Ann Radcliffe, Gothic Great Enchantress, Part 1

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy ve Wilson. Tracy Ann Radcliffe has been on my list for a long time, I know, particularly for an October subject. So hooray, we're into the best season. Because she is considered the sort of the queen of the Gothic novel, Thomas de Quincy called her the Great Enchantress. She's been cited as an inspiration and influence for the likes of Mary Shelley and even Ed Grellan Poe. She was seriously famous in her lifetime, but she preferred a quiet life out of the spotlight, and she doesn't get as much attention as some other authors that kind of fall in that space of spooky or eerie fiction. But as I dug into her story, it also became apparent that it was a little bit tricky because there are a lot of places you look that will we don't know anything about her. That's not true, but there have only been a few modern biographies of her that really dig into the details of her life, and it's actually a pretty interesting life, particularly because her reclusive nature led a lot of people to speculate wildly about the details of her life, and sometimes all of that really upset her. So today not only are we covering her, but I feel like she's one of those people that's probably due for a two parter. This whole week, it's Anne Radcliffe Week. In today's episode, we're going to talk about her early life and her marriage, and her years actively publishing her work because it's a pretty short timeframe. Next time, we're going to talk about her retirement and her death and the ways that historians and biographers are still piecing together details about her. So. Anne Ward was born July ninth, seventeen sixty five or in the Holborn district of London, England. Later in her life she would cite a book that was published the same year she was born as one of her main influences. That was Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto. Her family was relatively comfortable financially. Her father was a haberdasher named William Ward. She was named after her mother, Anne Oates. Oates was connected to King George the Second through her uncle William Sheesldon, who was a king's physician. Ann's mother was also connected to a number of other high society people through the family, although the Wards lived a lot more modestly than most of those other connections. When Anne was still young, sometime before the end of seventeen seventy two, the family moved from London to Bath. There, William Ward managed a china shop that featured Wedgwood, and the Wedgwood Company had an ownership interest in the shop. We don't really know a whole lot about Ann's childhood or early a day adulthood. We do know that she was well read. She was said to have been so smart and charming that members of the family who were higher up the social letter than her parents often invited her to spend time with them. So she probably met quite a few interesting people at a young age, although we'll talk about the fact that she was perhaps charming to people she could open up with, but she was overall very, very shy. This charm and delight was particularly the case when she stayed at her uncle, mister Bentley's house, and this actually ties back to the Wedgwood involvement in her father's career, because her uncle Bentley worked with Wedgwood. Biographer Richter Norton makes the case that Anne may have actually never returned to her parents' home and may have actually stayed with her uncle long term. We know that her uncle had an assortment of interesting friends who may have made an impression on young Anne and influenced her later work, including separatist theologian Joseph Priestley, who was featured in our recent episode on carbonation. As for Anne herself, she's been described as short in stature and very, very pretty. Her personality was marked by shyness from the beginning, and that would continue to be the case for her whole life. She's said to have not even been comfortable being called an author or talking about her work publicly. One thing that may have heavily influenced that work is the degree of formality that she was exposed to as a guest in the homes of relatives and family friends who are a lot older. She's almost always described as really struggling in social situations. She was a bookish child. She read a lot, and it seems like a lot of her knowledge of the world came from her reading rather than formal instruction. In seventeen eighty seven, Anne married William Radcliffe in Bath. The couple lived in London after the wedding. William had initially intended to be a lawyer, and he had studied at Oxford, but he became a journalist when he became editor of The Gazetteer and then part owner of the paper, The English Chronicle, at which point he also assumed editorial duties for that. As his work kept him away from home, Anne began to use her time alone to write, and is said to have read her work of the day to William each evening. From the start, she wrote things that elicited the reader's fear. In a biographical memoir written after her passing, it was said that quote so far was she from being subjected to her own terrors, that she often laughingly presented to mister Radcliffe chapters which he could not read without shuddering. Anne and William did not have children, and they seem to have been very much in love. Two years after Anne and William got married, she published her first novel, which she did anonymously. That book was The Castles of Athlen and Dunbane. It was really not a critical success, but it does have a lot of the characteristics that would become hallmarks of her work. It opens with two warring Scottish claims associated with the castles that are named in the title, and there's a woman who has been widowed by the ongoing conflict and takes her revenge and then retreats to a quiet life to raise her two children. The book then picks up years later when the kids are young