Friday, January 1, 2010

Enter Udolpho

Okay, I have been maintaining that Austen's point is not to burlesque Udolpho. That raises an obvious question, what is she doing with Udolpho in this book. I cannot deny that it plays a very important part in the story.

It makes its first appearance in Chapter six of book one and we also learn that Catherine has never before read Ann Radcliffe. Catherine has just hit the section where Emily is about to discover what is behind the black veil.

A brief digression, veils and veiling are recurring themes in all of Radcliffe's books. What turns out to be behind the black veil is, well, it is the explanation to a mystery. But while Catherine might worry about that, Isabella manages to slip a few mysteries of her own into the conversation and poor Catherine misses them all. Mysteries that, if she had noted them, would have enabled Catherine to deal better with upcoming real life challenges.

The funny thing about this is that this technique is a favourite trick of Radcliffe's. Radcliffe loves to have some peasant show up and offer to tell a story about something only to have the hero be preoccupied with concerns of his own and not be interested or start asking questions that distract the storyteller from his purpose. Later we figure out that if the hero had just shut up and listened, all would have been made clear.

Austen is doing more than just borrowing Radcliffe's technique, she is making a deeper point about sensibility and I'll come back to that later.

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