The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

O, to return to those gentle days of yesteryear when young women of education and good circumstance had nothing better to do than sketch and take nature walks and write melancholy poetry. And when they craved excitement, they could turn to this romantic gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe, with its young heroine who bravely faces one danger after another and experiences many seemingly-supernatural visitations, in between her sketching and walking and poetry writing, only fainting every 20 pages or so.

Radcliffe's novels were tremendously popular in the late 1700s, so much so that Jane Austin even satirized a typical Radcliffe reader in her novel Northanger Abbey. I can only conclude that the young female novel readers of that time were so bored that they were willing to slog through pages and pages of tedium to experience a few chills and thrills.

Out of the 670 pages of this novel's very small print, we have perhaps 250 pages of actual story. So what about the rest? Here's an approximate rundown:
*300 pages of nature descriptions of various landscapes in France and Italy. As it turns out, only good and honorable people appreciate nature; people of doubtful honor or breeding don't properly appreciate it, and really dishonorable people don't even notice it or actually dislike it.
*50 pages of melancholy poetry composed by the heroine in response to nature and events.
*10 pages of repetitions of the word "melancholy." No kidding. Almost every page has at least one "melancholy," and many pages feature it twice.
*30 pages of accounts of fainting episodes. All manner of happenings can bring on insensibility, not just frightening events.
*30 pages of accounts of people dying and the heroine's response to the deaths.

However, in those 250 pages of story, Radcliffe does provide an interesting plot line, suspense, and several cliffhangers. In the most interesting section of the book her heroine is imprisoned in the crumbling Castle of Udolpho, where she faces a suitably heartless villain and his band of banditto, some of whom would like to ravish her! It is there, also, that she sees something supremely frightful beneath a black veil! The description of the sight and its explanation is withheld until the last pages of the book.

My conclusion is that Ann Radcliffe was the Stephenie Meyer of her time, with a huge readership for a mediocre talent. Just as the Twilight series has spawned a myriad of imitators, so did Radcliffe's fake supernatural. All Radcliffe's creepy events are explained rationally, and as for Meyer, it turns out that vampires are really pretty sexy guys.