you every thing that happened, as well as those letters.

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But you liked reading the letters best then, and so mayhap you may find some

more to-morow that will tell you every thing you wish to know. (62)

Columbia eventually coaxes Cora to tell the history by threatening to disturb her mother,
but Cora has made her point, and the next section of the novel takes up the history in
Cora’s own words, in juxtaposition to the narrative erasure that had gone before.

In the above scenes, both Columbia and Cora want to start at different points in
history, points related to each woman’s cultural connections to those events and each
culture’s respective means of historical transmission. Cora rejects what happened in
Europe before her experience, favors oral transmission, and tells history with detail,
convolution, and drama; Columbia sees this history’s origin in Europe, favors the written
document, and wants to read history linearly. Rather than showing history as one true
immutable narrative, Rowson demonstrates through these two women how historical
transmission and reading are inevitably linked to a narrator’s class and cultural position.
Columbia condescends to her servant Cora and threatens to tell her mother when she finds
Cora intractable. At the same time, the written historical record has gaps in knowledge
when the history takes place in Peru; only an eye-witness participant can fill in those
gaps, but since she is not literate, the only way that history will be told is through her
own words. Without Cora and her perspective, the European Columbia who lives outside
the Peruvian culture would not understand fully the past of her own family. The tensions
between the two women as Columbia attempts to learn history and select which source to

use further depict history-gathering as conflictual. Each type of historical discourse—oral

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and written—competes with the other until an uneasy truce is reached through necessity.
Because Cora and Columbia disagree about the different types of history and their
usefulness, the narrative does not flow smoothly onward and the two ways of “knowing”
the past exist together only tentatively. Rowson makes clear, however, that both are
necessary and valuable. Rather than blending into one, the two histories interact in a
dialectic that continually calls attention to the differences between the two. Columbia
eventually finds that oral history told by a participant plays an important role in the
larger historical picture and can transport the listener to the past even as historical
documents, which “must contain facts necessary for me to know, or they would not be
thus carefully preserved” (13), are able to do.

Rowson further complicates the history lesson by shifting Cora’s position as
historian. Cora not only relates her participation in the family’s Peruvian history and her
knowledge of Isabelle’s marriage to Arundel but also teaches Columbia about English
history. Assuming the authority to tell the history of her newly adopted English culture
and the authority to interpret it for Columbia, Cora ends her narrative by relating
Arundel’s political intrigues in the court of Edward VI and the sad tale of Lady Jane
Grey. She possesses knowledge not only of the aristocracy’s genealogies and factions,
but also of the political moves of people like the Earl of Northumberland, Bishop
Gardiner, and the Duke of Somerset. Whereas earlier, Cora’s storytelling methods
hearken to stereotypes of the garrulous servant who tells a story with heightened

dramatic effect and superstitious interpretations, in this section Cora communicates

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history as a political narrative driven by reason and organized linearly by cause and effect.
Not an ignorant native, she includes philosophical commentary on legal and political
systems of thought, such as when she discusses Arundel’s ruin at the hands of his
enemies.
They said he [Somerset] had laid a plan to murder the yormg King, and accused
my worthy master, Sir Thomas Arundel, of being an accomplice; and they threw
them into prison, and a great many more good men were confined And then
Gardiner, and the Duke of Northumberland, and others of his enemies, pretended
to have a regular trial. But what sort of trial was that, when the men that accused
them were the judges? (71-2)
Insider and outsider at the same time, Cora occupies a number of positions, all of which
interrogate how history is formed and passed down, as well as how that history is used to
create national identity. She tells history both according to “her own way” of native
storytelling and following a method influenced by Enlightenment historiography. With
expertise in Peru’s and England’s history based on personal experience, she adopts the
authority to make herself a character in these histories and include her own political
commentary. Rowson supports such a move by at last locating within Cora’s narrative
the specific historical information Columbia is seeking-her mother’s great nagedy of
losing her husband, for whom she chose banishment. England’s history is, in the end,
related not by another Englishman but by a native servant, suggesting the potential an

outsider possesses to create fissures in the national subject and in the nation’s own

historiography that attempts unity through the portrayal of homogeneity. Cora
appropriates one powerful tool of colonial occupation, that of creating and passing on
history, and uses it to include herself, her historical methods, and her own ideas about the
political events that transpire.

Cora’s shifting position as historian makes her particularly well-suited to relate
the history of another conflicted subject, Lady Jane Grey. Like Mary Queen of Scots,
Lady Jane Grey was a favorite character in eighteenth~centmy studies of historical
women, largely because of her tragic execution which elicited sympathy in her readers.
The paradox of her powerful yet also powerless status appears clearly in Cora’s
narrative:

Oh! what a heavenly creature lady Jane was; your mother loved her dearly. She,

sweet soul, did not wish to be a queen; and when, on the death of King Edward,

they offered her the crown, “I pray you pardon me, my fiiends,” said she, “and

suffer me to decline this honour; it is too much for me, frail mortal that I am. I

would seek an eternal, not a temporal crown; and much I fear the cares and

anxieties attendant on the one, will prove a hindrance to my doing my duty
necessary for the obtaining of the other;” and when urged to comply, she bowed
her head in token of assent. She said to those who knelt to do her homage, “Pray
rise, my fiiends, this is mockery. You think I am ascending a throne; but I see

clearer, and perceive it is a scaffold Heaven pardon me this usurpation, for I feel I

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have no right to these honours, and shall be ready, when called upon, to resign

them to my rightful queen.” (72-3)

Cora describes Lady Jane’s strength as stemming from the spiritual realm of Christian
humility and virtue, not the political realm of power and action, a technique that Nina
Baym has argued was one way that historians of famous women could avoid the
association of women with political, historical corruption and decline (214-222). Her
purity, sweetness, and seeming foreknowledge of her doom set her up as the quintessential
suffering heroine as well. Cora’s story includes the personal love that existed between the
historical figure of Lady Jane Grey and the novel’s similarly suffering Isabelle, joining the
political with the personal through a daughter’s experience of motherly affection.
Columbia’s love and sympathy for her mother affect how she hears the history, making
more intense her tears and sighs following Cora’s relation. She has been prepared for this
since the beginning by her mother’s inability to relate her history without being overcome
by sorrow, by Cora’s exclamations that the past is full of woe, and by the early letters
themselves that focus on death, suffering, and the correspondents’ tears.

Cora’s history thus becomes not simply a relation of historical events, but also an
examination of character, both that of the virtuous Lady Jane and of the other corrupt
courtiers. This segment of the novel also becomes a lesson for how to react while learning
history, as Columbia’s frequent emotional interjections demonstrate. For example, after
hearing about Lady Jane Grey and her father, “Columbia was unable to thank her [Cora] or

articulate a single word The unmerited accusation and ignominious death of her father, the

untimely fate of the lovely and pious lady Jane, had so oppressed her heart, that it was
only by the indulgence of tears she could save herself from fainting” (73). After all,
Columbia’s motivation lies in learning how better to sympathize with her mother, and
Isabelle’s wish that she finally learn the secret of her past stems from her desire to enrich
Columbia’s character. These motivations hearken back to Rowson’s motherly preface,
where she states that her purpose is to educate her young readers about history and about
character.

And though none of my characters are so very faultless as to occasion the young

reader to neglect imitating them at all, because they despair of attaining the same

degree of perfection, yet they discover such an innate love of virtue, such a

thorough contempt of vice, that the uncontaminated mind will contemplate with

pleasure the beauty of the one, and shrink with abhorrence from the deformity of

the other. (iii-iv)

Columbia’s history lesson, which occurs at the very beginning of the novel, instructs her
and the reader how to read and react to history: by feeling it and by using it to judge and
imitate virtuous character.

While tears and sighs may be appropriate reactions to history, terror, it seems, is
not Rowson inserts gothic moments into Columbia’s reading about and experiences
within British history, but she later repudiates the terrors by explaining them away or
scoffing at them. However, these ghostly appearances and gothic devices appear

concurrent with real dangers, both in the past and the present. Exploring both Columbia’s

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overwrought emotions and the linkage between those emotions and the highly dramatic
history Columbia has just read, Rowson conjures up the gothic to point to a real danger
only to cover it up again in order to maintain a narrative where difference does not interfere
with personal relationships or lead to terror.

