WALPOLE`S LEGACY: A STUDY OF MODERN, POPULAR GOTHIC

WALPOLE`S LEGACY: A STUDY OF MODERN, POPULAR GOTHIC

WALPOLE'S LEGACY: A STUDY OF MODERN,
POPULAR GOTHIC NOVELS
by
BEVERLY SIX CASE, B.A,
A THESIS
IN
ENGLISH
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Approved
December, 1976
P
'
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There have been many who have aided and encouraged me in my quest
for gothic definition.
I would like to thank Dr. J. Wilkes Berry for
his encouragement, careful reading, and conscientious criticism.
In
particular I would like to thank Dr. Jack D. Wages who, in two years
of work with me, has been unceasingly supportive and constructively
critical throughout. His unfailing patience has made this thesis
possible.
n
1^
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ii
I. INTRODUCTION
1
II. HISTORY AND DEFINITION OF GOTHIC
Walpole's Legacy
Gothic Devices
III. THE BRITONS
Victoria Holt
Dorothy Eden
8
8
20
27
27
44
IV. THE AMERICANS
Jane Aiken Hodge
Phyllis Whitney
54
54
69
V. CONCLUSION
83
ENDNOTES
87
LIST OF SOURCES
94
APPENDICES
98
A. AUTHORS AND WORKS LINKED WITH THE GOTHIC TRADITION
B. SYNOPSES OF NOVELS UNDER CONSIDERATION
Victoria Holt
Dorothy Eden
Jane Aiken Hodge
Phyllis Whitney
99
103
103
115
120
128
m
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this thesis is to study the novels of four contemporary authors--Victoria Holt, Dorothy Eden, Jane Aiken Hodge, and Phyllis
Whitney--in order to ascertain to what extent these four authors have
utilized in their novels those patterns of plot and characterization
that have become the gothic tradition. In the pursuit of this purpose
one must of necessity also become involved in the discovery of the
changes each author has made in the gothic tradition in order to adapt
gothic patterns of style to her own literary needs.
In order to pursue the purpose of this thesis one must follow several steps. The first step is investigation of the gothic tradition itself in order to establish what aspects of the gothic tradition will be
sought in the novels of the four authors under consideration. The second
step will be evaluation of the works of each novelist in turn in order to
find examples of gothic techniques and to relate those techniques to the
gothic tradition. The third step will be the goal, the conclusions drawn
from the evidence cited in steps one and two. This thesis will follow
these three steps.
Before following the steps that will lead the reader to the conclusions drawn about the relationship between the novels under consideration
and other novels in the gothic tradition, one must first establish that
the novels under consideration are of literary merit. When Horace Walpole
1
and his eighteenth-century contemporaries produced gothic novels, the
novels were popular in both literary and social circles.
In fact, the
novels of Walpole and his contemporaries are accepted as literature
today.
Somewhere in the two-hundred-year interval between Walpole and
the modern gothic writers, however, the contemporary gothic novel lost
its place in literature.
Today the gothic novel is forced into the
realm of "women's reading," a denigrated area of the written word that
lumps together the gothic novel, movie magazines, confession magazines,
nurse novels, and the like, as if modern women read nothing else.
In fact, it is true that contemporary gothic novels do not suit
the literary needs of everyone, and Appendix B of this thesis, which
contains brief synopses of the novels under consideration, is mute
acknowledgement of the fact that many readers of this thesis may be unfamiliar with the works of Holt, Eden, Hodge, and Whitney.
One cannot,
however, dismiss the novels of these four authors as having no literary
merit after only cursory investigation.
It was more than cursory inves-
tigation of the earliest gothic novels, listed in Appendix A, that gave
them a place in literature, for the titles alone (The Hag of the Mountains, or Mysterious Memoirs of the Marquis de la Terra and His Supposed
Friend the Count di Suza, Including Those of Lucetta and Vittoria, The
Lovely Daughters of a Vintager, at Montmelian, in Savoy, for example) are
not convincing as indicators of literary masterpieces.
These'early nov-
els do have an established place in literature under the aegis of the
gothic tradition, as do contemporary gothic novels, despite the deprecatory gestures of the literarily astute.
/^
X
1^
y
Actually, it is not that modern gothic novels, i.e., those gothics
written today, are so much despised by the literarily astute as ignored.
It is rare today to find literary discussions of modern gothic novels.
One exception to this rule of silence is Joanna Russ, and her approach
to the modern gothic not only reflects the usual approach to the gothic
tradition but also reflects the almost universally accepted "literary"
approach today.
In an article titled "Somebody's Trying to Kill Me and I Think It's
My Husband:
The Modern Gothic," Ms. Russ begins with the question, "What
fiction do American women read?" and the answer, "God knows."
Ms. Russ
establishes that the fiction read exclusively by women includes the modern gothic, and then she states her thesis:
"If you look inside the
covers [of the modern gothic] you will find that the stories bear no
resemblance to the literary definition of 'Gothic'
They are not related
to the works of Monk Lewis or Mrs. Radcliffe, whose real descendants are
known today as Horror Stories."
Ms. Russ goes on to say that "Modern
Gothics . . . are read by middle-class women or women with middle-class
aspirations,"^ leaving the general impression that the gothic novel, as
well as the middle-class, carries some terrible, non-literary stigma.
Ms. Russ follows her thesis carefully in a well-written article, and,
with a somewhat feminist flourish, concludes that the popularity of the
modern gothic among women readers is not a compliment to the general
intelligence of that sex.
Ms. Russ is not alone in her assessment of the gothic novel and its
readers, nor will she or anyone else ever find a dearth of ill-written,
ill-conceived contemporary gothics to use as examples.
The purpose of
this study, however, is not refutation, but investigation.
Such comments
as those expressed in Ms. Russ's article are not new in the two-hundredyear history of the gothic tradition, for the gothic has never been as
popular with critics as other literary genres. One must therefore set
such comments aside and begin with the modern writers under considerati on.
An exhaustive study of every contemporary gothic writer would, indeed, be exhausting; so, for the purpose of reasonable investigation,
this study has been narrowed to four of the better gothic writers in
terms of literary ability and popularity with the reading public. The
works chosen for this study meet the following criteria:
1) they all
have nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century settings, 2) they have been
published and sold as gothic novels, 3) they are all considered to be
"popular" fiction, and 4) they are contemporary, having all been written
and published no earlier than 1950.
One facet of this study must be the evaluation of the effects of
the American way of life on the gothic tradition in America.
the reader will, with Richard Chase, recognize "...
Of course,
the difficulty of
making accurate judgments about what is specially American in American
novels . . .,"^ but, nonetheless, the possibility of differences between
gothics written by Americans and gothics written by Europeans must be
investigated.
Despite the focus on American authors, however, one cannot
undertake a discussion of representative contemporary gothic novelists
today without beginning with a Briton, Victoria Holt.
Ms. Holt (Eleanor Burford Hibbert), the most prominent and possibly
most prolific contemporary gothic writer of the twentieth century, has
written romances under the names Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Ellalice
Tate and Eleanor Burford, and historical novels under the names Jean
Plaidy, Eleanor Hibbert, and, most recently, Philippa Carr. As Victoria
Holt, Ms. Hibbert is universally recognized as the "Mistress of the turnof-the-century Gothic." With Lord Of The Far Island, Victoria Holt produced her thirteenth, consecutive, international, best-selling gothic
romance.^ She has perhaps the largest reading audience of any gothic
novelist today, she commands an impressive monetary remuneration for
each book, she frequently heads book club best-seller lists with her new
publications, and she is rarely, if ever, read or studied for her gothic
techniques.
Being ignored by literary critics does not bother this Mistress of
the Gothic, however, for she says, "I don't care about the critics. I
write for the public.
It's nicer to be read than to get nice reviews."
Victoria Holt j ^ read, and the praise "In the best tradition of Victoria
Holt" is very nearly a guarantee of success for aspiring young gothic
writers today.
Twelve of Ms. Holt's gothics are set in the nineteenth century, and
she deals primarily with British backgrounds or characters. Another
well-known British writer, Dorothy Eden, provides a transition between
the Britons and the Americans in this study because she sometimes uses
an American setting or heroine, and she utilizes the gothic framework
for non-gothic purposes, as do the American writers under consideration.
She writes historical romances as well as gothic romances, but only five
of her novels fit the criteria for this study. The five novels considered here show both tradition and innovation within the gothic framework.
The two American authors under consideration in this study, like
Ms. Eden, use traditional gothic techniques in their novels, and, at the
same time, incorporate innovative twists to the traditional gothic plots.
Jane Aiken Hodge, the daughter of American poet Conrad Aiken, uses both
American and European settings for her gothics. She has written eight
novels, but only seven of these can be classified as gothic romances and
should be considered in this study.
With Ms. Hodge, as with many American gothic writers, one finds that
the gothic framework frequently, perhaps necessarily, carries other, nongothic themes.
In speaking of her work, Ms. Hodge says, "What I am do-
ing, I suppose, is using the Gothic paraphernalia, along with the historical background, to hide behind, so that I can write freely what I want
to say."
In saying what she wants to say about history or such physical
problems as stammering or autism, Ms. Hodge uses gothic techniques to
advantage, even though she admits that "Frankly, some of my books are
much less Gothic than others . . . but publishers have been taking advantage of the vogue and dressing them all up with the inevitable castle
o
and fleeing heroine."
It will be the purpose of this study to investi-
gate Ms. Hodge's use of the gothic and the extent of her reliance on
original gothic techniques, as well as her reluctance to use American
settings in her gothic novels.
While Ms. Hodge often uses non-American settings in her gothics,
the other American novelist in this study, Phyllis Whitney, uses American
settings entirely.
Ms. Whitney, born of American parents in Japan, makes
her home in America and finds her gothic atmosphere in America's past.
Since Ms. Whitney uses both contemporary and nineteenth-century settings
in her novels, only six, tho$e novels that fit the criteria, can be included in this study.
Her novels will be studied for traditional gothic
techniques, as well as for her adaptation of the gothic framework to
accommodate her American settings.
Before one can search for the presence of traditional gothic techniques in modern-gothic novels, one must first know what those techniques
include. Therefore, a brief look at the two-hundred-year-old history of
the gothic novel, as well as a listing of gothic devices, is important
here.
CHAPTER II
HISTORY AND DEFINITION OF GOTHIC
Walpole's Legacy
Horace Walpole is generally credited with first presenting the
gothic novel as a form of popular literature, despite Devendra Varma's
assertion that "...
the Gothic romance did not spring fully grown and
armed, like Minerva, from The Castle of Otranto. Walpole merely outstripped a gradual accumulation of influences which would all have
eventually brought about the birth of something resembling Gothic literature. He provided a tradition, a legacy."
A far more prevalent
opinion among critics is that of Edith Birkhead, who said that "to Horace
Walpole, whose Castle of Otranto was published on Christmas Eve, 1764,
must be assigned the honour of having introduced the Gothic romance and
2
of having made it fashionable."
In explanation of the fashionable ap-
peal of The Castle of Otranto, Birkhead says that the novel "...
fled a real craving for the romantic and marvellous."
satis-
In a hard look at
the actual construction and content of the first gothic novel, Birkhead
notes that "The Castle of Otranto is significant not because of its intrinsic merit, but because of its power in shaping the destiny of the
novel."
In truth, as Varma says, "Otranto opened the flood-gate of
5
'Gothic' tales," and many of these gothic tales mirror Otranto so closely that Birkhead's comment that "the characters [in Otranto] are mere
puppets, yet we meet the same types again and again in later Gothic
8
romances,"" encompasses both the influence of Otranto and the appeal of
Walpole's literary style. Later in her study of the novel of terror,
Birkhead discovered that although "the word 'Gothic' in the early eighteenth century was used as a term of reproach,"^ the influence of Walpole
was such that "when the nineteenth century is reached the epithet has
lost all tinge of blame, and has become entirely one of praise."
What,
then, is the nature of this literary form, the "Gothic" novel, that can
elicit at once such caustic criticism about its character development
and such unstinting praise of its popularity and influence on literature?
The Gothic novel has been much maligned by literary critics, but
that same novel has at times been equally acclaimed by its ardent followers.
In The Gothic Flame, Varma says that
. . . some critics are prepared to agree with Mrs. Barbauld
who, in On the Origin and Progress of Novel Writing . . .,
says, 'books of this description are condemned by the grave,
and despised by the fastidious; but their leaves are seldom
found unopened, and they occupy the parlour and the dressingroom while productions of higher name are often gathering
dust upon the shelf. It might not perhaps be difficult to
show that this species of composition is entitled to a higher
rank than has been generally assigned it.'9
This, then, is an appropriate definition of the popularity of the gothic
novel, that step-child of literature, from Walpole's day to the present.
The gothic novel has undergone many changes and not a few additions and
refinements, but it has rarely been given the serious evaluation it-deserves. Varma's cry that "the Gothic novel is definitely of intrinsic
merit"
echoes hollowly along the empty passageways linking popular
gothic fiction to the mainstream of literature.
Perhaps some of the
lack of recognition that the popular gothic novel suffers at the hands
10
of literary critics is the result of unfamiliarity with this particular
form of literary expression.''
Before one can become cognizant of the modern gothic tradition,
therefore, he must become familiar with the two-hundred-year-old history
of the gothic form.
Such a study, however, can easily become gargantuan,
for a detailed description of the gothic novel, from its birth (or synthesis, as one may prefer) in Horace Walpole's day to the countless paperbacks populating bookstands today, must cover an overwhelming amount of
description of style, listing of "gothic devices," and evaluation of
those authors who have made use of the gothic tradition.
Since one facet
of this particular study is to discover whether modern gothic novelists
have inherited Walpole's legacy, such a detailed historical survey is
not practical.
No discussion of the gothic novel can commence, however,
without a glimpse of that novel's history and the contribution of its
father, Horace Walpole.
Obsessed with gothic architecture to the point of emulation, Walpole
penned his gothic, Otranto, from Strawberry Hill, whose turrets and chambers were hauntingly evocative of those atmospheric elements so necessary
to the gothic mood:
clanking chains, haunting sounds, locked and myster-
ious rooms, hidden vaults, subterranean passages, dungeons, bloodstained
battlements, and dark galleries hung with portraits of ancestors long
called up for their dark and devious deeds. Walpole's influence on later
gothic writers can be found in the re-creation of his characters. Such
notable characters as the usurping tyrant, the "noble peasant" hero, the
persecuted heroine, monks, and garrulous, ghost-ridden servants are practically prerequisites for the gothic novel. Walpole's plot in Otranto,
1^
11
the restoration to hereditary rights of a defrauded heir by supernatural
means, can also be found in many later gothics.^^ These gothic stock
properties have become part of the essence of the gothic novel itself;"
one does not write a gothic novel today without starting with a skeletal
frame of the gothic "stock properties" Walpole first used.
Walpole initiated other gothic properties necessary to the success
of the gothic novel, some of which include the tolling of a midnight
bell, blasts of whistling wind, the moon emerging from clouds to disclose new horrors, thunder and lightning, a significant, time-yellowed
scroll, a Southern setting, usually in Italy, and haunting music issuing
from deserted ruins. To the literary world, "Walpole gave the first
sketch of the dark, handsome, melancholy, passionate, and mysterious
hero of [later] Byronic poems." 13 To complement his Byronic Manfred,
Walpole gave to posterity the lovely Lady Isabella who, her chastity
and perhaps her very life threatened by Manfred, can say to Theodore,
her rescuer, "Though all your actions are noble, though your sentiments
speak the purity of your soul, is it fitting that I should accompany you
alone in these perplexed retreats?
Should we be found together, what
would a censorious world think of my conduct?"!^
A censorious world obviously applauded Lady Isabella and her sentiments, for Otranto was immensely popular.
Indeed, almost every gothic
novel of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries was popular.'^
Jane Austen intended to mock the gothic intensity she found in such
novels as Walpole's Otranto and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho
with her Northanger Abbey, but she also gives an accurate picture of the
popularity of the gothic romances when she has Catherine say, of Udolpho.
12
"I am delighted with the book!
reading it."^°
I should like to spend my whole life in
It is not inconceivable that when Isabella replies that
"when you have finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian together; and
I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you,"^^
she accurately reflects the fervor with which young ladies read gothic
novels in the nineteenth century.
Each gothic writer who followed Walpole drew from his legacy and
sometimes added a new dimension to the gothic tradition.
Varma feels
that ". . . since Clara Reeve's time no Gothic castle is complete without
its 'deserted wing.' She also introduces presaging dreams, groans, clanking chains, and such other Gothic machinery as she thinks comes within
18
the range of probability." ,*? In the hands of Ann Radcliffe, the range
of probability is enlarged to include a mysterious veil, haunting whistles on the wind, walking apparitions, and bloodied corpses, all seemingly supernatural phenomena that are prosaically explained later as
natural occurrences exaggerated by unnatural circumstances or by tautlystrung sensibilities. Birkhead feels that "from the very first [Ann
19
Radcliffe] explained away her marvels by natural means,"'^ but Radcliffe's
Innovative explanations point to the diverse development of the gothic
novel when it left Walpole's hands. A harbinger of a trend later developed by American writers, Radcliffe dabbles in the psychology of terror.
Again Birkhead says that "Mrs. Radcliffe's psychology is neither subtle
nor profound, but the fact that psychology is there in the most rudi20
mentary form is a sign of her progress in the art of fiction."
Another sign of development, if not progress, in the art of gothic
fiction is The Monk, the 1796 brainchild of Matthew Gregory Lewis. A
13
true father of the line of gothic fictions known as the "horror gothic,"
Lewis eschews the romantic sentimentality of such gothic novelists as
Ann Radcliffe and capitalizes on the dark and menacing side of the gothic: dabblings in necromancy, Faustian dealing with devils, descriptive
charnel-house horrors, rape, murder, incest, and torture. Although Varma
contends that "it is a commonplace of criticism to presume that the
horror-romantic phase of Gothic fiction was initiated by Lewis's story.
The Monk (1795), . . . [despite the fact that] there are one or two
interesting precursers of this work,"^! wery few of these "precursers"
remain as popular or as horrifying today as does The Monk. After naming
William Godwin as a terror-gothic precurser of Lewis and after calling
Beckford's Vathek (1786) a "wild fantasy"^^ gothic, Varma goes on to say
that, "of all the tales of horror. The Monk (1796) is probably the most
extravagant. . . . The Monk remains a romance of extraordinary fascination and power."^^
The development of the Gothic horror-novel does not stop with the
introduction of The Monk, however.
It is refined and scientifically
endowed with futuristic horror by Mary Shelley, whose Frankenstein has
become the prototype for gothic monster-terror novels and, perhaps, the
precursor of much of the terror of science fiction.^^
In Frankenstein,
the result of the agreement among Shelley, Mary Shelley, Byron and Dr.
Polidori to write ghost stories, Mary Shelley's inspiration was the
popularity of the gothic; her genius was the incorporation of science
into the novel of terror. She is not alone in innovative technique among
the ghost-story group, however. Dr. John Polidori's The Vampyre: A Tale
(1819) opens up new vistas for the gothic writers: a world populated by
14
supernatural and superhuman beings. Montague Summers says that "'until
we come to Polidori's novel . . . nowhere do we meet with the Vampire
in the realm of Gothic fancy.'"^^
Readers of gothics have met with many
Vampires since Polidori's tale, to be sure, since "Polidori's tale . . .
set a fashion for vampire stories."^^ One must agree with Varma, however,
that "the prince of vampires is Bram Stoker's Dracula, round whom centres
probably the greatest horror tale of modern times."^^
One might well ask where the phrase "modern times" leaves the historian of the gothic literary tradition.
In Great Britain the legacy
of Walpole has split into two main schools of writing: the gothic romance novel and the gothic terror novel. One other division of the original gothic formula has made its way via Sir Walter Scott to the shores
of America to be incorporated into an American gothic tradition:
ical gothic.
histor-
It is strange that a country that has just now accumulated
two hundred years of written history should have turned in the nineteenth
century to the historical branch of gothic fiction rather than taking a
direct legacy from Walpole or Radcliffe.
Leslie Fiedler in Love And
Death In The American Novel makes some explanation when he says,
"...
behind the gothic lies a theory of history, a particular sense of the
past."^^ As a matter of fact, American novelists recognized that a sense
of history or of the past, although not necessarily the historical past,
is vital for the traditional gothic writer.
For Walpole and his followers, the past became the symbol for corruption and the means of evoking horror. When Fiedler says that "the
[gothic] tale of terror is a kind of historical novel which existed
before the historical novel . . . came into being,"^^ he is recognizing
15
the gothic writer's tendency to use the past as the source of his gothicism.
What is at least a century beyond the contemporary reader's
recall is the perfect setting for the terror of the unknown, the mystery
of vague definition, and the romance of a selective view of only one facet
of history.
From the beginning of the gothic novel, writers were quick
to realize that a description of contemporary life is in itself rarely
believably mysterious; consequently, they incorporated into the traditional gothic framework an obsession with the past.
Of course, the revelation that "the gothic felt for the first time
the pastness of the past . . ."^^ is not a new revelation, nor does it
apply solely to American gothic novelists.
Every gothic novelist who
traced his heritage to Walpole's Otranto knew that the Middle Ages,
mythically transformed by gothic imagination, was the fertile ground
from which all "good" gothics should spring, in actual form or in evocative mood.
Nevertheless, the historical gothic in the hands of American
writers undergoes a subtle transformation, a transformation wrought of
the coalescence and refinement of the terror-gothic, the gothic-romance,
and the historical gothic.
Charles Brockden Brown, the acknowledged
"Father of American Gothic" adapted the European gothic mode to American
thought and "...
determined, through his influence on Poe and Hawthorne,
the future of the gothic novel in America."^!
Alexander Cowie acknowl-
edges the difficulties American novelists faced when he says, "Moral,
technical, and chronological difficulties . . . tended to hamper the
growth of American Gothic, and even Charles Brockden Brown did not
wholly surmount its difficulties."^^
16
Fiedler catalogues the difficulties of adapting the gothic tradition
to an American setting when he says that " . . .
the gothic mode proved
difficult to adapt to the demands of the American audience and the deeper
meanings of American experience, for the generation of Jefferson was
pledged to be done with ghosts and shadows. . . ."•^•^ Fiedler further
discusses the task confronting the American gothic novelist when he says,
. . . it was not hard to provide the American equivalents of the moors, hills, and forests through which the
bedeviled maidens of the gothic romances were accustomed
to flee. But what of the haunted castle, the ruined abbey,
the dungeons of the Inquisition? In America, such crumbling
piles, architecturally and symbolically so satisfying to the
eighteen-century reader and writer, are more than a little
improbable. Yet on them, not only the atmosphere, but [also]
an important part of the meaning of the tale of terror depended. 34
Thus, the American author must substitute his frontier reality for ages
of European history.
