A Sicilian Romance

“Though naturally of a haughty and overbearing disposition, he was governed by his wife. His passions were vehement, and she had the address to bend them to her purpose; and so well to conceal her influence, that he thought himself most independent when he was most enslaved.”

The Direct Characterization in this quotation portrays the relationship between the marquis and Maria de Vellorno, while also developing key contrasts and the theme of Passion Versus Reason. It highlights both characters as corrupted by their vices and suggests that the marquis has allowed passion to enslave him in a life of falsehoods.

“In the minds of the vulgar, any species of the wonderful is received with avidity; and the servants did not hesitate in believing the southern division of the castle to be inhabited by a supernatural power.”

Here, two key ideas are present: that the lower classes are uneducated or unintelligent and that a lack of reason or intellect is what causes people to believe in the supernatural. This represents the class structure that dictates society in the novel and provides patriarchal power to a corrupt few and also highlights The Use of Rational Thought to Explore the Supernatural.

“In spite of all her efforts, her vivacity sunk into languor, and she then perceived that love may produce other sensations than those of delight. She found it possible to be unhappy, though loved by Hippolitus; and acknowledged with a sigh of regret, which was yet new to her, how tremblingly her peace depended upon him.”

Here Radcliffe directly characterizes Julia while also making philosophical observations about the relationship between love and happiness. As with most of the couples in the novel, love for Julia only leads to happiness when its passionate feelings are tempered with reason and virtue.

“They had awaited his return in all the horrors of apprehension, till at length all fear for themselves was lost in their concern for him; and they, who so lately had not dared to enter this part of the edifice, now undauntedly searched it in quest of Ferdinand.”

This quotation evokes the feelings of tension and terror characteristic of the Gothic genre. It indirectly characterizes Madame de Menon, Julia, and Emilia as both selfless and courageous, as they put aside their fears to go in search of Ferdinand. In doing so, it also inverts the socially accepted gender roles by making women the rescuers of a man.

“Her imagination, invigorated by opposition, heightened to her the graces of Hippolitus; her bosom glowed with more intense passion, and her brain was at length exasperated almost to madness.”

Maria’s contradictory impulses are demonstrated here, but they represent an emotion experienced by other characters in the novel (notably the Abate and duke), who want something more only because they cannot have it. Passion leads her to emotions that are contrary to her own best interests and clouds the possibility of rational thought. 

“Alarms […] which will readily find admittance to the weak mind of a woman, but which the firmer nature of man should disdain.—Degenerate boy! Is it thus you reward my care? Do I live to see my son the sport of every idle tale a woman may repeat? Learn to trust your reason and your senses, and you will then be worthy of my attention.”

The marquis’s scolding of his son, Ferdinand, demonstrates his views of women as weak-minded and of those who sympathize as unable to think clearly. It also highlights his relationship with his children, one in which it is their role to reward him. His insult of “[d]egenerate” references decline, reflecting the crumbling edifices in the novel and suggesting that, in the marquis’s view, propping up patriarchy is the only way to maintain the standards of the lives of the wealthy and powerful.

“Attend to what I say—accept the duke, or quit this castle forever, and wander where you will.”

The marquis presents this ultimatum to Julia, demonstrating his power over her and his desire to oppress her. It also shows that he values her only as an asset to be bartered for ambition’s sake. Because he believes women to be weak, he assumes that she will never take the step of leaving his protection, and so he is not in fact offering her any choice at all–something he proves when he stabs Hippolitus to prevent her escape.

“Believe me, that a choice which involves the happiness or misery of your whole life, ought to be decided only by yourself.”

This quotation characterizes Ferdinand and presents him in contrast to his father, who believes that a choice as important as the rest of a woman’s life can only be decided by a man. It heightens tension in the narrative by emphasizing that what’s at stake in her decision is nothing less than the rest of her life.

“The air of desolation which reigned through the south buildings, and the circumstance of their having been for so many years shut up, would naturally tend to inspire awe; but to these people, who firmly believed them to be the haunt of an unquiet spirit, terror was the predominant sentiment.”

Here Radcliffe draws a distinction between a natural sense of awe and a superstitious sense of terror. The personification of desolation as the ruling feature deepens the text’s sense of gloom, while also once again emphasizing that the servants are responding to what they perceive with emotion rather than rationality.

“Yet it was his pride rather than his virtue that was hurt; and when he wished him dead, it was rather to save himself from disgrace, than his son from the real indignity of vice.”

The juxtaposition of virtue and vice in this quotation demonstrate the duke’s shallow and tyrannical character. He cares only for the appearance of things. He would rather have a dead son than one who might cause him embarrassment.

“Wild and terrific images arose to her imagination. Fancy drew the scene;—she deepened the shades; and the terrific aspect of the objects she presented was heightened by the obscurity which involved them.”

Radcliffe uses the metaphor of a sketch to present Madame’s imaginings of what may have happened to Julia after her escape. This metaphor demonstrates what happens when Madame allows her fear to get the best of her, and that imagining the unknown is more terrifying than reality. The suggests the importance of The Use of Rational Thought to Explore the Supernatural.

“The fatigue and hardship I endured on this journey, performed almost wholly on foot, at any other time would have overcome me; but my mind was so occupied by the danger I was avoiding that these lesser evils were disregarded.”

Julia demonstrates a strength in this passage which she herself had not expected. This connects with the narrator’s assertion that those who come through trials and hard times will be rewarded. It also romanticizes nature, in that Julia has been freed from the evils of civilization and the duke by escaping into the woods.

“For the first time, she repented that she had left her father’s house.”