The first of these instances occurs right after Columbia has heard and read the
entire history of her ancestors. Columbia and her companion Mim come face to face with
their own terrors, which are stirred up by the whole history they have heard ending with
Lady Jane’s persecution. Rowson describes the gloom surrounding the tower at midnight
as the two prepare for bed. After already having cried about her family’s history,
Columbia tells her fiiend, “My spirits are so depressed, and the apartment looks so
gloomy, I almost wish I had not put out the candle” (74). Mina echoes the sentiment and
tells of the castle’s history, featuring a baron who killed his brother to seduce a woman.
“And they say the young Baron’s ghost often is seen about the western ruins; and that he
walks round the garden, and even sometimes through the long gallery and up the winding
staircase that leads to the turret that joins this range of apartments” (74). Though
Colrnnbia says, “What should we hear or see, more than our own family?” (74), she still
shudders and hides. The young women hear male voices and footsteps along the turret
connected to their bedroom and later see out the window ghostly forms that wander and
disappear into the castle’s western ruins. Running to Cora, who also knows the history of
the castle, they become even more terrified Cora “fully believed that they had seen

supernatural beings, and related, as she lay trembling between them, so many horrible

stories, that the terrified girls were afiaid to open their eyes, lest some ghastly spectre
should meet their view” (76). Again, Cora’s continuing position as historian/storyteller
leads her credulous audience into listening to and believing her tales, bringing up the
question of which parts of the above histories of Isabella, Columbus, and Onabella that
she tells are true.

The narrator says that “Cora was strongly tinctured with the superstition so
prevalent at that period in almost every rank” (76), but her tales actually do presage
danger. The family of four women and an elderly male servant, who are in hiding from
political enemies and living in this remote and ruined castle, have much to fear indeed fiom
strange men wandering the grounds, ghostly or otherwise, as Mina’s story about the
Baron’s sexual crime intimates. Fortunately, the men turn out to be the honorable Sir
Egbert Gorges and his servant, who are hiding from Bloody Mary. Their arrival, however,
reinitiates the reclusive family into political intrigue, and other, less fi'iendly men-Sir
Howard and Queen Mary’s officers-come at night and take the family away. That
Columbia and Mina give in to meaningless fears of ghosts provides Rowson with an
opportunity to critique such reactions, but it is a qualified critique in that their instincts
are correct, even if their object is wrong. Standing in between two moments of real
political persecution, that of Lady Jane’s history and the women’s own eventual
persecution by another queen, the ghostly appearance marks a dangerous space of real
clash between two different groups-Catholic and Protestant. Once they are prisoners of

Bloody Mary, the two women are threatened with torture, burning at the stake, and the

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machinations of Bloody Mary’s priests. No longer a sentimental narrative but one of real
terror, the political events that follow the continuation of the history the girls have just
learned remind the reader that history is not simply a matter of feeling and that terror is
certainly a part of its events.

F ortrmately, since Columbia has learned of her family’s origins and of Peru’s
colonization, she has absorbed lessons such as these from her female predecessors that will
influence her in parallel experiences as she herself becomes a player in historical events.
Columbia learns of heroic women and their brave deeds, stalwart virtue, moving words,
and honorable sacrifices. For example, when Orabella returns to Peru to find that her
people have been robbed and butchered, she confronts the villainous Garcia directly, “her
eyes darting lightning, her fine face and person uncommonly animated by the fire of
resentment” (43):

insolent Spaniard, the king my father, though you term him a savage, was your

superior in every virtue! What though unpolished, he had but nature for his

guide? that nature taught him humanity, honour, patience, fortitude, and

Orrozombo would have died rather than deceive a fiiend, or insult a fallen foe. . . .

Tell me, barbarian, have you entirely extirpated the race of the children of the sun,

or do you hold the lawful king of this territory in bondage, whilst you usurp his

rights, and riot in the spoils of his devoted subjects? If so, Oh lead me to the
dungeon where you have confined him, that I may weep in his arms, and die with

grief to see my king, my father, a slave to the nation he had vainly hoped to have

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held in eternal bonds of friendship, and gave his child as a hostage of his faith

towards them. Alas! what hostage did he require to insure their faith to him?

None; his noble heart harboured not deceit, nor could suspect it in another. (434)
In her anger, Orrabella, like the other natives, at first groups Columbus and his men with
the other corrupt colonizers, until he clarifies his aims and proves himself by overthrowing
Garcia Du Ponty’s hand. She feels no difficulty seeing past the bonds of her adopted
EurOpean family when she suspects his treachery against her own people.9 Columbus
protests that his motives were for good (45), both to bring religion and trade to the natives,
but Orrabella sees through such motives to the abuses brought along with European
religious and cultural proselytizing. She actively fights the Castillians and takes charge of
her people in spite of their initial suspicion of her and her child and heir. She criticizes her
sister Alzira for her folly in loving Du Ponty and for allowing her power and honor to be
tainted. Orrabella’s active resistance aids in the defeat of the Spaniards and the
reestablishment of her people’s power.

When faced with similar oppression, Columbia behaves in a like manner, rejecting
sentimentalized norms of female passivity and speaking out even at peril to herself. In
Mary’s clutches, Columbia refuses to be separated from her mother and bravely stands
with her during her imprisonment. Isabelle, too, is willing to take the fall and hides from
Columbia her belief “within her own mind, that the hour drew near in which she would be
called upon to seal her faith with her blood” (99) and awaits the expected trial with

patience and fortitude. Isabelle conceals her fear from Columbia, and when the guards

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eventually come for Columbia, she urges her daughter not to give up her faith, even if it
means dooming her mother. Demonstrating how she has learned fiom history, Columbia
states, “Fear me not, beloved parent. I can never forget the noble examples of firmness
and resolution set me by my ancestors” (100). Columbia is up for the task of facing down
Queen Mary and replies to her threats and manipulations with directness and unswerving
purpose. While Mary and her advisors are certainly threatening, Columbia outwits them
and counters their threats with steadfastness, eventually creating the opportunity for their
escape. Learning fiom her ancestors’ examples in history and successfully applying them
to her own life, Columbia, too, becomes a successful actor in history during Bloody
Mary’s reign.

Later, upon discovering that their protector Sir Howard has once more betrayed
them by hiding them under false pretenses once Bloody Mary is dead, the women again
plan an escape. Here, Rowson’s heroines again demonstrate their mettle, as well as the
way in which they depart from the norm of female passivity. Noting to her daughter, “We
are, I fear, in the power of a villain” (112), Isabelle and Columbia plot to escape their
imprisonment and seek aid from Queen Elizabeth. Isabelle fortifies her daughter by
saying,

We must summon all our fortitude to brave even hardship and danger without

shrinking. We are women, it is true, and ought never to forget the delicacy of our

sex; but real delicacy consists in purity of thought, and chastity of words and

actions; not in shuddering at an accidental blast of wind, or increasing the

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unavoidable evils of life by affected weakness and tinridity. How many of our sex

are obliged by hard and daily labour, to procure for themselves and children the

bare means of existence! How many brave the severities of the most inclement
seasons, with hardly covering sufficient to keep them from perishing! I allow that
you and I, my beloved child, have been accustomed to tenderer usage; but we are
particularly called upon at this time, to exert the strength and faculties of both

mind and body, with which nature has bountifully endowed us. (113)

The two women not only succeed in their plan; they later have the opportunity to again
shame Sir Howard, this time into submission to their mandate that he expiate his crimes
and immorality. Throughout their lives, Isabelle and Columbia have lived by their
principles, whether while residing alone at Aubury Castle, taking charge of dangerous
situations, forming secret plans of escape and rebellion, or refusing to give in to
gromdless fears. Within a segment of the novel where women through the generations are
aware of each other’s influences and deeds, Rowson depicts women as adventurous and
powerful heroines.

