PHALLOCENTRISM AND GOTHIC SPACE IN
THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO
by
CYNDY KAY HENDERSHOT, 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
Accepted
August, 1991
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to the members of
my thesis committee, Drs. John Samson and Bruce Clarke.
Without their guidance and encouragement, this project would
not have been completed.
ii
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
ii
Chapter
I.
II.
Introduction
1
Dominant Discourse .
13
III.
Muted Discourse:
Cheron .
26
IV.
Muted Discourse:
of Udolpho . .
The Gothic Space
Muted Discourse:
Laurentini .
v.
VI.
35
Conclusion .
52
66
69
Works Cited
iii
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In her essay "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness,"
Elaine Showalter discusses the double-voiced discourse that
she believes women authors are culturally forced to write.
Showalter maintains that because women are simultaneously
part of both the dominant male tradition and the muted
female tradition, their written discourses reflect both
cultures.
In Showalter's view, "women writing are not,
then, inside and outside of the male tradition; they are
inside two traditions simultaneously,
'undercurrents,' in
Ellen Moers's metaphor, of the mainstream" (473). Showalter
suggests that a feminist criticism can develop from the
acceptance of the double-voiced discourse in which feminist
critics not only recognize the androcentric aspects of the
feminine discourse, but also actively pull from the text the
muted story that reflects the feminine tradition.
As
Showalter asserts:
How can a cultural model of women's writing help
us to read a woman's text? One implication of
this model is that women's fiction can be read
as a double-voiced discourse, containing a
"dominant" and a "muted" story, what Gilbert and
Gubar call a "palimpsest." I have described it
elsewhere as an object/field problem in which
we must keep two alternative oscillating texts
simultaneously in view. (474)
The search for the muted feminine story within female texts
relies upon the reader's application of feminist theory
1
2
which seeks to discern the marginal feminine story within
the dominant and pervading masculine values.
This study applies feminist readings of Freud and Lacan
to a female text, Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho,
in order to demonstrate how Showalter's theory of doublevoiced discourse works within this novel.
Some ideas
crucial to the study, therefore, need to be explained.
One
is Freud's theory of pre-oedipal psychological experience,
which is indeed crucial to many feminist critics'
appropriations of Freud.
In Freud's theory, during the pre-
oedipal phase, the infant is bisexual:
it possesses both
active and passive aims and its desire is directed toward
the mother.
There are, therefore, no psychological
distinctions between infants based on sexual difference.
As
Julliet Mitchell points out, "In all the passions of the
first mother-attachment the little boy and the little girl
are alike" (58).
It is not until the oedipus complex that the concept of
sexual difference manifests itself.
The oedipus complex
must be understood as an event that takes place only within
patriarchal culture and does not influence pre-oedipal
experience.
It is only after the infant understands the
cultural privilege afforded men and the cultural deficiency
afforded women that sexual difference can have any
psychological impact.
As Kaja Silverman notes, "it is only
retroactively that anatomy is confused with destiny.
That
3
confusion performs a vital ideological function, serving to
naturalize or biologize what would otherwise be open to
question" (142). Feminist readings of Freud point out that
the cultural construction of sexual difference is implicit
in Freud's writings. As Mitchell notes, Freud sees society
demanding that the psychologically bisexual infant take on
the characteristics of either femininity or masculinity:
for Freud, "man and woman are made in culture" (131).
Freudian theory, therefore, describes the pre-oedipal
period in the trope of a "prehistoric era" which exists
prior to the "culture" of the oedipus complex and which
offers an alternative to patriarchal culture.
The
experience of this alternative culture is repressed in the
individual and "can only be secondarily acquired in a
distorted form" (Mitchell 404).
Because the oedipus complex
is more traumatic for the female subject, the pre-oedipal
period, in which no sexual difference exists, becomes more
important for the female child.
The female subject must
transfer her pre-oedipal desire for the mother to a desire
for the father, and must move her erogenous zone from the
clitoris to the vagina.