In doing so. Brown borrows Radcliffe's rational explanations and
produces a ventriloquist for a ghost, a psychologically-disturbed religious fanatic for a thorough villain.
Edgar Allan Poe, falling heir to
Brown's psychological mantle, pens tales of terror shot through with
the horrors of a psychological mania manifest in incest and dark, ancestral curses.
Hawthorne, burdened with the heritage of Puritan guilt and
primal sin, evokes guilty forays into the consciousness in his efforts
to create a gothic terror.
Melville takes to the sea to find the
Faustian Ahab, obsessed and damned, yet as unforgettable as any Manfred
or "Monk" Ambrosio who ever pursued a maiden instead of a whale.
The
resulting horror is akin to the gothicism created by Walpole and his contemporaries; the difference in gothicism between Walpole and the Americans is the means by which the author evokes terror.
17
Since basic gothic devices are present in varying forms in American
gothic, one must evaluate American gothic with a new eye.
For the castle,
one must see a shuttered Puritan house or a death-haunted ship; the gothic
villain becomes the mysterious Indian or the hated Negro; the hero merges
with the shadows and the darkness to plumb psychological depths of despair; the traditional heroine virtually disappears.
The traditional
gothic becomes, in the American psychological gothic novel, the New American Gothic explained by Irving Mai in.
Rather than viewing the New Ameri-
can Gothic as a new literary form, Mai in views it as something of a mutant heir when he says, "in old gothic we encounter the haunted castle,
the voyage into the forest, and the reflection.
Walpole, Monk Lewis,
and Mrs. Radcliffe do not use these images in any psychologically acute
way:
they remain mere props.
But the inheritors of old Gothic regard
35
these images as 'objective correlatives' of the psyche."
Thus one has the "modern" gothic in America, a rich, albeit transformed, inheritance composed of three traditions:
terror gothic, romantic gothic.
historical gothic,
The American, twentieth-century histor-
ical gothic is found in the Southern gothic writings of William Faulkner,
Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty and others.
In this Southern gothic
form one finds subtle blendings of Walpole and the other gothicists who
relied upon the past.
Using sometimes an historical South, sometimes a
grotesque South, these modern Southern writers exemplify Mai in's objective correlatives in American Gothic.
in the gothic tradition.
Again, one finds slight changes
Instead of Radcliffe's Italian castle set on
a hillside, one finds Faulkner's mouldering mansion draped in Spanish
moss and deathly silence; instead of Walpole's Isabella fleeing super-
18
natural and sexual terrors, one finds O'Connor's Tarwater fleeing redemption and psychological committment.
The terror gothic in American literature follows much the same pattern of transformation as does the historical gothic.
The terror in
"Monk" Lewis's Faustian devil-dealings turns in America to the Black
Sabbath.
Instead of Lewis's burial-vault necromancy, one finds Thomas
Tryon's present-day. New England cults or Ira Levin's Black Masses.
It is primarily the emphasis on Black Magic and devil worship in these
modern gothics that links them with Lewis's terror gothic tradition and,
at the same time, prevents their degeneration into mere ghost stories.
The reader must not assume that he will never encounter a ghost in
modern, popular gothic novels, however.
The third gothic division, that
of the romantic gothic, depends often upon ghostly visitations to create
the gothic effect necessary to forward the plot.
It is this form of the
gothic that comes most directly from Walpole's tradition, less battered
and less transformed than either historical or terror gothic.
It is
this particular type of literature that still carries the unmistakable
stamp of the early gothics, with no vampires, no science fiction, and
no Mephistophelean intervention.
When the author feels a need for more
depth, he may add an historical context, but, on the whole, the romantic
gothic novel has withstood the transformation of time and the ravages of
criticism to emerge today in the widely-popular gothic romances that
flood the bookstores and grace the Best Seller lists for months at a
time.
For every Harvest Home or Rosemary's Baby one finds a multitude
of gothic romances, written sometimes by a multitude of aspiring novelists, sometimes by one, multi-named, more accomplished novelist.
/ ^
X
In
3
i
19
evaluating only a small portion of these many gothic romances, choosing
only the more well-constructed novels, one can find many similarities
of theme and characterization between the first gothic romances and the
popular, modern gothic romances, similarities necessary to the very
essence of the gothic tradition itself.
In order that the reader may more easily discover these similarities
and understand the connection between Walpole and modern, popular gothic
writers, he must first understand the gothic vocabulary that will be
used in this discussion.
It is necessary, therefore, at this point,
to describe in detail those gothic terms and devices that are the most
important in an evaluation of Walpole's legacy and the influence of the
gothic tradition upon the popular gothic romance.
Gothic Devices
There are many gothic devices that are necessary to the wery existence of a gothic tone in a novel. Going back to Walpole and the other
early gothic writers, one finds countless gothic props, each an important thread in the weave of the gothic fabric.
For the sake of clarity,
however, these gothic devices are easily divided into two primary parts:
atmosphere and characterization.
It is to be expected that the devices
that produce a gothic effect in each division may sometimes overlap,
but, theoretically, at least, the terms may be divided for ease of discussion.
In a discussion of atmosphere, this study will concentrate
mainly upon explainable phenomena. The important atmospheric techniques
include
(1) the Haunted Castle.
Railo says of the importance of the
haunted castle in the gothic romance that "...
plays . . .
so important . . .
this 'haunted castle'
[a part] that were it eliminated the
whole fabric of romance would be bereft of its foundation and would
lose its predominant atmosphere."
37
-> In the older gothic romances, the
haunted castle was stock property; in contemporary gothic romances, the
haunted castle can appear as an old, family house, the coveted manor
house, an old abbey, or simply a place from the past. To the haunted
castle, however portrayed, falls the duty of atmospheric control, providing a background of haunted, disassembled abbeys, dark passages,
ghostly rooms left as a monument to the dead, dank dungeons, echoing
vaults, decaying tapestries, oppressive silence, premonicive clocks,
20
21
hidden diaries, and the like. In or around the haunted castle one can
usually find
(2) the Haunted Physical World. This world consists of those
particular atmospheric conditions, usually connected with the haunted
castle, that contribute to a general feeling of terror in gothic romances.
The haunted physical world contains such elements as the whistling midnight wind, mysterious, flickering lights in the forest, the full moon
at midnight, secret meetings, and an historically-provable background
of ancient curses, tense conflicts, mysterious deaths, or pisky-mazed
madmen.
In early gothics, ghosts appeared, either bleeding or clanking
their chains; in modern gothics, the ghost is explained as an evil person
Intending a ghostly effect, with explainable physical props. Less easily
explained are those techniques involving
(3) the Haunted Psychological World.
In the haunted psychological
world, the character finds himself wondering about his sanity, imbuing
those he loves with motives to murder him, searching for the end of a
recurring nightmare, enduring the agonies of self-doubt, or falling
heir to the superstition the servants use to explain mysteries. The
haunted psychological world is part of the atmosphere because it sometimes creates a gothic atmosphere where none actually exists. In succumbing to the terrors of his own imagination, the character brings his
own psychological perspective to a situation which, no matter how ripe
for mysterious interpretation, in reality contains no mystery and no
lurking ghost of one long dead. This category of atmosphere is, of
course, closely related to characterization, the second classification
of evaluative criteria for the gothic romance.
22
The characters in a gothic romance are, by and large, types rather
than distinctive individuals.
Rarely are more than the main characters
drawn in depth; more often than not, characters in a gothic romance are
sketched in one of several categories of character-types, the first of
which is
(1) the Pursued Heroine. Originally conceived by Walpole as a
character-type necessary to the gothic romance, the pursued heroine is,
of course, the character in modern gothic romances whose life is in
danger.
She is the one seeking secrets, the one digging up past crimes
and rattling skeletons long laid to rest in family closets.
It is she
who discovers the moldering manuscript, the hidden diaries. She is
pursued by would-be murderers through dangerous situations; she is running from doubts born and nurtured in her own mind; she is, in either
case, daringly and narrowly rescued, not only because she is the heroine,
but also because she is and always has been pursued unjustly.
In Wal-
pole's or Ann Radcliffe's day, the heroine was weak and maidenly, inclined to fainting at crucial moments. When she was good, she was, like
Lady Isabella, very, very good, and when she was bad, her worst fault
was curiosity.
To some extent this character type has been carried over
to modern gothics, with a few revisions to suit the tone of a modern
world's demands.
No matter in what century she appears, however, the
pursued heroine is almost always rescued by the hero. Her rescuer is
usually
(2) the Byronic Hero. The heroes created by Walpole, Radcliffe,
or Clara Reeve were perfect complements to their heroines—excessively
polite, unduly conscious of convention, strong-armed to fight villains.
23
and bolder in battle than in love. The perfect delineation between the
"good" hero and the "bad" villain was smudged by the Byronic tradition
to create a new type of hero, one who has a dark and brooding side to
his nature.
Railo describes the Byronic hero as "'the man of loneliness
and mystery,' who is scarce seen to smile and seldom heard to sigh; in
38
his being there does not seem to be much worthy of admiration. . .,"
although the heroine finds something to love beyond the dark side of his
soul.
Closely allied with the Byronic hero is
(3) the Villain.
In order to sustain gothic suspense and mystery,
the gothic romance must have a villain to initiate terror, create danger
for the heroine, and threaten the romance.
In early gothics the villain
was thoroughly wicked and irredeemable, having sometimes, like Ambrosio,
sold his soul to the devil. The Faustian villain has been transcribed
for skeptical modern readers and in most modern gothics is represented
by the weak man who, enslaved by ambition, can be driven to murder.
At
times the villain, disguised until the end, and the hero, whose dark
side seems the only side to his nature, merge in the heroine's mind in
the modern gothic romance. This technique is not new but is instead the
result of the development of character types through the years.
In a
discussion of the thoroughly wicked villains of early gothicists, Edith
Birkhead concludes that "among the direct progeny of these [early] grandiose villains are to be included . . . the heroes of Scott and Byron.
We
know them by their world-weariness, as well as by their piercing eyes and
passion-marked faces. . . ."
It is often the "passion-marked" face of
the Byronic hero that attracts the heroine and makes him hard to distinguish from the darkly passionate villain.
If the unwary reader or the
24
gothic novice early in his reading does not realize who will, as one
might say, "get the girl" at the end, he may well be fooled by these two
character types. A complement to the villain is
(4) the Villainess.
In some gothic romances, the villainess may
actually be the villain, set apart from that particular character type
only by her sex and long skirts. Most often, however, the villainess
only appears evil. A descendant of the "fatal woman" of Romantic Poetry,
the villainess can be a beautiful woman whom the heroine thinks is an
attraction for the hero, the first, now-dead wife of the hero, or the
domineering, old family retainer. The villainess exhibits many faces;
she may actively express antagonism for the heroine; she may appear mad,
spouting Cassandra-like prophecies; she sometimes is actually mad, in
which case she frequently functions as the villain. She appears primarily as a foil to the heroine or as a source of mystery and terror.
The mystery and terror are also evoked by
(5) the Comic Servants. Frequently the author of gothic romances,
taking a cue from the dramatists, includes the comic retainer, usually
a loquacious nurse, a garrulous gardener, or a superstitious housekeeper^
The comic servant functions primarily as comic relief, but may also further the plot by inducing superstition or by echoing the heroine's suspicions.
The modern gothic writer is indebted to every early gothic novelist
for such character types as the Byronic hero and the pursued maiden, as
well as such gothic themes as the dispossessed inheritor, the unknowingly
wealthy maiden in danger, and the kidnapped heroine. The gothic tradition has also absorbed several psychological gothic traits from the
r
25
American gothic school, however.
Irving Malin discusses these in New
American Gothic, categorizing the following three American Gothic themes:
self-love of the hero or heroine, particular family types, and three
Images that may be literal or psychological--the haunted castle, the
voyage into the forest, and reflections or mirror images. A short analysis of Mai in's themes reveals several overlapping areas in the New
American Gothic themes and the traditional properties.
The self-love of the hero or heroine is often manifested, not in
self-pride, but in a narcissistic selfishness, a retreat from the world
or turning inward.
The most common family type in New American Gothic
is the ineffectual or evil parent, the alienated child seeking love, and
a general lack of communication between family members. The heroine in
popular gothic romances is most often the bridge between the unapproachable parent and the untouchable child.
The images described by Malin
function in a psychological milieu as definitions for modern rebels.
According to Malin, the castle represents authoritarianism, the flight
to the forest represents a flight from authoritarianism, and the reflection imagery represents the two-sidedness of motives.
The popular gothic romances have incorporated these images where
necessary to produce the rebellious heroine who resorts to vituperative
speech instead of delicate sighs and the hero/villain whose motives may
be In question throughout the book.
Sometimes even the heroine's motives
are in question, a device that modern authors utilize to avoid the twodimensional characters of early gothic writers. Given such versatility
of portrayal as well as the rich heritage of two hundred years of gothic
popularity, the modern popular-gothic writer finds the gothic romance
26
genre an overwritten, uniquely popular field. The four modern gothic
writers included in this study are all important contributors to the
gothic tradition. A careful analysis of their works reveals a debt to
previous contributors to the gothic tradition as well as some necessary
adaptations of gothic techniques.
CHAPTER III
THE BRITONS
Victoria Holt
)
Just as one cannot commence a study of the gothic tradition wUhout
mentioning Horace Walpole, so one cannot study modern, popular gothic
writers without first acknowledging the contribution of Victoria Holt.
Like Walpole, Victoria Holt is automatically associated with the gothic
novel and is, of the writers under consideration, the most closely related to early gothicists. Like Walpole, Ms. Holt relies on the mystery
and romance evoked by the past to enhance her gothic novels. All of the
twelve Holt gothics under consideration have nineteenth-century settings.
Like earlier gothic writers, Ms. Holt relies on the atmosphere readily
produced by an earlier-century setting to gain some gothic effects almost naturally.
In doing so, she has followed the gothic tradition,
for the superstitions, legends, tales, ghosts, castles, and mysteries
so necessary to that tradition lend themselves more easily to the romantic, flickering-firelight world of the 1800's than to the prevalent
pragmatism of the twentieth century.
It is this romantic, nineteenth-
century world that creates much of the gothic atmosphere so successfully
evoked in Holt gothics.^
The haunted castle that was stock property in the early gothics is
stock property in a Holt romance, and in Holt gothics it rarely takes
other forms.
It may take many names--Lovatt Stacy (Shivering Sands),
27
28
Keverall Court (Curse of the Kings), or Chateau Gaillard (King of the
Castle),
to name only a few--but the atmospheric control exercised by
the castle/manor house in each Holt novel varies little.
Holt heroines
consistently encounter subterranean passages, haunted chambers, dank
dungeons, walled-up skeletons, crumbling balconies, torture chambers
and oubliettes, or sliding panels that conceal passageways.
As they were in the early gothics, these props in the Holt gothics
are important to plot as they create atmosphere:
the heroine, at some
point in the plot, is always locked, lost, concealed, or trapped in the
dungeon, vault, whatever, that is always mysterious, dank, and dark.
Her danger in such a terrifying atmosphere is important to the plot because it gives the villain/hero a chance to rescue the heroine (as withWalpole's Isabella and Theodore), or it proves that someone is trying to
frighten/kill her to keep her from finding out the Truth about the mysteries surrounding the inhabitants of the castle.
As in Radcliffe and
Walpole, in Victoria Holt it is primarily the haunted castle and the
eerie atmosphere that the castle produces that creates plot when the
heroine has to unravel the tangled relationships of those around her.
In solving the mystery of the haunted castle, the Holt heroine must
search for clues in the haunted castle, and it is often the haunted phyS'
ical world that creates some of the mystery and terror of the haunted
castle.
The importance of the interaction between the haunted castle
and the haunted physical world in Holt novels is traceable to the first
gothic novels.
It is only after the heroine arrives at the haunted
castle that she becomes aware of the secret vaults, whispered stories
about the house and its inhabitants, the obvious fear of the servants,
29
and the mysterious cloak of silence about both past and present deeds.
In Victoria Holt the heroine always encounters a haunted physical world
in and around the castle as she looks for clues to the mystery she has
found.
Ellen (Lord of the Far Island) discovers diaries and drawings in
the haunted castle; Anna (The Secret Woman) discovers in Chantel's diary
the answer to the threats and mysterious deaths connected with Carrement
House.
Dallas (King of the Castle) satisfies her curiosity about the
Comtesse's death with Francoise's diaries and solves the mystery of the
emeralds by braving the dangers of the haunted dungeons and oubliettes.
It is such physical terror evoked by the haunted chambers of the
castle that link the haunted physical world with the castle.
In the
gothic tradition, Ms. Holt uses such physical props as moving tapestries,
ghostly deserted passages, and haunted legends of the castle to provide
gothic terror.
In fact, one finds that the haunted-physical-world prop
that concerns ancient legends and curses is Ms. Holt's most common physical means of producing a gothic atmosphere.
Only one example of Ms.
Holt's use of this physical prop, representative of numerous examples,
is in Menfreya In The Morning.
Having heard as a child the legend of
the Menfrey who kept his mistress, the former governess of the house, in
the tower of Menfreya, Harriet applies the story to her own situation as
mistress of Menfreya.
Already suspicious about the relationship between
her husband and Jessica, the governess, Harriet silently questions
Jessica's choice of dress at a ball. Thinking, "Why did she come here
as a governess?
Was she trying to draw some parallel?
Was she saying:
It is happening now as it happened then,"^ Harriet is at the mercy of
her Imagined mysteries and fears. She creates horrors and suspects the
30
wrong person because she identifies herself with the heroine of a legend.
Like the early-gothic heroines, the Holt heroine often finds herself unwittingly, if somewhat prophetically, reliving the terrifying
legend she has heard.
In Kirkland Revels Catherine faces a hooded monk
instead of a bleeding nun, but the atmospheric effect of terror is the
same.
Kerensa of The Legend Of The Seventh Virgin is most terrifyingly
walled up alive like the legendary virgin, but she is being punished for
her own form of fornication, the sin of marrying ambitiously, without
love.
The listing of examples of the haunted castle and haunted-physicalworld techniques found in Ms. Holt's gothics could go on almost interminably, if one were prepared for repetition.
In speaking of the importance
of these two atmospheric elements in Holt gothics, however, note must be
made of one, consistent, important phenomenon:
each supernatural terror
must be explained logically and naturally at the end of the book.
In
fact, like Radcliffe, Holt goes to some trouble to explain her ghosts.
Thus, the reader discovers in The Shivering Sands that the ghostly lights
in the burned-out chapel are the tricks of terrified schoolgirls.
In
Mistress Of Mellyn the ghostly shadows on the curtains in Alice's room
are made by a very corporeal Celestine; in Kirkland Revels the monk-ghost
who terrifies Catherine is really the maniacal family doctor who wants
the house.
Even in accommodating a skeptical, twentieth-century audi-
ence, Ms. Holt has followed faithfully one tenet of gothic tradition:
tie up the dangling, supernatural ends with physical explanations.
The
means by which Ms. Holt explains the supernatural vary little from book
31
to book.
Usually, the essentially practical heroine, whose lapse of
sense into sensibility was warranted in the face of the gothic atmosphere, is relieved to discover that her terrors have a tangible origin.
Her fears about her sanity are explained; she is proven sane; black has
become white, or at least a less-murky gray; and the Byronic hero, whom
she loved despite all, has become pure hero at last.
It is this conflict between what the heroine wants the Byronic hero
to be and what he seems to be that provides the basis for Ms. Holt's use
of the third prop in creating atmosphere, the haunted psychological
world.
Again, one finds linkage between the physical props and the psy-
chological props in the gothic atmosphere.
The haunted psychological
world seems to be more of a modern gothic innovation and is more closely
related to the American gothic evolution than to the early gothics. The
closest link to psychological gothic among the early writers is probably
The Monk, in which Ambrosio's mental struggles create much of the horror
in the novel.
In Victoria Holt's gothics the haunted psychological world
is most frequently expressed in the relationship between the heroine and
her dark-browed, Byronic hero.
In Holt gothics, the heroine's fears and
psychological terrors most frequently stem from two doubts about the
hero: the fear that he murdered his former wife, whom he married for
money, or the fear that he wants to murder the heroine, whom he may or
may not love and whom he marries for reasons she cannot fathom.
It is
the heroine's fear of love and commitment, coupled with her anxiety about
being loved in return, that causes the distortions in her psychological
world.
These distortions, in turn, cause a terror-stricken, gothic at-
mosphere as the reader sees the heroine wondering about her sanity.
32
Imbuing those she loves with motives to kill her, searching for the end
of a recurring nightmare, or falling prey to the superstitions of the
minor characters.
As would be expected in a study of twelve, so-closely-similar novels, the list of passages illustrating Ms, Holt's use of a distorted,
psychological world is quite long. The following illustrations are
representative of the fears Holt heroines face. For example:
I wished I had not inherited a fortune. Then I could have
been assured that I had been married for myself.4
It was inevitable that night that I should dream the dream.5
I believed that one of those people who were drinking my
health might at that very moment be planning to kill
me. . . . 6
I had made my will. If I died Joliffe would be in control.
Whichever way I looked it came back to Joliffe.7
I am going mad.^
. . . the news was already over the neighborhood. The
clock stoppedl It means one of the Menfreys is threatened (Menfreya, p. 230).
With her fearful conjectures and imagined dangers, the Holt heroine
creates suspense, reinforces the traditional gothic dispossessedinheritor theme, and presents an important gothic character-type directly traceable to the Walpole tradition:
Each Holt heroine is pursued.
the pursued heroine.
Even the reasons for her imminent
danger are reasons that can be easily found in almost any eighteenthcentury gothic romance: she has inherited a fortune, she has discovered a secret, she is going to marry the hero and/or become mistress
of the haunted castle, or she refuses to marry the villain.
The gothic
heroine as originally conceived suffered through no fault of her own.
33
Radcliffe's Adeline (Romance of the Forest) and Walpole's Isabella
(Otranto) brought evil upon themselves inadvertently by inheriting a
fortune, and Lewis's Antonia (The Monk) innocently aroused the lust of
Ambrosio.
The early gothic pattern required that the heroine be pursued j
unjustly.
In Victoria Holt's gothic novels the pursued heroine is not
always blameless.
By making her heroines more recognizably human than most eighteenthcentury heroines, Ms. Holt adds twentieth-century believability to her
gothic novels and sometimes moves her heroines well beyond the traditional gothic framework in characterization.
The most striking examples
of the questionable morality of Holt heroines are in The Legend of the
Seventh Virgin and in The Shadow of the Lynx.
In the former, the pur-
sued heroine, Kerensa, marries for money instead of love, lies about a
murder, schemes to get and to keep the haunted castle, and sacrifices
others for her ambition.
In Lynx, the heroine, Nora, marries the father
of the man she loves and attempts to destroy innocent people's lives in
order to carry out her dead husband's plan of revenge.
In each case of
devious heroine in Ms. Holt's novels one can see vestiges of the original
gothic formula, for good triumphs over evil, the heroine is thwarted in
love, and a secondary character marries the hero.