As the novel continues throughout the next several generations, women like Rachel
and Arrabella become less intimately connected to their foremothers and less
knowledgeable about their own histories, both personal and political. Indeed, the concern
with compiling, transmitting, and learning from history plays a less vital role in Reuben
MW after the generation of Columbia’s son Ferdinando. At the same time, female

characters take less prominent places in historical events, and they become less

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independent and daring, degenerating instead into passive domesticated creatures.
Castiglia has argued that the novel’s generic shifts parallel the shifts in early American
women’s position.
From a frontier romance featuring strong and independent women of both races,
W becomes a sentimental novel, complete with abandonment by
worthless lovers and a lovelom suicide. The move from frontier romance to
sentimental novel accurately reflects the experience of many American women,
who witnessed their own transformation in the nation’s perception of the ideal
American woman fiom a brave and industrious fighter for liberty to a frail,
overwrought, housebound sentimental heroine. (27)
Castiglia rightly observes that once the tales of adventure close at the end of Volume One
and the sentimental and captivity plots take precedence in volume two, women in the
novel lose agency in their own lives and in the events around them (29). This increasing
female passivity, I would add, is also related to women’s increasing lack of historical
education and consequent failure to participate in history’s transmission. Early in the
novel, women like Beatina, Orrabella, and Isabelle pass on their histories to each other
down through the generations by means of letters, mementos, and autobiographical
narratives; by the time it reaches Columbia, the historical record has become a substantial
body of information. Daughters learn about their own personal links to history and about
the grand historical events in which their mothers participated; mothers guide their

daughters learning about history and its application to their lives. Mothers and mother

figures like Queen Isabella and Cora also record their own engagement and presence in
history, writing themselves in as important figures, for future generations to read about
and learn from. Unlike Beatina, Orrabella, Isabelle and Columbia, however, the women in
later generations do not pass history on to their daughters or use history to educate their
daughters about character, fortitude, heroism, etc. Once history is no longer transmitted
from woman to woman, the strength of the female characters diminishes. As the novel
continues, this linkage of women throughout history breaks apart until Rowson’s mothers
are entirely absent. Interestingly, later in the novel it is the sons who learn about history
directly from their parents and who transform education into action Reuben, for
example, learns about his father William’s past as a sachem after discovering the artifacts
of William’s life in America. This, in turn, urges Reuben to undertake his journey to
America and eventually to succeed in a new life there. Those who are connected to
history and historiography are also connected to action, heroism, and empowerment In
temrs of the educational motives Rowson claims for her novel, this is one other lesson

that W provides, a lesson particularly important for women.

G ||°fi IH'I Ill E'l [II S I' Illi I'

I now turn to those darker and more violent moments in W to
examine more closely how gothic effects intertwine with and destabilize the
sentimentalized versions of familial and national history. The novel spends a good

amount of time setting up and supporting sympathetic relations between people of

255

different cultures, races, and genders. However, once gothic moments interrupt the text,
such visions cannot sustain themselves. The more obvious examples center around the
story of Columbus and the initial attempts at colonization, a segment of the novel that is
full of graphic violence and that points to the ultimate failure of the sympathetic family.
Other examples include: monstrous appearances along Peru’s coastline, ghosts at sites of
massacres, and transformations at the site of a corpse. Whether giving voice to history’s
horrors, marking cultural difference as uncanny, or revealing national/family history to be
a tale of oppression and exclusion, the gothic narrative line that runs throughout the novel
constantly “gothifies” the historical events with which it interacts.

The history that Columbia reads is full of violence and horror In many ways her
historical education is an education about sexual and racial oppression, collected by white
and native women. The difference between a glowing representation of her forefather
Columbus and the portrayal of the horrible efi‘ects of colonization becomes a foundational
conflict not only in these early historical moments but in the whole novel, which springs
forth from Columbus’s entrance into history. The shocking, spectacular, and gory
descriptions for which the gothic is known place in bold relief moments when two
cultures clash and when personal relationships cannot stem the larger tides of violence.

Rowson chooses as her central historical character the man who, in David
Shields’s words, became “the single most popular symbolic character in early American
literature, the prototype of heroic sailors, the American Aeneas, Christopher Columbus”

(29). Rowson models the patriarch of her family and the fount of her national history

after the popularized version of Columbus: a man who followed his imaginative vision;
whose interactions with Native Americans were characterized by moderation and good
intentions; who suffered injustice at the hands of European aristocrats and Spanish
adventurers; and who ended his life unrecognized and persecuted (Shields 29-33). 1° The
first series of Columbus’s letters depicts his excitement about the voyage, difficulties
securing funding, and his eventual success in persuading Queen Isabella to support him.
Rowson portrays Columbus as the good colonizer who makes clear his peaceful
intentions to the natives, who in turn honor him. After making friends with the chief
Orrozombo, Columbus and his crew set up a colony of mutual benefit and solidify their
interconnectedness through the marriage of Columbus’s son Ferdinand and Orrozombo’s
daughter Orrabella

In addition to founding a colony based on amicable and mutually beneficial
relations, Columbus proves to be the defender of natives against the abuses of the
Spanish. When, on a return voyage, he visits the Spanish colony of Hispanolia, he
discovers conflicts between settlers and natives exasperated by the harsh demands
imposed by the Spanish When the head of the colony, Rolden, complains that the
natives are not complying with the colonists’ demands and must be taught a lesson,
Columbus exclaims,

I do not rightly understand you. What privilege can these people solicit fiorn you

or me, which they have not a right to demand? Is not this continent theirs by right

of nature? and is not the privilege of living here unmolested enjoyed by us

through their unsuspecting good nature, and the confidence they place in our

honest intentions? and shall we abuse this confidence, repay their hospitality by

infringing their natural rights? Heaven forbid! If they have complaints to make, it

is our duty to hear, and to the utmost of our power redress them. (27-28)

Later, once Spanish tyranny takes its strongest hold, Columbus leads a resistanceto
overthrow them and reinstate the same type of “good” colony that he created in Peru.
Depicted as a hero, a man who honors the native peoples with whom the settlers share
land, education, and love, the character Columbus allows Rowson to begin her familial and
international history with idealizations of colonization and America’s foundation, as well
as of the natives and some of the colonizers.

In opposition to Columbus and his friendly settlement, Rowson depicts the
Spanish colonizers as violent, evil, and un-Christian. Again, Rowson adopts the popular
myth of Spanish violation that justified Anglo settlement and its enlightening, peaceful,
and civilizing ways. Shields describes this stereotypical depiction of Spanish cruelty as
“The Black Legend” that “held Spain responsible for the disruption of New World peace.
Spanish galleons freighted the gold wrested from Peru’s mines by enslaved natives;
Spanish armadas conveyed the conquistadors to virgin territories” (33). In a variety of
British and British American texts, “Spaniards are often not differentiated in character;
when they do possess differences, they tend to function as one-dimensional allegories of
vicious human impulses. Often no motive is supplied for the actions of Spanish

clutracters, as though like devils the will to do evil exists a priori in their nature” (178).

 

1t.

Rowson’s portrayals are certainly aligned with this “Black Legend”; horrifying
imagery and description characterize her novel’s portrayal of Spaniards. Rowson
provides many instances of Spanish cruelty, and she describes them in detail. Upon
retruning to his original colony in Peru after a short period of unfair imprisonment,
Columbus finds that his enemies, led by Garcias Du Ponty, have taken over the colony
and undone the balance of native and European interests that characterized it before
Columbus was sent to Spain Indeed, he sees the destruction happen before his very
eyes. When he arrives, he finds that the natives and the good Spaniards united against
these invaders and fled into the country, but with little success.

The Castilians had gone to the interior of the country searching for mines and

plundered all they saw. These returned, boasting of the ravages they had

committed, and displaying the spoils they had gleaned They had plundered
every village through which they passed, and then set fire to it. Thousands of
innocent families, thus deprived of their homes and all means of support, fled into

the mountains, where many perished through famine, and the rest dragged on a

wretched life, living on wild fruit, and what game their bows and arrows produced,

sleeping in caves or recesses of the rocks, and too often their miserable existence

was terminated by the fangs of the tyger or the lion. (46)

The natives were undisciplined in the art of war, gave up their arms, and accepted a false

offer of peace. During their annual festival of the sun, they invited Garcias and his crew,

who then massacred them: “then did the blood-thirsty Garcias and his detested crew rush
on the defenseless victims, and massacre them without mercy and without remorse” (46).
Rowson also allows for the retelling of history’s violence to European women and
indigenous men and women, both of whom are represented as historians who pass their
narratives on It is mainly through the experiences of the native women that Rowson
portrays the larger violence brought about by the dealings between colonizer and native.
Christopher Castiglia has argued that “Rowson is unique among early white novelists in
depicting Indian women as the objects of a dual subjection, as she implies through the
representation of their oppression by rape-an act of violence directed both by a colonist
against a native and by a man against a woman” (28). In this way Rowson links colonial
and domestic captivity and subjection (29). Rape certainly plays an important role in
this section of the novel and Rowson continuously refers to it. She details the rapes of
Bruna and Alzira and refers to many other instances where “the chaste wife and the pure
virgin were violated in the presence of parents and protectors, who, confined by these
inhuman monsters, had not the power to refuse or avenge them” (45). Rowson depicts
and repeats this particular kind of violence at the border of cultures in detail, emphasizing
its location within the family, using gothic spectacle rather than gentle references, and
locating this violently unstable boundary site within the body of the woman.
Counterpoised to the happy interracial marriages which result in successful miscegenation
and reproduction of unified national subjects, these instances of rape bring up the darker

side of inter-cultural relations. Whereas marriages like that of F erdinando and Orrabella or