As Luce Irigaray notes, "this
entails a 'move toward passivity' that is absolutely
indispensable to the advent of femininity" (This Sex 41).
These are the conditions for the "normal" development of the
female child.
The pre-oedipal period, therefore, represents
not only a time when the female subject experiences
4
something outside of the patriarchal order, but also a time
when psychologically she is encouraged to express active
sexual desire.
As Julliet Mitchell notes:
"As she pushes
aside her active desire [during the Oedipus complex], the
girl, thoroughly fed up with her lot, may well repress a
great deal of her sexuality in general" (58).
For feminist psychoanalytic critics, therefore, the
Freudian concept of the pre-oedipal phase is important for
several reasons:
(1) it implies that sexual identity and
difference are culturally, not biologically, based; (2) it
demonstrates that there exists an alternative to patriarchal
cultural experience; (3) it demonstrates that the move to
passivity and resignation of sexual desire that culture
demands of the female subject is not the last word, or even
a necessary movement.
Some feminist psychoanalytic critics find Lacanian
theory beneficial to their various projects as well.
Feminist readings of Lacan's theories of the imaginary and
symbolic orders and the phallus figure prominently in this
study.
In Lacanian theory, the imaginary may be correlated
to Freud's concept of the pre-oedipal phase:
the imaginary
is a time when the infant's experience is ruled by
identification and unity.
The imaginary precedes the
symbolic, the order which the infant enters into at the time
of the oedipus complex (Silverman 157).
The symbolic order
is the order of language; the imaginary is the order of
5
identifications.
The infant enters into patriarchal society
when he or she enters the symbolic order--an order which
transforms the infant's early desire for the mother into a
desire for what is acceptable in the symbolic order.
Because entry into the symbolic means entry into a realm of
signification, what may be termed real (phenomenal
experience, the infant's organic nature, ita relationship to
an actual mother and father) becomes alienated from the
subject's experiences (Silverman 164).
Lacan's concept of the phallus relates to the symbolic
order.
The phallus signifies all that the infant loses
through his or her entry into the symbolic, that is to say,
through his or her acquisition of language.
Culturally,
however, it becomes associated with the masculine because,
as Silverman notes, it serves as a signifier "for the
cultural privileges and positive values which define male
subjectivity within patriarchal society, but from which the
female subject remains isolated" (183).
The phallus is
related to two other Lacanian terms, the symbolic father and
the Name-of-the-Father, all three of which are signifiers
for patriarchal power.
Although the penis fails to embody
the phallus, and the actual father cannot fully embody the
symbolic father, the patriarchal power represented by these
concepts are associated with individual men, and,
furthermore, find their greatest support in institutions:
6
political, economic, legal, medical, religious, and
educational systems, and the patriarchal family (Silverman
184).
Although Lacan implies that women remain outside of the
order of symbolic signification, feminist readings of Lacan
criticize this point.
Lacan's theory, in their view,
demonstrates instead that female sexuality is as organized
and repressed as male sexuality, although it is negatively
rather than positively defined within the symbolic order
(Silverman 189). Lacanian theory, therefore, is important to
feminist psychoanalytic readings because it exposes the
power of the phallus and the symbolic father and
demonstrates the crucial role of signification within
patriarchal society.
As Silverman notes, application of
Lacanian theory "can even help us to conceive of a different
signification, a different subjectivity, and a different
symbolic order" (192).
Thus Lacanian theory, like Freudian
theory, can be beneficial to feminist projects because it
provides much knowledge needed to conceive of a new order
which will overthrow the repressive patriarchal system.
The
primary means to this change, as Julliet Mitchell observes,
is an understanding of "how thoughts, customs, and culture
operate" (416).
The insight that Lacanian and Freudian
theory provides, therefore, is crucial to any feminist
project which seeks to conceive of a culture which
represents an alternative to patriarchal culture.