These examples of shamelessly devious Holt heroines are excepttons,
however, for Ms. Holt more commonly blends modern believability and
traditional characterization to find a heroine recognizable as a charactertype and acceptable as a character-person.
Therefore, even though a hero-
ine may be pursued for her inheritance or her innocent relationship to
another, she still has many traits to be deliberately construed by the
34
reader as human failings.
Many Holt heroines could easily be castigated
for coveting other women's husbands; eyery Holt heroine can be blamed
for prying shamelessly into the lives of others, tricking gullible servants into revelations, relentlessly interrogating senile old aunts for
information, or listening at doors, reading personal diaries, and gossiping with lonely children.
In each case of deviousness on the part of the heroine, the explanation is always the same:
the end justifies the means.
If the hero-
ine is righting some past wrong, she may use any means at her disposal.
For example, Anna in The Secret Woman reminded herself that she was
"Guilty . . . Guilty of loving another woman's husband,"^ and Dallas,
reading the dead Comtesse's diaries, says, "As I read I could not rid
myself of the feeling that I was spying into the mind and heart of a
dead woman.
on.
But he [the Comte] was concerned in this. . . .
I must read
With every day I spent in the chateau it was becoming more and more
important for me to know the truth."
Spying for love is acceptable in
a Holt gothic.
Examples from other Holt novels read in much the same way.
The
heroine feels she really should not be spying, prying, or investigating,
but she must.
Thus the heroine becomes involved in a ghastly gothic
nightmare, sometimes for love of position, power or money, but usually
for love of the unloved child and that child's father or guardian.
As
a modern-gothic character-type, she is the catalyst for action or the
instigator of plot.
In speaking of the heroine as a character-type, one can catalogue
several Holt-heroine characteristics.
Like the early gothic heroines,
^*i%
'1
35
she is an orphan (with no strong male relation to befriend her), impulsive, romantic, in danger, inquisitive, desirable, and sensitive.
Unlike
the early gothic heroines, the Holt heroine is well past her teens, independent, proud, clever, talented, capable, daring, and defiant.
It is
the heroine's more "modern" qualities that link her more closely with
Mai in's later gothic themes. Because the Holt heroine is not only sensitive but also wise, capable and daring, she often fights her battles
or instigates her investigations for the sake of the unloved, wild, yet
appealing, child or children at the haunted castle.
If there is no child,
the heroine may just as often take action on the part of a weaker, more
vulnerable female.
The Holt heroine is not without her own vulnerability, however.
If
the early gothic heroine was vulnerable physically, the Holt heroine is
most often, aside from the physical danger necessary for the gothic atmosphere, vulnerable psychologically.
It is Ms. Holt's habit of using
first-person narrative that makes the reader uncomfortably aware of the
heroine's psychological traumas and dilemmas. With such passages as
"Then I realized what a fool I had been, for I had been harboring
thoughts which I would not dare express, even to myself,"'' "I knew
now that I loved him" (Moon, p. 61), and "This is the complete happiness,
I thought" (Lanterns, p. 80), the reader is kept constantly in the mind
of the heroine.
Since suspense in a gothic is necessary for the action,
the heroine's thoughts guide the reader through the various stages of
fear and danger, love and distrust.
In the true gothic tradition, the
object of the heroine's love as well as her distrust is the Byronic
hero.
36
Although the first gothic heroes were pure heroes, untainted by any
dishonor, lack of gentility, or dark, suspicious past, the pure hero has
today evolved into the brooding, suspicious, Byronic hero. The modern
gothic hero still fulfills the traditional heroic function, however,
especially when he rescues the persecuted heroine.
In eight of the
twelve Holt novels under consideration, the Byronic hero rescues the
heroine at the last moment from a sure death from poison, suffocation,
quicksand, or drowning.
In each of these eight novels the rescue pre-
cipitates disclosure of the villain and the marriage of the principal
characters.
When the Byronic hero appears in Holt novels, he exhibits traditional characters for Byronic heroes. As a character-type he is moody,
secretive, autocratic, lonely, mysterious, and feared by all. The heroine is at times afraid of him, but she is more often concerned that the
dark secrets of his past have infringed on his present happiness. As a
Byronic, or brooding, hero, however, he gives the heroine good reason to
fear him and to doubt his trustworthiness. Some illustrative passages
attesting to Ms. Holt's use of the Byronic hero character-type include
the following:
How frightened I was, and he sensed my fear I was sure. It
amused him. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the
curl of his lips, the glitter of his eyes (Island, p. 77).
He was smiling and I caught the gleam of his teeth.1^
He stood still, looking at me. . . . Tall, lean, legs apart,
bellicose, arrogant. . . . His nose was long, slightly prominent; his mouth too thin, as though he were sneering at the
world (Sands, p. 46).
He gave an impression of both strength and cruelty (Mellyn,
p. 34).
37
As a character-type, Ms. Holt's dark hero has much in common with
the legendary Byronic hero.
It is precisely because of his mysterious,
cruel and scornful nature that the hero in modern gothics is so closely
allied with the villain so as to be sometimes indistinguishable, both
In the heroine's and the reader's minds.
In early gothics, roles were carefully assigned, and characters
were readily distinguishable as good or evil.
In the process of liter-
ary evolution the hero became smudged and the villain became more seemingly pure until the result was another of Ms. Holt's character-types:
the whitewashed villain.
Radcliffe's Montoni was a thorough villain,
consistently superior, consistently cruel, and consistently frightening.
The modern gothic villain must first masquerade as a hero so that the
heroine may turn from her fears of the Byronic hero to the false safety
of the villain's arms. Again the examples of Holt's use of this character-type are legion. At the moment of final danger the heroine discovers her mistake, usually with lines similar to the following:
"There
was something unreal even about him--something which was different.
He
was not the godlike creature I had seen when we were young. . . . There
was something different about Rollo" (Island, p. 268), and "He seemed
sane, an ordinary merchant. . ." (Kings, p. 297).
In The Legend of the Seventh Virgin the villainous character who is
revealed at the end of the novel is a seemingly guileless idiot boy.
Although the idiot plays little part in the story except to threaten the
heroine at the end of the book, he still fulfills the role of villain.
There are few deviations from the villain character-type in gothic novels.
38
but Holt gothics frequently contain another, closely-allied charactertype, that of the villainess.
The villainess in Holt gothics may take one of two forms.
If she
plays the same role as the villain, ultimately endangering the heroine's
life, she is classified with the villain.
In The Secret Woman, Mistress
of Mellyn, The Shivering Sands, Menfreya in the Morning, and The Shadow
of the Lynx one finds, in each novel, a villainess instead of a villain.
The villainesses follow the same criteria that the villain does, masquerading as the faithful servant, the concerned friend, the loving
stepmother, or the innocent child.
In each case the Holt villainess is
not only ambitious but also insanely possessive.
In Holt gothics the second division of villainess, the character
descended from the "fatal woman" in literature, is represented by the
mad wife, the deceased wife, the unfaithful wife, the jealous mistress,
the former nurse, or any varying combination of these types. Since the
Holt heroine is always unsure of her beauty or of her relationship with
the Byronic hero, the villainess in this category represents the position, beauty, poise, grace, or knowledge the heroine wants to acquire.
Although this character-type would, for lack of an exact, early counterpart, have to be classified in original gothics with the villain, she
does not suffer the same evil stigma in Holt gothics. Usually the Holt
villainess in this category is merely the victim of circumstance:
in
King of the Castle Francoise rejects her. husband because she fears passing on inherited insanity; in The Shivering Sands Edith, in love with
the curate, stands between Napier and Caroline only because she is forced
Into a loveless marriage with Napier. As a true villainess, this character
39
In Holt does not live up to her name. The evil she does falls short of
murder and springs primarily from her fear of losing her husband/lover
or, in the case of the old nurse, from her need to protect her former
nursery charge.
She appears as a villainess only because she is juxta-
posed beside the heroine.
In using the gothic character-types so necessary to the gothic
romance, Ms. Holt sometimes resorts to comic characters, frequently as
mysteriously cloaked as the villain or hero, to maintain suspense.
In
Ms. Holt's novels the comic character is often the garrulous housekeeper,
the talkative old family retainer, or some older eccentric member of the
family.
Frequently Ms. Holt uses comic descriptions of these characters
rather than conversation between the characters themselves to create
humor.
For example, a description of the housekeeper's room in Mistress
of Mellyn includes notation of "antimacassars on the chairs; . . .
a
whatnot . . . filled with china ornaments including a glass slipper, a
gold pig, and a cup with 'a present from Weston' inscribed on it. . . .
[and] the mantelpiece [where] Dresden shepherdesses seemed to jostle
with marble angels for a place" (Mellyn, p. 17). After describing the
room, the heroine adds that, "It showed Mrs. Pol grey to me as a woman
of strong conventions . . ." (Mellyn, p. 17), and Mrs. Polgrey thereafter
consistently lives up to her commonplace conventions.
Most often the comic characters in Holt novels serve some purpose
besides humor.
In The Legend of the Seventh Virgin, the comic descrip-
tions of the servants give one the necessary setting for the informative
gossip the heroine hears in the lower quarters. When Ms. Holt describes
"Mrs. Rolt, the housekeeper, self-styled widow but very likely using
40
Mrs. as a courtesy title, hoping that one day Mr. Haggety would put the
question and Mrs. be hers by right," and her nudging Mr. Haggety, the
Butler, with his "little piggy eyes, lips inclined to slackness at the
sight of a succulent dish or female,"^3 under the table, the reader
expects stereotyped behavior from stereotyped characters.
These stereotyped comic characters serve another function in addition to humor when they are not only lower-class and common but also
representative of a stereotyped, lower-class superstition that creates
suspense and feeds suspicions already nurtured by the heroine's fertile
imagination.
In The Night of the Seventh Moon, legends of the "pseudo-
bride" who threw herself out a window seem to merge with the heroine's
dangerous encounters.
In Kirkland Revels the servants' superstitions
about the "suicide balcony" and the dispossessed monks serve as explanations for mysterious events.
In nearly every Victoria Holt gothic the comic retainers or superstitious servants carry much of the responsibility for reinforcing terror
and suspense. One can trace this technique to the early gothics, when
legends and comic servants provided humor and fear.
In Lewis one finds
the Bleeding Nun (Monk); in Holt the reader finds Loke, the god of mischief (Moon) or the seventh virgin legend (Virgin).
For Radcliffe's
simple-minded Annette (Udolpho) or her cowardly Peter (Forest), one may
substitute Holt's Mary-Jane (Revels) or Billy Trehay (Mellyn).
In an
effort at the modernization of the gothic formula. Holt has put less
emphasis on comic relief than did the early writers. Even if one wonders
how much comic relief the early gothic writers actually intended and how
41
much of the comedy in their works only seems humorous to a twentiethcentury reader, he must acknowledge that the comic characters in either
Radcliffe or Holt are effective.
In using so effectively the techniques set forth in the early gothics, Ms. Holt has not neglected those later-gothic techniques described
by Malin.
Some of them, to be sure, have been discussed in the perusal
of Ms. Holt's novels from an early-gothic viewpoint.
This deliberate
combination of early-gothic and New American Gothic is instrumental in
retaining a traditional gothic flavor while at the same time making the
Holt gothic palatable to the twentieth-century reader.
Ms. Holt's most-frequently-used, new-gothic technique is the alienated child.
In any Holt gothic in which the heroine is not a mother
herself, she is the champion of the child who is neglected either for
having been fathered by the wrong person, having caused her mother's
death, or having been born as the result of some family scandal.
As
with other examples from Holt novels, the list of such neglected children is seemingly endless.
In a selected few examples one may find
the following, all spoken by the heroine:
"I saw the stubborn fear
return to her eyes, and felt a new burst of resentment toward that arrogant man who could be so careless of the feelings of a child" (Mellyn.
p. 4 8 ) , " . . .
I had dared summon him [the Comte] to his own library to
criticize his treatment of his daughter" (Castle, p. 107), and "I was
ready to fight for Fritz as I had not been to fight for myself" (noon.
p. 213).
In each case, the heroine wins her battle for the child and
assures him of happiness.
In doing so, the heroine bridges the gap
between the forlorn child and his unapproachable parent.
42
It is usually this unapproachable parent, if he is the hero, who
exemplifies Malin's narcissistic gothic character-type who retreats from
the world.
In bridging between the world and the retreating individual,
the heroine reunites families, gains the love of the hero, and provides
the romance in the book. There are examples of this frequent occurrence
In Holt gothics in the following illustrations, spoken by the various
heroes:
There was one woman in the world who could make me change
my mind [about marriage]. I didn't even know she existed .. . (Castle, p. 258).
. . . you changed me, Marty dear. Your coming changed the
whole household (Mellyn, p. 179).
Perhaps there is one person who could force me to do that
[banish the past] . . . one person in the world (Sands,
p. 274).
The conclusion that each Holt heroine is unusual is obvious from
the preceding examples. The modern gothic heroine j£ unusual when viewed
from the traditional gothic formula, for she is not as helpless and prone
to fainting as early gothic heroines. Whereas the early gothic heroine
was more apt, like Adeline or Isabella, to weep copiously at any sign
of danger or distress, the Holt heroine is more apt to say, "I had always
been adventurous and never one to take the safe road ..."
p. 252), "I was no longer afraid of Johnny.
(Island,
In fact I was rather eager
for more encounters with him" (Virgin, p. 135), or "I won't be dominated,
I told n\yself. . . ."1^ In such passages the reader sees not only the
heroine of a modern gothic romance, but also a meticulous blending of
old gothic and twentieth-century self-sufficiency calculated to appeal
to today's reader.
43
In Ms. Holt's gothics the original gothic formula is as easily
Identified as those qualities she uses to snare a modern audience.
The
techniques of a gothic terror, a haunting atmosphere, and the lingering
presence of revived ghosts and legends, all directly traceable to the
early gothics, are combined with a psychologically sound, sometimes
pragmatic, approach to terrifying situations that makes Ms. Holt's novels
not only probably the most popular gothic romances written today, but
also the most effective blend of original gothic formula and twentiethcentury ideas of personal freedom and independent spirit.
Other modern
gothic writers do not conform so precisely to the original gothic formula,
but they, too, blend early-gothic techniques with modern ideas of freedom and independence.
Dorothy Eden
It is the modern ideal of independent spirit that most markedly
distinguishes Dorothy Eden's gothics from those of Victoria Holt. Ms.
Eden, like Ms. Holt, is the author of historical novels as well as gothic novels. Of her thirty-four novels, only five, a selected few which
follow this study's criteria of possessing deliberate gothic elements
and a nineteenth-century setting, will be used.
In these five gothic
romances one can identify the characteristics of atmosphere and human
stereotypes found in both the early gothics and in Malin's new gothic.
In Lady of Mallow, the earliest-written of these five novels, several
standard, early-gothic techniques stand out.
In the first paragraph of Mallow one glimpses the gothic atmosphere
that will prevail throughout the book as he reads, "Sarah shivered and
drew her cloak more closely about her. The summerhouse had broken panes
of glass in the windows, and the wind blew through in a cold stream.
It
was rapidly growing dark. Because the trees were leafless, it was possible to see the house."
finds:
Further into the first chapter the reader
"The wind was rising and rags of thunder cloud, blacker than the
approaching night, drifted across the sky.
Sarah looked apprehensively
into the darkness, and at last heard footsteps approaching" (Mallow,
p. 9 ) . The reader has, in seven paragraphs, learned that the heroine
finds the haunted castle mysterious, that there is an unhappy marriage
Involved in the mystery, and that the child Titus is neglected and fearful, three gothic elements that are reinforced by the symbolic gothic
44
45
atmosphere containing wind, darkness, storms, and danger. The one remaining gothic necessity, the Byronic hero, appears with the approaching footsteps, and "Already he was deeply suspicious of her [the heroine]" (Mallow, p. 9 ) .
The avid gothic-romance reader is correct in his assessment of the
first chapter, for the gothic elements continue throughout the book:
Sarah befriends the frightened, unloved child, staying for his sake in
the face of both physical and emotional danger; Blane Mallow's right to
the Mallow title is in question; Lady Mallow is the villainess who not
only stands between heroine and hero but also proves to be the ambitious
murderer who creates danger for the characters. Ms. Eden makes use of
several of these gothic devices to create danger and suspense.
Although
not held at Mallow against her will, Sarah makes use of her presence in
the house to discover secrets that will, in her case, unmask the imposter Lord Mallow.
In describing Sarah's investigation, Eden reminds one
vividly of early gothic writers.
For her passages "Sarah set her supper
tray on one side and tiptoed to the door of the room to open it a crack
and listen ..."
(Mallow, p. 58), "It took only a moment to tiptoe quick-
ly down the passage ..."
(Mallow, p. 59), "She had to descend the
stairs and actually pass the dining-room door. . . . she could not resist
stopping to listen a moment" (Mallow, p. 60), or "Sarah stiffened as she
heard approaching footsteps" (Mallow, p. 61), one might easily substitute Radcliffe's words:
"With extended arms, she crept along the gal-
lery, still hearing the voices of persons below, who seemed to stop in
conversation at the foot of the staircase . . .'° Emily .. . seemed
Inspired with new strength, the moment she heard the sound of their
46
steps, and ran along the gallery . . .17 Emily often stole to the staircase door, to listen if any step approached. . . .1^ . . .
she quitted
her chamber and passed with cautious steps down the winding staircase,"^^
or "Footsteps pursued her. . . ."^^
Ms. Eden uses such traditional goth-
ic atmosphere and description to create the ghosts and spectres that are,
like Radcliffe's ghosts and spectres, explained at the end as recognizable physical phenomenon.
There is no need to explain the characters, however, nor to excuse
their behavior, for they are gothic types. The heroine tiptoes around
the house, "stumbling on the wrong secrets" (Mallow, p. 76). The hero,
who must both hide and escape from his past, has "The haughty black
brows, the moody eyes, the thin cheeks scored with lines [that] showed
signs of intolerance and an exceptionally strong will" (Mallow, p. 40).
Despite her distrust, Sarah is inevitably drawn to this strong-willed
man, but not before her doubts and suspicions about him are reinforced
by Lady Malvina.
Lady Malvina, the garrulous, old mother of the imposter, serves the
function of the comic servant. Unlike early gothic comic servants, she
is neither servant nor overtly humorous. She is, however, made to be a
figure of ridicule, and she presents a sad yet comic character with her
unreasonable vanity and her "grizzly bear" games with her frightened
grandson.
It is, of course, Titus the child who serves as the catalyst for
the mystery.
As is often the case with modern, popular gothics, it is
not so much the heroine as the child who is in danger. She is in danger
of exposure and of falling in love with the wrong man; the child is under
47
the threat of death. He narrowly escapes death at the hands of his demented mother, the novel's villainess, and he is the center of the mystery in the book.
Unloved by his mother and the man pretending to be
his father, he is Malin's alienated child.
In befriending him, the
heroine discovers that she is actually working with the hero to fulfill
another, traditional gothic goal: the restoration of Titus's title and
hereditary rights.
The heroine's discovery that the hero's imposture is justified and
even somewhat noble follows the modern gothic pattern. Other aspects of
their relationship do not. Contrary to the demands of the modern, gothic
romance, Sarah and Blane do not inherit the castle now exorcised of its
ghosts.
Instead, they disappear together. Ms. Eden prepares her reader
somewhat for this conclusion in her description of Sarah, a gothic stock
character strikingly like Ms. Holt's modern-day heroines. Sarah, from
the beginning, finds the adventure "stimulating and perhaps a little
dangerous" (Mallow, p. 20). She enjoys being "able to pit her wits
against that impudent, black-browed imposter [Blane]" (Mallow, p. 20)
because "she had inherited her father's gambling spirit" (Mallow, p. 21).
As with Ms. Holt's heroines, Sarah fulfills the demands of the earlygothic heroine in the center of a mystery as well as the demands of
modern-gothic readers for a daring heroine.
In Winterwood one finds another daring heroine, one who takes
clothes and jewelry from her cousin to wear to the opera, where, of
course, she meets the hero and his family. As one finds in Holt gothics, so one finds in Eden gothics that the heroine is excused her bad
48
behavior because Cousin Marion is mean, spiteful, and selfish, and the
heroine, basically, is not.
In Winterwood the traditional gothic pattern is a little changed,
but the plot is much the same as the plot in Mallow. This time the child
in danger is a girl. Flora, and she is doubly cursed with a large fortune
as well as a psychosomatic injury that confines her to a wheelchair.
The
child in physical danger as a substitute in the original gothic pattern
for the heroine in danger, the same method utilized by Holt, is one of
the popular methods also utilized by Ms. Eden.
In Winterwood the method
retains the gothic flavor in the book while allowing the heroine the
advantages of escaping personal injury and, at the same time, appealing
to the reader's instinctively protective attitude toward children. Ms.
Eden uses the same plot in both Winterwood and in another of her gothics, Darkwater.
Despite her updating the gothic formula to provide variation, Ms.
Eden faithfully conforms to many of the gothic devices initiated by
Walpole and Radcliffe.
In both Winterwood and Darkwater, there are
exotic undertones that add to the gothic atmosphere.
In Winterwood the
reader first meets the characters in Italy, where the Venetian funeral
?l
is "outlandish and barbarous," ' and Aunt Tameson's house is quiet with
a silence "unbearably oppressive" (Winterwood, p. 44), peopled with a
dying, old woman and "shrouded furniture and trunks that could have been
coffins" (Winterwood, p. 45). Winterwood, the characters' English abode.
Is just as menacing as the Venetian palace, primarily because ghosts of
the Venetian past come to haunt the inhabitants. As in most modern
49
gothics, the ghosts of Winterwood are proven to be very-much-alive humans
Impersonating the dead, but the effect is traditionally gothic.
Darkwater is set entirely in England, but such exotic elements as a
Chinese amah and oriental treasures are introduced that remind one of the
early gothics with their penchant for the South of Europe or the Far
East.
Again, it is primarily the children who are in danger, even though
one is let to know that the danger could as easily extend to Fanny herself. The legend about the bird in the chimney whose presence presages
death, the mansion itself that "had turned treacherously into . . . [a]
haunted state,"^^ and the mist-shrouded Chinese pavilion near the lake
are all gothic props that might just as easily have been found in gothics of two centuries ago.
In Darkwater and Winterwood the heroines are not likely to have
stepped from an early gothic, for, despite their untouchable beauty,
they are too bold, too daring.
For example, one would not expect to
find in Walpole a heroine of whom a servant said, ". . . no one could
meekly make Miss Fanny take second place, or marry a man whom she detested.
She would rather proudly remain alone all her life" Darkwater,
p. 142); yet one finds this passage in Eden. This tendency for authors
to make their heroines more modern is not unusual in modern gothics, but
one element of the old formula must remain the same in a gothic romance:
the heroine must finally become involved with the hero.
