56 pages • 1 hour read
Ann RadcliffeA Sicilian Romance
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1790A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 15-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
Maria de Vellorno has been spending the interim reprimanding the marquis for allowing the Abate to get the better of him, which he has only been able to do because of the marquis's secret. The marquis’s shame and fury at being compelled into submission convince him that he has only one way out: to murder the imprisoned marchioness and so render the secret powerless by eliminating any evidence of its truth. Thus, the marquis decides to poison his wife.
His plans are disrupted by the revelation of Maria de Vellorno's infidelities when a servant, Baptista, tells the marquis that she meets a young cavalier at the pavilion by the seashore. The marquis hides nearby and catches her. Though he at first decides to forgive her, he is so galled by her denials and tears that he realizes that their relationship is ended forever and disavows a life of dissipated pleasures. He resolves to live entirely for ambition and devotes himself thoroughly to the task of wedding Julia to the duke, through which he will make a powerful alliance. To appeal to the Pope for the return of his daughter, he must first kill the marchioness. He brings her a supply of poisoned food that night.
Returning to his chamber, the marquis becomes violently ill and proclaims that he is dying. He summons Maria de Vellorno and his son, which reveals that Ferdinand was recovered from the banditti and reimprisoned at the castle. Seeking Maria de Vellorno reveals that she has died by suicide and left a note explaining that she also poisoned the marquis, leading to his present illness. The marquis's dying words repent his adoration of “that woman, for whose sake I forgot conscience, and braved vice–for whom I imprisoned an innocent wife, and afterwards murdered her” (167).
Upon hearing his father's confession, Ferdinand goes to the cell to seek his mother, but he finds it empty. He assumes that the murder has taken place some years hence and determines to dig up the floor at a later date to locate her remains. The events of the day so shock Emilia that she becomes seriously ill. The Marquis de Mazzini and Maria de Vellorno are buried with the honor of their high rank.
Chapter 16 Summary
Ferdinand concludes that the dungeons where his father confined him were near to his mother's cell and that the supernatural groans he heard were hers. Her death remains a mystery to him, but he is determined to rescue Julia, whom he believes is still a captive of the banditti. He sets out with a search party to find her, but all news is discouraging. Seeking shelter from a storm, he comes upon a small lighthouse, and upon admittance discovers Julia, Hippolitus, and the marchioness, his mother, who greets him with joyful caresses.
It is revealed that Hippolitus escaped the Duke de Luovo and returned to the cavern in search of Julia, finding both her and the marchioness in their cell. To delay the discovery of their escape, they waited for the marquis to leave supplies, then hurried away leaving the poisoned food untouched. They attempted escape to Italy but were driven back to the lighthouse by a storm. Ferdinand returns to Mazzini to fetch Emilia, and the marchioness sends a message to Madame de Menon at St. Augustin. Reunited, all journey to Naples and abandon the castle at Mazzini. The marchioness is restored to her rank, Ferdinand is declared the sixth Marquis de Mazzini, and Julia and Hippolitus are married. Emilia and Madame de Menon continue to reside with the marchioness, where they happily watch Julia's children grow up.
The novel concludes with a paragraph wherein the narrator explains that the record of the tale concludes, and he states the moral of the story: that those who do what is right endure no misfortunes, only trials of their virtue that lead to the protection of heaven.
Chapters 15-16 Analysis
The narrator’s comment that the marquis’s second wife, who has been referred to as “the marchioness” throughout the novel, “may now more properly be called Maria de Vellorno” (161) suggests her illegitimacy as both wife and mother and ties to her “corruptions” and “vices” that the marquis is about to discover (161). That she heightens “with cruel triumph his resentment towards Julia and Madame de Menon” emphasizes her as a foil for all things good and maternal (161). Further, the assertion that her goading is responsible for the marquis’s decision to poison Louisa, as well as her own decision to poison the marquis, paint Maria de Vellorno as the true antagonistic force throughout the novel. Her manipulations have been the cause of every character’s pain, actions for which she exacts a final revenge, rather than repenting. The marquis, by contrast, rapidly repents in the face of his disillusionment. Both characters, acting under extreme passions, meet their deaths because they were unable to see reason; Radcliffe’s moralizing narrator presents this as “divine vengeance” for lives spent in a “boundless indulgence of violent and luxurious passions” (169), expounding the juxtaposition of Passion Versus Reason.
The novel revisits several key motifs in these chapters. When the marquis gives up the secret of Louisa’s imprisonment to Ferdinand, he literally hands him the keys to the answer he has been searching for, thus opening locked doors to the secrets of the past. His deathbed confession and the possibility that Louisa and Julia have both already been poisoned lend drama and suspense to the final scenes of Chapter 15. The question of their fates, now that most of the other mysteries of the novel’s plot have been resolved, propels the narrative into the final chapter.
The final chapter indulges a return to the motif of Landscapes and the juxtaposition of dark and light: Ferdinand’s journey through a “wild” and windy landscape “whose solemn pauses were filled by the distant roarings of the sea” reflects the dark and tumultuous feelings he experiences as he searches for Julia (171). That it is a flame which directs his course to a lighthouse and allows him to discover Julia along with his mother and Hippolitus, both thought dead, develops Radcliffe’s symbolic use of light to represent life itself.
The happy mood of the novel’s conclusion is emphasized by repetition of words like “celebration” and “restoration.” The narrator’s conclusion that Emilia, “engaged in forming the minds of the infant generation [...] seemed to forget that she had ever been otherwise than happy” again praises the power of education and reason (174). This suggests that the ruins of the past may yet be overcome if people choose reason and virtue in the present. This unambiguous ending is further developed by the narrator literally closing the book on the story and addressing readers directly to explain the lesson on morality they should take from it.
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By Ann Radcliffe
