The Castle of Otranto

Manfred’s wife, Hippolita, is a compassionate and pious woman who is submissive to Manfred. When Manfred expresses his wishes to divorce her, Hippolita, acting against her faith and own wishes, agrees to allow him to pursue Isabella to save his ownership of Otranto. By the conclusion of the novella, Hippolita is certain that Manfred’s reign at Otranto is coming to an end. After Manfred loses his rights to the castle, Hippolita enters a nearby convent to become a nun.

Hippolita symbolizes piety, submission, and resignation, embodying the traits expected of women in a patriarchal system. Hippolita feels powerless in the face of her husband’s often evil and abusive behavior; moreover, when the other women at Otranto complain about Manfred’s behavior, the loyal Hippolita defends him and his abusive manner, accepting his disdain of her inability to bear him more than one son. Although Hippolita’s cowed acquiescence of Manfred is clearly meant to be pitiful, the novella praises her identically helpless behavior in the face of Frederic’s ascendency, valorizing female passivity and belief in fate.

Matilda is the religious and compassionate teenage daughter of Manfred and Hippolita and sister of Conrad. Matilda is very close with her mother; her father, however, disdains the fact that Matilda is not a son. Matilda originally plans to become a nun at a nearby convent, but instead falls in love with Theodore when she frees him from the tower. While she and Theodore discuss marriage in the poorly lit church, Manfred mistakes her for Isabella and stabs her to death.

Matilda is significant because she is one of the pawns in the ancient prophecy that says that Manfred’s family will meet an unfortunate fate. Because she and her brother are both potential illegitimate heirs to Otranto, the supernatural elements guiding the rightful role back onto the throne kill them through gruesome accidents, arguing that even innocent children might inherit their father’s evil tendencies.

Isabella, the daughter of Frederic, the Marquis of Vincenza, became Conrad’s fiancée through Manfred’s machinations: Manfred bribed her guardians into offering her hand in marriage to Conrad. After Conrad’s death, Isabella becomes Manfred’s prey—needing to sire more sons to preserve his family’s claim to Otranto, Manfred decides to divorce his wife and marry Isabella. When he tries to sexually proposition Isabella, she escapes through the castle’s tunnels, seeking refuge in the Church of St. Nicholas. Following Matilda’s death, Manfred’s and Hippolita’s divorce, and Manfred’s decision to become a monk, Isabella marries Theodore, who has learned that he is the rightful heir to Otranto.

In the novella, Isabella symbolizes female innocence and chastity; her clear claim to Otranto’s throne is also in keeping with Walpole’s interest in legitimate bloodlines bestowing divinely blessed political power.

Father Jerome, one of the friars at a nearby convent, embodies faith and spirituality. He provides protection for Isabella when she first escapes from Manfred; later, after realizing that he is Theodore’s long-lost father, Father Jerome protects him against execution. Father Jerome, who never succumbs to Manfred’s deceptions, regularly tries to convince Manfred to abandon his obsession with power and replace it with devotion.

Theodore, who bears a striking resemblance to Alfonso the Good, the previous rightful ruler of Otranto, first appears as a peasant who recognizes the giant helmet that killed Conrad as that belonging to the statue of Alfonso in the Church of St. Nicholas. When it is revealed that Theodore is actually Alfonso’s heir, his intimate knowledge of the statue in retrospect becomes a sign that he is Otranto’s correct ruler.

Theodore spends much of the novella fleeing Manfred, who baselessly accuses him of Conrad’s murder and sentences him to death. While preparing for his execution, Father Jerome realizes that Theodore is his long-lost son. Although Theodore falls in love with Matilda, Manfred’s daughter, their relationship is doomed—because she is the daughter of the monstrous usurper Manfred, neither she nor her children can sit on the throne of Otranto. Instead, after Manfred murders Matilda, Theodore marries his cousin Isabella, another legitimate heir. Their marriage is not based on love, but on political expediency.