#MysteriesofUdolpho
Whereas Madame Cheron/Montoni! What a villain! Petty & self-centered! Emily is barely even a real person to her!

I feel for Emily in having to depend on this woman & her sketchy husband (the true nature of Montoni has not yet been revealed) in a foreign land.

#MysteriesofUdolpho
October 25, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Her lover, Valancourt, is even less of a character, comprised mainly of naïveté & devotion to Emily. Really bugs me how he fails to observe boundaries—“I won’t speak of my love anymore,” he says, right before going on & on about it for a few more long paragraphs.

#MysteriesofUdolpho
October 25, 2025 at 12:41 PM
What is Emily’s character, even? Hardly perceptible as a real, particular person. Sensitive to nature, loyal to her father’s instruction (bizarre to me how rarely she thinks about her mother), strong emotions (all the fainting!) that she is nevertheless not ruled by.

#MysteriesofUdolpho
October 25, 2025 at 12:37 PM
I sympathize with Catherine Morland; I, too, often fail to understand when people are saying things they don’t really mean.

Not the savviest of Austin’s heroines! But a far more compelling character than Udolpho’s Emily St. Aubert!

#MysteriesofUdolpho
So, I’ve been reading The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, about which Northanger Abbey’s Catherine Morland says, “While I have Udolpho to read, I feel as if nobody could make me miserable,” and I have some thoughts!

#MysteriesofUdolpho
October 25, 2025 at 12:30 PM
I actually tend to forget that the book is set in the late 1500s & imagine that the characters are late eighteenth-century English folks.

Similar to the seemingly contemporary-to-now attitudes found in historical romances set in the Regency or Victorian eras.

#MysteriesofUdolpho
October 20, 2025 at 5:16 PM
For example, Emily is “surprised at the ostentatious style exhibited in her aunt’s house & furniture.” But what would that have looked like in the south of France in the late sixteenth century? I have no idea & Radcliffe doesn’t fill us in. #MysteriesofUdolpho
October 20, 2025 at 5:10 PM
I’m having a hard time imagining the characters’ clothing & interior spaces. Radcliffe tells us lots about landscape, but not much about the made world. #MysteriesofUdolpho
October 20, 2025 at 5:09 PM
I’ve never read it before & am only eleven chapters in—not quite one-quarter through.

So far, I’m hardly as entertained as Catherine Morland, but I’m for sure intrigued.

#MysteriesofUdolpho
So, I’ve been reading The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, about which Northanger Abbey’s Catherine Morland says, “While I have Udolpho to read, I feel as if nobody could make me miserable,” and I have some thoughts!

#MysteriesofUdolpho
October 20, 2025 at 4:59 PM
So, I’ve been reading The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, about which Northanger Abbey’s Catherine Morland says, “While I have Udolpho to read, I feel as if nobody could make me miserable,” and I have some thoughts!

#MysteriesofUdolpho
October 20, 2025 at 4:56 PM
After reading #NorthangerAbbey, I decided to dive straight in to #MysteriesofUdolpho! My thoughts at the 1/3 mark are that, while it could definitely do with some editing in places, it's legitimately quite suspensful and I'm wholeheartedly invested in the characters! ^_^

#books #classicliterature
June 14, 2025 at 8:32 PM
May 18, 2025 at 12:01 AM
February 28, 2025 at 4:05 PM
“You are all about to curse my name because of the endless landscape descriptions.” #AcademicLife #MysteriesOfUdolpho
November 19, 2024 at 12:33 AM