A Close Reading Analysis of Radcliffe’s Revolutionary Stance in A Sicilian Romance
This passage is taken from Ann Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance, which follows protagonist Julia through her transition away from the grips of patriarchal tyranny towards a world of self-liberation. The text serves as a platform where Radcliffe’s stances on both the internal and external female worlds of this period are explored. While her “reformist politics” are, as Watts highlights, set “not just in a different era but in a different country,” and are therefore perhaps not as revolutionary as her Wollstonecraft equivalents, whose writing is set in Britain, still one cannot deny their prominence in A Sicilian Romance’s plot.[1] In the text, through the actions and sentiments of Radcliffe’s heroine, “an age of feudal or aristocratic privilege gives way to a modern, egalitarian, ‘enlightened’ one.”[2] Her literary techniques demonstrate a subtle, nuanced revolutionary stance, both against the entrapment of women within the patriarchal home, and for the benefits and necessary utilization of female sensibility. Through an exploration of the contrast between Julia’s and Madame’s approaches to sensibility within the passage’s structure, the use of female gothic tropes, the employment of language and multi-perspective narration, and the concept of depth, Radcliffe embeds within the text her argument for the healing powers of female companionship, solidarity, and voice, as initiated by her heroine’s sensibility.
This passage sits almost precisely at the novel’s center, in the middle of the ninth chapter, and as such an analysis of its structure is perhaps the most revealing of Radcliffe’s intended meaning. Her artful enmeshing of her characters’ dissimilar perspectives into the structure of the text serves to both represent the two conflicting views on female sensibility held by Julia and Madame de Menon, and to express where she stands in the debate between the two. Clery writes that “[t]he narration is organized around [Julia’s] ever-active sensibility” and indeed, the four paragraphs within this passage are arranged in just this way; each has its distinct purpose, each builds the precedence of Julia’s approach over Madame’s, and each leads towards the rewards of Julia’s sensibility-driven curiosity.[3]
The first states the two clashing stances on female sensibility: an upset Julia whose sensibility is unrestrained and a rational Madame attempting to pull Julia away from her sorrows by redirecting her towards “that taste for literature and music.”[4] The second and longest paragraph embodies Radcliffe’s attention to “the inward processes of the observer’s sensibilities” as the reader journeys through the inner workings of Julia’s mind, emotions, and perspective.[5] Julia ignores Madame’s pleas to turn her attention towards cultivating her taste, layering into the text an underlying tone of dissent as a younger generation rebels against the views of an older one. This opposition reveals the true cause of Julia’s emotions— a worry for Cornelia’s declining health. While Madame wishes for Julia to escape her pain by turning to other pursuits, Julia, inseparable from her sensibility, can only “[escape] from herself” and her pain by turning to aid the suffering of another. Radcliffe’s approval of sensibility over emotional restraint is further expressed here through the concurrent surrendering to her emotions with the increase in Cornelia’s health; by leaning into her sensibility, the two women grow a deep, reciprocal attachment, and as the passage states, Cornelia credits her returning health to “the assiduity and tenderness of her young friend.”
The third paragraph pushes Radcliffe’s argument further; not only does Julia’s unrestrained sensibility bring Cornelia back to health, it is additionally rewarded with the sharing of her story: “‘Of the life which your care has prolonged […] it is but just that you should know the events.’” Thus, in the fourth, Cornelia begins her first-person narration, and Julia discovers the many parallels between their experiences, as well as information that crucially alters her fate, and the rest of the plot. Julia learns that Cornelia, too, lost her mother and that she, too, is a descendant of an “illustrious Italian family,” the one key difference between them being the character of their fathers. However, despite Cornelia having grown up under the influence of a “noble father” instead of a tyrannical one, the circumstances of both women have still led them here, enclosed within the monastery’s walls. It is within this circumstance that Radcliffe artfully weaves in her views on the inescapable and inevitable sense of entrapment that stems from patriarchal homes and spaces. Both women were raised in male-led homes “deprived of a mother’s care,” and both women are here confined within another patriarchal space. As the reader goes on to learn, it is not until Julia’s mother escapes the bounds of patriarchal surveillance and assumes the role of familial matriarch— until the patriarchal structure has been destabilized and dismantled— that her fate has entirely turned around.
Breaking down the passage’s structure thus sheds light on Radcliffe’s growing argument towards exercising one’s sensibility. Clery articulates that Julia “yearns to experience the wider world,” and as demonstrated in this passage, when this cannot happen through exploration, escape, and moments in nature, this yearning is contained within the realm of sensibility, connection, and emotional curiosity.[6] Julia’s emotional curiosity, her yearning, keeps her from denying her sensibility; however, rather than this surrendering to her emotions leading her to ruin, it guides her to both a growing attachment and friendship with Cornelia: at the end of the chapter, Radcliffe writes that “similarity of sentiment and suffering united them in the firmest bonds of friendship” (108), the argument thus demonstrated that female sensibility leads to female solidarity. Moreover, it is Julia’s sensibility that leads to the crucial discovery that Hippolitus is her brother. And while this discovery causes her further pain, rather than weaken her, this pain offers her a renewed drive on her journey to self-liberation.
Further aiding Radcliffe’s nuanced approach to sensibility is her use of specific language as an entry point for her female readers; in moments of high emotion, Radcliffe uses “she” in place of “Julia,” embedding the reader’s mind within the mind of her heroine. Moreover, this word choice stresses the female relatability of the emotions and experiences being described. The passage opens, “she wept to the memory of times past,” immediately bringing the reader into Julia’s emotions following the preceding poem. Throughout the passage, this tactic remains: Radcliffe writes, “there was a romantic sadness in her feelings, luxurious and indefinable,” and “her heart now expanded in warm and unreserved affection.” By keeping the subject of these emotions in the anonymous realm of ‘she,’ Radcliffe allows her readers to place themselves within these words, creating a space for women to feel seen who might feel and experience emotions in a similar manner.