In each of
these two books the modern gothic formula is evident when the heroine
goes through some moments of distrusting the hero before the relationships in the book are untangled and the mysteries solved.
TEXAS TECH LIBRARY
50
In both Winterwood and Darkwater the heroes contribute to the mystery, but they are not so unrepentantly Byronic as some of Ms. Holt's
heroes.
Adam Marsh (Darkwater) has eyes that one "could get out of her
depth in" (Darkwater, p. 102), while Daniel Meryon (Winterwood) looks,
"with his faint melancholy, like a portrait . . ." (Winterwood, p. 23).
At times, however, it seems that their greatest faults lie in their love
for the wrong person or in wanting money to restore the manor house.
In
fact, they are each rather closely related to the early-gothic, stereotyped hero.
Other, early-gothic stereotypes are present also. Daniel's wife,
"self-indulgent, vain, clinging, and unfairly using her frailty as a
weapon" (Winterwood, p. 25) is the villainess of Winterwood.
Darkwater's
villain is the seemingly benevolent Uncle Edgar, and Fanny's childhood
is overshadowed with fear of old Lady Arabella, with her enticing sugar
plums, with whom "as a child Fanny had felt as if she had been on a
nerve-wracking journey when she had had to visit ..."
(Darkwater,
p. 22). In several of Ms. Eden's novels, however, the reader can sense,
amid all the traditional gothic trappings, a new trend in the author's
work:
the incorporation into the traditional gothic framework of not
only traditional gothic techniques but also more progressive causes and
crusades.
Ravenscroft is the Eden gothic that contains what might be considered a progressive cause. The presence of many of the previouslymentioned gothic elements makes Ravenscroft a "gothic romance." To
prove the novel's right to the title "gothic" one finds substantiation
In the Isolated country manor house, the brooding figures of Noah and
51
Aunt Aggie, the near-death encounters of Bella and her unstable sister
Lally, and the hero with the "high-browed face, . . . lazy blue eyes
that could turn to steel, and . . . cool hard mouth . . . [who] could
be unforgivably rude and deliberately shocking."^^
Under the title
"Romance" one finds substantiation in Bella's constant struggles to
make Guy forget Caroline and in her realization that "She loved him
terribly and forlornly and forever"
(Ravenscroft, p. 154). Bella's
rival, the Other Woman, is "soft-voiced, clever . . .; she didn't obtrude, speaking only when spoken to and then with impeccable politeness.
. . . Yet . . . there was something, a subtle confidence, almost a veiled
amusement" (Ravenscroft, p. 164) that rouses suspicion.
The astute read-
er knows, though, despite seeming evidence to the contrary, that it is
Bella and Guy who constitute the main figures in the romance.
Ravenscroft, gothic and romantic though it may be, has another
theme, however.
In what may have been an attempt to give depth to the
work, Ms. Eden has added another facet: a diatribe on the evils that
lurked in nineteenth-century London (and, doubtless, elsewhere as well).
Bella and Lally fall into Aunt Aggie's white slavery scheme because they
are penniless orphans. Guy Raven, stung to a show of conscience by a
friend, champions the two girls in a bid for a cause on which to formulate a campaign platform.
Ms. Eden's crusade is not meant as historical
fact, but the crusade against evil does make a moral point that not only
deepens the impact of the book but also adds to the gothic atmosphere
necessary for plot. The white slavery theme gives sinister import to
characterization and gives depth to a plot borrowed from the traditional
techniques of early gothic novelists.
52
One of Ms. Eden's later books. The Millionaire's Daughter, utilizes
another theme that would not have been considered in early gothics:
homosexuality.
The Millionaire's Daughter gives the reader the suspense
and romance he expects from a modern gothic and preserves a nineteenthcentury setting to make crumbling mansions and fearful plots plausible.
The haunted castle is Monkshood, and Chrissie describes her first sight
of it in gothic terms: "The day . . . had lost its brightness. Rags of
cloud moved across the sky and made shadows on the lake. The jackdaws
were flying restlessly in and out of the old ruin, crying harshly. The
house, without the pearly glow of sunlight on it, had a shadowy, deserted
look. Not a single window shone with light."^^
There is more than just a gothic atmosphere to link The Millionaire's Daughter to traditional gothic, however. The Byronic-hero image
is nowhere else in Ms. Eden's books more prevalent nor more blatant than
in Daughter.
In fact, there is a direct reference to Lord Byron for the
reader who has not yet recognized Lord Monkshood's homosexuality. When
Percival wants his bride Chrissie to have her hair cut short, she says,
"Like Lady Caroline Lamb?
sion for Lord Byron"
I hope you haven't got my Uncle Boy's obses-
(Daughter, p. 273). Her husband's obsession is,
ironically enough, not for Byron but for younger males, but the unmistakable parallel in unacceptable sexual habits is evident.
Other descriptions of Percival that point to him as a Byronic hero
Include descriptions of his sad face and melancholy eyes, "with their
hint of world-weariness and sadness ..."
(Daughter, p. 201). Accord-
ing to modern gothic tradition. Lord Monkshood should first elicit sympathy for his being misjudged and then be vindicated in order to become
53
the pure hero. Ms. Eden deviates again from the customary gothic formula, however, when she provides another sympathetic hero, Matthew Smith.
Lord Monkshood, the victim of his unnatural desires, receives only the
reader's sympathy while Matthew Smith, ultimately, will "get the girl."
In this way Ms. Eden uses a primary gothic framework but deviates from
the formula to produce a short study of those at the mercy of their
sexual desires. By deviating from the gothic formula, she also completes
her romance.
The Millionaire's Daughter, although admittedly not conforming
entirely to the usual modern gothic-romance demands, cannot be dismissed.
It contains enough gothic devices to be evaluated as a gothic, but its
innovative approach to characterization as well as to plot serves as a
linkage between modern British authors and modern American gothic writers.
The combination of Ms. Eden's use of an American-born heroine and
her use of the gothic framework to carry other, possibly more important,
themes of reform and tolerance reflect the American approach to the
gothic romance.
CHAPTER IV
THE AMERICANS
Jane Aiken Hodge
Of the two American writers considered in this study, Jane Aiken
Hodge is the one less dependent upon her American heritage for her gothic romances. She uses the gothic framework, but gothicism is not the
main purpose of her writing.
In speaking of her own writing, Jane Aiken
Hodge says, ". . . I do tend to have a private theme to make the book
extra interesting to me. . . . The autistic child . . . the stammer
. . ., and so on. . . ."'
It is not only this private theme, however,
that sets Ms. Hodge's books apart from those modern gothic writers considered earlier in this paper. One finds also that Ms. Hodge frequently
uses the gothic framework when she writes carefully researched historical romances.
Ms. Hodge's use of carefully researched historical accuracy is
neither accidental nor restrictive.
In fact, Ms. Hodge finds her his-
torical settings advantageous, for she says, "A great advantage of the
historical novel is that people tend not to point at a character and
2
say, 'That's me.' It gives one a much freer hand."
In using her
"freer hand" to create a pleasing combination of historical and fictional characters, as well as plots redolent of gothic devices, Ms.
Hodge relies on her Yankee ingenuity to take the best of both worlds.
She pleases herself with her historic research and special theme; she
54
55
pleases her publishers, concerned with sales, with her use of gothic
devices. Ms. Hodge's publishers' tendency to dress her novels "up with
that inevitable castle and fleeing heroine"^ is no futile attempt at
deception, however.
In each of Ms. Hodge's seven books advertised as
gothics one can easily find gothic devices worthy of Walpole himself.
In searching for a medium for her themes, Ms. Hodge chose the gothic.
In searching for a setting for her "gothic" tales, Ms. Hodge found
America disappointing.
Leslie Fiedler noted the American writer's prob-
lems with the adaptation of the gothic to the American shores when he
asked, "what was to be done about the social status of . . . herovillains? With what native classes or groups could they be identified?
Traditionally aristocrats, monks, servants of the Inquisition, members
of secret societies . . ., how could they be convincingly introduced
on the American scene?"
"Similarly, it was not hard [for early American
gothicists] to provide the American equivalents of the moors, hills, and
forests through v/hich the bedeviled maidens of the gothic romances were
accustomed to flee. But what of the haunted castle, the ruined abbey,
the dungeons of the Inquisition?"^
Faced with the fact that haunted abbeys, ghostly dungeons, and
centuries-old legends are traditionally necessary to produce gothicism,
the American writer is forced to create gothic atmospheres that are
peculiarly American.
Ms. Hodge chooses to skirt the issue in five of
the seven books considered.
One of these five. Watch The Wall, My
Darling, is set in England, albeit with an American heroine. The other
four have foreign, war-ravaged settings.
In Marry In Haste and The
Winding Stair, the setting is Portugal; in Shadow Of A Lady and Greek
56
Wedding It is Greece.
In each of these five the gothic atmosphere of
terror and suspense is created primarily by the war situation and the
resulting secret societies, spying, political intrigue, and betrayal.
Mention of the war as the "Napoleonic Wars" or the "Greek War for Independence" sets the time historically; mention of the danger of advancing forces or the inevitable death awaiting spies is the terror that
brings the reader's attention back to gothicism.
In bringing the reader's attention to gothicism in The Master Of
Penrose (originally Here Comes A Candle) and Savannah Purchase, Ms. Hodge
must resort to external sources of fear that adapt themselves to American
settings.
For Penrose Ms. Hodge chooses the advance of the British on
Washington, D.C. in the War of 1812. When the epigraph of Penrose opens
with the question, "What Horror Haunted Penrose?"^, the reader may well
wonder; for Penrose can hardly be one hundred years old. Ms. Hodge must
create gothicism through kidnappings and murders, just as earlier Americans devised terrors to create gothicism for America, an atmosphere naturally devoid of gothic horrors. Charles Brockden Brown evoked gothic
horror with murders, Indian uprisings, kidnappings, ventriloquism, and
mental imbalance.
Poe's gothicism hinged upon his evocation of terror
through the atmosphere produced by mysteriously haunted mansions, incest,
walking dead, doomed families, and murder.
The gothic atmosphere in
Hodge's Penrose is represented by the screaming *
autistic child.
Ms. Hodge further evokes horror
or of Sarah, the
ih the later kidnap-
ping and planned murder of Sarah by her own mother.
Casting about for another convincing American setting that could
give a gothic atmosphere (short of another murder attempt on a child)
57
to Savannah Purchase. Ms. Hodge, like so many other American authors,
chooses the South. Modeled on the aristocratic tradition of England,
the Southern mansion of Purchase provides ample gothicism, as does the
aristocratic mansion of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" or the
decaying plantation house of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!.
In Purchase,
the plantation home is cold with an atmosphere of mourning and impending death; the Southern fear of Negro revolt lends suspicion and uneasiness.
Purchis of Savannah is a name to be reckoned with, and the desert-
ed plantation home that is refuge for the heroine at once evokes both
lonely terror and the picture of haunted, deserted abbeys and castles.
The haunted castle of the early gothicists is easily found in Purchase. Again, the South provides ready gothicism.
Ms. Hodge describes
Juliet's first glimpse of Winchelsea, the Purchis plantation, thus:
"Mild December sunlight filtered through the narrow, dark green leaves,
and a light breeze stirred the strange grey drapery that hung, like curtains, like the backcloth of a theatre, but quivering in the cool sunshine so as to turn the long drive into something from a fairy tale, the
road to the enchanted palace."
The following description of the haunted
castle in Penrose, with its New England setting, is more disappointing:
"She was aware . . .
of the looming bulk of a big three-story house, its
shape defined against the sky by a scattering of illuminated windows"
(Penrose, p. 41).
In the descriptions of the haunted castles in Ms. Hodge's other
books, the effect is gratifyingly gothic.
In The Winding Stair one
reads, "And, ahead, above them, stood the castle itself, sharply silhouetted against the western sky, a place of dream or even, maybe, of
58
nightmare, with its strange mixture of spire and minaret, of Christian
and Moorish architecture.
It had been at different times in its history
a Moorish citadel against the Christian invader, a pirate's base, and,
briefly, an English stronghold when Richard Coeur de Lion's crusaders
o
stormed it on their way to the Holy Land."
Even the Tretteign mansion
in Watch The Wall, My Darling or the Greek castle in Greek Wedding,
"silhouetted against the light: medieval turrets . . .
a square Maniote
0
tower. . . ."
cannot equal the sense of centuries-old retribution and
wrongs that the gothic castle of Stair evokes.
In each of Ms. Hodge's
books, however, the gothic terror utilized by the author depends far
less upon physical setting than on circumstance and characterization.
Ms. Hodge's circumstances vary, but her intent when presenting
adverse circumstances for her heroines is predictably gothic and amazingly reminiscent of Victoria Holt as well as of Walpole or Radcliffe.
In each of her gothics Ms. Hodge must at some point leave her heroine
alone and defenseless in order that the hero might rescue her. Therefore, one finds circumstance largely linked with characterization in
Ms. Hodge's romances.
No matter how brave, how American, how unique,
or how indomitable the heroine, she must at one point at least be left
homeless, penniless, without male protectors (or with protectors who
are absent or negligible), or, perhaps, all three.
Whenever the Hodge heroine is, either for the sake of accurate
historic portrayal of woman's lot or for the purposes of gothic devices,
at the mercy of circumstance, she is still a little more self-reliant
than the traditional gothic heroines. With few exceptions, the Hodge
heroines are exceptionally tall, and, although Ms. Hodge says, "It
59
hadn't occurred to me that my heroines were tall. . . .
accident,"
I think that's
she also must add, "What they mostly are is as feminist as
one can get away with in the period."^^
Given the statement that Hodge heroines are feminists, one might
well wonder how they can be gothic heroines as well.
period" are the key.
The words "in the
Ms. Hodge has acknowledged the necessity for an
earlier-century setting for her gothics, and that setting provides a
tradition that lends itself to gothic devices.
Helen Telfair, of Shadow,
trapped by a clause in her inheritance, must marry because she is pregnant.
She realizes that "after all those plans for a free and indepen-
dent life, she must mortgage her own future to protect her child.
must marry, and since there was no one else, marry Lord Merritt."
She
12
She also realizes later that "She had been mad to hope . . . that she
should control her own fortune instead of its passing automatically
into her husband's hands" (Shadow, p. 175).
Of course, some of Ms. Hodge's heroines are fortunate enough to
find themselves sole heirs to their fathers, and this technique of the
heroine's receiving an inheritance is as old as the gothic itself.
In
Stair, Wedding and Wall, the heroines are rich heiresses, but each must
conceal or lose her fortune until she has secured the love of the hero.
In each of these three books, however, the fortune of the heroine provides a perfect gothic touch.
In true gothic tradition, the heroine is
kidnapped, courted, threatened or held captive by the villain who hopes
to take possession of her fortune.
Phyllida Vannick, of Wedding, sums
up these Hodge heroines' individual situations when she says, ". . . h e
[the villain] had thought he might get her and her fortune as well, and
j ^
60
had held his hand. When she refused him, he had begun to plot again
. . ." (Wedding, p. 224). In typical Hodge fashion, however, even this
gothic device has a unique twist in some of her novels.
Juana Brett, in The Winding Stair, not only holds the inheritance
of the Castle on the Rock as lure for the villain, but she also remains
the only legitimate heir to the throne which the illegitimate villain,
Vasco, wants to regain. Therefore, she is necessary to his plan not
only for her inheritance but also for her parentage. The unique Hodge
twist in Watch The Wall, My Darling is that Christina is necessary to
the hero's plans as the heir to the manor house he needs as his spying
and smuggling base. Again in Wall one finds that war, this time the
Napoleonic Wars, is the circumstance that defines the book's gothic
qualities. The actual threat to Christina's life comes because she has
information about her cousin's spying operation, not because of her
inheritance.
Regardless of her claim to or her need for an inheritance, however,
the Hodge heroine displays at times another uniquely Hodge trait for a
gothic heroine: she is, to her contemporaries, a shocking "bluestocking."
Perhaps as a result of Ms. Hodge's twentieth-century predilection
for feminism, the Hodge heroine shows little resemblance to the early
gothic heroine in personal qualities. The Hodge heroine may share the
early gothic heroine's curiosity, but she does not share her timidity.
In the face of danger and, possibly, death, for example, Juana gambles
on adventure when she realizes that "If she killed them both, she would
never know what she might have achieved by staying alive and taking her
chance at the meeting" (Stair, p. 279).
61
The heroines of all Ms. Hodge's works, like Juana, show an unusual
amount of independence and intelligence.
This is a phenomenon that
proves Ms. Hodge's claim that she injects as much feminism as possible
into her gothic novels, serves as a means of characterization, and
affects the relationship between the heroine and the hero.
heroine is ingenious, witty, brave, and sensible.
The Hodge
A series of quota-
tions from the seven books in question characterize the Hodge heroine
with the following words:
Josephine to Juliet: "You've never lost your head to that
dry-as-dust husband of mine! . . . what a pity . . . You'd
suit him much better than I do. The two of you could talk
education and politics and the rights of man till the cotton was picked" (Purchase, p. 104).
Ross to^Christina:
"You showed a man's courage then.
II13
•
•
•
Alex to Phyllida: "'So, you're human after all, kyria.
. . . I confess, I'd wondered. I'm glad it's a woman I'm
to marry, not a goddess . . .'"(Wedding, p. 226).
Juana, about Vasco: "Riding with him, learning it was
best to let him beat her at chess, . . . it had been easy
to forget how time was ebbing away ..." (Stair, p. 108).
Merritt of Helen: " . . . charming ladies. . . . And ladies
. . . most unusual . . . who think" (Shadow, p. 48).
Countless examples from each book would say much the same thing:
Ms.
Hodge's heroines are feminist in orientation and outlook.
It is this feminism that most often colours the relationship between
the heroine and the men in the book.
In Ms. Hodge's novels the heroine
is not only a bluestocking, but she is also smarter than the villain.
In
many passages in Ms. Hodge's works the men are duped by the heroine, but
at least Ms. Hodge makes the unwary males the villains, not the heroes.
62
One can see the effect Ms. Hodge's feminism has on her heroines in the
following representative examples:
. . . she . . . congratulated herself that Price must think
her negligible as an adversary. There were, after all,
some advantages about being a woman. Men tended to dismiss
you as a fool (Shadow, p. 212).
That was her only weapon, she knew, against Vasco--the fact
that he thought of her almost as a thing, not for a moment
as an equal (Stair, p. 274).
He took this, she saw with pleasure, as merely another
proof of her expected stupidity (Stair, p. 275).
But there was no time for anxiety; she was too busy concealing it, laughing with Dom Fernando and showing herself the kind of giddy wife to whom no man in his senses
would think of giving precise information.l^
At times the Hodge heroine even teaches some of her feminism to the other
female characters.
In Wedding, for example, Phyllida encourages Oenone,
Alex's fiancee, to assert herself intellectually, something no nineteenthcentury Greek woman would have done. Phyllida comments on this unusual
transformation when she says, "The sight of Oenone suddenly using her
excellent brain suggested [Frankenstein], and Phyllida thought . . . what
a surprise she would be to Alex as a wife" (Wedding, p. 247).
The Hodge heroine is not a totally feminist creation, however, for
she inevitably gets herself into dangers she cannot charm or trick her
way out of.
In the gothic tradition, therefore, Ms. Hodge has provided
several heroes to rescue her heroines in their moments of greatest danger.
The Hodge hero as a gothic hero is neither pure beauty (as was
Walpole's Theodore) nor Byronic devil (as was Lewis's Monk).
As a whole,
the Hodge hero is brave and wise until he deals with women or, more
63
particularly, with the heroine.
It is the hero's distrust of women that
appears most frequently in the relationship of hero to heroine. Against
his will the hero finds himself loving the heroine, but he first makes
known to her his feelings about women. The following lines illustrate
this point:
I thought he [the hero] didn't much like women (Wedding,
p. 25).
^
Then, to begin with, as I think I told you before, I do not
like women. Anyone will tell you that. I do not understand them, I do not appreciate them, I do not want them.
. . . I know nothing about them, and I do not wish to learn
(Haste, p. 22).
You're the only woman I've ever respected (Wall, p. 199).
Even thinking the worst of women, or more specifically, of the heroine,
however, the hero still rescues her when she cannot save herself and, in
true romantic gothic tradition, the two marry.
Hyde Purchis of Savannah Purchase is the only Hodge hero in the
seven novels considered who seemingly has no faults and therefore is
like the early gothic heroes. He guesses early in the book that
Josephine and Juliet have changed places; he calmly fights an inevitable
duel; he smooths over Juliet's mistakes as mistress of Winchelsea; and
he adeptly handles the scandal when Josephine's attempts to rescue
Napoleon are disclosed.
The rest of Ms. Hodge's heroes have much in
common with both the romantic hero and the Byronic hero, displaying such
heroic traits as courage, ingenuity, intelligence, gentlemanliness,
strength, and tenderness.
The descriptions of Hodge heroes fit many of the criteria for both
the romantic and the Byronic heroes, and a few representative lines indicate the prevalence of these criteria.
64
He looked years older than the frivolous young man who had
turned so suddenly serious that sunny, far-off day in
Wimbledon. Fair hair, bleached almost white, set off the
deep tan of a face that bore the marks of hard service,
both in the fine wrinkles that criss-crossed cheeks and
brow, and in one savage scar, livid from hairline to chin
on the left side (Shadow, p. 87).
. . . his broad shoulders and great height combined with
this martial outfit to present an odd contrast to his
dandy's voice and manner. His thick dark hair was cut
short and curled irrepressibly around a face tanned almost as dark as an Indian's. His gaze, at once languid
and piercing, had now taken her in . . . (Wall, p. 19).
. . . he was formidably handsome. His dark hair curled
shortly round a high forehead and his large and piercing
eyes gave a romantic impression to his face which was
somewhat contradicted by a straight nose and small, firm
mouth (Haste, p. 14).
He was immaculately neat as always, but the efforts he
had made to look as usual merely accentuated his ghastly
pallor, the nervous twitch under one eye, and worst of
all, the path of dried blood across the top of his head
that he had tried so hard to hide by a rearrangement of
his Byronic curls (Wedding, p. 168).
In contrast to the Hodge hero, the Hodge villain is swarthy where
the hero is handsome, short where the hero is tall, and, of course,
cruel where the hero is kind.
Following the gothic tradition, Ms. Hodge
uses the proven formula of villain pursuing heiress to create suspense
in her novels.
Ms. Hodge's descriptions of her villains more than any-
thing point out her debt to early gothic writers.
When one reads such
lines as "He loomed over her, dark, bewhiskered, sallow-complexioned,
furious" (Purchase, p. 65), "His eyes glittered in the torchlight . . .
this was a scene straight out of Sir Walter Scott" (Wedding, p. 223),
and "She . . . knew how right she had been to be afraid of him. . . .
a
mad, frightening genius" (Stair, p. 269), it is evident that Ms. Hodge's
heroines are capable of experiencing any gothic horror.
