The English Romantic Catholic Tradition

I've been thinking about where to go with blogging next and, by coincidence, reading The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, which is pretty much the perfect thing to read if you are trying to put off thinking about more serious issues.

The Castle came along with Christmas. I was given an e-Reader (a wondrous thing) and it came with 100 books prepackaged. Many of these were selected for the very good reason that they are in the public domain, and thus The Castle of Otranto.

I'd never read it. I'd heard of it because it, along with Ann Radcliffe, was introduced as background in English literature courses I took a long time ago. None of my professors thought these things worth reading. The woman who taught me, who now lives up the street from me, dismissed Gothic literature as stuff for empty-headed 18th century girls. Another professor who taught me gave the impression that classic Gothic novels were just like the stuff you find the in Fantasy Literature section of bookstores today.

It was only last year that I read Ann Radcliffe for the first time and only this Christmas that I read The Castle of Otranto for the first time. It's great stuff.

There is not a lot of characterization in these novels. Some might argue that they are, therefore, not really novels but romances. That's fine with me. That they are very entertaining is all I'd claim.

Two things about them jump out at me. The first is the very heavy debt to Shakespeare. I know, I know, serious readers will say, "This is nothing like Shakespeare," meaning by that that it is not nearly as great. And that is fine but consider the famous comparison of classic French cooking and Big Macs. In classic French cooking it is not the meat that gives a dish its distinction so much as the sauce that goes with it and in a Big Mac ... I'm sure you can figure the rest out.

These writers also tell stories that feel like told stories just as Shakespeare does. It isn't hard to imagine how Shakespeare might have treated them.

This is armchair tourism literature. Like Shakespeare, neither Walpole nor Radcliffe had seen the foreign places they right about. Radcliffe obviously spent a certain amount of time with guidebooks creating background but background is all it is. All her scenes could take place on a stage with a painted background. Or you could leave the background out as Walpole does; the settings for Otranto are "a castle", "a monastery", "some caves" and various "private chambers" within the castle. And that is all there is. When reading this, you imagine people with wooden swords standing on a  stage acting out parts.

The other thing that jumps out at you when you read these stories is the Catholicism. It jumped out at first generation readers too. It is partly a real Catholicism but also partly an imagined one. In theory these writers, especially Radcliffe, are giving us a critique of Catholicism and the presentation is not intended to be charitable.

In one of history's many ironies, the effect was quite the opposite for many because the caricature of Catholicism that was presented, probably precisely because it was a caricature, proved to be liberating for many.

We do this all the time if you think about it. Cultural caricatures are often demeaning for the people who are, in theory anyway, targeted by the caricature. But often these caricatures are just as much, if not more, about wish-fulfillment fantasy for the people promoting them.

Modern soul and dance music as well as Japanese Anime cartoons, for example, trade in racial and sexual stereotypes that are often enthusiastically embraced by young black men and young Japanese women. Pay attention to both sets of stereotypes and you can see what young white women and men wish there partners were like.

You may say, but these things are an exaggerated cartoon and not real life at all! And you are right but that is precisely what makes it safe for those young women who listen soul singers exalt a very muscular, dominant forceful idea of male sexuality. But don't kid yourself, if the men in their own lives could be more like that they wouldn't say no. Likewise the image of womanhood you find, for example, in Anime is not one that most men would say no to; that is to say very feminine and even girly and dressed in a very neat, feminine and erotically elaborate fashion. Again, we have all been taught that we aren't allowed to ask for this sort of thing so we don't ask (most of us anyway). But if the gift were offered, it would not been turned down by many.

The Catholicism you find in English Romanticism beginning with the Gothic novels is often like that. It gives in to the sensually appealing aspects of Catholicism in a "safe" way.

As it turned out, not as safe as was imagined. Anyway, as the year starts off that is where my interest will be. It's something that has always fascinated me and a natural follow-up to Brideshead Revisited.

What to make of the end

The part of Book 2 Chapters 5 to 9 is unlike anything else in the book and it isn't at all clear what they have to do with the rest of it. The temptation is to say it's simply a burlesque of Radcliffe but the rest of the book doesn't do much burlesquing of Radcliffe: only these four chapters do. What is Jane Austen up to here?

The question, "What is she trying to do?" is so tempting but I think wrong. I had a English professor years ago who started our class by saying that anyone who wrote a sentence along the lines of "Shakespeare [or other famous] writer is trying to ..." in an essay or answer to an exam question would be summarily failed. It's a good rule of thumb. It does not matter, and in any case we cannot know, what Austen was trying to do. What matters is what she achieves.

