The Mysteries of Udolpho

What It's About

Emily St. Aubert, a sensitive and cultivated young Frenchwoman, is orphaned and placed under the guardianship of her aunt, who soon marries the domineering Signor Montoni. Montoni removes the household to his remote, decaying castle of Udolpho in the Apennines, where Emily finds herself isolated, threatened, and surrounded by strange sounds, forbidding passages, and half-glimpsed horrors she cannot explain. As Montoni pursues his own dark schemes, Emily must contend with fear, confinement, and the unresolved mysteries of her family's past.

Key Concepts

Udolpho is the defining example of the "explained supernatural": its eerie occurrences are unsettling in the moment but are eventually given rational, non-supernatural explanations, a technique that became Radcliffe's signature. The novel is equally known for its lengthy, painterly descriptions of landscape, used to evoke the aesthetic idea of the sublime — beauty mixed with awe and terror. Its heroine's refined emotional responses reflect the era's cult of sensibility, while the novel's castles, tyrannical guardians, and imperilled heroines helped define the Gothic genre and shaped decades of imitators, including a famous send-up in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.

About the Author

Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823) was an English novelist and one of the foremost figures of the early Gothic movement. Born in London, she married William Radcliffe, a journalist who encouraged her writing. Despite becoming one of the most popular and highly paid novelists of her generation, she lived a notably private, retired life and largely avoided public attention, which led to considerable speculation about her later withdrawal from writing.