William and Oberea idealize the relationship between the races and serve to blend the two
seamlessly together in familial love, the violent pairings of Spanish settler and Peruvian
woman bring to the forefront the colonial appropriation and abuse brought about by the
meeting of Old and New World Colonial violence against the racial other becomes
violence within one’s own family-violence against oneselfu-as in Columbus’s family
which is made up of natives and Indians, as well as Europeans. One of the rape victims,
Alzira, is Columbus’s daughter-in-law and Orrabella’s sister, for example. Both Bruna
and Alzira die shortly after, one fi'om suicide and one from a shipwreck, as if not even the
novel can contain such terrible reminders of cultural blending gone amiss. Further
emphasizing what is at stake with investment in the idealized intercultural family,
Bnma’s death combines family violence with national violence in its fiightening aftermath.
In front of her father, Bruna plrmges a dagger into her heart, creating a spectacle wherein
“the bleeding form of the lovely Brum, the agonizing sorrow of her father, acted like a
talisman on the minds of the people; and in a few hours the whole settlement was in a
state of insurrection” (33). Alzira’s death and the death of her child must take place in
order to cleanse the family of the stain her body represents, not the stain of her loss of
virtue, but the stain of interracial violence which irrupts within the idealized family.

As head of this family epic, Columbus and his deeds take on special significance
when examining how a national myth plays out once its horrors are revealed. His failures
both as family patriarch and as sentimental hero point to the larger failure of the novel’s

sentimental narrative. As seen above, he is unable to keep colonial violence from touching

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his family. In spite of his noble motives, he is unable to keep the colony together in the
face of Du Ponty and his men. He cannot stand up to other encroachers, like Roldan, the
governor of Orrozombo’s colony, who creates false charges against Columbus and sends
him back to Europe in chains so that he no longer interferes with Roldan’s

appropriations. In juxtaposition to Columbus’s foundation of mutual love and peaceful
relations in his first colony, Garcias, described as “the chief of these banditti” (43), states
that he has taken over the colony “By the right of conquest; not by a ridiculous family
compact with a savage” (43). Roldan’s strategy proves to have more power than
Columbus’s. Even when in Spain, Columbus cannot maintain his honorable position once
his loving patroness, Queen Isabella, dies and her husband changes the political situation
of the Com such that sentimental love no longer reigns. Dying in solitude, his colonies
taken over by his enemies, and his role in their discovery unnoticed, Columbus emerges
not as a hero who brings enlightenment to the world but as a man deluded by his own
idealistic fantasies. He fails both as the “good” colonizer and as the sentimental hero, for
it is his adherence to honor, sympathy, and justice which leave him vulnerable to the
outside world. Other characters, too, fall into the trap. The natives’ generous forgiveness
and desire for peace set them up for a massacre. Bruna’s honesty makes her vulnerable to
Diego. Columbus notes that “when I spoke to her of the customs and manners of the
European world, she would laugh, and declare her own country manners were best; for
she could not possibly think any duty obliged us to conceal our thoughts, or that any

custom whatever could make it laudable to speak one thing and think another” (30). As

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long as Columbus acts within his family, an idealized space where different races come
together in affection, he is powerful and influential. When that family must be a part of
the outside world, however, we see his failure, his family’s failure, and the failure of an
idealized sympathetic version of colonization and intercultural relations, this sentimental
narrative’s main concern.

Aside from the novel’s larger emphasis on violence against the natives in the
history of Columbus, more specific gothic moments throughout the novel highlight the
darker side of the Columbus family’s idealized vision The novel’s first gothic scene
occurs during Cora’s narrative about Columbus’s arrival in Peru. Cora describes her
people’s first encounter with the Europeans on Columbus's ship in terms that bring chills
to her anew as she repeats the tale. She tells the young Columbia:

There, as we stood looking toward the sea, we saw a monstrous fish or bird, for it

was impossible to tell which it was; its body was black, its wings white; it was

coming quick toward the shore. The princess shrieked The king and queen had,
from a lower apartment, observed the same monster hastily approaching; and
ordering forth the guards, bade them draw up on the beach, and as it drew near

discharge their arrows at it. But, Oh terrible, if I was to live a thousand years, I

never shall forget how fiightened every creature was, when the huge monster,

drawing quite near, stopped on a sudden, and dropping all its wings, a burst of fire
and smoke issued from its side, with tremendous noise. Many fell to the earth

with terror, as this dreadful phenomena was repeated three times. (22)

Interestingly, this gothic scene, the first depiction of the meeting of two cultures, is told
through the eyes of a Peruvian. This typifies Rowson's approach to her history of
colonization, for instead of simply demonizing the natives she carefully includes native
voices and perspectives with those of Europeans. In this instance, Cora retells her
experience of terror when the unknown in the form of a monster-ship lands on the shores
of her native land Recalling the tradition of Ann Radcliffe in which supernatural events
are eventually explained, the natives discover, once the moment of initial contact is past,
that the monster is really a ship bearing friendly Spaniards under the direction of
Columbus.

However, perhaps their first gothic impression of the Spaniards was more true to
the effect that the arrival of this new culture on South American soil would have on the
Peruvians. As Rowson shows in following chapters, pillage, domination, and violence
follow once the peaceful Columbus leaves and places other men in charge of the colonies.
Here, too, Rowson gothicizes colonial expansion in her depiction of the horror that results
from it. Comparing the greed of the colonizers to a vampire-like monster, the narrator
bewails, "Alas! Avarice had discovered this new world was an inexlmustible mine of
wealth; and, not content to share its blessings in common with the natives, came with
rapine, war and devastation in her train: And as she tore open the bowels of the earth to
gratify her insatiate thirst for gold, her steps were marked with blood" (25). In her

depictions of the Spaniards, Rowson explores in detail the violence they commit upon the

natives. Gothic language provides particularly graphic means through which Rowson can
emphasize the horror of cultural clash.

These gothic metaphors concerning the ship and its attendant horrors take place
early within the novel. As seen above, Rowson begins the novel with a debate between
Cora and Columbia about the uses of different styles of history-making. Preparing readers
for the historical narratives ahead, this initial conflict between the two women exemplifies
the difficulty in sorting through different kinds of evidence while trying to create a
narrative of the past Though at first Columbia discredits Cora’s contribution, she later
finds that she cannot discover the complete story of her past, and her famous great-
grandfather’s role in history, without Cora. One of the reasons Columbia mocks Cora is
related to her use of metaphor, detail, and local color; Cora’s physical storytelling
position with her hands dramatically poised in front of her listener also contributes to
Columbia’s initial opinions of Cora’s dubious value as a historian Yet, the very details
that mark Cora’s history as mere storytelling-descriptions of monsters, stories of ghosts-
- tend to depict the real moments of violence and fear—rape, fratricide, massacre,
seduction—that occur when two different cultures meet Gothic language, with its
connections to the hysterical and the monstrous, becomes the code through which real
horror breaks into the historical record of Columbus’s successful and honorable voyage.
Rowson will continue to use this code at various points throughout the novel as future
generations enter into the history.11 Just as Cora’s history forces entrance into the

recorded history Columbia had hitherto relied upon, so too does gothic symbolism and

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the supernatural rupture the sentimentalized history Rowson creates. This strategy
continually fractures attempts in the novel to commingle people across racial and cultural
lines and, even as it facilitates articulations of those typically excluded from historical
discourse, emphasizes their erasure from the record.