So, here is what I think. There is a burlesque of Radcliffe in this novel. It is forehadowed. When it arrives, it is exactly four chapters long. It does not connect with anything else in the story. So, what Austen achieves is a non-connection.

Huh? I'll explain in another post.

How Austen differs from Radcliffe

1. She differs in that there are no actual terrors to drive Catherine Morland's wild imaginings. Unlike a Radcliffe novel, there is no mysterious, half-ruined Gothic castle, there are no huge craggy mountains and there are no evil plots of kidnapping, poisoning or forced starvation in secluded rooms hidden beneath monasteries.

Radcliffe, by the way, didn't think these things happened in England. Her novels are set in far-away romantic lands that are haunted by history. So while it may seem that Austen is mocking the view in Radcliffe, she is merely making the milder case that a heroine living in modern England will not have the experiences Radcliffe describes.

2. Fiction itself, including Radcliffe's is a major contributor to Catherine Morland's imaginings.

3. The sexuality in Austen is direct whereas it is allegorical in Radcliffe. The black veil in Udolpho, for example, is a fairly obvious symbol for female sexuality but a symbol it remains. (Veils and veiling are probably the most common literary device in Radcliffe.) The sexuality in Austen may seem tentative by our standards but sexuality it is. When blood rushes to the cheeks of an Austen heroine as she is helped out of a carriage by some gentleman, it is perfectly clear her blood rushes elsewhere too.

3. The real threat in Austen is never something capable of causing terror. People really do get murdered in Radcliffe. In Austen, the threat is social. Her heroine's risk being ruined in society. What Catherine is threatened by is being cut off from contact with Henry forever because of the prejudice and bad character of the General.

4. Radcliffe's novels are haunted by the past. Beliefs, practices and superstition of the past that threaten our heros and heroines. Catherine risks making a terrible fool of herself because of her infatuation with fiction about these things but there is none of this in her experiences. Jane Austen is thoroughly modern Jane and everything in her stories is very much up-to-date for their time.

What Austen owes Radcliffe

The title on this post will puzzle anyone who hasn't actually read Radcliffe. And most people have not and should feel no shame at not having done so. It's work to read Radcliffe now. I quite like her but can't recommend her with the ease that I'd recommend a others.

For the benefit of those who have a lot of good reading to do before they get to Radcliffe, here are a few things you might not guess.

1. There is no supernatural in Radcliffe. There are no ghosts, no magical powers, no spells, no demons. Every single thing that happens has a natural explanation.

2. The (false) sense that something supernatural might be at work is always a product of the hero or heroine's imagination just as is the case in Northanger Abbey.

3. The hero or heroine's wild imaginings get out of control because he or she is in a stress causing situation such as visiting some romantic and awe-inspiring locale. This is very close to but not quite what happens to Catherine Morland.

4. Ultimately, the explanation for the bad things that happen to the hero or heroine is a plainly human cause. There is a person who is motivated by evil will and a lifetime of nursing their vices who is behind it all. Again, Catherine Morland's case is close to this but not quite.

5. Just as the supernatural elements are imagined in both Radcliffe and Austen, it also turns out to be the case that the heroine is faced by some very real threat.

6. Finally, because the supernatural is not real in Radcliffe, the encounters with this imagined supernatural don't drive the plot.

I'll explain the "not quites" in a later posts about how Austen differs from Radcliffe. For now though, I hope the similarity is clear.

Miseducation of Catherine Morland (4)

Last time for that sentence:

They were viewing the country with the eyes of persons accustomed to drawing, and decided on its capability of being formed into pictures, with all the eagerness of real taste.

We now can have no doubt, the crack about "real taste" is meant to be ironic and note who and what the irony is targeting.

First it is aimed at the Tilneys, particularly at Henry Tilney. Arch he may be but that won't get him off the hook here; he contributes to Catherine's miseducation. He will do more by building up the Gothic horrors of Northanger Abbey in Catherine's imagination in book 2.

Second, Austen is commenting on the way the picturesque can distort our feelings. More on this later but a devotion to the picturesque is often a sign of moral shallowness in Austen. For my purposes right now the important thing is that Austen is not picking on Ann Radcliffe here. The disconnection is not complete; the picturesque does play a part in Radcliffe, not surprisingly for, like Catherine Morland, she never had been to the places she discusses in her books. But it is not reading that book that is confusing Catherine here—it is learning about the picturesque from Henry that does the job.

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.