In addition to Radcliffe’s strategic use of structure and language, her employment of female gothic tropes further embeds her pro-sensibility and radical beliefs within the passage. Williams contends that male and female gothic writers fall into two distinct literary categories, and an essential technique she attributes to the female gothic is the “[generation] of suspense through the limitations imposed by the chosen point of view; we share both the heroine’s often mistaken perceptions and her ignorance.”[7] As revealed by the passage’s structure, Julia’s curiosity, driven by her extreme sensibility, drives the plot forward; the reader shares Julia’s perspective and discovers information as she does. Throughout the text then, and acutely felt in this passage, her sensibility itself is employed as a literary technique that guides the reader through the narrative’s twists and turns as events unfold and different characters are offered the freedom to share their perspectives.
Radcliffe’s attention to dialogue and, specifically, her multi-voiced narrative, is a foundational pillar in this discussion of female voice and solidarity. Williams writes that the “Male Gothic derives its most powerful effects from the dramatic irony created by multiple points of view”; Radcliffe borrows this technique from the male gothic, strategically weaving multiple female perspectives into the text— not to create irony, but to grant her female characters, and thus argue for, an agency over their voice.[8] This is a frequent tactic throughout the text; she allows each female character to which Julia is attached to paint the picture of their life— for themselves, for Julia, and by extension, for the reader— including Madame, Julia’s mother, and here, Cornelia. The passage begins from Julia’s perspective and seamlessly shifts into Cornelia’s voice after introducing her narration: “and Cornelia unfolded the history of her sorrows.” Further, the lack of dialogue preceding Cornelia’s perspective stresses the gravity and weight given to each female character whose speech is enmeshed within the narrative; the lack of other voices lends Cornelia a strong and clear entrance.
Williams also articulates that “[t]he power of Radcliffe’s strategy lies in her ‘expanding’ the reader’s imaginative powers in suspense and speculation.”[9] While Williams associates this expansion with Radcliffe’s use of terror, it is additionally utilized through her multi-perspective approach; by granting multiple women the opportunity to share their story, the reader’s mind expands throughout the text, her imaginative powers used to uncover the links between the different perspectives. In this passage, as the reader is about to learn of Cornelia’s relation to Hippolitus, by employing the female gothic technique of simultaneous discovery between the reader and the heroine, of being held in “suspense and speculation” as Cornelia speaks, the reader’s imaginative mind expands alongside Julia’s. In this use of multiple voices, layered storytelling, and the reader’s piecing together of the larger picture as Cornelia shares her perspective, Radcliffe constructs a powerful sense of depth within the passage, one that fits into the broader, layered framing of the novel. The text itself is framed within the curiosity of an unnamed narrator who has “arranged in the following pages” “abstracts of the history” of “the noble house of Mazzini” (1-2). The subsequent layer, Julia’s third-person narration, carries the reader through most of the text, bringing Cornelia’s narration three layers within the story. Radcliffe further commits to the concept of depth by filling the text with secrets, in this passage, “a secret grief.” These women’s stories and their secrets are buried deep within the text, and they are revealed simultaneously to Julia and the reader as her curiosity slowly digs them out and brings them to the surface. Her sensibility is, in this sense, the shovel; her emotions and her imagination uncover the text’s secrets, guide the reader’s understanding, and bring her out of patriarchal entrapment and into the arms of her mother and Hippolitus.
There is no lack of discussion on the literary genius that Radcliffe exhibits in A Sicilian Romance. In this passage, her talent is demonstrated through nuanced, immense subtext, which is cleverly layered beneath the passage’s structure, language, female gothic tropes, and multi-perspective narration. Read out of context, the progressive and even radical nature of the text is in part lost; however, by re-situating and reading the novel within the historical context of the 1790s, the reader can grasp just how complicated Radcliffe’s positionality was at the time, and just how skilled her navigation of these intricate and ambiguous themes within a fictional space of her own creation really is.
Footnotes:
[1] James Watt, “Ann Radcliffe and Politics,” in Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic, edited by Dale Townshend and Angela Wright, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 67,72.
[2] Robert Miles, Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 88.
[3] E. J. Clery, “Ann Radcliffe,” in Women’s Gothic: From Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley (Liverpool University Press, 2004), 69.
[4] All quotations from A Sicilian Romance are taken from Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance (Moncreiffe Press, 2023).
[5] Daniel Cottom, The Civilized Imagination: A Study of Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 28.
[6] Clery, “Ann Radcliffe,” 65.
[7] Anne Williams, Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 102.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 73.
Bibliography
Clery, E. J. “Ann Radcliffe.” In Women’s Gothic: From Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley, 51–84. Liverpool University Press, 2004. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv5rf49t.7.
Cottom, Daniel. The Civilized Imagination: A Study of Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. https://doi-org.ezproxy.st-andrews.ac.uk/10.1017/CBO9780511753176.
Miles, Robert. Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.
Radcliffe, Ann. A Sicilian Romance. Moncreiffe Press, 2023.
Watt, James. “Ann Radcliffe and Politics.” In Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic, edited by Dale Townshend and Angela Wright, 67–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139507448.006.
Williams, Anne. Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. https://doi-org.ezproxy.st-andrews.ac.uk/10.7208/9780226899039.