7
This study will also utilize Mary Wollstonecraft's
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a significant feminist
text of the late eighteenth century.
Because Wollstonecraft
was a contemporary of Ann Radcliffe, and because her ideas
were part of the intellectual climate of late eighteenthcentury England, her analysis of the complex network of
patriarchal institutions and their effect upon women
provides valuable insight into the phallocentric
institutions which were most powerful in the late eighteenth
century.
Wollstonecraft provides historical context for the
psychoanalytic criticism I will be using.
The relation of feminist psychoanalytic theory to
literature is a compatible one.
The emphasis put on
language and discourse in Lacanian theory, which
demonstrates the crucial role of signification in
patriarchal society, implies that literature has been a form
of discourse which supports the phallic order.
Examining
literature as a cultural document which reveals the
intricacies and contradictions of phallocentrism not only
exposes the inherent paradoxes of the phallocentric system,
but, as Kaja Silverman notes, it in addition "can help us to
alter our own relationship to texts, assist us in the
project of re-speaking both our own subjectivity and the
symbolic order" (283).
Classic Gothic space provides a textual area within
which the contradictions of patriarchal culture can be
8
read.
Some classic Gothic texts' use of space presents it
as an ambiguous area where both heroine and reader can
~onceive
of something apart from the dominant discourse.
This ambiguous, illuminating space is most often present in
the terror-Gothic written by female Gothicists of the late
eighteenth century.
As Judith Wilt observes, this space "is
unpredictably various, full of hidden ascents and descents,
sudden turnings, unexpected subspaces, alcoves, and inner
rooms, above all, full of long, tortuous, imperfectly
understood, half-visible approaches to the center of
suspense" (10).
As Wilt further comments, classic Gothic
space represents the vulnerability of absolutes that are
finally affirmed at the end of the work (23).
Gothic space,
therefore, if read properly, exposes the vulnerability of
cultural systems:
it reveals the void outside of
patriarchal signification and thus offers the space to view
alternatives to that signification.
Feminist psychoanalytic
criticism thus finds a conducive environment in classic
Gothic space.
As Wilt notes, the classic Gothic "was
unmistakably the era of the Father" (24); hence, the
ambiguity of much classic Gothic space may be read as
exposing the vulnerability of the symbolic father.
The
classic terror-Gothic text is The Mysteries of Udolpho, and
the increase in interest in Ann Radcliffe's work, especially
Udolpho, has resulted in many feminist readings of the
novel, some of which are very relevant to the present study.
9
Norman N. Holland and Leona F. Sherman's "Gothic
Possibilities," and Claire Kahane's "Gothic Mirrors and
Feminine Identity" discuss the possibility of reading Gothic
literature as texts containing two discourses; furthermore,
Holland and Sherman's article hints at the pre-oedipal
rumblings in Gothic space.
Sherman, a feminist
psychoanalytic critic, concludes that the Gothic allowed the
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century female reader to actively
or passively experience fantasies involving sexuality and
aggressiveness while the conventional ending in marriage
provided women
a way to arrive at the right psychological
solution for that society and that time" (286).
Kahane,
dealing specifically with Udolpho, perceives two discourses,
one dealing with the idealized world of La Vallee, and the
other providing "the sexual and aggressive center" where
Emily can transcend acceptable social boundaries (58).
Both
articles, therefore, suggest the two discourses of Udolpho
that this study will explore.
Holland and Sherman's article
is suggestive also because it maintains that some of the
terror experienced in Gothic space may be linked to the
ambiguous feelings experienced in relation to the preoedipal mother.
Sherman says that in Gothic space, "I re-
create a mingling of my very early relationship with my
mother, mother as environment" (286).
Although "Gothic
Possibilities" does not deal specifically with Udolpho, it
does suggest the pre-oedipal space explored in this study.