adults, and it follows their exploits which intertwine with the stories of the two clans. There are a lot of story points that would seem pretty tropy now, like the child believed to be dead but actually alive who's reunited with their family as an adult, and star crossed lovers from enemy families, the discovery of long term captives within castles, complicated lines of title and twists of inheritance, and a happy ending. There are also a lot of flashes of lightning and decaying structures, things that really evoke a mood of spookiness in their descriptions and set the scene for this Gothic romance. It also features one of the things that came to be read clear signature style of suspense and terror, so some suggesting that something bad is about to happen, only to have it be a benign or beneficial thing. For example, in this first book, The Angenue, Mary is pursued in the woods, and there's a passage that reads, quote the clattering of hoofs advanced in the breeze. Her heart misgave her, and she quickened her pace. Her fears were soon justified. She looked back and beheld three horsemen, armed and disguised, advancing with speed of pursuit. Almost fainting, she flew on the wings of terror. All her efforts were in vain. The villains came up, one seized her horse, the others fell upon her. Two attendants, so Mary faints at this point. There's also a lot of fainting in these books. She faints at this point, and she was vaguely aware that she was being carried through the woods. But then when she regains consciousness, she realized that the people who had seized her were in fact friends. Another key part of her writing from the very beginning was detailed descriptions of lance and settings that created a really ominous or spooky mood. An observation of the landscape is often part of the character's psychological development. In a paper written for the Schottenhouse Library in twenty twelve. Writer Ruth Facer noted, quote Landscape is always more than a backdrop to her novels. It is a device through which we come to know her characters and through which Radcliffe outlines her theories of the sublime and the picturesque. Anne considered this first novel and all of her books to be romances. Her second book, also published anonymously, came out just a year after her first. This one was titled a Sicilian Romance, and it once again features a woman from whom choices or property have been taken away. In this case, the heroine is a woman named Julia, whose marriage has been arranged by her father, the Marquis of Mazzini. He is not a sympathetic character at all, and the reader follows Julia's search for her lost mother and her love of a man who is not her fiance as the plot unfolds, and it echoes a lot of the same ideas as her first novel, and those ideas that further developed her writing. It also was not especially well received. For example, a big issue was that Anne had never visited Scotland, which figured in her first book, or Italy, which figured in her second, So her descriptions and details about these places, which were often just wrong, drew a lot of criticism. Coming up, we'll talk about Radcliffe's third novel, but first we will pause for a sponsor break. Anne's third novel was The Romance of the Forest. The plot of this book, which is set in France, involves a young woman, Adeline, with a mysterious past, who ends up in the care of a couple on the run from their debt. If these are starting to sound like they all have really complicated, multi layered plots, that is correct. One of the main through lines of the book is an examination of morality and hedonism and what it means to be a refined person. The villain of the book, for example, the Marquis de Monte pontificates with the following ideology quote, nature uncontaminated by false refinement, everywhere acts alike in the great occurrences of life. It is the first proof of a superior mind to liberate itself from prejudices of country or of education. There are people of minds so weak as to shrink from the acts they have been accustomed to hold wrong. However advantageous, they never suffer themselves to be guided by circumstances, but fix for life upon a certain standard from which they will on no account depart. Self preservation is the great law of nature. When a reptile hurts us, or an animal of prey threatens us, we think no further, but endeavor to annihilate it. When my life, or what may be essential to my life, requires the sacrifice of another, or even if some passion wholly unconquerable requires it, I should be a madman to hesitate. Radcliffe had never been to France either, so for her descriptions of these settings, she used paintings by Salvador Rosa and Claude Lorraine as reference. This really seems to have helped stave off some of the critique of her earlier work that hadn't been maybe as accurate. The Romance of the Forest was a huge hit. Initially, it had been published anonymously, like Radcliffe's first two books, but when it came time for the second printing, Anne's name was included as the author. Radcliffe's first three novels have in common a young character who might be kind of a self insert for Anne herself. They also have a sense of being very proper and shy, but also, they all get happy finales to their stories. Yeah, we're not doing a ton of literary analysis in these two episodes. I can certainly throw you to people in the reference list to a ton of it, but it's worth noting that she is she does seem to be like making herself part of the stories. She followed up those first three with Mysteries of Udolpho, which was released in seventeen ninety four, and it's very similar in theme and plot to her previous work. Once again, it features a young woman protagonist, this time Emily Saint Aubert, who is orphaned and deals with mistreatment for the people around her. This particular book involves what is a seemingly haunted castle. That's the Udolpho of the title. So the