Written by Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), this novel appeared in 1790, and is her second published work. I read it because a) I've been interested in Gothic literature since reading The Last September; and b) it's set in Sicily (albeit a highly romanticized, 16th-century version of Sicily).

Radcliffe was one of the most popular writers of her time, but she was a very private person, and we know incredibly little about her. So, when a letter to her mother-in-law came to light, suggesting between the lines that the latter was a bit of a pain, and laying the law down about money, the discovery was greeted with great enthusiasm.


Ann Radcliffe

A Sicilian Romance opens at the castle of Mazzini. We're given this information about the topography: "During the fine evenings of summer, this little party frequently supped in a pavilion, which was built on an eminence in the woods belonging to the castle. From this spot the eye had an almost boundless range of sea and land. It commanded the straits of Messina, with the opposite shores of Calabria, and a great extent of the wild and picturesque scenery of Sicily. Mount Etna, crowned with eternal snows, and shooting from among the clouds, formed a grand and sublime picture in the background of the scene. The city of Palermo was also distinguishable."

At first, I totally pooh-poohed this description. Impossible to see all this at once, I thought. Then we climbed to the top of La Rocca in Cefalu, with its impressive castle ruins and its vast views, and I wondered... We thought we could just see Palermo, and Etna. But Calabria? I don't know... Maybe on a clear day...


No-one is making any claims, but it's interesting that Tracey Madeley Jones also illustrates her post with pictures of the castle at Cefalu...

***

It's a fairly convoluted plot. And everyone is either terribly nice or terribly nasty. There are no half-measures.

So, we have Ferdinand, the fifth marquis of Mazzini. Definitely nasty. His nice first wife, Louisa, we're told, died, leaving him with three children (another Ferdinand, plus Emilia and Julia). The girls are being looked after by the very nice Madame de Menon, a friend of their late mother. The marquis's nasty second wife, Maria, is unfaithful, jealous, and vengeful. So, when Julia and the dashing Count Hippolitus fall in love, they're thwarted by the meanness of Maria (who has herself taken a fancy to Hippolitus), and by the ambition of the marquis (who anticipates significant gain to himself by marrying her to the decidedly nasty Duke de Luovo). When Julia appeals to her father's better nature, she's given an ultimatum: Marry the duke, or be banished from the castle.

Ferdinand, her brother, is surprisingly liberal. He tells Julia: "Believe me, that a choice which involves the happiness or misery of your whole life, ought to be decided only by yourself." He tries to help her to elope with Hippolitus. The count is wounded in the ensuing scrimmage (mortally, we're given to believe). But Julia manages to flee, so now she's really on the run.

And on the run she stays, throughout most of the book, as both her father and her despised suitor (slow to take the hint) attempt to track her down, and bend her to their will. She's helped by various people at different stages: Madame de Menon, her brother, and the -- not dead, hah, we thought as much -- Hippolitus.

She's also helped -- but in a very ambivalent way -- by the Abate of the convent where she and Madame take refuge for a while. He's an interesting, if again somewhat loathsome, character. Another selfish and vain man, who's very conscious of what is due to him, and quick to take offence, he ends up, not surprisingly, with his ego in a stand-off with that of the marquis. Eventually, the Abate promises Julia protection -- but only if she renounces the world, and becomes a nun. Otherwise, he will deliver her to her father and the Duke de Luovo.

The theme of male domination is therefore very present throughout this book, and exerting power over Julia becomes the driving force of all the narrative's nasty men.

There is a happy ending, though. Hippolitus rescues Julia from the banditti among whom she has fallen, and they eventually discover Julia's mother, who is still alive, but has been imprisoned for years in the abandoned bit of the castle.


A sunnier prison than poor Louisa's...

With that revelation, we know that the marquis's second marriage, to Maria, was bigamous... And there's now the danger that the marquis, to avoid this charge, will do away with his first wife once and for all. And he does make a spirited attempt at this -- but is thwarted.

Meanwhile, the marquis has been informed of Maria's infidelity. He challenges her, whereupon she poisons him, and commits suicide. Never a dull moment...