10
Cynthia Griffin
Wolff~s
"The Radcliffean Gothic Model:
A Form for Feminine Sexuality" asserts, along the lines of
Kahane and Sherman, that there are two discourses within
Udoloho, one which allows the female reader to "indulge
sexual feelings of immense power" for the devil-lover
(Montoni), and one which provides a "safe" context in which
this may be done through the final affirmation of the chaste
lover (Valancourt) (214).
Wolff sees these two discourses
as characteristic of the eighteenth-century female Gothic,
or terror-Gothic.
Her article represents yet another
reading of Udolpho from a double-voiced discourse
perspective.
While Coral Ann Howells, in "The Pleasure of the
Woman~s
Text:
Ann
Radcliffe~s
Subtle Transgressions in
~
Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian," also perceives a
discourse alternative to the dominant sentimental one
present in the text, she sees this discourse as manifesting
itself in fragments of an alternative set of images and
storylines.
Howells concludes that although the Radcliffean
text ultimately silences the female desire present in the
alternative storylines and images, "desire has been uttered"
(158).
This article is relevant to the present study
because the muted discourse which I will explore manifests
itself in the stories of Cheron and Laurentini, and in
11
Emily's sporadic experiences of dephallicized space within
Udolpho.
The alternative discourse I perceive, therefore,
is fragmented.
One other article which relates to this study is Mary
Laughlin Fawcett's "Udolpho's Primal Mystery."
This article
utilizes feminist and psychoanalytic interpretive strategies
to demonstrate that the "horror" of the novel lies in
Emily's repeated discovery of "the primal scene" of
heterosexual relationships.
Emily's search leads her to
discover that heterosexual relations "are wounded or
murdered, and female sexual needs will not be satisfied"
(493).
This study will attempt to point out that St.
Aubert's suppression of Laurentini's story is partly
motivated by his fear of Emily discovering the sadomasochistic nature of heterosexual relationships within
patriarchal culture.
Unlike earlier feminist psychoanalytic studies of
Udolpho which do not, this study will utilize feminist
appropriations of Freud and Lacan to demonstrate the
existence of two discourses within the text.
The dominant
discourse of Udolpho, involving the stories of St. Aubert
and Valancourt and the apace of La Vallee, affirms the power
of the phallus through a complex network of patriarchal
institutions, including religion, family, property, and
discourse; however, I will argue that the alternative
discourses present in Charon's and Laurentini's stories, and
12
in the Gothic space of Udolpho, undermine phallic power and
provide fragmented glimpses into pre-oedipal, and therefore
non-patriarchal, experience, thus exposing the symbolic
order as an arbitrary cultural construct.
And I will argue
that because Udolpho's alternative discourse takes shape in
pre-oedipal rumblings, Udolpho proves to be a text very
conducive to feminist psychoanalytic analysis.
CHAPTER II
DOMINANT DISCOURSE
The Mysteries of Udolpho, published in 1794, was Ann
Radcliffe~s
most popular and financially successful novel,
and remains her best-known work.
She is considered to be
the leading exponent of the late eighteenth-century Gothic
novel, and Udolpho is considered by many to be the apogee of
the classic Gothic genre.
The novel focuses on Emily St.
Aubert, who is orphaned early in the novel and transported
to Italy to the castle of Udolpho by her aunt, Cheron, and
Cheron~s
husband Montoni.
Within Udolpho, Emily experiences
many apparently supernatural terrors, most of which are
attributed to the ghost of Laurentini, the former owner of
Udolpho.
These terrors are later explained as being the
result of human agency.
Emily escapes from Udolpho, returns
to France, and after further adventures--including an
encounter with Laurentini, who has become the nun Agnes-returns to her former home at La Vallee and marries her
suitor, Valancourt.
What may be perceived as a dominant discourse in
Udolpho appears to take shape in
Emily~s
relation to La
Vallee, St. Aubert, and later, Valancourt.
The discourse
involving La Vallee and St. Aubert, established at the
beginning of the novel, affirms patriarchal power within the
dangerous guise of sentimentality.
