Cοurse paper Theme: Ann Radcliff as a founder of traditions of English gothic fiction

Conclusion
The black veil has been one of the most used motifs from the range of the possible episodes to illustrate from The Mysteries of Udolpho. Ann Radcliffe carefully built up the tension around this mystery and the novel exemplifies her signature style of narration, which later became known as the popular, explained Gothic. The author actually held off on solving the mystery until the last segment of the book and even separated the resolution from the heroine’s storyline. She focused on Emily’s physical and emotional reactions in her endeavor to lift the veil and the things she sees—or imagines—behind it. The prominence of the novel and the notoriety of the black veil might have created a certain amount of curiosity for the reader that could be fueled by the illustration before actually starting to read the novel.
The complex mechanisms of engaging the reader and immersing them into the diegesis could not be simplified by a single frontispiece or even a sequence of illustrations. The examples discussed above show that the illustrators approached the motif of the mysterious veil and Emily’s challenge in different ways. The opposing strategies are distinguished by the handling of the mystery and understanding of the concept of the explained Gothic. The first French and German illustrations by Maradan and Haas spoil the mystery by depicting the gruesome image which Radcliffe only described at the end of her novel. In these examples, the cause of Emily’s expression of terror is visible and the veil itself becomes secondary. Also, the viewer is addressed directly and can perceive terror because of the body behind the curtain, and Emily is not necessarily needed as an arbitress. In the depiction of the body, the illustrators did not differentiate between the portrayal of a human corpse or an effigy made of wax. The viewer is therefore misguided by his/her sense of sight as much as the heroine is.
The English artists, providing prints for Fisher, Limbird or Dove, leave the mystery intact by not illustrating what lies behind the veil. The illustrators’ aspiration to commit to the genre of the explained Gothic is noticeable and in order to do so they converted the textual narrative into a visual one. Their images do not explain more than could be read in this exact paragraph nor add to the story and visualize without anticipating the final identification. Instead, those motifs concentrate on the act of revealing and magnify the stages of lifting or Emily reacting to what she thinks she has seen. Here, the veil could allude to its function in the text as a pain-fear stimulus, without being sidelined by the sensational object behind it. Nevertheless, even in these images the focus is mostly on the human characters. The depiction of the episode offers two different type of women: the anxious, overwhelmed, and vulnerable woman driven by her emotions, in opposition to a curious and exploratory type. If only Emily was shown, it was her duty to express the fear and terror originating from the situation. If accompanied by Annette, the representation of those (female) characteristics were left to the servant. Analogous to the novel, the latter is used to exemplify the suspense which can be exaggerated to oscillate into the comic spectrum.
The decision to use the episode of the black veil revealed the challenges of illustrating the explained Gothic. Not before the enlightenment were the supernatural or the fear that rose from it decoupled from a manifest representation such as a demon or the devil. Even the inner struggle with for example temptations could be depicted through the vehicle that represented the allurement. In her novel, Ann Radcliffe leaves a blank space for the reader to fill in with his/her speculations and emotions induced by Emily’s thoughts and her physical reaction. The illustrations provide a visual paratext that offered a reading before stepping into the Gothic tale, but a translation of the narrative trope of omission into visual means did not necessarily result in an engaging image.
The Mysteries of Udolpho is a Gothic novel by English author Ann Radcliffe and was first published in 1794. The novel tells the story of Emily St. Aubert, the daughter of a wealthy French family whose fortunes have declined.
Following her mother's death, Emily and her father, who share a love for nature, embark on a tour from their home in Gascony, France, through the mountains of the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean coast. On their journey, they meet the young Valancourt, who quickly falls in love with Emily.
When Emily's father dies, Emily is forced to live with her aunt and guardian, Madame Cheron, who shows no affection for her and whose husband, the Italian nobleman Montoni, endeavors to force Emily to marry his friend, Count Morano. A characteristic villain, Montoni is cruel and power-hungry, imprisoning Emily and his wife at his secluded castle called Udolpho and threatening his wife to sign over her property to him.
When Montoni discovers that Count Morano is not as rich as he first thought, Montoni refuses to allow Morano to marry Emily and wounds him in a fight when Morano attempts to abduct Emily from Udolpho. Following Madame Cheron's death, Emily manages to escape Udolpho with the help of several servants and returns to her aunt's estate in France, where she discovers that Valancourt, whom she still loves, has lost his fortune. The novel ends happily, with Emily coming into ownership of her aunt's property and reuniting with her lover.
The Mysteries of Udolpho is characterized as a Gothic novel, a genre popularized in the mid-1700s with the publication of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto in 1764, that combines elements of suspense, horror and romance. Elements of the Gothic novel include mystery and suspense, encounters with the supernatural, fear of the unknown, romance, and man's admiration of and struggle with the power and forces of nature.
Radcliffe both modeled and sometimes comically mocked the Gothic in her fiction. Consider the following passage, describing Emily's wish to visit her father's grave:
The nun offered to accompany Emily to the grave, adding, 'It is melancholy to go alone at this hour;' but the former, thanking her for the consideration, could not consent to have any witness of her sorrow...Emily paused a moment at the door; a sudden fear came over her...As she heard the steps of the nun ascending, and, while she held up the lamp, saw her black veil waving over the spiral balusters, she was tempted to call her back. While she hesitated, the veil disappeared, and, in the next moment, ashamed of her fears, she returned to the church (Chapter VIII).
This passage both pulls the reader into the story through Radcliffe's use of suspense and also invites the reader to find humor in the power of the overactive imagination. In this passage, Emily recognizes that she is unreasonably fearful, almost poking fun at the overly dramatic setting around her.
The Mysteries of Udolpho also features elements of the picturesque, an element of eighteenth-century literature that celebrated the beauty and power of nature (both the pleasing and the terrible). Consider the following passage, detailing the scenery encountered during Emily's travels with her father:
From Beaujeu the road had constantly ascended...where immense glaciers exhibited their frozen horrors, and eternal snow whitened the summits of the mountains. They often paused to contemplate these stupendous scenes, and, seated on some wild cliff...looked over dark forests of fir, and precipices where human foot had never wandered, into the glen--so deep, that the thunder of the torrent, which was seen to foam along the bottom, was scarcely heard to murmur.