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History of English Literature

Notes sisters of Clarissa, both in emotional expression and in moral impeccability.” Add to all that the usual
paraphernalia of terror elements. “She”, observes Louis I. Bredvold, “availed herself to the fullest of
loathsome dungeons, secret vaults and corridors, all essential features of the castles of Gothic
romance.” Let us consider the main points of her work, in most of which she differs from Walpole:
She is quite timid in her use of the supernatural. Just before the end of a novel she tries to
explain away all the supernatural incidents as misunderstood versions of quite natural
phenomena. She works very well through subtle suggestion, especially through the de-
scription of eerie sounds.
She introduces in her novels the element of scenic description which was altogether ne-
glected by Walpole. She is perhaps the first of English novelists in her interest in the
scenery for its own sake. She never visited the countries she dealt with in her novels, but
her descriptions are vivid and entirely credible. ·
Her grasp of real history is as poor as Walpole’s. On the very first page of The Mysteries of
Udolpho she expressly tells us that the incidents of the story belong to the year 1584.
However, this year could easily be substituted by another without any difference.
In her novels she reconciles didacticism and sentimentalism with romance, whereas Walpole
had entirely forsaken the realistic, didactic, and sentimental tradition of eighteenth-cen-
tury novel.

Matthew Lewis or “Monk” Lewis (1775–1818)

Matthew Lewis, nicknamed “Monk” Lewis on account of his Gothic romance of that title, seems to
have completely neglected the lesson of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe. The Monk is a blood-curdling nightmare
of macabresque ghosts, rotten corpses, weird magic and witchcraft, and a thousand other horrifying
elements. According to Samuel C. Chew, “in The Monk (1797), a nightmare of fiendish wickedness,
ghostly supernaturalism and sadistic sensuality, there is almost indubitably something else than
mere literary sensationalism: it gives evidence of a psychopathic condition perhaps inherent in
the extremes of the romantic temperament.” He further observes that “The Monk may be considered
the dream of an ‘oversexed’ adolescent, for Lewis was only twenty when he wrote it.” Lewis never
made any attempt like Mrs. Ann Radcliffe to rationalise his supernatural. He was out for the
crudest sensationalism, and therefore he cannot be ranked high among the terror novelists, in
spite of being the most terrifying of all.

Miss Clara Reeve (1729–1807), Charles Robert Maturin (1782–1824), and
Mrs. Shelley (1797–1851)
They were the most important of the rest of Gothic novelists. Miss Clara Reeve’s Champion of
Virtue, afterwards entitled The Old English Baron, was obviously inspired by Walpole. She laid
the scene in England of Henry VI, but, like Walpole, she did not show much genuine knowledge
of the age she handled. Compton-Rickett observes : “Miss Reeve thought to improve upon the
original and economised with her supernatural effects; but she only succeeded in exceeding
Walpole’s tale in its tedium, repeating most of his absurdities and showing even less acquaintance
with medieval life.”
Maturin wrote his romance The Fatal Revenge (1807) as a follower of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe. However,
his masterpiece is Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) which, according to Samuel C. Chew, is “the
greatest novel of the school of terror.” It differs from most novels of this type in its well-patterned
structure and its attempt at the analysis of motive.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein (1817) is, in the words of Samuel C. Chew, “the only
novel of terror that is still famous.” It is the story of the ravages of a man-made monster equivalent
to the modern “robot”. Decidedly, Mrs. Shelley’s work gave many hints to the future writers of
science fiction such as H. G. Wells. She may with equal justice be considered the first of the writers
of science fiction as the last of the novelists of the terror school.

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