THE GOTHIC NOVEL
55
IV
Like all gothic romance, the
Mysteries
is projected into the past.
It
lacks the antiquarian mechanics of Scott's novels, though Scott
exhibits the same sort of ambivalence that appears in Mrs. Radcliffe–
writing upon different scales or levels of value, chronologically.
Aesthetically, the level of the novel is that of the past (sixteenth–
century "mediaeval"), whereas the ethical level is that of
1794.
Prudential motives are transposed into a gothic
mise en scene.
As
a
historical novel the
Mysteries
cannot be taken seriously on any count.
But we are not concerned with its failure as a historical novel. Socially
this ambivalence is testimony of the alienation. of the romantic artist.
Mrs. Radcliffe, evidently unable to generate aesthetic values from her
bourgeois environment, is forced to undertake what Ruskin or Carlyle
or Morris undertook, to seek aesthetic gratification in the mediaeval,
all
the while maintaining, in whole or in part, prudential-acquisitive
ethical standards. One aspect of this alienation is the inhibited or even
feudal socialism of Ruskin and Carlyle, by which bourgeois social
arrangements are modified into picturesque forms such as mediaeval
guilds. A fissure opens between ethical and aesthetic-emotional values.
The same dilemma plagues Catholic-Communists and the hangers-on
of neo-Thornicsm, who are at pains to adjust thirteenth-century reli–
gious practice to twentieth-century pragmatism. (A.
I.
Tiumeniev
has commented upon this dilemma in his essay on "Marxism and
Bourgeois Historical Science"). Because the
Mysteries,
even with its
barbarous sham mediaevalism of Udolpho, does not so fully exploit
the past as some of Mrs. Radcliffe's other novels, such as
The Italian,
the point can be more clearly supported elsewhere in her work.
Associated with this chronological "fault" is Mrs. Radcliffe's /
amusing projection of British protestant, rationalist, bourgeois reli- 1
gious conviction into the atmosphere of mediaeval Qatholicism. Nearly/
all her novels pass double judgment upon the conventual institutions
so essential to the plots. Religiously Mrs. Radcliffe has no illusions
about them: they are outmoded, benighted, and often wicked estab–
lishments that betoken superstition and popery. Emily's friend Blanche
exclaims, "Who could first invent convents? and who could first
persuade people to go into them? and to make religion a pretence,
too, where all that should inspire it is shut out! God is best pleased
with the homage of a grateful heart; and when we view his glories,
we feel most grateful." So much for mediaeval asceticism. Aestheti–
cally the convent or monastery may represent quite different values:
