The religion of the characters of mysteries of Udolpho is far from the orthodoxy one might expect from the France or Italy in the period she was writing. The characters do at time encounter religious figures and symbols but they are judged based on their beauty or character rather than their piety. In the early travels of Emily and her father, religion takes on a dual nature of sanctuary and danger. The perfect example of this is when they view a stone cross and are struck by the beauty of it but at the same time Emily pictures Bandetti pouring forth from it to attack them. When they are stuck between towns and trying desperately to find shelter for the night, it is the ringing of the convent bells which leads them to safety.

The convent which Emily stays in upon the death of St. Aubert is the point which best displays Radcliffe’s portrayal of the religion of the characters of Mysteries of Udolpho. The convent itself is both a source of comfort and of pain to Emily as she rests there to recover from his death. While the quiet atmosphere of the convent and the kindness of the nuns are soothing to her, she is also driven to great pain as she risks a midnight visit to his grave and proximity to him keeps his death fresh in her mind. There is no real religious connection to the nuns beyond their occupation. One might think that of anywhere in the novel, religion could be found in a stay at a convent but this is not the case. The treatment of the nuns and the Abbess are much the same as the treatment of the villagers where St Aubert dies. They are praised for their simple rural kindness rather than their pious kindness.

The question the becomes why does Radcliffe place her characters in religious settings without addressing any of the religion. Emily would’ve most likely been a Catholic and her willingness to stay among nuns furthers this belief. When she is staying at the convent though she does not go to Mass with them and only attends the funeral service for her father. One likely cause of this is that Radcliffe would’ve been an English Protestant and therefore would’ve been at the least uncomfortable with Catholicism if not downright disgusted by it. This novel doesn’t display much anti-Catholicism but in her other novels, like The Italian, she is vicious in her treatment of Catholic figures. Since Mysteries of Udolpho came before The Italian there’s a chance she had been neutral earlier or that she was working her way up to the treatment in The Italian and started with indifference. Personnally I believe that the reason religion was given this kind of treatment in Mysteries of Udolpho is just that it wasn’t her focus for that novel. Yes Emily would’ve been Catholic but her goals in writing that novel were not related to religion and therefore religion receives little treatment. With The Italian, she set out to include religion which explains her much harsher treatment of it.

The character of Julius comes off as very true to my perception of teenage boys, especially given the situation he was in with such high expectations. Noel was frightening from the beginning. I remember at the reading there was a man that said he was very put out by Noel being psycho because in the beginning he saw himself in Noel… for those of you that haven’t read it, there’s a section very early on where he talks about an empty room after a party being purged of its disease with the former partygoers as the disease… I really hope never to be left alone with this man because just as Fall was Noel’s trigger, who’s to say what will be his? Creepy older men aside, Noel was very well drawn. There’s enough history given of how others perceive him to reinforce the more subtle cues given from Noel’s perspective about how he really isn’t quite right. That he bit off a piece of flesh because someone punched him in the eye is not a comforting thing to know and further puts Julius’ judgement into question. Granted when with him Noel might have acted a little differently and he wasn’t there to see the fight… still though. When they take their revenge on Ant and Noel manages to get Ant hospitalized because of how he tied him up, this should have been an indicator that he wasn’t quite right. I guess to be fair, Ant doesn’t come off as entirely right in the head either. There’s always the chance that I really just don’t understand the level of aggression involved with being a teenage boy and especially one in senior year that can hold his own against older angrier rugby players…

This potential lack of understanding of the boys also allowed me to further define what McAdams left open about Fall. The vague clues as to the disconnect in her family life and the dependant nature of her friendships show a very hard life which Julius and Noel are entirely oblivious to. Despite how certain he is that he sees things no one else sees, Noel entirely misses the sadness that leads the reader to see many times of Fall in tears or being extra distant. Julius is privy to these instances but his understanding of her is too shallow despite how deeply he claims to love her. McAdams stated at the reading that Fall was left undefined because he felt it was impossible for men, and especialy teenage boys, to understand or really see women and girls. In retrospect I’m reminded of arguments put forward by De Beauvoir concerning the myth of woman and find myself inclined to agree with McAdams. If my own experience is to be counted as well, men are just as much of a mystery to women as women are to men.

All in all I highly reccommend this novel to everyone! It’s very well written and has a good mixture of heart wrenching and humor.

Now that the venting is done with I’ll try to look at this more analytically…

This could only fall if it tried to stand alone. The plot follows Pamela so closely but so condensed that there are footnotes giving where to read in Pamela so Fielding’s scene becomes more understandable. I feel that the turn he took with the character of Pamela and Mrs. Jenks has little precedent in Pamela. While I confess I was a little suspicious of Mrs. Jenks at times it was not in that she was helping Pamela seduce Mr. B but that she was helping Pamela to stay for Mr. B’s sake. Pamela references several times secret talks that Mrs. Jenks has with Mr. B while there is no real indication that she’s practicing any kind of deception with Pamela.

Dr. Jones had mentioned the feud between Fielding and Richardson and, if these two works are compared, Richardson easily wins. While Pamela does have its faults it stands strong in the face of Fielding’s attempts at mocking it. Fielding’s satire has little basis in the original novel but unlike Haywood’s work it doesn’t take on a life of its own and instead is only a shade of what it seeks to destroy.

As we said in class, Anti-Pamela really only needs a new name in order to be a stand alone novel. It would be in the amatory style and still retain satiric elements perhaps but it could easily be read and enjoyed without ever reading Pamela. Where we know Haywood was trying to capitolize on the phenonema of Pamela it’s even possible that Haywood already had a story in mind and just decided to add a few allusions to Pamela to sell more copies. The issues which she raises against Pamela are issues which she had raised before in other original works. The idea that drinking is the route of all evil or at least of ruin is even referenced in one of the footnotes about the ruin of a chambermaid. The issue she raises of how frivolous Pamela is can be found in a pamphlet on conduct for female servants included in the appendixes. While I dont doubt that Haywood had issues with Pamela it is interesting to wonder if the satire got away from her to become a stand alone novel or if she added satirical aspects to a stand alone novel

Either way I enjoyed it and can enjoy it alongwith Pamela.

For my post I’ve decided to address the issues which prompted Haywood and Fielding to write satires about it. Well at least what prompted Haywood to as I have trouble believing Fielding did it for any reason other than pompous spite. I’m halfway through Shamela and it is very slow-going. I have no doubts why it is that Richardson won. His might be a lot longer but it’s a quicker read.

So first I’ll look to the issue of her vanity. I don’t deny she is vain. She gets reprimanded by her parents for being vain early on in the novel and from there she tends to qualify her repeating of compliments by stating she knows she had nothing to do with it. In this respect I don’t think Richardson was necessarily unaware of how Pamela would look going around repeating every compliment paid to her and almost pokes fun at it.  In class we talked about how he worked out the kinks for his next novel but couldn’t it just be a matter of character? Pamela is 15, she came from a very poor farm to live as the companion to a rich old, and seemingly eccentric, lady before falling into Lord B’s path. I say eccentric given that she educated a girl fresh off the farm in the arts of a gentlewoman or a lady rather than anything suitable for her station in life. This is not quite a fairytale but it does have a similiar quality in that she went from hard work to dancing and singing which doesn’t pave the way for being exceptionally well-grounded.

I think that while I can defend her actions, the 18th century reader would not. I see a 15 year old girl who is brought into a world of dancing and singing and is naive but a quick learner as a result. Well not entirely quick but she’ gorwing up and with that learning not to trust rich lords that could keep her captive.

As to Haywood’s point concerning the many faults of Pamela as a working lower middle class there is little argument other than that it has caused me to look at Pamela as more of a Cinderella story than before though in retrospect it’s more obvious.

I also came to this short story with the notion that it was the precursor of Harlequinn romances, further bolstering up my belief that there must be a happy ending. Now I’m questioning if I really did hear that somewhere or if I just guessed given how it would’ve been “trashy” literature at the time and Harlequinns are very trashy today. Also, by trashy I don’t mean that they are any less valid but they’re entertaining in a very different way than reading a Jane Austen novel. There might be a link in that people would read Amatory fiction and then decide how it should have ended but that tendancy might just be a result of Disney.

In short, I found Fantomina very interesting though short and not the happiest of endings. It reminded me a lot of some of the plays we read for Restoration Drama and I’m looking forward to hearing about the woman who wrote it tomorrow.

He sails again despite every reason not to and after making one safe trip, he next gets captured and enslaved by Moor pirates. Frankly, he deserved it though I’m not sure the others did. As a slave, he had no choice but to do what he was told so he couldn’t make exceptionally stupid decisions. Unfortunately, he then escapes. With the help of another slave, Zuri, he escapes and manages to sail around til finding a European ship. I always try to judge a book by its times but I still had difficulty with him selling Zuri off. If it weren’t for Zuri he might not have made it to that ship, plus he had experience as a slave but still sold a friend into slavery. There’s just nothing redeeming about Crusoe!

He spent some time on a plantation and managed to become profitable but quickly switched to a sea life again! Heaven forbid he actually have some kind of stability or kept his promises to God. He then of course gets stranded on the island where, supposedly, he redeems himself. I do see the evidence of how he became more religious but I don’t believe it all that much. I almost wonder if he was trying to flaunt God further because he erects a Cross – not to God or his religion – but to himself and his time on the island. He sets himself up like a king when he finally accepts he’s on the island and while he did have a religious vision, it doesn’t change how focused he is on materialistic goods or the lack of care he show for others. He makes a goat his pet and almost lets it starve to death and I think he only saved Friday ought of a need for another slave rather than to save a life.

In short, I disliked Crusoe before writing this blog and I know dislike him intensely. He’s a selfish, heretical fool who doesn’t deserve the multiple Divine Interventions and really should have stayed on the island to perish, along with his manuscript.