The natives are not the only ones who must encounter the terror of the unknown
Other’s culture. Rowson also provides the gothic experiences of the settlers, both
Spanish and, later, the English. Terrified reactions and gothic metaphors are not only the
province of uneducated natives, for Rowson’s purpose is to make uncanny not simply
the native race but the actual coming together of two cultures. The first such
intercultural confiontation surrounded by gothic references occurs after Columbus has
returned to find the Peruvians enslaved by the Spanish colonizers. When Columbus and
the surviving Peruvians battle the encroachers, the very landscape of the new continent
forces itself into the consciousness of the Europeans, as if to reassert the power of the
natives, who will now win back their land once the natural disaster has conveniently
removed all the enemies. The narrator at this point, Columbus's wife Beatina, relates,

A torpor seized our senses, and we sat gazing at each other, without power to

speak, and with scarce the faculty of thinking. From this stupor we were aroused

by a tremendous noise, like the howling of a mighty wind, the rushing of waters,

and the crash of thunder. In a moment the palace shock to its foundation . . . .

Two hours of such tremendous threatenings from gleaming meteors, bursts of

thunder, and contortions of the earth, as could hardly be supported by human

nature, we passed sitting on the ground, expecting every moment it would open
and swallow us. (54-55)
Once the tempest and earthquake are over, the survivors return to the beaches to find
everything in the harbor gone, the village destroyed, and their population decimated
Surveying the sublime landscape, Beatina continues,
We cast our eyes towards the place where latterly stood the tents and dwellings of
our friends and associates; nor tent nor dwelling appeared; all was silence, all was
desolation. A vast cavity was seen where once the dwellings were, through which
impetuously rushed a foaming torrent; which, as it roared along, bore on its surface
trees, shrubs, ruins, and bodies of wild beasts which had perished in the tempest.
Oh! what a night of agony we passed (55)
This scene, complete with the destruction of ships at sea and the collapse of the palace,
highlights the horror and the monstrosity of the very landscape of the New World which
threatens to swallow the Europeans and portrays the anxiety of encountering a new world
with all its attendant promises, conflicts, and dangers.12 As the characters in Peru find,
the earth that was once opened and sucked dry by the vampire of expansionist greed has
now risen from the dead to swallow the predator. The Europeans thus encounter their
monster as well in the midst of colonial expansion, a monster which reflects back to them
the abuses they have perpetrated in the New World.
The natives, familiar with these natural disasters, seek shelter in the level plains;

Europeans who survive do so because they, like Ferdinando who "learnt from his [native]

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wife the nature of these convulsions of the earth" (54), follow the advice of the natives.
This is one of several scenes in Rowson’s novel where education across cultural lines
either saves people or allows for a loving bond between the different races. Orrabella and
Ferdinando teach each other their respective languages and share their cultures with one
another, so, too, do their parents Columbus and Orrozombo (24). Living with the Indian
family who kidnapped him and his sister, William undertakes the teaching of Otooganoo
and his daughter Oberea while he learns fiom their tribe (155-6). Such intercultural
learning and acceptance are part of Rowson’s idealism in the novel, and yet as the
interjections of gothic moments show, such education possesses little long-term power in
the face of colonial violence in the larger world William’s double bond with his Indian
family and his birth family eventually implodes in retributionary warfare; love and
education can neither control the vengeance of warriors like Yankoo nor stop the settlers’
violence which inspire the war. Neither the noble motives of Columbus and Orrozombo
nor the love of Ferdinando and Orrabella can successfully stand against the Spanish
violence just arormd the corner. Finally, the above example of the earthquake suggests
that connection and learning across racial and cultural lines can only sustain itself in the
absence of those with dishonorable motives. The ships that the tempest conveniently
destroys hold Garcia and his villainous crew, who continued to plot against Columbus.
They also hold Alzira, whose body and whose offspring from Garcia’s rape have stood as
a continued reminder of enduring colonial exploitation and of the failure of love and family

ties to cover real intercultural violence. Without the seemingly supematural interference of

the landscape, Garcia’s group would have endured to trouble the colony again, and Alzira
would have continued to serve as a reminder of the horror that has occurred in the
combination of European and native races, both within and without the family. Using the
gothic here calls attention to the very unreality of removing such troublesome characters
and events from the historical record of Columbus’s discovery.

Gothic devices of the supernatural and graphic horror rupture the text in several
places; frequently, they open up a space where Rowson includes the voices and opinions
of the natives and the women. One such instance occurs at the site of an Indian massacre
of a settler’s homestead. Springing upon the farm of Edward Dudley and Arrabella
Ruthven, the Indians kill some members of their household while Edward is away.
Arrabella escapes with some of her children and hides in a cave, but the Indians captrue
William and Rachel. When news of the destruction reaches Dudley, he is so distraught at
the supposed loss of his family that he immediately takes ill. Servants, therefore, must
retum to the scene to discover what remains. The scene of Indian violence upon
European settlers is a double scene of gothic terror, one of Indian violence and one of
ghostly appearances. As the two servants walk fiom Plymouth to Dudley's settlement,
they speak of spirits, haunted houses, and other strange appearances. Furthermore,
"Philip affirmed, that it was his belief, innocent blood was never spilt, but that the spirit
of the departed, nightly visited the spot where it had been driven from its earthly
tabernacle, and called for vengeance on the murderer", nor would it be at peace till that

vengeance was executed" (151). He states his belief that his dead mistress and her

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children walk the ruins they are about to find and trembles with his fiiend in fear. No
sooner does he say this than the form of the child Eliza rises in the distance and just as
suddenly disappears. Eliza, of course, is alive and returning to the settlement to find
help; her disappearance has been occasioned by her sudden fainting. While an instance of
the Radcliffean “explained supematural,” this gothic moment also marks the site of two
real hauntings, parallel in language and action Just as the event unfolds, Rowson’s
narrator interrupts with one of the novel’s several justifications for Indian violence:
But what could be expected from the untaught savage, whose territories had been
invaded by strangers, and who perhaps had suffered from the cruelty of the
invaders, in the person of a father, brother, son, or some near connection Revenge
is a principle inherent in human nature, and it is only the sublime and heavenly
doctrine of Christianity that teaches us to repel the impulse and turn good for evil.
(142)
As the novel shows repeatedly, Christianity does not effectively stop any violence on the
part of the settlers; indeed, as in the case of the Spaniards, it can be used as an excuse for
their harsh treatment of the “heathen” savages. In the above scene, revenge of the Indians
and feared revenge of the settlers’ ghost occur in the same vicinity and highlight how the
violence works both ways and becomes self-perpetuating. While Rowson certainly
writes from a privileged racial position and tends to idealize the Indians and their own
feelings of sympathy, she also uses the gothic in moments such as these in ways different

from other American gothic novelists that portray Indians as satanic or animalistic.13

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Demonizing neither Indians nor colonists by themselves, what Rowson surrounds with
horror is the site where both have clashed violently and failed to meet peacefully. Taken
within a context where Rowson has written of violence suffered across both sides of the
racial divide, where she has included the conflicting voices and narratives of both native
and European, and where each group experiences the other as uncanny at some of the
same places in the novel, this scene provides another example of the novel’s failure to
maintain its fantasy of racial fusion.

Furthermore, the seemingly harmless ghost’s appearance-Rowson does remark
that superstition “pervaded the understandings of almost every class of pe0ple” and was
a sign of being uneducated (150)--marks an even stronger disjunction The ghost’s
appearance plays upon the corporality of settler violence and remembers it through its
very ghostly absence. Like the scene where the Spaniards’ destruction must be erased by
supernatural forces destroying their ships, so, too, does this supernatural occurrence draw
attention to what is hidden or missing. In this case, the reminder of settler warfare is
conjured up only momentarily in the form of a vengeful ghost that is then immediately
dismissed Once again, as in Cora’s introduction to her history, the supernatural
metaphor points to a real harm, that of Indian and settler warfare. The brief glimpse of
unreality in the form of the ghost actually draws more attention to that harm’s absence
from the narrative record by playing out its dismissal. The ghost, which the servant
describes as the embodiment of the settlers’ revenge, is not really there. And yet, that

revenge and its attendant violence is really there and will be throughout the rest of the

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novel as settlers and Indians continue to exact justice from each other. That it is the
settlers who fear the vengeful ghost, not the Indians, further points to the real horror--
white settlers facing their own acts of violence.

