The Myseries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Jan. 28th, 2025 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pretty_plantReading The Mysteries of Udolpho was interesting...
It was in fact a quite absorbing read, I was excited to know more, even though some sections bored me to death. The first and second part were quite fun, Montoni was an interesting villain. However, I think it got less exciting when Count de Villeforte's family showed up. I never care much for that family, Blanche de Villeforte was very much bootleg Emily while her father, the Count, was very much the bootleg version of Emily's father.
Spoiler (highlight the grey section to read the spoiler) I do not share the Emily's favorable view of the Count. He always appears very impetuous to me and rather sets in his own way. He has no qualm about sending his daughter to a monastery at the injunction of his wife even though Blanche was miserable in it. He also had no reservation about making his wife join him in the middle of nowhere despite his wife's love for festivities and constant proclamations of dislike towards a secluded lifestyle. He was never compelled to fact-check before telling Emily to give up her lover.
This book was also very irritating because everybody took a damned long time to share anything out of a sense of propriety. It would be half this length if everybody just got to the damned point sooner instead of just skirting around the truth and indulging in all kinds of melodramatic fainting and crying fits. I know that was the point but I was super annoyed about this.
Another complaint is spoiler how the protagonist and her lover are said to be poor the entire book until the end, when they both turn out to be rich. Emily is certainly not very well-off but her aunt, who is widowed and childless at the beginning of the novel, is very rich. The money then goes to Emily once the aunt dies. Certainly, it will not be hard to imagine prior to the aunt's death that the money will go to Emily because the aunt has no closer relative to pass her property onto. Valancourt has a rich brother who is also unmarried and childless and it is stated at the end of the book that it is likely the brother's property will go to Valancourt after his brother dies but throughout the book, everybody keeps talking about how poor Valancourt is as if he were not in expectation of a great estate. Despite all the constant emphasis on how poor Emily and Valancourt are, they both seem terribly connected to so many childless, affluent relatives that it feels like they are never in any actual danger of financial hardships and Radcliffe just made a fuss over a problem that never even existed in the first place. However, of course, I am not the best judge of financial hardships of rich, well-connected people in that time period because I am certainly not a rich person of my time period.
Despite all the sympathy Emily gave for the poor, the book seems highly insensitive to the poor themselves. There was one section in which the Count encountered a group of huntsmen and told them: how I wish I could be a huntsman and lived like that for a week (or a month). Yeah, this titled, rich gentleman totally would be willing to give up his property to be huntsman. It has the same energy as Marie Antoinette dressing up as a peasant to enjoy her idyllic, Arcadian life in the village specifically built for her enjoyment. This book, in fact, has a lot of idyllic scenes of peasants being simple and natural, as opposed to the elegant artificiality of Paris like.
I, in fact, enjoyed reading this but it also made me strangely mad that I need to rant adkewnfiuehfirefj.
It was in fact a quite absorbing read, I was excited to know more, even though some sections bored me to death. The first and second part were quite fun, Montoni was an interesting villain. However, I think it got less exciting when Count de Villeforte's family showed up. I never care much for that family, Blanche de Villeforte was very much bootleg Emily while her father, the Count, was very much the bootleg version of Emily's father.
Spoiler (highlight the grey section to read the spoiler) I do not share the Emily's favorable view of the Count. He always appears very impetuous to me and rather sets in his own way. He has no qualm about sending his daughter to a monastery at the injunction of his wife even though Blanche was miserable in it. He also had no reservation about making his wife join him in the middle of nowhere despite his wife's love for festivities and constant proclamations of dislike towards a secluded lifestyle. He was never compelled to fact-check before telling Emily to give up her lover.
This book was also very irritating because everybody took a damned long time to share anything out of a sense of propriety. It would be half this length if everybody just got to the damned point sooner instead of just skirting around the truth and indulging in all kinds of melodramatic fainting and crying fits. I know that was the point but I was super annoyed about this.
Another complaint is spoiler how the protagonist and her lover are said to be poor the entire book until the end, when they both turn out to be rich. Emily is certainly not very well-off but her aunt, who is widowed and childless at the beginning of the novel, is very rich. The money then goes to Emily once the aunt dies. Certainly, it will not be hard to imagine prior to the aunt's death that the money will go to Emily because the aunt has no closer relative to pass her property onto. Valancourt has a rich brother who is also unmarried and childless and it is stated at the end of the book that it is likely the brother's property will go to Valancourt after his brother dies but throughout the book, everybody keeps talking about how poor Valancourt is as if he were not in expectation of a great estate. Despite all the constant emphasis on how poor Emily and Valancourt are, they both seem terribly connected to so many childless, affluent relatives that it feels like they are never in any actual danger of financial hardships and Radcliffe just made a fuss over a problem that never even existed in the first place. However, of course, I am not the best judge of financial hardships of rich, well-connected people in that time period because I am certainly not a rich person of my time period.
Despite all the sympathy Emily gave for the poor, the book seems highly insensitive to the poor themselves. There was one section in which the Count encountered a group of huntsmen and told them: how I wish I could be a huntsman and lived like that for a week (or a month). Yeah, this titled, rich gentleman totally would be willing to give up his property to be huntsman. It has the same energy as Marie Antoinette dressing up as a peasant to enjoy her idyllic, Arcadian life in the village specifically built for her enjoyment. This book, in fact, has a lot of idyllic scenes of peasants being simple and natural, as opposed to the elegant artificiality of Paris like.
I, in fact, enjoyed reading this but it also made me strangely mad that I need to rant adkewnfiuehfirefj.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-29 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-29 04:20 pm (UTC)The author kept making characters faint from seeing something but that something turns out to be perfectly mundane. However, what Radcliffe seemed to understand quite well is that fear is in the mind and can be invoked by sounds and atmosphere rather than crude jumpscares, which is why I believe she would be able to craft a convincingly scary dream in the world of JSAMN.