65
With a treacherous single-mindedness, the Hodge villain has no
qualms about rape, kidnapping, murder, lying, treason, extortion, or
adultery.
Every Hodge villain in the seven books considered is thorough
and unrepentant.
Ms. Hodge's feminism allows for degrees of evil, though,
and the one Hodge villainess, in Master of Penrose, is allowed a moment
of redemptive remorse before her death when she sacrifices herself for
her child.
As in Victoria Holt, so in Jane Aiken Hodge one can find another
theme so popular with modern gothic writers, the theme of danger to a
child.
The idea of a child's being in danger, with such excellent gothic
connotations, is part of Ms. Hodge's technique in two of the novels consi dered--SFia^ow_of_a_Lady^, and The Master of Penrose.
In each of these
two novels the hero or heroine is compelled at least once to stand between a child and the threat of death.
With words strikingly reminis-
cent of Victoria Holt, the Hodge heroine of Penrose says, "She ought to
go, anywhere, anyhow. . . . She could not go. . . . Sarah needed her.
Nothing else mattered but that" (Penrose, p. 95), or, in Shadow, "What
she could do to safeguard herself and the child, she had done. . . .
how strange that she v/ould go through fire and water for Trenche's child.
The child who had wrecked her life" (Shadow, p. 181). Unlike Malin's
totally unloved child, however, the child in a Hodge novel is merely
rejected by one parent.
Nonetheless, it is still the heroine who becomes
the stable influence in the child's life and who risks much and seemingly
lets her life be determined by a primary concern for the child's welfare.
As can easily be seen by this cursory glance at the seven novels
under consideration, Ms. Hodge owes far less than some other writers to
66
the unrevised gothic formula that the reading public and some publishers
demand.
It is a measure of Ms. Hodge's skill, however, that she so ad-
mirably joins the gothic formula with historical fact, feminism, and a
measure of that brashness and independence of spirit often associated
with Americans. To say that Ms. Hodge's romances are purely gothic
would be to insult the intelligence of the reader. The promise of gothicism in the epigraph, such as: "HER IMPULSIVE MARRIAGE TO THE HANDSOME
STRANGER PROMISED TO BE A REFUGE FOR CAMILLA—UNTIL SHE LEARNED THE TRUTH
ABOUT HER HUSBAND . . .
BOTH ..."
AND THE SECRET THAT THREATENED TO DESTROY THEM
(Haste, p. i ) , is not always fulfilled in the book.
Instead, Ms. Hodge adapts the terror and mystery associated with
such gothic techniques as haunted castles, ghost-ridden psyches, or
villains bent on revenge or gain to the tools she finds in her feminist,
American hands. Lacking the ability to portray the simpering Misses of
early gothics, she creates gothic situations that put her strongly selfsufficient heroines at the mercy of a rescuer. She dispenses with comic
retainers and gives her Austen-like heroines the wit to create their own
humor.
In doing so, however, she merely uses the gothic techniques to
advantage without losing the reader's credulity.
Using the gothic techniques primarily for her own purposes and,
perhaps, enjoyment, Ms. Hodge is free to adapt them at will.
In doing
so she has followed the example of the American gothicists who have preceded her. Ms. Hodge draws on the gothic tradition to cast her characters in the required aristocratic mold.
Lacking the innate, aristocratic
caste system found in Europe, America forged gothic writers, who, like
Hodge, have been forced either to create a uniquely American aristocracy
67
or to borrow from European aristocracy.
Ms. Hodge does both.
Frequently
her characters are titled English aristocrats, descendants of prestigious
families, members of the royal families of Greece, or sole heirs to vast,
American fortunes.
Ms. Hodge's American heroes or heroines are usually
rich, but they, in comparison to European aristocracy, are nouveaux
riches.
In early New England the aristocracy gained its wealth from trade
or business.
As a result, the American gothic writers have been forced
to find the aristocratic characters necessary in the gothic tradition in
such American families as shipbuilders, sailors, pioneers, landowners,
entrepreneurs, merchants, and mining or manufacturing giants.
Lacking
titled families, the Americans created business barons; lacking Kings,
they created Captains of the sea trade.
It is this particularly Ameri-
can heritage that Ms. Hodge draws upon for her American aristocrats in
her novels.
In one Hodge novel. Savannah Purchase, Ms. Hodge uses what most
closely resembles the European aristocratic tradition in America:
South of the nineteenth century.
the
In this she is following the example
of such earlier American writers as Edgar Allan Poe and William Faulkner.
Faulkner's most gothic novel, Absalom, Absalom! borrows the gothic qualities associated with the pre-Civil War South to create atmosphere as
well as characterization.
His gothic novel uses ghost-haunted, guilt-
ridden, aristocratic, slave-owning plantation owners to represent American aristocracy in literature.
Ms. Hodge only uses the South, with its
natural gothicism and American aristocracy, in one of her novels, however, preferring more often to create gothic settings from non-American
68
settings.
The second American author to be considered in this study,
Phyllis Whitney, chooses to use American settings in all of the Whitney
gothics under consideration.
tradition for her purposes.
She, however, must also adapt the gothic
Phyllis Whitney
Phyllis Whitney feels that she is writing primarily for women and
that the gothic novel is the type of literature that women want to read.
Should one doubt this fact, he may find proof by simply reading all
Ms. Whitney's novels or by asking Ms. Whitney herself.
Speaking in
Ms. Whitney's behalf, Patricia Schartle Myrer, publishing representative
for both Whitney and Holt, says, "It's rather obvious that women who
write for women are a little more inclined to know what women will enjoy
reading, and this is the simple reason so many of the best Gothic v/riters are women.
I can assure you that total deliberation is given to
15
the use of Gothic devices."
Having established Ms. Whitney's purpose
in using gothic techniques, Ms. Myrer goes on to say, "Phyllis Whitney
feels that America definitely doesn't have a Gothic tradition of its own
but that the Gothic elements she uses are human elements which are relevant to any setting."
In the six Whitney gothics under study in this thesis, the setting
is always American, and in each of these six gothic romances the atmosphere is always gothic.
It is obvious, however, that Ms. Myrer is cor-
rect in saying that Ms. Whitney uses gothic techniques merely as human
elements relevant to any setting.
As with the other three authors dis-
cussed here, so with Ms. Whitney one finds that the romance is a more
dominant theme than the gothicism.
In Ms. Whitney's gothic romances
one finds many gothic techniques, but the main thrust of the story is
more frequently concerned with resolving romance, effecting a change
69
70
in family members, or producing a bildungsroman for the heroine.
Since
Ms. Whitney uses gothic devices, whether for pleasure, audience appeal,
or mysterious effect, it is appropriate to study the effectiveness of
the gothic in her American settings.
Railo feels that the haunted castle as the setting for gothic romances is vitally necessary for atmospheric effect.
Faced with a com-
paratively young American nation when she utilizes nineteenth-century
settings, Ms. Whitney finds none of the centuries-old castles so abundant in Europe.
In America one has family homes, but they are genera-
tions-old, not centuries-old.
Even these old, family homes are not
castles; having been through no religious upheavals, they have no peeps,
no priest's holes, no oubliettes, no dungeons.
No old family houses in
America were built from the ghost-ridden stones of destroyed abbeys and
monasteries.
Given this situation, Ms. Whitney has chosen to utilize
such settings as the Civil War, the San Francisco earthquake, post-Civil
War New Orleans, and tragedy in the families of what she, too, feels
passes as dynastic aristocracy in America--Captains and shipbuilders,
politicians, and pioneers.
It is in the mansions of these families that
Ms. Whitney utilizes some of the gothic techniques she feels are so
appealing to her female audience.
Ms. Whitney's use of the haunted castle as a gothic technique is
necessarily limited by her American settings; therefore, f's. Whitney
most frequently creates a gothic atmosphere with one haunted room in
the old house in each novel.
In Window On The Square the haunted room
is the untouched shrine to Dwight Reid and the actual scene of his murder, supposedly at the hands of his own son.
Since the house itself
71
has no other threatening ghosts, it is in this haunted room that the most
physically frightening scenes occur.
feels that " . . .
In one scene in the room, Megan
the sense of a presence that meant me harm was so acute
that I could not speak or move. . . . Fingers, chill and somehow deadly,
touched my face, my throat."^^
Early in the book the reader discovers
that Megan is trying to free the child Jeremy from the guilt that haunts
him, and the key to the source of that guilt is the haunted room.
In The Trembling Hills the room at the top of the house is haunted
because its former occupant was mad, not because its present occupant is
bent on evil.
that one room.
Still, there is much atmospheric control exercised by
As the former prison of the madwoman Callie and as the
present obsession of the sleepwalking Hester Varady, the room embodies
the core of evil that makes the house the source of the heroine's unexplained nightmares.
It is only when Sara has exorcised the ghosts in
the house by revealing family secrets and Hester Varady's guilty remorse
about her treatment of Callie that the room and the house lose their
threatening aspects.
As in each of the other Whitney gothics under consideration, so in
Hills one finds that the haunted house is haunted not by legend but by
the evil of its present inhabitants.
The descriptions of the houses in
Whitney novels have just enough gothic elements to elicit a gothic atmosphere.
In Hills the description of the haunted castle reads as follows:
"Hester Varady's house looked like something out of a fairy tale, with
its gloomy turrets and peaked roofs.
Vines grew heavily over the front
windows as if the house wanted to hide its secrets from the street."^^
The description of the house in Thunder Heights echoes the description
X"
72
of the Varady house.
Camilla describes the house as " . . .
a conglomera-
tion of wooden towers and gingerbread curlicues, with sloping roofs from
which jutted gables and dormer windows. . . . Storms had weathered the
house to a dingy gray, . . .
look of a place uninhabited.
and the trees crowding about gave it the
It appeared enchanted, spellbound, there
on its remote heights. . . ., torn from the pages of fantasy."^^
In Sea Jade Ms. Whitney uses the same technique of mystery and
secretive evil, but the source is less the house, despite its haunted
room, than the abandoned ship at harbour.
On board the ship Miranda
feels her first sense of danger and describes the experience thus:
"...
there were creakings and whisperings and rustlings all about me.
. . ."2^ "Panic rose in me at the thought of being shut into this place,
with no one to know where I was, and the air growing closer every moment"
(Jade, p. 133). Such descriptions of the gothic atmosphere Whitney
creates both on land and aboard ship echo the gothic atmospheres created
by such other American writers as Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne
when one compares them to Melville's silent, dark, driven Pequod with its
evil Parsee and devilish Ahab and Hawthorne's sad, shadowed, shuttered
house of seven gables with its reclusive, blood-stained, guilt-ridden
inhabitants.
Frequently the inhabitants of Whitney's haunted houses
are victims of a physical world that only seems haunted.
Ms. Whitney's
haunted-world properties function merely as stock gothic devices when
they simply add to the atmosphere.
In Sea Jade, for example, the large,
black dog, appropriately named Lucifer, howls for days.
It is not pre-
science of danger that makes him howl, however; it is merely the absence
of his master.
It is revealed somewhat ludicrously that the dog, Lucifer,
73
like his master, is not really evil and cruel but is merely lonely and
shy.
In Window On The Square Megan is frightened of Miss Garth, who is
openly, malevolently hostile toward her, but Miss Garth is ultimately
revealed as a lonely, jealous woman.
Although one can find similar
examples in all the Whitney books under consideration, they all are
relatively unobtrusive.
In Ms. Whitney's gothics a much more important
technique for producing the gothic atmosphere is the author's use of
the haunted psychological world.
Ms. Whitney's use of the haunted psychological world is primarily
her adaptation of that technique to her heroine's emotional growth.
Unlike Ms. Holt's or Ms. Eden's heroines, Ms. Whitney's heroine is not
tempted to believe that the hero she loves is the person who is trying
to kill her.
The Whitney servants do not whisper legends of mysterious
deaths; the heroine does not fall prey to so many suspicions that she
doubts her own sanity.
True, in Skye Cameron the hero is falsely accused
of having murdered once, but the accusation is proved false and Skye
never fears for her own life at his hands.
The moment of the hero's
being accused of murder in Window On The Square is so brief as to be
fleeting; again, the heroine never feels physically threatened by him.
The book that most clearly uses the haunted psychological world for
gothic effect is The Trembling Hills.
In this Whitney gothic one of the
keys to the mystery is Sara's recurring nightmare.
When Sara goes back
to the "haunted castle," she discovers that her unfinished nightmare is
the psychological block she put on the death scene of her father that
she witnessed as a child.
Here the fear Sara feels is purely psycho-
logical; the greatest threat to Sara is the fear of not knowing how her
74
dream ends in real life. Sara's search for an end to the nightmares that
haunt her is a search for the father who deserted her as a child.
It is
significant that Sara finds the answer to her nightmarish dreams when she
realizes her love for Nicholas Renwick, who functions as both father
Image and lover in the book. Once Sara forces her Aunt Hester to reveal
the secrets of the "haunted room" and confess her own guilt in the matter
of the death of Sara's father, Sara is able to finish her dream and resolve her search for a father in Nick.
One of the devices by which Ms. Whitney reinforces the gothicism of
the haunted psychological world in The Trembling Hills is her use of
mirror imagery.
Mirror imagery as a technique of the new American gothic
discussed by Malin appears in Hills in Sara's fear of coming unsuspectedly upon mirrors. The flash of light that reveals the terrors of her
nightmares is reflected in various mirrors in Sara's dreams. She tips
her mirror back in order to avoid suddenly glimpsing images in the mirror
at night. " Any unexpected encounter with a mirror, as in the attic of
the Varady home, causes Sara to relive her recurring nightmare, the
childhood experience of watching her father fall to his death. Ms.
Whitney uses such mirror techniques both to reinforce the gothic feeling
of a haunted psychological world in The Trembling Hills and to reflect
the stages of psychological and emotional growth of her characters.' The
added lessons on character-building that are found in Whitney gothics
add another dimension to the author's characterization.
In her characterization of the heroine, Phyllis Whitney frequently
portrays the growth of her main character from a girl to a woman.
At
times the author is almost painfully explicit in this bildungsroman.
75
much more so than Holt, Eden, or Hodge.
In Hills one finds the follow-
ing descriptions of the heroine Sara: "She liked to weave make-believe
dreams about his [her father's] unexpected return. She couldn't help
building a fantasy in her mind, with an exciting figure that was her
father at its center" (Hills, p. 3 ) . "You remind me of the first time
I saw you, Sara--kneeling there above the stairs. You have the same
look of a little girl this morning" (Hills, p. 123). When asked what
she wants from life, Sara answers, "I want more dresses than I can wear.
A fine house. A dozen taffeta petticoats" (Hills, p. 148), and after
she alienates Nicholas with her obsessive infatuation for Ritchie, Sara
realizes her immaturity.
not seen flashed upon her.
mattered to her.
"In this unwelcome moment the truth she had
It was not Ritchie and a childhood love that
It was Nicholas Renwick. Nick--who held her only in
contempt" (Hills, p. 157). From this point the reader follows Sara
through the resolution of mystery as well as the revelation of the heroine's maturity.
This pattern of maturation can be traced in others of Ms. Whitney's
novels.
In Thunder Heights Camilla goes to the Judd house expecting
everyone to love her despite old family feuds; she discovers that she
has underestimated their hatred.
From the first her inexperience, her
Immaturity, and her idealism are emphasized, but, again, the reader follows her maturation through the book, manifested, at the end, as usual,
by her mature love for the hero.
In The Quicksilver Pool the heroine is
Introduced as a young girl cherishing a childhood romance. The domineering, older woman in the book points out her lack of maturity for the unwary reader when she says, "I suppose allowances must be made for the
76
fact that you are hardly more than a child."
Lora, of course, moves from
child to mature and understanding woman, and the stages of her development are duly catalogued.
In Skye Cameron Skye learns to forget her
jealousy of her mother and, in the process, matures accordingly.
The
charge that Ms. Whitney uses the maturation theme in her gothics can be
easily substantiated with excerpts from all six novels under consideration. She is not the only one of the authors discussed here to use the
theme, but she is the one author of the four here to use it so blatantly,
perhaps because of her background as an author of juvenile fiction.
In
Ms. Whitney's gothics the maturation theme is expressed explicitly, as
it is in Skye Cameron, with such lines as "...
in those moments some-
thing in me had changed, had gained in perspective and proportion."^^
The explicitness of the theme in Whitney gothics is more noticeable than
in the gothics of the other authors under consideration, but the presence of the theme does not make the Whitney gothic heroine more threedimensional as a character. The Whitney heroine is still dependent upon
a gothic cast to her character development to carry the maturation theme.
Easily recognizable gothic techniques in the character-types of
Whitney heroines are abundant.
Camilla (Thunder Heights) is the one
digging up past crimes and family secrets, and she is narrowly rescued
from danger and possible death by the hero, Ross.
In Sea Jade Miranda
learns the truth about the death of Brock's father and the secret of her
own birth when she discovers Captain Obadiah's letter behind a sea chart;
Lora searches for clues to Wade's character in old copybooks and diaries
In The Quicksilver Pool. Ms. Whitney employs American gothic techniques
in her creation of an American aristocracy in America:
the wealthy
77
family in Sea Jade is headed by Captain Bascomb; Thunder Heights focuses
on the family of building magnate Orrin Judd: Mother Tyler of The Quicksilver Pool tries to interest her son in the banking business built up
by her father, who was of the prestigious Cowles family; Uncle Robert of
Skye Cameron rules his family with the firm, aristocratic hand of the
Creole. These techniques are not the only ties Whitney gothics have
with Holt or Eden gothics, however. Another important facet to the
Whitney heroine's character is her defense of the untouchable, alienated
child.
The theme of the alienated child is discussed by Irving Malin as an
American innovation to the gothic novel. Ms. Whitney uses Malin's theme
of the alienated child in five of the novels under consideration, The
Trembling Hills, Window On The Square, Sea Jade, Skye Cameron, and The
Quicksilver Pool.
In Thunder Heights the theme is used simply as back-
ground knowledge; the alienated child, not rescued soon enough by the
heroine, has grown up to be the unrepentant villain.
In each of the
other five Whitney novels, however, the heroine, despite her dreamy
immaturity, is the champion of the misunderstood, unloved child of the
family she comes to live with.
Ms. Whitney's alienated children and their protectors closely resemble the children and governess of Henry James's The Turn Of The 'Screw.
The following passage from James's short story, "...
something within
me said that by offering myself bravely as the sole subject of such
experience, by accepting, by inviting, by surmounting it all, I should
serve as an expiatory victim and guard the tranquility of my companions.
78
The children, in especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely
save,"23 is amazingly similar to the following passages from Whitney:
All that really mattered was Jeremy [the child], and there
was still much I could do for him. It was for him that I
must fight to remain in this house . . . (Square, p. 149).
I had begun to fancy myself in the light of Laurel's champion—the defender of a mistreated child; someone to stand
between her and a cruel parent (Jade, p. 78).
Even if the skies fell she must try to help Jemmy (Pool,
p. 55).
In each instance the heroine not only brings love and security to the
child, but she also finds love for herself.
The hero of the Whitney gothic, so obviously destined for the heroine by the decree of romance, is rarely confused with the villain.
De-
spite the rare instances in which the heroine feels the hero is cruel
and unstable (as in Sea Jade, for example), there is always another
character in Whitney gothics more forcefully evil than the hero. Ms.
Whitney's physical descriptions of her heroes follow the traditional
gothic vein.
The heroine admires him not only for his ". . . broad
strength of his shoulders [and] the clean length of his stride" (Heights,
p. 197), but also for his " . . .
eyes so coldly gray and appraising"
(Square, p. 9) and the "depths . . .
in which unknown emotions stirred,
seldom flashing to the surface" (Hills, p. 76).
The Whitney hero may wear many faces, but he is always recognizable
to the experienced gothic-romance aficionado.
with the words, " . . .
Sara describes her hero
how wise he was. And how kind, how gentle . . .
Nick was someone to trust and lean upon.
He v;ould always be fair.
She
could imagine him angry, but he would never be cruel" (Hills, p. 120),
79
While Skye describes her hero as " . . .
a giant of a fellow. . . . His
chin, I thought, was made of iron, and there was a straight hard look
to his mouth . . ." (Skye, p. 52), and "There was violence in this man,
and rebellion and anger" (Skye, p. 105). Despite the rebellion, anger,
potential for murder and other cruel traits that the Whitney heroine may
see in the hero, however, she never feels physically threatened by him
as does the Holt heroine, for example.
Indeed, despite her initial dis-
like, intense hatred, or distaste for the hero, the Whitney heroine is
frequently simultaneously drawn and repelled by her hero.
Skye says of Justin that " . . .
I looked up into eyes intensely blue and
felt in me a sudden sense of destiny.
other.
For example,
To love, or to hate--one or the
No woman could ever be indifferent to such a man" (Skye, p. 52),
while Miranda says, "I did not like what could happen to me with this
man.
How could I hate him so thoroughly, and with such good reason, yet
be drawn to him so that in the midst of anger I was conscious of the
touch of him and wanted to be held close in his arms?" (Jade, p. 152).
The. hero is not the only man to whom the Whitney heroine feels
drawn; for she is also attracted to the villain.
There is, however,
careful delineation between the attraction the Whitney heroine feels for
the hero and her attraction to the villain.
Whereas one finds the Holt
heroine frequently charmed and physically attracted to the villain,-one
finds that the attraction the Whitney heroine feels toward the villain
lacks such sexual overtones.
Indeed, in many instances the Whitney
heroine laments this lack of "spark," as does Megan when she says of
Andrew after he declares his love, "For a moment I could only stare-perhaps not so much in surprise as in dismay.
Had I not sensed the
80
direction in which he was moving and even wished at times that I could
respond?" (Square, p. 185). To her dismay, her response is to the seemingly unattainable hero.
The same pattern holds true in each of the
other Whitney books that contain villains.
The Whitney villain is not presented as the Walpole villain or
Radcliffe villain is; instead, the Whitney villain is to some degree a
sympathetic character.
He is ambitious, true, but his ambition is no
greater than that of the hero.
The Whitney villain is frequently pre-
sented as a kind, generous man driven by circumstance to murder, deceive,
and scheme.
In Sea Jade, Ian personifies the Whitney villain when he
says, " . . .
one desperate step led to another, and each forced me into
the next.
There was never any turning back" (Jade, p. 218). There is
further indication of the distance between the Whitney villain and the
Lewis villain, for example, when Miranda, after lan's death, says, "That
there was good in Ian as well as evil, I know full well, and I grieve
for good so hideously wasted" (Jade, p. 224). Skye expresses the same
sorrow for the villain in Skye Cameron when she says, "When Uncle Robert
recovered, he might well be a broken man, but whether he was or not, I
could only pity him for the empty shell he had made of his life" (Skye,
p. 219).
Of course, in gothic novels, the villain must lose all or perish,
however good or evil he may be.
