Reading the Classics: THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO

As a novel, The Castle of Otranto is downright risible, but as a period piece it’s fascinating. While it doesn’t have quite as much rape and murder per square inch (the bestseller it inspired, The Monk, which was very clearly written by a teenage boy, I think takes that dubious award) it has enough to satisfy the Game of Thrones fan–and is a whole lot shorter.

So this novel, written by Horace Walpole, whose letters are utterly delightful, was presented as a text translated from an old manuscript. People actually took that seriously; when they found out a contemporary guy had written it, he got some blowback for that, but at the time, nobody seemed to comment on how totally ridiculous the story is, featuring such oddities as walking portraits and a helmet the size of a Volkswagen falling out of the sky.

At the beginning of this novel, said helmet squashes the villain’s fifteen year old son, whereupon the villain commences chasing the hapless boy’s intended around–in order to marry her himself. While his wife, still alive, faints all over the place. When she does wake up, of course she obeys her husband as good wives ought to do.

That’s in the first couple of pages.

It rapidly goes downhill from there.

This is the novel that kicked off the fashion in Gothics, inspiring Mrs. Radcliffe ((The Mysteries of Udolpho) as well as Lewis’s The Monk. Clara Reeve wrote a Gothic that took out the fantasy elements so that it would be more “realistic”. When you consider its incredibly long deathbed speeches, the number of hidden heirs, rotting castles, mysterious letters/portraits/messages, and so forth, one begins to realize that realism has had a fairly elastic definition over the past couple of centuries. But hey, these were best sellers, so clearly the audience knew what it wanted.