SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

129
Both Manfred and the Countess preside over a castle filled with horrible secrets.
Evans says that in Walpole’s drama, the castle is there to help set the melancholy mood,
not as a place of horrors (268), in contrast to Otranto’s castle which is a place of
entrapment, terror, and incestuous threat. When considering the castle, the genres reveal
different aspects of the story. The novel relies on fast-paced action, a complex plot, and
physical confinement, as well as the threat of physical sexuality, to create a feeling of
shock in the reader. The format of the play places the castle in the background. Most of
the action takes place near the castle walls rather than inside, and what did happen
inside—the incest—happened in the past. The problem now is the guilt that consumes
the Countess, and her psychological state is privileged in the play in large part by the
inclusion of the castle.
The family units in Walpole’s two works are housed in castles. The castle plays
such a prominent role in The Mysterious Mother and The Castle of Otranto, and in many
other Gothic works, that it almost becomes a character itself. It is a physical reminder of
the past; in Walpole’s two stories it is the past that intrudes on present-day action. In the
novel the focus is on the family and the dangers and problems that eventually cause the
undoing of the patriarch. The plot relies on fast-paced action, a complex plot, and
physical confinement along with the threat of physical sexuality, to shock the reader. But
in The Mysterious Mother, the genre of drama allows for the privileging of the
psychological state of the characters, and thus focuses on the individual. The castle
looms in the background as the site of an earlier horrific event. Both Manfred and the
Countess preside over castles filled with horrible secrets. Evans says that in the drama,