A final instance where gothic conventions serve to break apart any hope of the
sympathetic family’s efficacy to create a unified national subject takes place near the end
of the novel during yet another outbreak of violence between Indians and settlers.
Through the bodies of both white settler and Indian, double loyalties lead to confusion of
identity and, with the resulting deaths, point to the failure of the cross-cultural family in
early American settlement. William and Rachel, captured by Indians while young and
raised in the sympathetic Otooganoo’s tribe, assimilate into the family through both love
and education Rachel loves the native Yankoo and William marries Otooganoo’s daughter
Oberea Otooganoo as sachem names William his heir until his grandson comes of age.
Not long after Ottooganoo’s death, William finds himself torn between his two loyalties
as violence breaks out again:

The situation or feelings of William Dudley were at this period by no means

enviable. Ruler over a nation of savages, who by their attachment and fidelity had

conciliated his affection, his principles would by no means suffer him to desert
their cause in the hour of danger; yet remembering that his natural parents were

Europeans, and the tenderness he once experienced for them not being extinct in

his bosom, he felt his heart divided between two separate interests; and if at any

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time a skirmish took place, he would think that, perhaps, amongst the killed or

wounded of the enemy, he might have to lament a father or a brother. (161-2)
Rowson describes the coming war as resulting from white settlers’ injustice, and once
again, she gives voice to the Indian inhabitants. She also describes William’s allegiances to
his tribe and his own anger at the settlers’ robbery, kidnapping, and killing, further
emphasizing his position in between the two races: “Was it in human nature to hear these
injuries tamely? No; they resented them. And even William himself, though his heart
bled at what must be the consequence, could not attempt to repel the spirit of just
vengeance that actuated the minds of all” (160). He himself rides in war against the
settlers. Similarly, his sister is torn between her love for Yankoo and her love for her
father. She asks him, “If at any time your tomahawk should be raised against an ancient
Englishman, pause for a moment, and think perhaps it may be the father of Rachel, and let
the idea disarm your rage” (161). Yankoo replies, “No! not even my own father in such a
cause” (16]). Given the love between Yankoo and Rachel, his vow becomes prophecy
when he does kill her father/his future father in law. Rachel, too, faces the dilemma of
dual sympathies. “The soul of Rachel was equally agitated. Alas! She dared not pray,
for to which party could she wish success? . . . It is anguish only to be felt, it is
impossible to convey the smallest idea of its excruciating tortures to any who have not
experienced the agonizing effects of divided affection” (162).

While all of these characters are bound to each other by affection, love cannot

keep the ties together in the face of the larger violence between the Indians and settlers.

William and Rachel lament how the violence affects both of their families; Yankoo, in
professing loyalty solely to his people’s cause, ends up unable to deny his family ties to
both races and sufiem greatly. Neither the Dudley family nor Otooganoo’s family
frmctions as a closed system, and Rowson manipulates each family’s permeable
boundaries to show the danger of confused racial identity. Loving on both sides of the
racial divide means suffering on both sides when one lives in a mixed family. Characters
such as these who have dual sympathies suffer particularly because their love is inclusive.
Whereas earlier Rowson sets up the mixed family to show how family love among
different cultures leads to virtue and success, here Rowson creates a mixed family to
emphasize the terror of difference, and of the world’s corruption against which family
love is inefi‘ectual.

As in other places in the novel, Rowson uses gothic conventions to surround the
sites of inter-cultural violence. In this case, gothic gore and ghastly horror mark the site
where the two culturally-linked families are ripped apart and reorganized in order to
escape the terrible in-between state that began when William and Rachel were kidnapped
In an attempt to kill a white settler, who happens to be the father of William and Rachel,
Yankoo accidentally kills William who has interposed between the hatchet and his father.
Covered with a torrent of blood issuing fiom William’s wound, “Yankoo recoiled with
horror“, he beheld his ruler, his fiiend, and more than those, the brother of Rachel,
sweltering in gore, wounded even unto death” (162). In trying to kill a settler, one of

another race, he fails to recognize a relative, Rachel’s father. When family bonds exist

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among fluid racial identities, the danger becomes one of not recognizing who belongs to
the family and who does not. This turns out to be the main source of terror in this scene.
Yankoo immediately regrets his action, and Indian and colonist alike pause at the
deathbed of the mangled corpse. Oberea "led her son Reuben (now nearly six years old)
to the bed on which lay the corse of his father, and pointing to the body, pronounced in a
tone deeply mournful, 'Beholdl'" (166). The young child cries at the loss of his father
and, "terrified at his ghastly appearance, clasped his arms round his mother, and hid his
face in her bosom" (166). At the deathbed, both cultures meet in a gothic scene of death,
both cultures mourn, and, metaphorically, both cultures in the person of the half-
Indian/half-white boy Reuben have lost a father. As Reuben and the others dwell there
and watch over the corpse, they also behold the destruction of a reminder of races
blending together, a blending which has by now become terrifying. Once William is
killed, the family reorganizes along racial lines. The deathbed scene of gore marks the end
of racial blending within the family. Yankoo is soon after killed defending William’s
grave. William is removed by death from his dual position between races, and Rachel’s
only motivation for staying in a mixed family, Yankoo, has been removed. The yormg
Reuben’s ascension to the position of sachem is ended by the settlers who massacre his
tribe, effectively removing his ties to his Indian family. He and his mother therefore join
the Dudleys and they all promptly set out for England, where they need not face such
conflicts of racial interest. This scene violently rips apart what most of the novel has

attempted to build: a family and a history where different peoples co-exist peacefully.

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It marks the climax for the interracial family; after this scene, miscegenation no longer
occurs. When Reuben Jr. returns to America, he has the chance to marry the Indian maid
Eumca, who falls in love with him while he is a captive in her father’s tube. In a mirror
reversal of William’s experience, Reuben chooses a white woman over her, emphasizing
the end of the novel’s sentimental fantasy.

The vision that Rowson’s W provides is ultimately a pessimistic
one, one that conjures up a loving family standing as the avatar of New World discovery
and colonization only to have it repudiated by the family’s failure to survive in the face of
larger tensions and violence in the outside world. Gothic conventions eventually take
over the story and, even though the novel ends in a happy marriage, the family history
has endured too many ruptures, terrors, and spectacular moments of gore and violence for
the sentimental closure to be taken as the final word ‘4 This move is typical of many
gothic novels. As Davidson points out, “the Gothic resists ending even as it assumes the
cloak of conventional sentimental closure. But a solemn distribution of rewards and
punishments scarcely brings to life again the innocent dead nor does an appended
Radcliffean explanation of the misestimated dangers undo the real fears that the reader and
protagonist previously endured” (225). The sentimental sands that in the end cover over
W’s gothic moments shift as the reminders of history’s horrors rise to
the surface. Just as the novel posits a unified history with many layers and voices that
nevertheless resist easy combination, so too does the novel create an (inter)national

family made up of the several races and cultures that nevertheless cannot easily blend

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Jr.

 

 

together such that the family can hold its borders or prevent conflict from within.
Examining the gothic effects within W is crucial for an understanding of
this tension, a tension that points to the inefficacy of the sympathetic family as a model

for nationhood.

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Notes to Chapter 3

 

‘ Stern focuses on the gothic presence in sentimental novels and discusses Rowson’s

QhadaneIemale, Hannah Foster’s 111W, William Hill Brown’s Them
Sympathy, and Charles Brockden Brown’s angnd, among other novels.

2 Patricia Parker coins the term in her work “Susanna Haswell Rowson: America’s First
Best-Selling Author. ” For other biographical sources on Rowson see Dorothy Weil, In

We); Doreen Alvarez Snrr “Susanna
Rowson: Feminist and Democrat”, Elias Nason, WW;
and Ellen Brandt, WW

These sources have influenced my discussion of Rowson 5 life.

3 For examples and discussion of some of these figures in Rowson’s works, including
Queen Elizabeth, Anne of Austria, Catherine the Great, and Margaret of Denmark, see
Weil, 27, 58-59. Rowson’s school annually presented exhibitions where the students
shared their various talents and products of their education, including poems, needlework,
and essays. As Parker points out, “the most popular part of the program had become the
‘female biographies,’ in which each student recounted a memorized account of a woman
fiom ancient or modern history” (35). Baym examines female biographies in terms of
millennial and republican rhetoric, focusing on the problem of how to portray powerful
women in a past that was seen as part of the “masculine” past of war and physical
power, inferior to the progress toward “feminine” spiritual power and Enlightenment
reason. One strategy, often seen in textbooks and presentations such as Rowson’s, was
to repeat the same familiar, culturally-favored biographies of women, like those noted
above, who existed “outside” the corruptions of history (214-222).

