The Romance of the Forest

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and incest. 

The Gothic genre derives its name from a style of architecture that prevailed in Europe from the late 12th through the 16th centuries, seen especially in the mighty cathedrals built during this time. Gothic novels frequently relied on such buildings for settings, particularly castles and abbeys. They also incorporate other medieval-esque elements, like the religious orders of the Catholic Church, once the predominant religion of Western Europe. The term “Gothic” was initially pejorative, meant to suggest this architecture was inferior to the principles Renaissance builders valued. This sense persisted in the literary label, as literary critics considered Gothic novels as mere sensationalism, exciting the susceptible reader with suspense, fear, terror, and pathos.

The popularity of Gothic literature peaked in Britain in the 1790s, in large part due to the reception of Radcliffe’s novels. Works with similar themes and premises had emerged earlier in the century, however. The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole is considered the first example of the Gothic novel, combining dramatic events and supernatural influences into its quasi-medieval setting. The evocation of terror, whether through human or paranormal means, became the defining principle of the Gothic narrative.

William Beckford’s Vathek (1786) is often classified as a Gothic novel for its incorporation of supernatural elements, though this tale is set not in Western Europe but in a highly stereotyped Middle East. The titular Vathek’s tendencies toward depravity and murder became frequent themes of later Gothic narratives. Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796) styles itself a romance, but its depictions of sexual activity and violence move it closer to a genre now thought of as horror. With these examples, the Gothic was perceived to rely particularly on elements of the supernatural, horror, and culturally taboo, thus increasing its appeal.

Radcliffe’s Gothic romances are distinct in that human agency almost always explains her use of supernatural elements. Her interest lies in the psychological terrors aroused through the imagination and apprehension about one’s circumstances, especially for her imperiled heroines. Rather than a reliance on gore or violence, Radcliffe uses a dark atmosphere and a tone of menace to evoke dread and thrills of fear. For all the villainous activity and disruption of social norms, Radcliffe’s novels generally conclude by reinforcing conventional morality, family structures, and gender roles.

Though The Romance of the Forest features incidents of murder and hints at incest, two characteristic elements of the Gothic, Radcliffe adds to literary genres that her contemporaries would have considered more sophisticated and instructive than sensationalistic fiction. In the third volume, especially, she draws on travel writing, an increasingly popular genre of 18th-century literature. Additionally, the inclusion of her poems as well as references to respected authors like William Shakespeare and John Milton can be read as attempts to elevate the style. Her characters converse on topics of current 18th-century philosophical debates, particularly the theories of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In so doing, Radcliffe attempts to place her work above the merely commercial, which led contemporary critics to praise her writing even while readers devoured the more dramatic elements.

The Gothic shares a great deal with the Romantic, a term which variously indicates a sensibility, an aesthetic, a philosophy, and a literary genre. Romanticism in philosophy and literature centered on an appreciation for the natural world and celebrated the imaginative, subjective, individual, and emotional realms above the logical, orderly, functional, or mundane. One Romantic ideal upon which Radcliffe often draws is the theory of the sublime as formulated by Edmund Burke in his 1756 essay, A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. In this essay, Burke argues that the awe and terror invoked by the sublime are more powerful emotions than those evoked by what is merely beautiful. Radcliffe uses this idea that terror and suspense can heighten the pleasures of the narrative.

The term romance, as indicated in the titles, does not allude to the Romantic aesthetic. Rather, it indicates the literary genre of the romance. In Radcliffe’s time, it held associations with its older definition as a tale of adventure, as defined by the popular medieval romances of the 12th through 16th centuries. The definition of romance as a love story is an evolution this genre underwent in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Aided by the popularity of the Gothic and Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who published their collection Lyrical Ballads in 1798, the Romantic sensibility gained ascendance in British and European literature at the turn of the 19th century. Gothic elements continued to draw interest, though writers who preferred more realistic forms of fiction tended to separate themselves from the genre; Jane Austen’s novel, Northanger Abbey (1817), for instance, parodies Gothic elements as much as it employs them. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) use Gothic elements in the exploration of human psychology that they pursue through the creation of their monsters.