In Thunder Heights Booth repents on his
deathbed, but he remains the primary source of evil in the novel nonetheless.
In other Whitney gothics this primary source of evil may be divid-
ed between the villain and one or more other characters, most notably
the villainess.
81
Unremitting hatred is the primary indication of evil in Whitney
gothics.
Sometimes this hatred causes the heroine to see villainesses
or villains where only guilt-ridden, self-destructive, malevolent people
exist, but the Whitney heroine may also encounter the villainess who is
not only capable of hate but also is capable of murder.
In The Trem-
bling Hills such a villainess takes the role of villain.
Sara's Aunt
Hester is filled with hatred for the man who scorned her and for the
woman he loved, and she is driven to murder by her desire to see that
Sara doesn't lose her own love.
Despite her villainy, despite the fact
that she deliberately sends Geneva to her death, Hester Varady is at the
end a haunted, lonely woman.
in gothic romances.
Such retributive justice is standard fare
In Window On The Square Leslie Reid alienates her
husband, loses her children, and then kills herself rather than face the
justice about to be meted out to her.
Not all Whitney villains and villainesses are clearly identified,
exposed, and punished with death or a death-in-life existence.
In
Whitney gothics there is a median character that is neither wholly villain/villainess nor clearly hero/heroine.
Ms. Whitney frequently creates
characters that are primarily old, female, and cruel.
These characters
exhibit explicit hatred for the heroine, create cruel and uncomfortable
scenes, appear fully capable of having instigated the evil the heroine
discovers, and, at the same time, appear as sympathetic characters to
the reader.
Two of Ms. Whitney's "old women" characters are mothers of
the heroes; one is an aunt of the heroine.
Despite her role, however,
this character must at some point in the book relent in her harsh judgement and jealousy of the heroine and in the process removes some of the
82
hatred so prevalent in Whitney gothics.
Aunt Hortense relents and sends
Ross to rescue Camilla (Thunder Heights); Mrs. McLean relents and accepts
Miranda as Brock's wife (Sea Jade).
All of the change that occurs in the Whitney gothic--the taming of
the unloved child, the softening of the old woman, the exposure of the
villain or villainess, the righting of old wrongs--takes place because
of the heroine.
In The Quicksilver Pool, Wade acknowledges this fact
when he says to Lora, "You've done something for all of us in this house"
(Pool, p. 269). In this respect, then, a Whitney gothic set in New
Orleans differs very little from a Holt gothic set in Cornwall.
Univer-
sally, the excitement of tension, catalyst, explosive action, and ensuing calm is what the modern gothic romance is all about.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
This thesis has studied the gothic novels of Victoria Holt, Dorothy
Eden, Jane Aiken Hodge, and Phyllis Whitney in order to discover what
use each of these authors has made of traditional gothic techniques that
have developed in the past two hundred years. One has only to read representative novels of Holt, Eden, Hodge, and Whitney to realize that
each of these four authors uses gothic devices deliberately.
This the-
sis contains ample evidence that the novels of these four authors contain gothic stock properties in abundance. Careful reading of any of
the novels discussed reveals the pursued heroine, the hero, the villain,
the fatal woman, the unknowing heiress, the alienated child, the haunted
castle, or the strange and mysterious atmosphere associated with gothicism. ;
The evidence given in this thesis indicates that the gothic novels
of Holt, Eden, Hodge, and Whitney do, indeed, have a place in that section of literature known as the gothic tradition. These four authors
have not been accorded the recognition they deserve as inheritors of
Walpole's legacy for the same reasons that assured Walpole himself a
place in the gothic tradition.
Each of the four writers considered here
is popular with the reading public, prolific, proficient in several
areas of writing, and translated, sold, resold, and reprinted continuously.
Horace Walpole might well wish for so much popular acclaim today.
83
84
One must conclude, therefore, that any lack in the novels of Holt, Eden,
Hodge, or Whitney is the fault of the gothic tradition itself.
Ms. Hodge says, " . . .
When
I do think the term Gothic has been gravely over-
worked,"' she speaks for two hundred years of literature.
Despite the
fact that these four contemporary authors might feel that the gothic
tradition has its weaknesses, however, each of the four takes that tradition seriously enough to research each book carefully, produce more novels in the same gothic vein, and deliberately use those same overestimated, overworked gothic techniques that bring them criticism in literary
circles.
In according the novels of Holt, Eden, Hodge and Whitney their place
in the gothic tradition, one must decide whether the Britons--Victoria
Holt and Dorothy Eden--are to be separated from the Americans--Jane Aiken
Hodge and Phyllis Whitney.
The Britons and the Americans are similar in
their (1) deliberate use of the traditional gothic techniques listed in
Chapter II of this thesis, (2) development of a heroine more compatible
with twentieth-century needs for more self-sufficient, independent, or
righteously indignant female characters, (3) utilization of a humanistic
approach that portrays traditional "evil" sympathetically while at the
same time exposing traditional "good" realistically, without perfect delineation of either, (4) incorporation of a moralistic or realistic theme
basically more important than the gothic theme, and (5) development of
unique styles of writing, approach, and theme easily identified as one
author's own.
Despite these similarities, however, one must realize that the gothic tradition in literature has already been divided into two classes:
85
the European gothic and the American gothic.
No matter what their orig-
inal intentions in using traditional gothic techniques, both Americans.
Jane Aiken Hodge and Phyllis Whitney, have been forced to alter their
use of the gothic techniques. Ms. Hodge and Ms. Whitney searched the
young shores of America and found that their concession to America's
comparative youth must be accommodation.
The Americans could create
endangered American heiresses, ambitious villains, and gothic nightmares
of danger and suspicion, but they could not create the heritage of time
necessary for nurturing the legends, superstitions, and ghosts essential
to the gothic novel. Both Ms. Hodge and Ms. Whitney were forced to find
substitutes for these gothic elements so lacking in the American landscape. Walpole and his contemporaries created exotic settings in distant lands or ancient times. Ms. Hodge utilizes this gothic technique
in many of her gothic novels.
Ms. Hodge and Ms. Whitney are more closely associated with American
gothic writers that have preceded them than with Walpole in creation of
settings, however.
Faced with the problems an American setting creates
for American gothic writers, Ms. Hodge and Ms. Whitney have made the
same accommodations that American authors have always made in the gothic
tradition.
Like William Faulkner, Ms. Hodge finds American settings for
her gothics in the South.
Like Edgar Allan Poe, Ms. Whitney has used
American settings for her gothics but has been forced to fill those settings with enough psychological gothic techniques to create a dismal,
threatening, gothic atmosphere.
Like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ms. Whitney
haunts her American castles with hatred, self-recrimination, and guilt
and makes her heroines the exorcists of those gothic elements.
86
The literary techniques of psychological fears, guilt, self-recrimination and exorcism are not restricted to American literature, nor are
they restricted to gothic American literature. They are, however, sure
representatives of those changes that American writers have made in the
gothic tradition in the past two hundred years. As authors who utilize
these techniques to create gothicism in their novels, Jane Aiken Hodge
and Phyllis Whitney must be included in the American division of gothic
literature. As authors who do not incorporate the literary techniques
that adapt gothic novels to American settings, Victoria Holt and Dorothy
Eden must be included in the European division of gothic literature.
Whether Briton or American, however, Victoria Holt, Dorothy Eden, Jane
Aiken Hodge, and Phyllis Whitney have all proven through their use of
traditional gothic techniques that they are all worthy of places in
gothic literature as modern inheritors of Walpole's legacy.
ENDNOTES
Chapter I
Ijoanna Russ, "Somebody's Trying to Kill Me and I Think It's My
Husband: The Modern Gothic," Journal of Popular Culture. 6 (1973),
p. 666.
^Russ, p. 666.
3 R U S S , p.
667.
^Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition (Garden City,
New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1957), p. xii.
5
^The terms novel and romance will be used interchangeably in this
thesis. William Gilmore Simms, Richard Chase, Henry James, and countless others have already attempted delineation of differences between
novels and romances and have themselves encountered difficulties of
definition. The reader is asked to note that Ann Radcliffe herself
called her gothic works romances, that the novels under consideration
here are currently referred to as either novels or romances, with no
distinction of terms, and that the gothic tradition has divided the
genre of gothic literature into historical gothic, terror gothic and
romantic gothic. The reader is therefore asked to view the works under
consideration here as either novels or romances in the historical gothic
or the romantic gothic vein.
^
\
c
J
^Contemporary Authors, 17/18 (1967), p. 223.
'Jane Aiken Hodge, personal correspondence, June 1, 1976.
i
o
"Hodge, correspondence, 1976.
Chapter II
1Devendra P. Varma, The Gothic Flame (New York: Russell and
Russell, 1966), p. 41.
^Edith Birkhead, The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance
(London: Constable and Company, 1921), p. 16.
3Birkhead, p. 19.
^Birkhead, p. 19.
87
88
^Varma, p. 13.
^Birkhead, p. 21.
^Birkhead, p. 16.
^Birkhead, p. 17.
9varma, p. 1.
l^Varma, p. 1.
1 1 A selective list of authors linked with the gothic tradition in
literature can be found in Appendix A.
l^Varma, p. 60.
^"^Varma, p. 60.
l^Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto in Three Eighteenth Century
Romances (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931), p. 77.
l^For an in-depth look at "popular" literature, see James David
Hart, The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1950).
l^Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (New York:
1965), p. 31.
New American Library,
l^Austen, p. 31.
^^Varma, p. 79.
l^Birkhead, p. 41.
20Birkhead, p. 41.
21varma, p. 132.
22varma, p. 132.
23varma, p. 140.
2^For bibliographies and studies on Science Fiction as literature,
see Thomas Clareson, Science Fiction: An Annotated Checklist (Kent:
Kent State University Press, 1972), H. Bruce Franklin, Future Perfect:
American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1966), Robert M. Philmus, Intothe Unknown: The Evolution of Science Fiction from Francis Godwin to H. G. Wells (Berkeley:
89
University of California Press, 1970), and Robert E. Briney and Edward
J?^^! Science Fiction Bibliographies: An Annotated Bibliography of
Bibliographical Works on Science Fiction and Fantasy Fiction (Chicaco:
Advent, 1972).
"
^
^^Varma, p. 159.
^^Varma, p. 160.
^^Varma, p. 160.
28
Leslie A. Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel (New York:
Stein and Day, 1966), p. }W.
~
^^Fiedler, p. 137.
F i e d l e r , p. 145.
^Viedler, p. 144.
32
^'"Alexander Cowie, The American Novel (New York: American Book
Company, 1948), p. 22.
^^Fiedler, p. 144.
^^Fiedler, p. 144.
^^Irving Malin, New American Gothic (Carbondale, 111.: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1962), p. 79.
"^"See Thomas Tryon's The Other, Harvest Home, and Lady; see Ira
Levin's Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives.
Eino Railo, The Haunted Castle (London: George Routledge and
Sons, 1927), p. 7.
% a i l o , p. 235.
^%irkhead, p. 55.
Chapter III
lln a careful study of the novels of Victoria Holt, one can easily
become repetitious in producing evidence of Holt's use of gothic techniques. In most cases, it is sufficient to cite only a few representative examples, with the assumption that the reader realizes that exhaustive examples may be found in each Holt novel under consideration.
90
For synopses of all the modern gothic novels under consideration,
see Appendix B.
3
Victoria Holt, Menfreya In The Morning (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett
Publications, Inc., 1965), p. 217. Further reference to this book will
be noted in the text by Menfreya and the page number.
^Victoria Holt, The Curse Of The Kings (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett
Publications, Inc., 1973), p. 260. Further reference to this book will
be noted in the text by Kings and the page number.
^Victoria Holt, Lord Of The Far Island (Garden City, New York:
Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1975), p. 243. Further reference to this
book will be noted in the text by Island and the page number.
^Victoria Holt, Kirkland Revels (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1962), p. 225. Further reference to this book will
be noted in the text by Revels and the page number.
'Victoria Holt, The House Of A Thousand Lanterns (Greenwich, Conn.:
Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1974), p. 339. Further reference to this
book will be noted in the text by Lanterns and the page number.
^Victoria Holt, On The Night Of The Seventh Moon (Garden City,
New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1972), p. 84. Further reference
to this book will be noted in the text by Moon and the page number.
^Victoria Holt, The Secret Woman (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1970), p. 323. Further reference to this book will be
noted in the text by Secret and the page number.
^^Victoria Holt, The King Of The Castle (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett
Publications, Inc., 1967), p. 209. Further reference to this book will
be noted in the text by Castle and the page number.
^^Victoria Holt, Mistress of Mellyn (Garden City, New York: Nelson
Doubleday, Inc., 1960), p. 134. Further reference to this book will be
noted in the text by Mellyn and the page number.
^^Victoria Holt, The Shivering Sands (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett
Publications, Inc., 1969), p. 93. Further reference to this book will
be noted in the text by Sands and the page number.
^^Victoria Holt, The Legend Of The Seventh Virgin (Greenwich, Conn.:
Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1964), p. 109. Further reference to this
book will be noted in the text by Virgin and the page number.
l^victoria Holt, The Shadow Of The Lynx (Garden City, New York:
Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1971), p. 165. Further reference to this
book will be noted in the text by Lynx and the page number.
91
^^Dorothy Eden, Lady Of Mallow (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1960), p. 7. Further reference to this book will be
noted in the text by Mallow and the page number.
^^Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries Of Udolpho (London:
sity Press, 1966 rpt.), p. 430.
Oxford Univer-
^^Radcliffe, Udolpho, p. 431.
1^Radcliffe, Udolpho, p. 386.
'^Ann Radcliffe, The Romance Of The Forest in Three Eighteenth
Century Romances (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931), p. 434.
^^Radcliffe, Forest, p. 451.
2'Dorothy Eden, Winterwood (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1967),
p. 2. Further reference to this book will be noted in the text by
Winterwood and the page number.
^^Dorothy Eden, Darkwater (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications,
Inc., 1963), p. 117. Further reference to this book will be noted in
the text by Darkwater and the page number.
23Dorothy Eden, Ravenscroft (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1964), p. 21. Further reference to this book will be noted
in the text by Ravenscroft and the page number.
2^Dorothy Eden, The Millionaire's Daughter (New York: Coward,
McCann and Geoghegan, 1974), p. 284. Further reference to this book
will be noted in the text by Daughter and the page number.
Chapter IV
^Jane Aiken Hodge, personal correspondence, June 1, 1976.
Hodge, correspondence, June 1, 1976
^Hodge, correspondence, June 1, 1976.
^Fiedler, p. 144.
^Fiedler, p. 144.
^Jane Aiken Hodge, The Master Of Penrose (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1967), p. i. Further reference to this book will be noted
in the text by Penrose and the page number.
92
Jane Aiken Hodge, Savannah Purchase (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett
publications. Inc., 1970), p. 84. Further reference to this book will
be noted in the text by Purchase and the page number.
^Jane Aiken Hodge, The Winding Stair (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett
Publications, Inc., 1968), p. 58. Further reference to this book will
be noted in the text by Stair and the page number.
0
''Jane Aiken Hodqe, Greek Wedding (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1970), p. 219. Further reference to this book will be
noted in the text by Wedding and the page number.
'^Hodge, correspondence, June 1, 1976.
"Hodge, correspondence, June 1, 1976.
"•Jane Aiken Hodge, Shadow Of A Lady (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett
Publications, Inc., 1973), p. 76. Further reference to this book will
be noted in the text by Shadow and the page number.
13
Jane Aiken Hodge, Watch The Wall, My Darling (Greenwich, Conn.:
Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1966), p. 70. Further reference to this
book will be noted in the text by Wall and the page number.
' Jane Aiken Hodge, Marry In Haste (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1961), p. 72. Further reference to this book will be
noted in the text by Haste and the page number.
'^Patricia Schartle Myrer, personal correspondence, August 26, 1976.
Myrer, correspondence, August 26, 1976.
Phyllis A. Whitney, Window On The Square (Greenwich, Conn.:
Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1962), p. 161. Further reference to this
book will be noted in the text by Square and the page number.
^^Phyllis A. Whitney, The Trembling Hills (Greenwich, Conn.:
Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1956), p. 107. FiTrther reference to this
book will be noted in the text by Hills and the page number.
1^Phyllis A. Whitney, Thunder Heights (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett
Publications, Inc., I960), p. 15. Further reference to this book will
be noted in the text by Heights and the page number.
^Ophyllis A. Whitney, Sea Jade (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1964), p. 131^ Further reference to this book will be
noted in the text by. Jade and the page number.
^1 Phyllis A. Whitney, The Quicksilver Pool (Greenwich, Conn.:
Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1955), p. 57. Further reference to this
book will be noted in the text by Pool and the page number.
93
22
^ Phyllis A. Whitney, Skye Cameron (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1957), p. 216:^ Further reference to this book will be
noted in the text by Skye and the page number.
23
Henry James, "The Turn of the Screw," The Turn Of The Screw And
Other Short Novels (New York: New American Library, 1962), p. 323.
Chapter V
'Hodge, correspondence, June 1, 1976.
LIST OF SOURCES
Primary Sources
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Mistress Of Mellyn. Garden City, New York: Nelson Doubleday,
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. On The Night Of The Seventh Moon. Garden City, New York:
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. The Secret Woman. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications,
Tn^., T970^
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and Company, Inc., 1971.
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Whitney, Phyllis A. The Quicksilver Pool. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett
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Austen, Jane.
Northanger Abbey.
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York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931.
Birkhead, Edith. The Tale Of Terror.
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Constable and Company,
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Chase, Richard. The American Novel And Its Tradition.
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Garden City,
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Cowie, Alexander. The Rise Of The American Novel. New York:
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Fiedler, Leslie A. Love And Death In The American Novel. New York:
Stein and Day, 1966.
Franklin, H. Bruce. Future Perfect: American Science Fiction Of The
Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.
Hart, James David. The Popular Book: A History Of America's Literary
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Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House Of The Seven Gables. New York: Washington Square Press, 1961.
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Other Short Novels. New York: New American Library, 1962.
Lewis, Matthew Gregory.
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Philmus, Robert M. Into The Unknown: The Evolution Of Science Fiction
From Francis Godwin To H. G. Wells. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Complete Stories Of Edgar Allan Poe.
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Russ, Joanna. "Somebody's Trying to Kill Me and I Think It's My Husband:
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The Gothic Flame.
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Russell and Russell,
APPENDICES
98
APPENDIX A
The following is a selective list of European, eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century authors and works linked with the gothic tradition
in literature.
Anonymous
The Eve of San Pietro (1804)
The Abbess of St. Hilda
The Black Forest, or The Cavern of Horrors
The Convent Spectre
The Hag of the Mountains, or Mysterious
Memoirs of the Marquis de la Terra and
His Supposed Friend the Count di Suza,
Including Those of Lucetta and Vittoria,
The Lovely Daughters of a Vintager, at
Montmelian, in Savoy
The History of Rinaldo Rinaldini, Captain
of Banditti (1800)
Midnight Horrors, or The Bandit's Daughter
The Mysterious Omen, or Awful Retribution
Romano Castle, or The Horrors of the Forest
The Secret Oath, or Bloodstained Dagger
The Sicilian Pirate, or The Pillar of Mystery
Beckford, William
Curties, Horsley
Vathek (1798)
The Scottish Legend, or The Isle of St.
Clothair (1802)"^
The Monk of Udolpho (1807)
Dacre, Charlotte
Zofloya, or The Moor (1805)
Godwin, William
The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) .
Travels of St. Leon (1799)
Green, William Child
The Abbot of Monserrat, or The Pool of Blood
The Prophecy of Duncannon, or The Dwarf and
the Seer (18241
Hook, Sarah Ann
Secret Machinations
99
100
Ireland, William Henry
Bruno, or The Sepulchral Summons
Gondez the Monk (1805)
Rimualdo, or The Castle of Badijos (1800)
Jones, Hannah Maria
The Woman of Feeling (1803)
Emily Morehead, or The Maid of the Valley
(1829)
Lancaster, Agnes
The Abbess of Valtiera, or The Sorrows of a
Falsehood (1816)
Lathom, Francis
The Fatal Vow, or St. Michael's Monastery
Italian Mysteries, or More Secrets Than One
(1820)
The Midnight Bell (1798)
Lathy, T. P.
The Mysterious Freebooter, or The Days of
Queen Bess (1806)
Mystery (1800)
The Invisible Enemy, or The Mines of
Wielitska (T806)
Lee, Sophia
The Recess, or A Tale of Other Times
(1783-86)
Lewis, Matthew Gregory
The Bravo of Venice (1804)
The Monk (1795)
Burton Wood (1785)
Mackenzie, Anna Marie
The Danish Massacre (1791)
Dusseldorf, or The Fratricide (1798)
Feudal Events (1797)
The Gamesters (1786)
Martin and Mansfeldt, or The Romance of
Franconia (1802)
Monmouth (1790)
Mysteries Elucidated (1795)
The Neapolitan, or The Test of Integrity
07%)
The Irish Guardian, or Errors of Eccentricity (IBOT)"^
Marquis of Grosse
Maturin, Charles Robert
Horrid Mysteries:
A Story (1796)
The Fatal Revenge of the Family of Montorio
nsoTi
101
Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
Montague, Edward
Morley, G. T.
The Demon of Sicily (1807)
Parsons, Eliza
Castle of Wolfenbach:
Deeds of Darkness, or The Unnatural Uncle
[1805]
A German Story (1793)
The Girl of the Mountains (1795)
Lucy (1794)
The Mysterious Warning:
A German Tale (1796)
Polidori, Dr. John
The Vampyre:
Radcliffe, Ann
The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789)
Radcliffe, Mary Anne
Reeve, Clara
Roche, Regina Maria
A Tale (1819)
Gaston de Blondeville (1826)
The Italian, or The Confessional of the
Black Penitents (1797")
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
The Romance of the Forest (1792)
A Sicilian Romance (1790)
Manfrone, or The One-Handed Monk (1809)
The Old English Baron (1777)
The Children of the Abbey (1796)
Clermont (1798)
The Tradition of the Castle, or Scenes in
the Emerald Isle (1824)
Rouviere, Henrietta
The Capture of Vallance (1804)
Lussington Abbey (1804)
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein (1818)
Sickelmore, Richard
Osrick, or Modern Horrors (1809)
Sleath, Eleanor
Ariel, or The Invisible Monitor (1801)
The Orphan of the Rhine (1798)
Smith, Charlotte
Rosalie, or The Castle of Montalabretti
(1811)
Emmeline, or The Orphan of the Castle (1788)
Ethelinde, or The Recluse of the Lake (1789)
Teuthold, Peter
Necromancer, or The Tale of the Black Forest
(1794)
Walpole, Horace
The Castle of Otranto (1764)
102
Walker, George
The Three Spaniards (1800)
Ward, Catherine G.
