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

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Shiver’d to splinters. ‘Ere I could repeat
An Ave-Mary, down with hideous crash
The cross came tumbling—then I fled— (II.2. 268-276).
This provokes an extreme reaction from Martin, who declares that this must be “unholy
ground” (II.2. 277). He turns on Florian, blaming him for bringing some curse upon
the castle:
The seasons change their course; th’ afflicted hind
Bewails is blasted harvest. Meteors ride
The troubled sky, and chafe the darken’d sun.
. . . Sixteen fatal year
Has Narbonne’s province groan’d beneath the hand
Of desolation—for what crimes we know not!
To edge suspended vengeance art thou come? (II.2.282-291)
Martin’s instinct, when confronted with the unknown, is to retreat into irrational,
backward fears. But the storms certainly serve to symbolize the Countess’s growing
mental distress. Bad weather outside the castle wall threatens to weaken the defenses just
like the storms of emotion surrounding Edmund’s return begin to chip away at the
Countess’s carefully barricaded mental fortitude. As Walpole highlights the
psychological state of the Countess, he similarly reveals much about Martin’s interior
feelings as well. Martin’s guilt and innate superstition allow him to read portents into
what is simply an unseasonable, though violent, storm. However, in order to feel guilt, it
is necessary to have a moral compass; Martin’s possession of one is contrasted with
Benedict, who has no conscience.
Benedict was planned by Walpole to “divide the indignation of the audience, and
to intercept some of it from the Countess” (Walpole’s epilogue). He has been called a