Ferdinand is reunited with his sisters, his mother, Hippolitus, and Madame de Menon, and they all go off to live in Naples. The castle of Mazzini is abandoned.

Phew...

Despite the constant coercive presence of men, the women are definitely not shrinking violets. Admittedly, they faint at regular intervals, but Julia is definitely not just going to passively give in to male tyranny, and she and Madame brave all sorts of hardships and dangers in their bid for freedom. Equally, while Maria's conduct is not exactly laudable, she's a powerful character, very much tackling the world on her own terms.



***

I'm still learning about the constituent parts of Gothic fiction, but this article by John Bowen highlights a number of features that apply to A Sicilian Romance. Often, he notes, the action takes place "in distant, marginal, mysterious southern Europe". Tick. Then there's the motif of power: "The Gothic world is fascinated by violent differences in power, and its stories are full of constraint, entrapment and forced actions. Scenes of extreme threat and isolation -- either physical or psychological -- are always happening or about to happen." Again, in this novel, we have this in spades. Additionally, there's frequently the suggestion of a supernatural presence: "[Gothic fiction] seeks to create in our minds the possibility that there may be things beyond human power, reason and knowledge. But that possibility is constantly accompanied by uncertainty." In A Sicilian Romance, there are initially a lot of suggestions of ghostly presence, bearing out Bowen's comment that Gothic intends "to shock us out of the limits of our everyday lives with the possibility of things beyond reason and explanation". But in this story, all the terrifying manifestations end up having a rational explanation

More generally, the background to this story seems replete with Gothic tropes:

-- A castle, with dungeons and disused bits that seem to be haunted; crumbling staircases; underground passages; concealed doors; locked doors;
-- Convents (always gloomy and desolate);
-- Wild, romantic scenery, with deep forests and towering mountains;
-- Tempests, peals of thunder, shipwrecks, and storm-swept, rocky shores;
-- Caverns;
-- Bandits' lairs, with perhaps the creepiest of scenes: "A receptacle for the murdered bodies of the unfortunate people who had fallen into the hands of the banditti".



Tracey Madeley Jones offers some historical context for the whole gothic movement: "A familiar nostalgia was attached to home and hearth prior to the industrial and French revolutions. Women were removed from the labour market and confined to the home with no other tasks than raising children. Anxiety arose as women realised how dependent they were on the goodwill of their husbands. The gothic created a fear of the unknown, foreign, catholic and primitive to reflect the cultural anxiety being created through change. It was up to the hero and heroine to create a new bourgeois world free from the trappings of the past, the aristocracy and the church. The heroine suffers throughout this book, only becoming a wife after a struggle. This conforms to the sentimental idea of virtue under siege whilst the novel goes on to incorporate enlightenment rationalism and the triumph of reason over superstition. Radcliffe developed what Ellen Moers termed ‘female gothic’ where the heroine took centre stage."

As another blogger points out, "Radcliffe gave her readers what they wanted. And what she gave them, superficially or not, was what they needed... Men and women of all ages read her books, but she was marketed at what would now be considered the chick-lit or Young Adult demographics... The more I learn about the constricted lives nearly all of Radcliffe’s young readers would have led, the less I want to begrudge them their adventures by proxy through her indomitable (if over-virtuous) heroines... On a more serious note, there is a theory that such literature will serve to further enforce, rather than subvert societal conventions. All of these novels take place in exotic locations; it’s clear such behaviour wouldn’t work in contemporary England. Maybe the purpose of these novels is to allow the readers to live out their fantasies safely, a bit like watching violent films rather going out and killing people. Contemporary critics were down on her, but Radcliffe did not precipitate a Feminist revolution. Girls read novels, dreamed of being heroines, then stayed at home as spinsters or married young to escape their parents just as they had been doing before. Maybe by shutting off such exciting women between the pages of novels actually inhibited their appearance on the world stage..."

***

All in all, it's a creaky plot, with more surprises and coincidences and strokes of luck than modern audiences are comfortable with. But it's undeniably gripping, as Julia, time after time, runs into a fresh episode of looming danger. And it gives us plenty to think about.