word seemingly when we talk about that Hana castle, is very important here because this book is really where she comes to full force with another characteristic of her writing. Her work in the supernatural and terror is grounded in reality, meaning that things will seem as though they are haunted or perhaps not even of this realm, but they always end up with a rational explanation. Anne is often credited with creating the style technique that's called supernatural explained for example, in the Mysteries of Udolpho, the character of Emily is walking through this very frightening castle which has a great many pieces of art, and she experiences something that terrifies her. After she gives in to the temptation to look at exactly the thing she is so afraid of. That's a very large frame that's covered with a black veil. Radcliffe writes of this moment before the veil is lifted, quote, as she passed through the chambers that led to this, she found herself somewhat agitated. Its connection with the late lady of the castle and the conversation of Annette, together with the circumstance of the veil, throwing a mystery over the subject that excited a faint degree of terror. But a terror of this nature, as it occupies and expands the mind and elevates it to a high expectation, is purely sublime. Leads us by a kind of fascination to seek even the object from which we appear to shrink. So when Emily lifts this veil, she sees so much more than she anticipated. It is not an artwork at all. The frame is actually an opening to another room. But guess what, we the reader do not know what she sees. Emily falls to the floor she faints. This scene takes place a little over a third of the way through the book, and it is not until the end of the book, as all of the plot lines are resolving, that we learn what she beheld. This is how it's written. Of quote. It may be remembered that in a chamber of Udolpho hung a black veil, whose singular situation had excited Emily's curiosity, and which afterwards disclosed an object that had overwhelmed her with horror, for onlifting it, there appeared, instead of the picture she expected, within a recess of the wall, a human figure of ghastly paleness, stretched at it ti length, and dressed in the habiliments of the grave. What added to the horror of the spectacle was that the face appeared partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which were visible on the features and hands. On such an object, it will be readily believed that no person could endure to look twice. Emily, it may be recollected, had after the first glance, let the veil drop, and her terror had prevented her from ever after provoking a renewal of such suffering as she had then experienced. Had she dared to look again, her delusion and her fears would have vanished together, and she would have perceived that the figure before her was not human but formed of wax. So this character of Emily had spent the whole book believing that Signor Montoni, who lived in the castle, had murdered his wife and then concealed her body in this recessed area. The reason that the odd wax figurine is actually what's there has its own odd story woven into the text quote. The history of it is somewhat extraordinary, though not without example. In the records of that fierce severity which Monkish superstition has sometimes inflicted on mankind, a member of the House of Udolpho, having committed some offense against the prerogative of the Church, had been condemned to the penance of contemplating during certain hours of the day a waxen image made to resemble a human body in the state to which it is reduced after death. This penance, serving as a memento of the condition which he must himself arrive, had been designed to reprove the pride of the Marquis of Udolpho, which had formerly so much exasperated that of the Romish Church. And he had not only superstitiously observed this penance himself, which he had believed was to obtain a pardon for all his sins, but had made it a condition and his will that his descendants should preserve the image on pain of forfeiting to the Church a certain part of his domain, so they also might profit by the humiliating moral it conveyed. The figure therefore had been suffered to retain its station in the wall of the chamber, but his descendants excused themselves from observing the penance to which he had been enjoined. So, I mean, this is maybe a weird thing to do, but it's not supernatural. Yeah, we keep a wax figure in the adjoining wall to remind us that death is coming. Yeah, but we keep it covered up because we didn't actually get that penance to have to go look at it. Yeah, the church, the Church made us do it. This also brings up that a lot of ants writing is considered to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church. This is kind of one of them. Just FYI. This book was very popular. Radcliffe ultimately sold the copyright for it for five hundred pounds. That was an immense sum for a writer at the time. For comparison, other novelists that I read about were frequently getting ten pounds for the rights to their books. So this number was so outrageous for many people to consider that bets were being placed by people that were connected to publishing. As to whether it had been reported correctly or not, Sir Walter Scott later wrote of the publication of this book, quote, it often happens that a writer's previous reputation proves the greatest enemy, which, in a second attempt upon public favor he has to encounter. Exaggerated expectations are excited and circulated, and criticism, which had been seduced into former approbation by the pleasure of surprise, now stands awakened and alert to pounce upon every failing missus. Radcliffe's popularity, however, stood the test and was heightened rather than diminished by the mysteries of Udolpho. It had become apparent that while most Gothic fiction and romance was considered to have a