‘ See Sarah Emily Newton’s “Wise and Foolish Virgins: ‘Usable Fiction’ and the Early
American Conduct Tradition’ ’for an examination of Rowson’ s didactic writings and
conduct fiction. Discussing works such as Hannah Foster’s W (1798) and
Rowson’ 3 WW (1791), she finds that “at the center of
both usable fiction and the seduction novel rs the archetype of the woman who rs tested
and fails; the woman who begins in innocence and ends in experience” (157). At the same
time, these works subvert this idea “Both congruent and paradoxical to this avowed
message are covert messages which reveal women’s ability to generate meaning in their
lives and create their own destiny, or in other words, avow their personhood rather than
their mere instrumentality” (157). Julia Stern, in “Working Through the Frame:
W1: and the Poetics of Maternal Melancholia,” discusses how the narrator
in this novel adopts a motherly role in order to educate and save her “daughters,” young
female readers, from the loss that must follow seduction. Blythe F orcey in “Charlotte
Temple and the End of Epistolarity” notes how the intrusive narrator intervenes and

278

 

guides readers through the potentially corrupting passages and morally damaging letters in
order to prevent misreadings that might inspire young female readers to stray from the
morally upright path.

5 Samuels focuses on portrayals of and rhetoric on the family and family roles as applied
to fictional narratives that portray issues related to national identity. She connects this
discussion to the use of violence, particularly family violence, in early American romances
by authors like Child, Cooper, Sedgwick, and Brown. At times, she does note the
presence of gothic elements in depictions of the family unit in early American romances—
incest, abuse, conflicts among family members during events like the Revolutionary war
or the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, etc.-and applies them to anxieties about changing
power dynamics in the domestic realm and the larger American society. My discussion
of the gothic extends beyond the family and focuses on historiography as a source of
terror in depictions of nation, including but not limited to the family metaphors related to
such depictions. The Columbus family is not a source of gothic horror in itself; rather,
Rowson portrays it as an idealized safeguard against violence and horror fiom the outside
world and larger historical record. Gothic terror results from the family’s failure to
function as a viable metaphor for the nation, a failure due to its very bluning of racial and
national boundaries that are so prominent in the novel. I look at how Rowson utilizes the
family in order to explore the creation of a nation’s history and the political events and
people that make up that history.

6 See David Shields’s W for a discussion of Columbus’ s popularity in
early American writings, particularly poetry. Nina Baym points out portrayals of

Columbus in such works as Eliza Robbins’ s W, Lydia
Slammer" 8 MW and Harriette F annms Reed’s mm
m

7 Christopher Castiglia, for example, argues that the narrative shifts parallel the changing
roles women experienced in the New Republic: “The move from frontier romance to
sentimental novel accurately reflects the experience of many American women, who
witnessed their own transformation in the nation’s perception of the ideal American
women from a brave and industrious fighter for liberty to a frail, overwrought,
housebomd sentimental heroine” (27). Similarly, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg argues that
Rowson’s choice to end the novel in the romance mode reinscnhes racism and women’s
absence; in so doing, Rowson adopts the dominant white-male discourses to authorize her
identity as a novelist (503).

8 That democratic ideals have the capacity to erase difference has been explored by

several other critics as well. Frank Shuffelton in “In Difi‘erent Voices: Gender in the
American Republic of Letters” finds that figming itselfas a republic of letters allowed the

279

 

 

 

 

 

American nation “to embrace all of the contending voices that spoke from different
sections, classes, and ideological positions” (190) and overcome some divisions, such as
by gender. From a more critical standpoint, Stern, examining the heightened emotional
states present in early American fiction, argues that the feminized literature of feeling
“registers the elaborate cost of the Framers’ vision. Such literature suggests that the
foundation of the republic is in fact a crypt, that the nation’s noncitizensnwomen, the
poor, Native Americans, African Americans, and aliens-lie socially dead and inadequately
buried, the casualties of post-Revolutionary political foreclosure” (Plight 2). O’Brien also
notes a drive in early American literature to search for national identity “against besetting
fears that postcolonial America may be fractured by social and regional diversity, and
compromised by slavery and the original expropriation of native lands” (1).

9 Indeed, here as elsewhere, both “good” colonists and treacherous ones are linked
together through women’s words and experiences. For example, facing the abuses the
Castillians perpetrated on her people while she was gone, Orrabella groups all Christians,
even the virtuous Beatina, together and points out their hypocrisy. When Beatina chides
Orrabella for suggesting that her sister Alzira should commit suicide to save her honor,
Orrabella replies, “Does it forbid murder, rapine, fraud, perjury, and oppression. Du
Ponty, I think professes Christianity. Oh! madam! madam! the professors of your
religion must practise themselves what they would teach others, before you can hope to
make sincere converts” (53).

1° Nina Baym also points out that “Christopher Columbus appeared in American
historiography as an exemplary hero; Ferdinand and Isabella (the latter especially) won
praise; but the Spanish Incursion was mainly narrated to contrast Spanish cruelty with
English fairness and altruism in Indian dealings; and to contrast the peaceful, friendly
South American native population with the warlike, treacherous tribes of North America”
(61). I find that Rowson’s novel starts out with this dichotomy, but it also provides
instances where both “good” and “’bad’ colonizers blur together. The violence that
intervenes covers over the fear that the self might be the Other by shifting the focus and
the blame back onto the Spaniards.

” For example, Rowson later matches the Spaniards’ greed with that of the new
American settlers in Arrabella’s and Dudley’s generation by using the gothic metaphor of
a witch She states, “But indolence introduced luxury with her innumerable train of
artificial wants. Though at first repulsed, still would the sorceress return, varying her
shape to gain her favomite point. . . . Alas! the number was but small that escaped the
contagion she spread through all ranks of people, till at length the fascination became
universal. By her magic power she threw a mist over the discerning optics of even the
most rational; they saw not the deformity she concealed under her gorgeous robe, but
blindly worshipped, whilst she led them to the very brink of ruin” (141). This passage

280

 

occurs just before Rowson mentions the fighting and plundering that occurs between
settlers and the Indians “whose territories had been invaded by strangers” (142). The
gothic metaphor of the witch more strongly emphasizes the cause of these skirmishes and
points out that, while in a different guise than seen in Peru, colonial violence still occurs
between settler and native.

‘2 As Louis Gross explains rn his discussion of Brockden Brown in W
W, critics have come to see the horror of the American landscape as one of
the primary themes of American gothic narratives: “One cannot overlook the importance
of the land itself as a stage for the monstrous transformations (of personal and national
identity) these works present The idea of America as a place of rebirth and renewal of
personal identity, while embodying a radical political force often reflected in our
literature (from the Declaration of Independence to Horatio Alger's rags-to—riches stories)
finds its reverse image in the literature of terror” (21).

‘3 Robert Bird in his novel W, for example, portrays Indians as cannibals
(56-7); describes their gleeful sport at burning a white man at the stake (248), and depicts
their terrifying appearances, such as when a savage comes upon the hiding place of
Nathan and his companions and gloats over them: “and as if that spectacle and those
sounds were not enough to chill the heart’s blood of the spectators, there were seen, over
his shoulders, the gleaming eyes, and heard, behind his back, the malign laughter of three
or four equally wild and ferocious companions” (157).

" Other critics of W similarly have discounted the ending’s marriages as
signifying a happy ending. Castiglia has argues that the marriages “signal the failure of the
original spirit of adventure and equality represented by the American wilderness and by
the American rhetoric of democracy and tolerance” (35) as they move closer and closer to
an inequality of the sexes and races.

