Book Review #4: The Castle of Otranto, by H. Walpole

The Castle of Otranto has a little bit of everything: a doomed love triangle, a curse and prophecy, a crusader returned from the dead, a delusive tyrannical character, mistaken identities and a gigantic killer helmet... Yes, you read that right: a gigantic killer helmet!

If you have ever read a Gothic novel – say, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, or The Monk by Matthew Lewis – many of the above elements will already sound familiar to you, but what makes this story unique is having been the first one.

The storyline.-

The novel begins when Conrad – son of Otranto's master Prince Manfred and heir to his estate – is found dead in his chamber on the eve of his marriage to the beautiful Isabella. This is the shocking fashion in which his father encounters him:

"He [Manfred] beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers."

The distraught father then goes on to make the worst decision he could have made: to divorce his wife and marry the girl who was meant to become his daughter in law, in the hope of producing another male heir for the household. But, will the chain of inexplicable events and the disclosure of an old feud prevent this unhappy match in the end?

The setting.-

As soon as we start reading we find ourselves immersed in medieval Naples, while under Aragonese rule, at some unspecified time during the Crusades.

The Castle itself is, as you might expect from the very title, the main location in which all action takes place. In fact, we never leave the castle's premises and surroundings throughout the whole novel. Otranto is described as having all sorts of secret passages and cloisters, but only sparsely; very much is left to the reader to imagine (or dread).

Supernatural elements are also scarce and only hinted at, which gives great strength to the eerie feeling permeating the tale.

The pros.-

It's a great read in terms of originality, and one that may be of interest to any Gothic fiction enthusiast. I applaud Walpole's attempt at merging together old and modern forms of literature, and creating something entirely new out of them. To use the author's own words, as he wrote them in the preface to the second edition,

"It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. In the former, all was imagination and improbabilty: in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success."

The cons.-

This novel might not be the book for you if you're not into this type of fiction; it might have caused quite a stir when it was first published but, in my opinion, it hasn't aged well. The characters are flat and over the top, and the point Walpole was trying to make was completely lost on me.

Some details I found interesting.-

• The "invention" of the Middle Ages. Or at least, the idealized version of the Middle Ages as it has been passed onto us by the Romantics. I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was being told about the 18th century more than I was about the 11th.
• Both the terms terror and horror are used. The genre would evolve into two sub-genres later on, depending on which of the two feelings had a most prominent role in the plot, but here we find them blended.
• Ann Radcliffe was born in 1764, the year in which The Castle of Otranto was first published. Very befitting!
• Although this is not concerned with this book specifically, Walpole is credited with being the coiner of over 200 new words, among them serendipity.

Further reading.-

• The Castle of Otranto, on Project Gutenberg.
• The Castle of Otranto, as discussed on Wikipedia.
• The First Gothic Novel, on Interesting Literature. An article dealing with some fascinating facts about Horace Walpole.
• Elements of the Gothic Novel. This article discusses some common elements usually included in gothic and romance novels: The Castle of Otranto, of course, complies with all of them: it was, after all, the novel that set those rules!
• The Castle of Otranto - Analysis of Horace Walpole's Gothic Novel. An article which discusses how The Castle of Otranto provided a kind of template for many Gothic fiction novels to come.