specific audience, that being women, that Anne's work had gained a wider appeal. In his biography of Radcliffe, historian Richter Norton notes that often fiction was purchased by ladies of a certain station, and then those books would be passed down to women on their staff to read, and thus Anne gained this devoted following. But in a biography written in eighteen twenty six, there is mention of the headmaster of the Winchester School, doctor Joseph Wharton, telling Anne's publisher, that he had stumbled across the book and had read it in an evening because he simply couldn't put it down. So part of the reason her copyright was so valuable and worth so much money was that her work was crossing through a lot of the usual audience boundaries that fiction and particuarly romantic fiction was partitioned by. There is also a unique lack of change in Anne's lifestyle as she gained fame. She easily could have started to move within high society circles as a celebrity, but she really didn't. In a likely overdramatized assessment of the situation, one biographer wrote, quote, the very thought of appearing in person as the author of her romances, shocked the delicacy of her mind to the publication of her work. She was constrained by the force of her own genius, but nothing could tempt her to publish herself or to sink for a moment the gentlewoman in the novelist. She felt also a distaste to the increasing familiarity of modern manners to which she had been unaccustomed in her youth, and though remarkable, free and cheerful with her relatives and intimate friends, she preferred the more formal politeness of the old school among strangers. So that's taken from a biography that was written shortly after her death, probably informed by consultation with her husband. But it's worth noting that for a thing not written by Anne herself, it makes all lot of declarative statements about her feelings. Yeah, we'll talk more about that biography. We're about to get to Anne's one and only time traveling abroad, and before we get into that, we will hear from the sponsors that keep the show going. In seventeen ninety four, at the age of thirty, and left England for the first time in her life. Even though she had written all of her stories in foreign locales. She had never traveled abroad herself, but that year she went to Holland in Germany. In seventeen ninety five, a book about her adventures was published, titled A Journey Made in the Summer of seventeen ninety four through Holland and the Western frontier of Germany, with a return down the Rhine, to which are added observations during a tour to the lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland and Cumberland in two volumes. The opening of the book is not about the traveling at all, but about her husband, William quote the author begs leave to observe an explanation of the use made of the plural term in the following pages, that her journey having been performed in the company of her nearest relative and friend, the account of it has been written so much from their mutual observation that there would be a deception in permitting the books to appear without some acknowledgment which may distinguish it from works entirely her own. The title page would therefore have contained the joint names of her husband and herself if this mode of appearing before the public. Besides being thought by that relative a greater acknowledgment than was due. His share of the work had not seemed liable to the imputation of a design to attract attention by extraordinary novelty. It is, however, necessary to her own satisfaction, that some notice should be taken of this. Assis stints, sort of sweet. My publisher doesn't want me to put my husband's name on the book, but he totally helped you guys. It's really really sweet. In seventeen ninety seven, Radcliffe released the last work of fiction to be published in her lifetime. That was a book called The Italian. There is a posthumous book that we will talk about a little bit later. The tall, thin monk in the book, named Scadoni, is a representation of the Inquisition. He is the villain of the piece. The hero is a man named Vivaldi who intends to marry a woman his family does not approve of. Scadoni, and Vivaldi's mother planned to kidnap Vivaldi and lock him away to keep him from his love Elena. Like her previous book, anseld the copyright for The Italian, this time for eight hundred pounds. Sir Walter Scott wrote of this effort, quote, here too, the author had, with much judgment, taken such a difference, that, while employing her own particular talent and painting in the style of which she may be considered the inventor, she cannot be charged with repeating or copying herself. She selected the new and powerful machinery afforded her by the Popish religion, which established in its paramount superiority, and thereby had at her disposal merks, spies, dungeons, the mute obedience of the bigot, the dark and dominating spirit of the crafty priest, all the thunders of the Vatican, and all the terrors of the Inquisition. He also leveled criticism at the work, writing quote, on reconsidering the narrative, we indeed discover that many of the incidents are imperfectly explained, and that we can distinguish points upon which the authoress had doubtless intended to lay the foundation of something which she afterwards forgot or omitted. Though she largely stopped writing fiction after the release of The Italian Radcliffe continued to write throughout her life, turning largely to poetry. She had been so successful as a writer that it seemed surprising to her audience that she just stopped publishing. But Anne did that thing that so many of us talk about and never actually get to do. She made enough money to live comfortably, and then she also inherited a little bit of money, and then she used her time to travel around Britain with her husband and their dog Chance. She loved music, She attended the