The Cottage on the Cliff, A Sea Side Story
n823r
Williams, W. Frederic
Durston Castle, or The Ghost of Eleonora
n804]
Valambrosa, or The Venetian Nun (1804)
The Witcheries of Craig Isaf (1804)
Woodfall, Sophia
Edmund Ironside
Rosa, or The Child of the Abbey
APPENDIX B
SYNOPSES OF NOVELS BY VICTORIA HOLT
Mistress Of Mellyn (1960)
When Martha Leigh comes to Mount Mellyn to be governess to Alvean
TreMellyn, she finds that the house holds many secrets.
She is deter-
mined to make Connan TreMellyn love his daughter Alvean, who longs for
his attention, to discover what happened to Alice, Connan's first wife,
and to persuade the half-idiot Gillyflower to talk.
She is romantically
pursued by Peter Nansellock, whose brother Geoffrey has supposedly run
off with Alice.
Martha spurns Peter's advances because she realizes
that she is in love with Connan.
Celestine Nansellock, Peter's sister,
is a frequent visitor at Mount Mellyn, and she persuades Martha that
Connan is in love with Linda Treslyn, the young wife of old Lord Treslyn,
When Treslyn dies suddenly, Martha expects Connan to marry Linda, but he
asks Martha to be his wife instead.
She agrees to marry him and then
begins to think that he wants to marry her only to cover his affair with
Linda and to avert suspicion of foul play in Lord Treslyn's death.
Mar-
tha's discovery that Lord Treslyn died a natural death comes just before
she is locked in a secret vault by Celestine, who wants to be mistress
of Mellyn herself.
The idiot child Gilly leads Connan to the vault, and
the rescuers discover not only Martha but also Alice's remains.
Celes-
tine is put away for murdering Alice, and Martha and Connan marry, living to see their great-grandchildren play on the lawns of Mount Mellyn.
103
104
Kirkland Revels (1962)
Catherine Corder, rejected by an unfeeling father, rides out on the
moors, meets Gabriel Rockwell, and rescues a starving dog which she calls
Friday.
After Catherine and Gabriel marry, they go to his family home,
Kirkland Revels, which is built on the site of an old abbey.
Once there,
Catherine learns that there is a history of suicides in Gabriel's family
and that Gabriel's father, aunt, sister Ruth and nephew Luke had had no
warning of the unwelcome marriage. Within a week of their arrival at
Kirkland Revels, Gabriel dies in a supposedly suidical fall from the
traditional balcony for such acts.
to accept his death as suicide.
Catherine is the only one v/ho refuses
Catherine leaves, but, discovering that
she is pregnant, returns to bear the heir.
She discovers eccentric Aunt
Sarah, who stitches family history into her tapestries, meets Aunt Hagar,
cousin Simon Redver's mother, and receives visits from the legendary
monk-ghost who haunts the former abbey.
In the next few months Cather-
ine tries to solve the mystery of Gabriel's death, sees the monk several
times, discovers that there is no threat of insanity from her family for
her child, and, because of a series of strange events, comes to the conclusion that someone is trying to stage her suicide or promote her insanity.
Simon rescues Catherine when the trusted family doctor, Deverel
Smith, tries to have her committed.
Catherine safely bears her child
and marries Simon, and the threat to the inheritance is removed when
Deverel Smith makes a suicidal leap off the balcony of Kirkland Revels.
The Legend Of The Seventh Virgin (1964)
Kerensa Carlee, poor but educated by the parson and his daughter
105
Mellyora, aspires to the position of mistress of the Abbas. She marries
the enamoured younger son, Johnny, and thus assures herself of a place
in the wealthy St. Larnston family.
Justin marries Judith Derrise be-
cause the St. Larnstons actually need money, but Judith has inherited
the Derrises' tendency to madness.
Kerensa's bringing the impoverished
Mellyora home to care for her son leads to an unconsummated romance between Justin and Melly.
Johnny disappears, Judith falls down the stairs
and dies, and Kerensa conceals the fact that her son's toy caused Judith's
death.
Questions concerning Judith's death and its connection with
Justin's love for Melly cause such a scandal that Justin goes away rather than subject Mellyora to disgrace, and Johnny is left the owner of
the St. Larnston Abbas and lands. Johnny's absence leaves Kerensa in
charge, but his fate is undetermined until the abandoned St. Larnston
tin mine is opened, revealing the bodies of Johnny and his once lover,
Hetty Pengaster.
Kimber.
Kerensa then dreams of marrying an old friend, Dick
While waiting for Kim (Dick) to propose, Kerensa begins repairs
on her Granny's cottage and is lured there by the half-mad brother of
Hetty Pengaster, who holds her responsible for Hetty's death.
He walls
up Kerensa at the Abbas like the seventh virgin of legend was walled up,
and she is rescued at the last minute by Kim.
Kim and Mellyora marry,
and Kerensa is left to build her life around her son Carlyon.
Menfreya In The Morning (1966)
Harriet Delvaney, the unloved, limping, unattractive daughter of a
prominent M.P., runs away from her cold father to hide on the island
owned by their long-time friends, the Menfreys. Gwennan Menfrey aids
106
her friend in this escapade, which is soon found out, and the two girls
are sent off to school together.
Gwennan elopes with an actor, and
Harriet marries Gwennan's brother Bevil, her childhood sweetheart.
When
Harriet finds a dying Gwennan and takes her son home to rear, it becomes
necessary for the Menfreys to hire beautiful Jessica Trelarken as governess. Harriet first suspects that Bevil is having an affair with
Jessica and then that Jessica is plotting her death. She sees the accidental arsenic poisoning, the stopping of the tower clock that signifies
Menfrey death, and the order for funeral arrangements for Mrs. Menfrey
as signs that someone means her harm.
In the end it is the overly-
protective, demented Fanny, Harriet's nurse and maid, who lures her to
the near-death by drowning from which she is rescued by Bevil.
Jessica
confesses that her plots to encourage Harriet's jealousy were only political ploys to discredit Bevil so that his M.P. post would become available for Jessica's lover, Harry Leveret.
The King Of The Castle (1967)
Dallas Lawson comes to the Chateau Gaillard in France to restore
the old paintings belonging to the Comte de la Talle. He is surprised
to find Dallas instead of her father, but he allows her to stay, commends
her work, and watches her establish authority over and friendship with
his uncontrollable daughter Genevieve.
Dallas falls in love with the
Comte but is convinced that he means to marry his mistress Claude.
Claude marries the Comte's cousin Philippe, but Dallas still feels that
Claude and the Comte are lovers.
In searching for the de la Talle emer-
alds, Dallas discovers the oubliettes in the dungeon, realizes that
107
someone is trying to kill the Comte, and discovers that the Comte's
first wife killed herself because she learned of the insanity that ran
in her family.
Dallas is romantically pursued by Jean Pierre Bastide,
a de la Talle bastard who aspires to the lordship of the castle.
Before
she unravels the mystery of the Comte's first wife's death and discovers
the emeralds, Dallas wonders if the Comte murdered his wife, if Claude's
mythical child is the Comte's, if Jean Pierre is trying to seduce Genevieve, and if Jean Pierre is the one trying to take the Comte's life.
In the climactic dungeon scene, Dallas learns that Jean Pierre has been
searching the castle for the emeralds, making the mysterious noises she
heard, and that Philippe has been trying to kill the Comte.
Philippe
actually does shoot the Comte and is banished, Jean Pierre leaves, the
emeralds are found and put away, Dallas discovers that the Comte does
not want his first wife's insanity disclosed to perhaps influence the
highly-strung Genevieve, the Comte recovers, and the Comte and Dallas
marry.
The Shivering Sands (1969)
When Caroline Verlaine, recently widowed wife of famous concert
pianist Pietro Verlaine, comes to Lovat Stacey to teach piano to the
three girls there, she conceals the fact that her real reason for coming
is to solve the mystery of her archaeologist sister Roma's disappearance.
She discovers that the house has its own mysteries, including the childhood banishment of the son Napier for killing his brother Beaumont, the
unhappy marriage of Napier and the child-like Edith, and mysterious
lights appearing in the burned-out chapel in the woods.
Caroline becomes
108
Involved in the family's problems, is concerned about Edith's love affair with the curate, worries about the illegitimate Allegra's pranksterism, and finds herself falling in love with Napier. After Edith disappears, Caroline tries to find some link between her sister's and
Edith's disappearances in order to solve the mystery and prove Napier
Innocent of his wife's murder. When she gets too close to recognizing
the archaeological discovery that led to Roma's death, she is nearly
burned to death but is rescued by the housekeeper's daughter Alice.
After several abortive attempts to discover who is haunting the chapel
and after several encounters with the semi-mad Aunt Sybil, Caroline is
lured to the shivering quick sands on the coast by a demented Alice.
Alice is exposed as the murderess of Roma and Edith, Caroline is saved
from the quicksands by Napier and another of her suitors, Godfrey Wilmot,
and Caroline and Napier later marry.
The Secret Woman (1970)
When Anna Brett's Aunt Charlotte becomes an invalid. Nurse Chantel
Loman comes to care for her. Aunt Charlotte's death by overdose causes
inquiry, but Chantel's testimony absolves Anna from guilt. When Chantel
Is called to Castle Crediton to nurse Monique, the exotic, ailing wife
of Redvers Stretton, she arranges for Anna to come to the castle as
governess to Edward, Redvers' child.
Chantel falls in love with Rex
Crediton, half-brother of Redvers. They all set sail for Coralle, the
South Sea island home of Monique, and the trip is plagued with suspicions
about the mysterious sinking of Redvers' former ship, the Secret Woman,
threats to Edward's life, and hysterical accusations from Monique about
109
Redvers' love for Anna. After their arrival on Coralle, Anna and Chantel
discover that Monique is no better physically and is more unstable mentally. Anna discovers that Chantel has married Rex secretly and that
the natives have found the figurehead of the Secret Woman as well as the
diamonds that Redvers was accused of having stolen. Soon after Anna
proves Redvers' innocence, Chantel dies when she accidentally drinks the
coffee she poisoned for Redvers. Anna discovers that Chantel had plotted Redvers' death because she had learned of the switch of babies that
put Redvers, the true Crediton heir, in his lifetime role of bastard.
Anna returns to England and, after several years, is re-united with the
now-widowed Redvers.
The Shadow Of The Lynx (1971)
When Nora Tamasin is orphaned, she discovers that Charles Herrick
has been named her guardian.
He sends his son Stirling to escort Nora
to Australia, and Nora and Stirling visit Whiteladies, an old, regal
mansion, before embarking for Australia. Once in Australia, Nora discovers why Charles Herrick is called the Lynx, for his steely blue eyes
miss little. She falls under his spell, as does everyone, marries him
despite her love for Stirling, and is widowed not long after her marriage.
Knowing the Lynx wanted to avenge himself on the people at White-
ladies who accused him unjustly and caused his deportation to Australia,
Nora and Stirling take the millions Lynx made in Australia and go to
England to buy Whiteladies.
Despite the fact that he loves Nora, Stir-
ling marries Minta, the heir to Whiteladies, when he discovers that
Whiteladies cannot be sold by the Cardew family.
Not long after Minta
no
becomes pregnant, a series of "accidents" occur to endanger her life.
She is saved each time, but, knowing of Stirling's love for Nora, she
begins to believe that her husband wants to kill her. After the last
poisoning attempt, Nora takes Minta home with her, where they both discover that Minta's stepmother, Lucie, is the one who killed Minta's mother and made the same attempts on Minta's life because she wanted Whiteladies for herself. Lucie throws herself off a balcony at Whiteladies,
Minta bears Stirling a son, and Nora returns to Australia convinced that
Stirling and Minta will have a fine marriage. Minta's neighbor, Franklyn Wakefield, returns to Australia with Nora in the hope of persuading
her to marry him.
On The Night Of The Seventh Moon (1972)
While a student at the Damenstift in Germany, Helena Trant is lost
in the woods and rescued by a charming man whom she knows only as Siegfried.
She spends the night in his hunting Schloss under the housekeep-
er's watchful eye and returns to school the next day. On the night of
the seventh moon the people celebrate the coming of Loki, the god of
mischief, and Helena is kidnapped by the same man but is again returned
home safely.
She then discovers that he is the Count Lokenburg of the
ruling family and that his name is Maximilian. She marries him, has a
honeymoon, and then is mysteriously drugged. When she wakes, she is
told that her marriage is a dream and that the child she is to have is
the result of rape. After she is told that her child died at birth,
she takes a job as governess to the children of Maximilian's cousin, the
Count.
She attracts the attention of the Count, discovers that Maximilian
Ill
has married again, and begins to think that someone is trying to murder
Fritzi, one of the Count's children.
Frau Graben, the family nursemaid,
helps Helena uncover the mystery surrounding her marriage, and Helena
finds out that Fritzi is her child.
She realizes the the Count, Maxi-
milian's cousin, is responsible for her son's close brushes with death.
She and Maximilian arrive at the Island of Graves in time to save Fritzi's
life, Max's evil cousin is killed, and, upon the retirement of Maximilian's second wife to a convent, Helena and Maximilian are together again.
The Curse Of The Kings (1973)
Judith Osmond, the ward of the vicar, is educated at Keverall Court
with Sir Ralph's daughter Theodosia and nephew Hadrian.
Her great inter-
est in archaeology endears her to Sir Ralph and causes her involvement
with the archaeologically eminent Travers family--Sir Edward, Tybalt-the brilliant son, and Sabina--the frivolous daughter.
After the death
of the vicar, Judith goes as companion to Lady Bodrean, Sir Ralph's
wife.
While she is enduring the miserable life of a companion, she sees
Tybalt again and realizes anew that she loves him.
After Sabina's mar-
riage to the curate and Theodosia's marriage to archaeologist-professor
Evan Galium, Sir Edward dies in Egypt, supposedly as a result of having
disturbed the sleep of the pharoahs.
Sir Ralph also dies, leaving a
large sum of money for archaeological advances, incomes for his wife and
nephew, and one-half of his fortune to each of his daughters--legitimate
Theodosia and illegitimate Judith.
After Judith's sudden marriage to
Tybalt, they all set off for Egypt to finish Sir Edward's work.
In
Egypt Theodosia becomes pregnant and is frightened by a soothsayer's
112
dire warnings of death, Judith is obsessed with the idea that Tybalt and
the beautiful housekeeper Tabitha Grey are in love, and a young Egyptian
girl, Yasmin, is murdered.
After Theodosia falls to her death from a
dangerous, wooden bridge, the whole expedition seems cursed, but they
decide to stay.
Judith is lured to entrapment in an obscure tomb because
she has discovered that the Pasha who has lent them his house is trying
to kill or scare them in order to cover his own theft and sale of ancient
tomb artifacts. Judith is rescued by Tybalt and is reassured of his love
when Tabitha marries another archaeologist.
The House Of A Thousand Lanterns(1974)
Jane Lindsay, daughter of a housekeeper and a cast-off nobleman,
rises to a position of class through marriage and of authority through
study of Chinese artworks. She first marries Joliffe Milner, nephew of
the Sylvester Milner who taught her the family business, buying Chinese
artworks. When she finds out that Joliffe already had a wife when he
married her, she returns to Roland's Croft to find her mother dying.
Later discovering herself to be pregnant, she marries Sylvester, who has
been paralyzed in an accident.
She then goes to China with him and her
son, and tries to discover the mystery of the House of a Thousand Lanterns.
In the process, she inherits the house upon Sylvester's mysteri-
ous death, receives proposals from Sylvester's manager, Tobias Grantham
and Sylvester's nephew Adam, re-marries the now-free Joliffe, suspects
Joliffe of trying to murder her in order to gain the business and marry
the beautiful Chan Cho Lan, and is imprisoned in a subterranean tomb by
Chan Cho Lan as expiation for her sin of owning a Chinese mandarin's
113
house.
Jane leaves China with her husband and son, restoring the house
to Chan Cho Lan's son in order to placate the displeased Chinese ancestors.
The Lord Of The Far Island (1975)
For years Ellen Kellaway thinks of herself as a Poor Relation.
Her
Aunt Agatha reminds her often that she lives on the bounty of her aunt
and uncle, and Ellen realizes that she will go to some family as governess as soon as her cousin Esmeralda makes a match in her debut.
Every-
one thinks that Esmeralda will marry Philip Carrington, the younger son
of family friends, but Philip proposes to Ellen instead.
While they
plan the marriage, Ellen discovers that, although she is fond of Philip,
she is marrying him only to escape the drudgery of a life as a governess.
She believes that Philip loves her, however, and she is amazed one day
to find out that Philip has killed himself.
Again the prospect of gov-
ernessing looms before her, but Ellen is saved by an invitation from
Jago Kellaway, her guardian, to visit Far Island, the home that her
mother took Ellen from when she was three.
On the Island, Ellen dis-
covers that Jago is an exciting, disturbing, self-confident man, realizes that Jago's sister Jenifry dislikes her for her friendship with
Michael Hydrock, Jenifry's daughter Gwennol's suitor, and finds out'that
she has a half-sister, Silva. When Ellen nearly drowns because someone
drills a hole in her boat, she begins to suspect that someone around
her is trying to kill her.
Jago proposes, and Ellen knows that she
loves him, but she suspects him of murdering Philip and of trying to
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murder her.
She refuses his proposal and tries to unravel the mystery
surrounding her sister Silva's disappearance.
In doing so, she talks
with her father's former valet, who discloses the news that she is her
father's heir, that Silva, presumed to be dead, was the second heir, and
that Jago will inherit the Island upon Ellen's death.
Frightened of Jago.
Ellen tries to escape the Island in order to think, is drugged and nearly
drowned by Rollo Carrington, Philip's brother, and is rescued in time by
Jago.
When she recovers, Ellen learns that Silva, whom Rollo married for
the inheritance he thought was hers instead of Ellen's, is still alive.
Rollo's attempts at Ellen's life were necessary because Philip had died
before marrying Ellen and securing her fortune for the failing Carrington
financial empire.
on the Island.
Ellen marries Jago and brings Silva to live with them
SYNOPSES OF NOVELS BY DOROTHY EDEN
Lady Of Mallow (1960)
Sarah Mildmay, secretly engaged to Ambrose, who has long waited to
inherit Mallow Hall, agrees to help him prove that the newly-arrived
Blane Mallow is not really the heir to the Mallow fortune. When Blane
reappears from the tropics with Amalie, his wife, and Titus, his son, to
claim his inheritance, Sarah takes a position with the new Mallows as
governess.
While Ambrose goes to the tropics for evidence to expose
Blane as an imposter, Sarah spies on the Mallow family for information
that will discredit Blane.
Blane becomes as suspicious of Sarah and her
motives as she is of him, but Sarah is indispensible to the terrified
Titus and thus must stay.
Sarah is caught by Blane several times as she
spies around the house, listens at doorways, secretly meets messengers
from Ambrose, and follows Blane to London to find out whom he is meeting.
Mysterious things begin to happen to Titus, until Blane orders Sarah to
keep the child away from his own mother.
After the mysterious disappear-
ance of Samantha, who Amalie tells Sarah was actually Blane's wife,
Amalie's behavior becomes wilder and more erratic.
is found, Amalie's mind snaps.
When Samantha's body
She confesses the murder of Samantha,
kidnaps Titus, and throws herself off the bell tower.
After Amalie's
death, Blane confesses to Sarah that the real Blane had been originally
married to Samantha instead of to Amalie, and that he was posing as his
dead friend Blane Mallow only to secure the Mallow inheritance for Titus,
Blane's illegitimate son.
Sarah breaks her engagement with Ambrose and
leaves England with the imposter.
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Darkwater (1963)
When Fanny is sent by her Uncle Edgar to meet her young cousins
Nolly and Marcus, she prepares to leave Darkwater for good.
She is un-
able to leave the two orphans, however, so she returns to Darkwater with
them, their Chinese amah, and memories of her meeting with Adam Marsh,
the handsome young man who met her at the station with the children.
The children cling to Fanny in a strange world, and they become even
more dependent upon her when their amah is killed and found in the lake.
Sarah notes that her Aunt Arabella has some mysterious accidents, that
her uncle's lawyer, Hamish Barlow, disappears, and that her mentally unstable cousin George, who is wery possessive of Fanny, is implicated in
each case.
Fanny begins to see more of Adam Marsh, but she thinks that
he is courting her cousin Amelia.
Fanny begins to fear that George, in
his unbalanced state, will murder someone else. When she tries to convince her Uncle Edgar that George is dangerous, he agrees with her, but
their theory is disputed by Adam Marsh.
Marsh has proof that Uncle
Edgar has cheated Fanny out of her inheritance, killed the amah, taken
the inheritance of the children, killed the lawyer Barlow who found out
too much, and planned the death of Aunt Arabella, who also knows about
the inheritances.
Uncle Edgar is taken to prison, and Fanny marries
Adam Marsh, the uncle of the children, whom Fanny and Adam later adopt.
Ravenscroft (1964)
When orphaned Bella and Lally go to London to find their relatives,
they meet a stranger on the coach and go home to stay with her.
They
become suspicious of the old woman. Aunt Aggie, and her son Noah when
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they hear strange noises at night. The baby supposedly being nursed by
Aunt Aggie's never-seen niece dies, and Lally catches Noah burying it
in the snow one night. Aunt Aggie drugs Lally in preparation for selling both girls into white slavery, and Bella summons help from the street
by calling from an upstairs window.
The two men who come to their res-
cue are an elderly doctor and Guy Raven, a rich Member of Parliament.
Guy takes the girls to his home and then offers to marry one of them
to avoid further scandal, even though he still loves his first, now-dead
wife.
Since Lally has become unbalanced and terrified as a result of
their experience with Aunt Aggie, Bella offers to marry Guy. Once married to Guy, Bella discovers that they are still in danger from Aunt
Aggie and Noah, who have sworn vengeance from prison.
Lally is terri-
fied by an Aunt-Aggie look-alike in the village, and Bella becomes suspicious of Miss Thompson, who looks after Lally, thinking that she and
Guy are having an affair.
After Bella's baby is born, a maid servant
disappears and Guy and Bella begin to watch for Noah and Aunt Aggie.
Just when it seems that Bella cannot mistrust her husband Guy more.
Miss Thompson is killed, and Guy is arrested for the murder.
Bella goes
to London with Lally and the baby and is drugged by her housekeeper, a
friend of Aunt Aggie's. Bella discovers that Miss Thompson was really
Noah's wife, and that Noah has several reasons to hate them now:
their
discovery of the white-slavery business, their testimony that sent him
to prison, and the death of Noah's wife.
Lally, but Lally escapes and brings help.
Noah tries to kill Bella and
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Winterwood (1967)
After Lavinia Hurstmonceaux's brother kills a man defending her
honor and goes to jail for the crime, Lavinia takes the name Hurst and
goes to Italy as companion to her cousin Marion.
Cousin Marion discov-
ers that Lavinia "borrowed" her gown and jewels to wear to the opera,
and Lavinia is forced to find another position.
She takes a position
as companion with the Meryons, to help with their crippled daughter.