This comparatively short sentence comes in the middle of a page-long paragraph describing the decaying mansion where Julia and Madame are taken after being apprehended on their journey. The change in narrative cadence draws attention to Julia’s sense of dread as she fears being delivered to an angry duke and marquis. By saying that this is the first moment she has felt regret, though she has lived on her own in the woods for many weeks, Radcliffe also highlights relative peace of nature versus the corruption of civilized patriarchy.

“Thus do the scenes of life vary with the predominant passions of mankind, and with the progress of civilization. The dark clouds of prejudice break away before the sun of science, and gradually dissolving, leave the brightening hemisphere to the influence of its beams.”

Here Radcliffe uses the monastery as an allegory for societal corruption, explaining that it bears all the marks of past customs and ages, during which wealthy patrons used it as an escape from their troubles. By using weather as a metaphor, she aligns reason with nature and daylight, and prejudice and passion with stormy weather, suggesting that society may yet progress into a sphere of enlightenment if the relics of the past are allowed to dissolve.

“Here prejudice, not reason, suspended the influence of the passions; and scholastic learning, mysterious philosophy, and crafty sanctity supplied the place of wisdom, simplicity, and devotion.”

Radcliffe overtly critiques Catholicism as an illusion, contrasting it with the reality of reason. By suggesting that prejudice is the result of scholastic learning, she emphasizes that wisdom comes from what people can learn and observe through their own senses, rather than what they might take second-hand from others, explicitly expounding theories of empiricism. This concept of religion as illusion is later emphasized by her repeated use of the colloquialism “taking the veil” to refer to consecration as a nun, suggesting that Catholic devotion makes one unable to see clearly.

“The spirit of the Abate was roused by this menace; and Julia obtained from his pride, that protection which neither his principle or his humanity would have granted.”

As with the duke, the Abate is compelled to act against the threat of the marquis’s letter and his own interests by a point of pride and passion. The vice of pride is juxtaposed with the virtues of principle and humanity, creating an ironic situation in which the Abate’s vice leads to protection for Julia. However, this is an illusory sense of protection since she still must live by the Abate’s whims.

“Look here […] and learn that you are in my power; for if you dare to violate these sacred walls, I will proclaim aloud, in the face of day, a secret which shall make your heart’s blood run cold; a secret which involves your honour, nay, your very existence.”

The Abate’s speech is a key aspect of the rising action of the novel, using hyperbole to raise the stakes for all involved with his threat. It overtly shows that knowledge of the secret is power, and the threat to reveal it “in the face of day” suggests that the secret is very dark. It also ties reputation to identity by suggesting that the marquis’s honor is tantamount to his existence.

“Her fancy attached to it a horror not its own; and that evil, which, when offered to her decision, she had accepted with little hesitation, she now paused upon in dubious regret; so apt we are to imagine that the calamity most certain, is also the most intolerable.”

Radcliffe explores the contradictory impulses of human nature, describing Julia’s reflections of her decision to accept life as a nun rather than life married to the Duke de Luovo. It heightens Julia’s sense that she is trapped between two patriarchal institutions and that when decisions are made in haste or under coercion, they yield to passion rather than reason.

“Far on the rocky shores the surges sound,

The lashing whirlwinds cleave the vast profound;

While high in air, amid the rising storm,

Driving the blast, sits Danger’s black’ning form.”

Unlike the other poems in the novel, this quatrain appears without introduction or segue, during Julia and Ferdinand’s attempted escape by sea. As in her other poems, Radcliffe uses vivid imagery to capture the emotions of her characters in quatrains built on rhymed couplets and iambic pentameter. Here, the personification of “Danger” suggests that an evil force looms ahead, one which will “cleave” life into a past and a future.

“She seemed as if about to speak, when fixing her eyes earnestly and steadily upon Julia, she stood for a moment in eager gaze, and suddenly exclaiming, ‘My daughter!’ fainted away.”

When Louisa faints upon identifying her daughter, it stresses the importance of the epiphany that she is yet living. Her easy identification of the daughter she has not seen in seven years represents her maternal bond to her children, a purity of feeling that even the corruption of the marquis has been unable to sever.

“When once we enter on the labyrinth of vice, we can seldom return, but are led on, through correspondent mazes, to destruction. To obviate the effect of his first crime, it was now necessary the marquis should commit a second, and conceal the imprisonment of the marchioness by her murder.”

The metaphorical “labyrinth of vice” represents the idea that one bad deed inevitably leads to the next, and that the path of vice is tangled and convoluted, while the path of virtue is straight and true. By describing the murder of the marchioness as “necessary,” the narrator suggests that the marquis is too far into the maze to be redeemed.

“‘The retribution of heaven is upon me,’ resumed the marquis. ‘My punishment is the immediate consequence of my guilt. Heaven has made that woman the instrument of its justice, whom I made the instrument of my crimes;—that woman, for whose sake I forgot conscience, and braved vice—for whom I imprisoned an innocent wife, and afterwards murdered her.’”

“Instrument of justice” is an idiomatic phrase used to describe a person or a thing (often a weapon) that punishes someone for their crime. In creating the linguistic parallel between “instrument of justice” and “instrument of my crime” Radcliffe hints at a sense of natural balance in the world. That the marquis’s poisoning is “the immediate consequence” of his attempt to poison Louisa suggests there is a natural order of things finally coming full circle. This circularity is reinforced when Ferdinand has the epiphany that his mother was the cause of the supernatural sounds he was hearing.

“The marchioness, thus restored to the world, and to happiness, resided with her children in the palace at Naples, where, after time had somewhat mellowed the remembrance of the late calamity, the nuptials of Hippolitus and Julia were celebrated. The recollection of the difficulties they had encountered, and of the distress they had endured for each other, now served only to heighten by contrast the happiness of the present period.”

These lines present the resolution of the novel, using understatement of their “late calamity” to assure readers of a happy ending. However, it does not suggest that they have forgotten or buried the past but that it has taught them to better appreciate what they have in the present.