281

‘-‘

Conclusion

Sophia Lee’s W, Ann Radcliffe’s Wig/jug, and Susanna
Rowson’s W are only three historical gothic novels written in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In both Britain and America, readers with a
taste for history as well as terror had a number of such novels from which to choose. For

example, Sally Sayward Wood’s 1800

 

H t‘ 'LFi' A‘lC' ave .[LIS'I " ' -I' 0 is; 0, r‘ 4.; 11“ -HI 0 1012-
W is set in America and Europe during the Illuminati crisis; Leonora

Sansay Hassal’s 1808 In -
WW explores slave uprising and capture in the island
colonies; Anne Fuller’s 1786 WWW depicts the Barons’

Wars during the reign of Henry III; and GA. Bolen’s 1826 W

We; features historical characters such as Pope Innocent III and Philip de

 

Clairville during the reign of King John. With the larger purpose of calling for further
study of historical gothic novels such as these, “WM

° ‘ gr ! -u- 'u ,s A01! ‘1’: o 'c \‘OV ; an i- ' ‘_l_ (111'! .3 . n arm has
argued that the combination of historical and gothic discourse yields a unique insight into
eighteenth-century historiography, one that looks into the darker side of crafting a
national history. In addition to highlighting moments of cultural clash in a nation’s
history, “gothified histories” reveal problems and an overall uneasiness surrounding
attempts to craft history according to Enlightenment ideals. The fears that one might not

be able to control historical writing and transmission; that history is not really objective

I,

 

but caught up in political power structures; and that history’s horrors rupture linear and
sentimental narratives that attempt to support claims of a nation’s progress and stable
identity all become the focus of the gothic terror that haunts these novels.

In order to understand the significance of gothic discourse in W, Qnstgn
defilgndeymg, and WM. once must first realize that these novels do
indeed contain accurate details of history and demonstrate careful engagement with
Enlightenment historical standards and concerns that were being debated in other forms
of historical discourse. These issues include: the place of the sentimental in historical
writing; the subject matter on which a history ought to focus; the use of classical or
modern methodologies in historical writing; how to address problems caused by the lack
or corruption of historical evidence; and the power dynamics involved in historical
transmission that affect a history’s claims to objectivity. Furthermore, each author
explores a specific aspect of historical knowledge and writing. Lee addresses sentimental
portrayals of important figures like Mary Queen of Scots; Radcliffe engages with amateur
antiquariani sm and historical tourism; and Rowson adopts the configuration of the
Anglo-American nation as family. An important part of the gothic terror in the above
novels stems from the fact that the histories they “gothify” are not irrational or fabulous
histories but ones that could very well appear in mainstream historical discourse. While
different in their inclusion of a significant gothic presence from the more realistic
historical novels of Sir Walter Scott and those that follow him, they also engage directly
with British and American political events and personages and include commentary about
them. Anachronistically applied standards for the historical novel have clouded analysis

of the historical content and political discussions found in gothified histories.

 

Alongside the historical narratives in each novel, the gothic narrative adds fear
and uncanniness to the portrayal of history. In Sophia Lee’s W, the twin
daughters of Mary Queen of Scots discover not only that the history in which they
participate is full of danger and fear, but also that the process of making history is itself
horrifying. Evidence, whether visual, physical, eye-witness or written, escapes the
women’s control, and historical discourse takes on a life of its own in the hands of those,
like Queen Elizabeth, who then use it to imprison, abuse, or otherwise victimize them.
Matilda’s attempts at forwarding a sentimentalized history might gain her the love and
sympathy of those so inclined, but it has no real power to subvert Elizabeth’s monarchy
or even to function effectively as a political tool allowing for the young woman’s identity
to be believed, authenticated, and passed on. Only Ellinor, whose madness frees her from
the victimization the girls experience while trying to “make” history, is able to speak the
real story of their identity and oppression and become an actor in history rather than a
victim of it. A second strand of gothic fear appears alongside the one Ellinor and Matilda
experience: the dominant culture’s terror that history cannot maintain its function of
creating a linear, rational narrative of national unity. In addition to Ellinor’s power to
break apart the history in Digs-neg, conflicting historical evidence and interpretations
throw objectivity into question. Various sites in the novel which Lee surrounds with the
supematural and other gothic conventions remind readers of the very real dangers to
national unity that lurk beneath the surface of this history, including the gloomy recess
with its association with Catholics and the girls’ real threat to the throne beneath their

sentimental guise; and the portrait gallery where a “ghostly” visitation transforms

international conquest into national strife. Mm thus involves the idea of history
with two intertwining strands of gothic horror.

Through her use of antiquarian and gothic conventions, Ann Radcliffe’s Qutgn
MM; similarly shows how history is incomplete, subjective, and vulnerable to
political intervention. The novel, itself a “found manuscript,” parallels its history with
antiquarian discourse and gothic discourse, both of which interrupt the linear history of
King Henry III’s visit to Ardenne. Just as this gothic novel provides political
commentary dressed in thrilling entertainment, so too do the plays and pageants within
the novel challenge the King’s version of the past through diverting their audiences with
terrifying and magical spectacles. Without supematural intervention-linked to haunted
artifacts, rotting bones, and other objects of antiquarian interest~the real truth of history
would not be told. In a novel which blends nationalites and highlights political conflict
within a country rather than against other nations, this gothified history--the manuscript
Willoughton and Simpson find--emphasizes the horror that occurs when a nation cannot
define itself through a history of national unity.

Finally, Susanna Rowson in W crafts a sentimental narrative to
create a representation of nation through the metaphor of an idealized family history that
can include several races, nationalities, and backgrounds. The gothic strand of her novel
breaks this sentimental narrative apart and shows how the ideal cannot survive in the real
world of historical horror. Gothic moments, featuring appearances of monsters, ghosts,
and gory scenes of death and violence, serve to highlight the actual clashes of those
different races and nationalities. In doing so, the gothic conventions contribute to the

novel’s central fear that difference cannot be easily included by the nation as it

285

l ,

. 1711.!

I

 

supposedly has been in the Columbus family. Sometimes it is the gothic aspects within
the novel that tell the real history--the monstrosity of colonization symbolized in Cora’s
vision of a terrifying creature coming to Peru; the ghost at the homestead which frightens
the settlers with their own vengeance against the Indians. Full of the spectacle of gothic
gore and violence, W cannot maintain the sentimental history that it
proffers.

One of the major purposes of W has been to point not just to
the recovery of neglected novels by a few authors, but also to the recovery of a larger
sub-genre of the gothic novel. Because historical gothics use subject matter pertaining to
a figure like King Henry, or Queen Elizabeth, or Columbus in order to do more than
simply idealize chivalric times or provide colorful background scenery, they have much
to offer other studies of historical discourse in fiction. Given the rising interest in reading
gothic novels in terms of how they portray national identity, expanding the gothic canon
to include novels that look directly at the horror of crafting and transmitting a national
history is all the more interesting and fruitful.

A second purpose of this study has been to emphasize women’s historical
participation in the popular form of the gothic novel. By focusing less on whether these
novels are always historically realistic and more on what political and historiographical
issues they do engage with, I find that gothified histories directly refer to forms that
follow methods of Enlightenment historiography. This connection shows the active
participation of the women writers of these gothic novels in larger public questions and
discussions about the role and function of history. It also exemplifies women’s larger

interest and knowledge of history and its transmission. For, education in history is an

important part of each novel as well. In some way, Lee, Radcliffe, and Rowson all argue
for the importance of learning history, particularly for women, and provide some sort of
lesson within the texts of their novels about how to read, react to, and use history. The
form of the historical gothic allows women writers to explore the darker side of history
reading and writing, as well as to include their own political commentary, as a matter of
course. Because it is a popular form, there is more leeway for an author to critique and
destabilize both the process of historiography and the historically famous events and

people that the novel contains.

As seen in Sophia Lee’s Mm, Ann Radcliffe’s WM, and
Susanna Rowson’s W, the historical content and the gothic content of these
novels must be read together in order to more fully understand the role that “gothified
histories” play in late eighteenth-century historiography. While these are indeed gothic
novels complete with supernatural occurrences and terrifying effects, they also begin with
a foundation that has strong roots in the larger Enlightenment historiographical tradition.
Lee, Radcliffe, and Rowson do not craft a completely irrational or unreal history; instead,
they carefully follow methods and styles utilized in non-fictional historical writings of the
eighteenth-century. These novelists explore historiography using the gothic mode, which
is necessarily tied up with fear, uncertainty, and even horror. What results is a very
specific response to Enlightenment approaches to history. As they “gothify” history,
these women writers show how depicting and organizing the past becomes an endeavor
that can be dangerous; history becomes uncanny, unknowable, and impossible to control.

Because of the way in which history is connected to larger definitions of a nation,

historical gothics also destabilize the ideal of a unified national subject. Combining the
two disjointed discourses of the historical and the gothic, gothified histories provide a
unique glimpse into the cultural uneasiness and textual disjointedness produced by

attempts at historical representation.

fr

 

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