Flora.
After the Meryons attend the funeral of their aunt's servant,
they, Lavinia, and the Meryon's Aunt Tameson go to England to Winterwood.
At Winterwood a nephew, Jonathan Peate, shows up, and Aunt Tameson later
dies.
When it is discovered that Flora is Aunt Tameson's heir, she
suddenly begins having a series of accidents. When a series of letters,
with current postmarks, written in Aunt Tameson's hand, arrive from
Italy, the people at Winterwood are in a state of terror.
ter. Aunt Tameson announces her arrival.
In one let-
When the doorbell rings.
Flora's mother rushes up to her room and kills herself.
It is revealed
that Charlotte, Flora's mother, and Jonathan Peate had convinced Peate's
mother to impersonate Aunt Tameson so that she could re-make Aunt Tameson's will in their favor.
The caller is actually Eliza, the former
pseudo-Aunt Tameson's maid, and Charlotte never lives to find out that
her attempts on her daughter's life have been revealed.
Lavinia and
Daniel Meryon are later married.
The Millionaire's Daughter (1974)
Harry Spencer has two great dreams:
to become a millionaire and to
have a daughter who marries an English aristocrat.
He marries Louisa,
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from a decadent yet aristocratic American family, and they have a daughter, Christabel, and a son, Henry.
After Henry dies of exposure in a
kidnapping attempt, Harry hires a bodyguard for Chrissie. When Chrissie
comes of age, Harry and Louisa take her to Paris where she meets Percival, Lord Monkshood.
The scandal about Lord Monkshood's divorce does
not deter Chrissie, and she marries him.
On their honeymoon he asks
her to cut her hair short, but other than dutifully desiring to sire
an heir, he leaves her alone. Back at Monkshood, Chrissie meets Matthew
Smith, a painter assigned the restoration of family portraits, and she
receives a young blackamoor as a gift from her husband.
Soon after her
baby is born, Chrissie discovers that her husband keeps young boys like
the Black boy around in order to satisfy his homosexual urges.
Chrissie
leaves without looking at her newborn son, the Monkshood heir, and lives
with Matthew Smith until they are free to marry.
SYNOPSES OF NOVELS BY JANE AIKEN HODGE
Marry In Haste (1961)
Faced with disgrace and financial disaster, Camilla's father prepares to sell her in marriage to his most threatening blackmailer.
In
the face of such a situation, Camilla chooses to accept the unusual
proposal of Lavenham, Lord Leominster, who wants to marry because his
grandmother has threatened to disinherit him if he does not. Fully
aware of Lavenham's innate distrust and dislike of women, Camilla enters
into the marriage of convenience and finds herself not initially sorry
that Lavenham's hoydenish sister Chloe, with no place to go, is forced
to accompany them when Leominster is sent to Portugal. In the Portuguese setting of intrigue and suspicion generated by Napoleon's southern advances, Camilla finds herself forced to cover up for Lavenham on
his spying-mission absences, tending his wounds in secret when he comes
home.
She must also contend with his dislike of women, conceal the
truth about the one night they had together that he has forgotten, and
try her best to prevent Chloe from continuing her secret affair with
Charles Boutet, a self-acknowledged French spy who threatens to destroy
them all. As their position in Portugal becomes more and more dangerous
with the advance of French forces and the collapse of the Portuguese
government, Camilla and Chloe are separated from Lavenham, captured by
Boutet, rescued by Portuguese partisans, and finally smuggled out of
Portugal by Mr. Smith, an English spy. Once home in England, the girls
are hailed as heroines, but each is still in suspense about the danger
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121
surrounding the Duke of Weston (Smith) and Lavenham.
Finally, Weston
returns and persuades Chloe to marry him, and Lavenham, returning to
find that his son has inherited the Lavenham foot and that his wife has
begun to love him, persuades Camilla to abandon their "convenient" marriage for a more satisfying union.
The Master Of Penrose (1967)
(Here Comes A Candle)
Kate Croston, narrowly rescued from the British by Jonathan Penrose,
goes back to Boston with him to nurse his autistic child.
It is soon
evident to Kate that Jonathan, who everyone says loves his wife Arabella
to distraction, is primarily concerned with Sarah.
Sarah is terrified
of her mother, but she responds to Kate's loving care and begins to
have fewer and fewer screaming spells.
Kate, Sarah, and Jonathan enjoy
the quiet of Penrose, the family estate, while Arabella lives her ov/n
life in Boston.
On a jaunt to the beach Kate is doubly frightened when
a carriage very narrowly runs Sarah down.
Kate realizes that Arabella
is one of the people in the carriage and that the man with her is
Charles Manningham, a British soldier whose rape of Kate drove her to
the flight that ended in America.
Because Manningham is so obviously
after Arabella's money, Kate tries to warn Jonathan about Manningham's
former life but cannot bring herself to tell Jonathan the full story of
her past with Manningham.
Because he distrusts women, Jonathan believes
Manningham's and Arabella's lies about Kate's wantonness, and he declares
not only his love to Kate but also his intention of setting her up carte
blanche.
Kate is incensed, but their resolution of the misunderstanding
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is delayed by Manningham's and Arabella's kidnapping of Sarah.
Manning-
ham finds Kate and takes her to Sarah because she alone can handle the
child, and Kate, Sarah, Arabella, and Manningham set off for Washington,
where Jonathan is supposed to give them ransom money.
Kate is knocked out, tied up, and left behind.
Taken by surprise,
Escaping her bonds, she
must contend with panic in Washington when the British forces, freed of
fighting Napoleon, come to take the capitol.
Kate finds Jonathan, the
two of them find Sarah and narrowly rescue her from a burning building,
and Arabella dies in the fire, freeing Kate and Jonathan to marry.
The Winding Stair (1968)
Juana Brett, half English and half Portuguese, meets Gair Varlow
and receives a summons to her grandmother's castle in Portugal at the
same time.
Arriving in Portugal, Juana discovers that Gair is an English
spy and that she is to take her grandmother's place as co-conspirator
with Gair and as handmaiden of the Sons of the Star. As handmaiden of
the Star she finds herself compelled in great secrecy to go down a hidden staircase to open and close the meeting place of the Sons, a secret
and wery dangerous society of anonymous members who plan the overthrow
of the Portuguese government when Napoleon's forces march into Portugal.
Frightening events make Juana more sure than ever that she cannot trust
anyone except Gair, for members of the Star who fail their duties are
peremptorily killed, plans are made for the deaths of the royal family,
and her cousin, Vasco Mascarenhas, who has been courting Juana assiduously, reveals himself as a fortune-hunter rather than a lover.
Juana
finds it increasingly difficult to meet with Gair, her pseudo-suitor.
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In order to report her spying on the secret meetings. After her grandmother is beaten and is on her deathbed, Juana reveals her plan to give
her inheritance, the castle, to her Portuguese relatives, and she refuses
Vasco's proposal.
Juana is kidnapped by the Sons of the Star and held
prisoner by Vasco, the real leader of the Sons. While a prisoner she
learns that Vasco plans to marry her to strengthen his claim to the
throne of Portugal, as they two are descendants of Sebastian and Juana,
former royalty of Portugal.
Realizing her cousin's madness, Juana, in
a last function as the handmaiden of the Sons, reveals his mad plans for
murder and tyranny to his followers at their last meeting.
She is con-
demned as a traitor, as is Gair, who tries to save her, and the two are
left to die below the castle. Juana's cousin Roberto saves them, they
warn the King of his danger, the members of the Sons are arrested, and
Vasco is killed by Gair as he attempts to kill the King. Juana and
Gair leave Portugal to marry and live in England.
Greek Wedding (1970)
Phyllida Vannick finds herself in 1826 in the middle of the Greek
war of independence.
She and her aunt, Cassandra Knight, escape the
Sultan's harem and are rescued from the water by Brett Renshaw.
Because
Renshaw has just been disinherited and thrown over by Helena, his fiancee, he heartily dislikes women, but agrees to take Phyllida and Aunt
Cass to Greece on his steam-driven yacht. When the boat is captured and
impounded for war by Greeks, the three are rescued by Alexandros f'avromikhalis, who, fortunately, knows Phyllida's brother Peter, a Philhellene,
whom she has come to find.
As Phyllida, Brett, and Aunt Cass sail around
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Greece under Alex's protection, they try to get word of Peter, but instead meet up with Jenny, Brett's sister, who has come to Greece to find
him.
When they discover that the Helena must be repaired before she
will run again, they take a house on shore, waiting for news of repair
parts and of Peter.
Brett begins a book on the war, Phyllida realizes
she doesn't love Alex and breaks off their secret engagement, and they
find Peter and nurse him back to health.
After Phyllida refuses Alex
and Jenny refuses Peter, the two men plot another way to get Phyllida's
fortune for themselves ^nd^ for the war effort.
Alex tricks Brett and
Phyllida into coming to his castle stronghold supposedly to nurse Peter
again, and they are captured with freedom only in terms of Phyllida's
marriage to Alex and Brett's consent to Jenny's marriage to Peter.
Oenone, Alex's lifelong betrothed, helps Brett and Phyllida escape after
Phyllida signs over half her fortune for Oenone's dowry.
Having escaped
from Alex, Brett and Phyllida declare their love for each other and are
married by a village priest, but they still must get past the Turkish
forces to safety.
After witnessing a sea battle as Turkish prisoners,
they make contact with the British, are reunited with Jenny and Aunt
Cass, and turn Peter over to Alex with the promise of a pension as long
as he stays in Greece.
Brett, who has now inherited his title, and
Phyllida prepare for a formal wedding on the morrow.
Savannah Purchase (1970)
As children, look-alike cousins Juliet and Josephine had often
exchanged identities to fool the convent sisters.
meet again after Waterloo in Savannah.
As young women they
Juliet, hiding from her father's
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creditors at an old plantation near Savannah, meets Josephine again and.
with no other choice than starvation, she sets out on another game of
deception.
Josephine, nursing an old grief, will not be happy until
she throws herself into a rescue mission for Napolson on St. Helena.
Juliet agrees to take Josephine's place as Mrs. Hyde Purchis while
Josephine finds a rescue ship and sailors.
As Mrs. Purchis, Juliet is
faced with remembering all Josephine has told her about her husband
Hyde and Savannah society, but she cannot deal with the angry advances
of Fonseca, Josephine's lover.
Fonseca's anger at Juliet's repulsion
of him precipitates ugly words, leading ultimately to a duel in which
Fonseca is killed and Hyde wounded.
Through Hyde's slow recovery Juliet
is worried with fears of Josephine's sudden return, the dangers of Hyde's
being punished for duelling, and her own realization that she loves
Hyde and has sparked in him a desire for the resumption of a true marriage.
With Josephine's return and the subsequent switch comes a wors-
ening in Hyde's condition for lack of nursing; so Juliet comes to Winchelsea again to care for Hyde.
She realizes that the Black servants,
freed by Hyde, are devoted to him, but she feels their hatred for Josephine and fears they may have learned the secret and prefer Juliet for
a mistress.
The fear of Hyde's duelling hangs over them, but the heavy
mood is interrupted by a visit from the President.
Back in Savannah,
Juliet meets another man from Josephine's past, but is at a loss as to
why Monsieur Tarot has grounds to blackmail her. When the blackmailing
is exposed when Tarot sells a necklace she gives him, Juliet discovers
that Hyde had discovered the charade early in the game, had supposed
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disembark on shore in Italy, they find themselves caught up in the political uproar.
Trenche is captured and imprisoned, and Helen realizes that
her husband is more and more reliant upon his man Price for his decisions,
Once Lord Merritt has placated his uncle with marriage, he inherits the
fortune he wants, but Helen finds herself continually in danger as she
becomes less necessary to her husband.
He and Price contrive to leave
her alone at their villa when a volcano erupts, threatening her life,
but Charles Scroope saves her.
After Ricky's birth she fears that they
both will suffer an "accident" and so leaves a letter with friends, to
be opened upon her death, that stops Price and Lord Merritt for a while.
She is saved a second time by Scroope, who arranges for troops to stay
with her when Price had again arranged for her to be alone to be killed.
Charles Scroope is injured in battle and Helen nurses him back to health
in time for him to help her and Ricky escape before Napoleon's troops.
In the escape Scroope kills Price, a French spy, and on board ship Lord
Merritt is killed by Trenche, now escaped.
Trenche is killed by Scroope
when he tries to kill Helen and Ricky, and Helen and Scroope confess
their love for each other.
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she saw Virginia slip and fall into the pool. Morgan knew Virginia
could not swim, but she could not reach her in time and fled, fearing
she would be accused of murder.
Lora and Wade return home with the
ghosts that lay between them exorcised, and they join in a new, closer
relationship.
The Trembling Hills (1956)
Sara Jerome cannot understand her mother's reluctance to move to
San Francisco, but, faced with unemployment, Mary Jerome agrees to the
move.
In San Francisco Sara and her mother live with the Renwick family,
for whom Mrs. Jerome is the housekeeper, and Sara renews her romantic
plans to marry her childhood idol, Ritchie Temple.
She soon discovers
that Ritchie is engaged to Judith Renwick, but she continues to dream
of being Ritchie's wife.
At the same time Sara is caught up in the
mystery of discovering who her family is. She discovers that her real
name is Bishop and that Hester Varady, the great aunt of Nicholas Renwick's fiancee Geneva, is her aunt, too. When the great earthquake and
fire of 1906 hit San Francisco, the Renwicks, along with Sara and her
mother, are burned out and forced to move in with Hester Varady.
Sara
discovers that the Varady house is the source of the disturbing nightmares she has had since she was a child, that Hester Varady is terrified
of cats and believes a white cat haunts her house, and that there was
once a mysterious Callie Bishop living in the house.
Sara befriends the
friendless Renwick child, Allison, realizes that she really regards
Ritchie as a brother, and comes to understand that, although she loves
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Nicholas Renwick and he loves her. Nicholas is connitted to marrying the
gentle Geneva.
Sara is publically acknowledged as Hester Varady's heir
and finally remembers the source of her continuing nightmare as having
been her witness of her father's being pushed from a balcony to his
death.
When Sara confronts Hester Varady with her theory that it was
Hester who killed Leland Bishop, Hester tells her that it was Callie
Bishop, who was Leland's mad, first wife.
Sara discovers that Hester
had kept Callie and Callie's white cat locked in a room at the top of
the house to save the family from the disgrace of insanity.
After
Callie's and Leland's deaths Mary Jerome Bishop had left with Sara and
Hester had brought Callie's and Leland's daughter Geneva from a convent
as her heir.
When Geneva learns that her mother was mad, she kills
herself, thereby leaving Nicholas and Sara free to marry.
Skye Cameron (1957)
When her father is paralyzed in a fall and unable to work, Skye
Cameron and her parents leave New England to live with Robert Tourneau,
her mother's brother, in New Orleans.
Skye, tall and strong, with bright
red hair, feels out of place in Creole surroundings and finds it hard to
accustom herself to the confining life of a Creole lady.
She is courted
by Courtney Law, whom her uncle has chosen for her to marry, but the romance is hindered both by her reluctance to have her mate chosen for her
and also by Courtney's infatuation for Skye's mother.
On one of her
escapes from her chaperones, Skye explores a rowdy street, is accosted
by a drunk, and is rescued by Justin Law, Courtney's outcast brother.
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She learns later that Justin has recently returned from the West, where
he was briefly jailed for murder.
Her family is scandalized by her
association with Justin and further shocked when she meets a young boy,
Lanny, at the park and brings him home to play with the Tourneau daughter.
Skye is thrown together with Justin again when the Tourneaus, out
of deference to Courtney and his mother, attend a party at the Law home.
Alarmed at Courtney's obvious attention to Skye's mother at the party.
Uncle Robert forces an engagement between Skye and Courtney by threatening to put Skye's father and mother out of his house.
Further evidence
of her uncle's treachery is revealed when Skye discovers that he is
guilty of having spread rumors to force his partner, Justin's father,
to flee New Orleans during the Civil War, and of having taken the Law
fortune to replace his own lost fortune.
Skye further learns that
Robert has brought Lanny, who is really Justin's son, and Justin's wife
Isabelle to his house in order to blackmail Justin into leaving town.
Justin and Uncle Robert duel, and Robert suffers a heart attack as a
result.
When Isabelle flees the house in fear of Justin, Skye learns
that she was the one responsible for the murder that Justin was convicted of and that Isabelle thinks Justin wants to kill her.
She drowns
trying to escape Justin, Skye breaks her engagement with Courtney, Uncle
Robert recovers but is too weak to sustain his financial and psychological hold on the Law family, and Skye and Justin plan to marry.
Thunder Heights (1960)
When Camilla King comes to Thunder Heights at the call of her dying
grandfather, she finds that her presence is resented with an almost
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palatable hatred.
Her grandfather dies before he can tell her why he
sent for her, and Camilla learns that she has been left everything in
his will.
She tries to assure her Aunt Hortense, her Aunt Letty, and
her Cousin Booth that she will share the Judd fortune with them, but
Hortense and Booth are cynical.
Ross Granger, her grandfather's finan-
cial agent, is also disappointed that the Judd fortune has been left to
Camilla, because it ruins his chances of advancing his architectural
career.
Camilla tries to make friends with her family, but she learns
that Booth has dangerous changes of mood, Hortense hates her and plans
to break the will, and that Letty, seemingly harmless, knows secrets
she will not share.
When Camilla, sent to the basement on a fabricated
errand, nearly falls to her death from a broken step, she discovers that
the step had been tampered with.
This event, coupled with the incident
in which the cat drank Camilla's tea and was poisoned, causes Camilla's
suspicions to heighten.
When Camilla tells Ross about her fears for her
life, he tries to get her to leave with him.
she wants to renew family relationships.
Camilla refuses because
Camilla also wants to discover
the truth about her mother Althea's death, and she feels that Letty and
Booth have the answers.
Camilla narrowly escapes Booth when he tries to
kill her, and she discovers that Booth arranged the "accident" that
killed her mother.
Booth returns to Thunder Heights to kill Camilla,
but he is caught in the house when Letty sets it afire.
He is fatally
burned while rescuing Letty from the fire, Thunder Heights is burned to
the ground, and Camilla leaves with Ross Granger.
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Window On The Square (1962)
When Megan Kincaid is summoned to the Reid mansion to make dresses,
she is surprised to be asked to remain as nursemaid for the troubled
little boy who lives there, but she agrees.
Still in the guise of dress-
maker, Megan moves in and begins to make friends with Jeremy, a very disturbed child who has recently been accused of murdering his father.
In
her close contact with the Reid household, Megan discovers several things:
that Leslie Reid married Brandon, her late husband Dwight's older brother,
less than a year after Dwight's death; that Brandon and Leslie are far
from friendly with each other; and that Jeremy is constantly searching
for the second gun that disappeared the night of his father's death, a
discovery that will prove his innocence.
Megan finds that Jeremy's
sense of guilt over his father's death is mixed with a fear of his own
Innate evil tendencies.
Jeremy is constantly abused and accused of
wickedness by Miss Garth, the governess, and his mother ignores him.
Megan wins Jeremy's confidence and makes progress in restoring his childhood to him.
In the process, she realizes that she has fallen in love
with Brandon Reid and has also alienated Garth.
Megan soon realizes
that Jeremy is in danger when more and more evidence is manufactured to
point to his increasing danger as an unstable child.
A climax comes
when Brandon asks Leslie for a divorce so that he can marry Megan and
Leslie tries to keep him bound to her with hints of her necessary secrecy.
Megan has momentary doubts about Brandon when Leslie accuses
him of murdering his brother and marrying her to insure her silence, but
Brandon explains that the silence he bought with marriage was Leslie's
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promise not to reveal Dwight's political disgrace and indiscretions to
the men's ailing father, who is now dead.
Realizing that she cannot
keep Brandon and that he and Megan are close to finding out that it was
she, not her son Jeremy, who killed Dwight, Leslie kills herself.
The
missing pistol is found, Dwight's death is explained and Jeremy is exonerated, Brandon is exonerated of Leslie's death, and Brandon and
Megan marry.
Sea Jade (1964)
When orphaned Miranda Heath comes to the Bascomb mansion in Scots
Harbor, she is unprepared for the hate that greets her.
Having come
at the dying Captain Bascomb's request, Miranda is told at once by the
Captain that he expects her to marry Brock McLean.
Miranda herself is
against the marriage, but she does not understand the violent hatred
both Brock and his mother feel for her.
With Brock, his mother. Brock's
child Laurel, and Lien, the Captain's Chinese wife, all against her,
Miranda finds that the only friendly person at the house is Ian Pryott,
an impoverished young writer promised a legacy for writing the history
of the Bascomb company and the three captain-partners--Obadiah Bascomb,
Andrew McLean, Brock's father, and Nathaniel Heath, Miranda's father.
When Miranda is talking one evening with Captain Bascomb, Tom Henderson,
formerly a sailor on the Sea Jade, enters the room and frightens Bascomb
so much that he has a heart attack.
Henderson disappears, the family
comes, and Brock forces Miranda to promise the dying man she will marry
Brock.
After he forces their promises, the Captain fools them by calling
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a preacher, and they are married before the Captain dies. Miranda is
suddenly faced with a hostile husband, a malicious mother-in-law, an
unfriendly stepdaughter, and veiled hints that her father Nathaniel
killed Brock's father on the last voyage of the Sea Jade. Trying to
discover the secrets in the mystery surrounding the Sea Jade's last
voyage, Miranda searches the Captain's cabin aboard the Pride for explanatory charts and logs or letters. On board the Pride one day she
hears the murder of Tom Henderson.
Not knowing for sure who the mur-
derer is, she suspects everyone, including Brock. Miranda tries to find
out about her parents, who came from Scots Harbor, searches for clues in
the murder of Captain McLean, and tries to befriend the unloved child.
Laurel.
She makes slow progress with Laurel and practically no progress
with Brock, but she develops a friendship with Ian, even posing for the
figurehead he is carving that is a replica of the first Sea Jade's figurehead.
Miranda fears for her life when she finds the figurehead
hacked to pieces, and she discovers that the damage was done by Lien,
who is jealous of lan's feelings about Miranda.
Miranda finds a letter
in which Captain Bascomb admits that it was he, not Heath, who shot
McLean.
Miranda is still afraid of the person who killed Tom Henderson,
and newly-raised questions about her birth are added to her worries.
Miranda and Mrs. McLean go to search the Pride for a letter that proves
that Miranda is Bascomb's illegitimate daughter, but they are trapped
by Ian, who sets the ship afire, before they find it. Brock rescues the
two women, Ian plunges into the sea and drowns, and it is revealed that
Ian planned the Captain's death in the hopes of marrying Lien, whom he
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expected to inherit the fortune. When Miranda, already married, inherited instead, Ian killed Henderson and nearly killed Miranda and Mrs.
McLean, who discovered the truth.
After lan's death Miranda and Brock
realize their love for each other and make a home for Laurel.