opera regularly. She just lived what sounds like a pretty great life of retirement. But there are many angles and theories about why she stopped publishing, both during her time and in more modern looks at her life. We will talk about those and a distressing event that came to her attention after she had retired. Next time done, Dun Dunn. I have a very fun email that also comes with a personal story afterwards. Because the email is great and it reminded me of something and then I couldn't stop laughing. This is from our listener, Kate and the absolutely Gorgeous Coco. Kate writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I'm catching up on episodes and just listen to the one on Sunscreen. My family spends lots of time outdoors and we all love upf clothing as added protection when we inevitably forget to reapply our sunscreen. Animals included. My horse, Coco is a Pinto with very sensitive pink skin under all her white hair. I thought you might get a giggle from these photos of her decked out in her upf sheet and mass to protect from sunburn and flies with her mule buddies Molly and Clover. The muzzle over Coco's nose is to limit the amount of grass she can eat, as she also has a tendency to get a bit chunky. Altogether, it looks like she's ready for a spacewalk or something. On another subject, I meant to write about ages ago milkweed. I love gardening and supporting pollinators, but urged caution. With spreading milk weed seeds around, it's often fatal to horses. As little as zero points zero zero five percent body weight consumption considered a toxic dose. Horses eat about two percent of their bodyweight a day. For reference, we battle many toxic plants in our pastures, milkweed and other podcast subject whilst snakeroot among them. Thanks for all the entertaining and informative episodes they make Farm chores much more enjoyable. Katie and Coco. Okay, Coco's the cutest thing on the planet. I saw this email, I was so excited. I love it. I did not know that about milkweed at all, so I'm super glad. She included that you may recall when we talked about butterflies, we had suggested that milkweed will help with their habitats. So if you do plant milkweed, be careful and try to keep it places where a horse would not be. Ours is in a like a big garden tub in the on the deck, so I don't think a horse would get up there. If it did, there are other problems going on. But this is why this made me laugh so hard. And it's a personal story that has nothing to do with this show, but it's so funny that I felt like I should share it. So we used to have a we have talked about on the show many times, mister Burns, who was a Devin Rex, which means he has short, curly hair and he has he had coat break on his tummy, so his tummy was pretty much just his bald skin. And I also used to write trying to think of the most careful way I can ward all of this so no one gets mad at me. I used to write sewing blogs for a big company like Little how To's, and one of the ones that I wrote was a little T shirt you could make for a cat, because I had made a T shirt for mister Burns which was very cute and he loved it. And I got so much hate mail from that blog because people told me I was abusing my cat and it cracked me up because I eventually had to post on like that company's social media, mister Burns gets sunburns on his tell me he actually needs to wear some club right, But everyone thought I was a horrible animal abuser. So listen. The internet is full of people who want to tell you what to do and be mad at you. But what I want to tell you what to do is keep loving Cocos a cute yeah, ever, very cute. And I'm so thankful that you know she has a great life and is being incredibly well caredful obviously, so Cocoa, you sweet baby. And you know some animals get sunburns. They I don't think people think about that very often, Like we think animals are natural creatures that live in nature. They have all their stuff sorted out by evolution. No, not necessarily. There are animals that can get sunburns and all kinds of stuff. I had the cat that I grew up with, who was an outdoor cat, which is not something I would do now, got a sunburn on her nose and U It was actually pretty scary because we didn't really know what was happening at first. It was like she kept re irritating it. So yeah, yeah, mister burns indoor only. But he would lie on his back. He really loved to be hot, and he would lie on his back with his legs splayed out, with his tummy exposed and the sun the sun in front of what was in our old apartment, a sliding glass door that did not really have like a UV coating on it, And he got sunburn once, and I was like, okay, we got to address this problem. There are lots of breeds of cats that have low coat or our hairless often have to deal with sun protection. So stephoy ie. If you see an animal in clothes, it doesn't necessarily mean that their person is abusing them. It's also just fine. In general. I wish we as a society would like pull back on this practice that I feel like has has really spread through social media of always making the least like, the least generous, most critical interpretation of every conceivable thing. Yes, I would like it if we as a society did not do that anymore and instead maybe extended people that would not even the benefit of the doubt, like you just don't even need to go scream at that stranger on the internet about that shirt that they made. How will they not know? And that I know better than everyone if I don't yell at them online. Anyway, this turned into a PSA you may not have been expecting at the end of Anne Radcliffe, but here we are. If you would like to write to us, maybe tell me I abused mister Burns by putting a T shirt on him. Listen, that thing was black, it had pink stars. He felt very pretty. You could do that as at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. 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