13
The world of La Vallee
14
affirms the patriarchal structures of family, religion,
property, and discourse.
The rise in sentimentality in the eighteenth century
represented a shift from an overt phallocratic power in
which physical force was used to control women to a
phallocratic power in which ideology was used to demonstrate
to women that their status as subordinate and deferential
beings was part of their natural "femininity."
As Jane
Spencer observes, sentimentality led to "a glorification of
weakness" in women, an exaggeration of the supposed natural
delicacy and timidity of women (78).
Even though both men
and women could be sentimental in their feelings and in
their discourse, women were judged on a harsher scale.
The
sentimental quality of modesty, for example, meant right
judgment in relation to men, and fear of every undertaking
for women (Spencer 78).
Sentimentality, therefore,
represented a dangerous support of patriarchal power by
glorifying stereotypical characteristics of women--modesty,
morality (especially chastity), physical weakness, mental
and physical delicacy--and trapped women in an ideology
which forced them to subscribe to its tenets in order to be
truly "feminine."
A contemporary of Ann Radcliffe, Mary Wollstonecraft,
observes the despotic function of sentimentality within
society.
Speaking of late eighteenth-century women, she
says, "Love, in their bosoms, taking place of every nobler
15
passion, their sole ambition is to be fair, to raise emotion
instead of inspiring respect; and this ignoble desire, like
the servility in absolute monarchies, destroys all strength
of character" (37).
Wollstonecraft's likening of
sentimental philosophy to an absolute monarchy reveals the
support it gave to phallocentrism.
Because of its appeals
to nature and "true femininity" (which are analogous to the
"natural" argument found in the Divine Right theory of
monarchy), most eighteenth-century women did not recognize
the autocratic power behind sentimentality, and thus it
became a powerful tool of patriarchal culture.
The St. Aubert family represent a late eighteenthcentury version of the bourgeois family, and reflect the
ideas of marriage based on mutual affection and childrearing based on a permissive and affectionate model which
were developing in the eighteenth century (Stone 266).
As
Foucault notes, the deployment of sexuality as a control
device in the eighteenth century coincided with the emphasis
placed on mutual affection and individuality within the
nuclear family (108-109).
The deployment of sexuality,
therefore, reinforced, and to a certain extent co-opted, the
power of the alliance system (which found expression in the
pre-modern patriarchal family) in a more subtle way.
It may
have appeared to the eighteenth-century individual that the
family structure, and most notably the father, was less
powerful.
Indeed, as Lawrence Stone asserts, eighteenth-
16
century people perceived that within the nuclear family the
father held "a limited and temporal authority" compared to
the father of earlier centuries who held, literally, the
power of life and death over his wife and children (239240).
It seems, however, that although the means of
patriarchal control switched from the rigid and cruel law of
the alliance system, its control was no less significant,
only more fully veiled within the sentimentality of the
nuclear family.
In the dominant discourse of Udolpho, it appears that
patriarchal power, represented by St. Aubert, is venerated
and affirmed.
St. Aubert wields his power over Emily
through a complex network of patriarchal institutions.
In
his death speech, for instance, St. Aubert attempts to keep
psychological control of Emily by associating himself with
God, thus hoping to leave Emily firmly entrenched in
patriarchal society through her religious beliefs:
"my dear
child, we must look up with humble confidence to that Being,
who has protected and comforted us in every danger . . . I
shall leave you, my child, still in his care" (76).
Wollstonecraft discusses this relation of the power of
the father to the power of God the Father, and relates this
justification of power to all despotic means of gaining
control, suggesting that, like the absolute monarch, the
father presents his power as being descended from "the King
of kings" (152).
In her view parental authority becomes
17
allied with the desire for property which lies at the base
of the Divine Right theory.
As the king uses the Divine
Right argument to keep his subjects as his personal
property, so the father uses the Divine Right argument to
keep his daughters as exchange objects.
of the child makes this possible:
The helpless status
"the father who is
blindly obeyed, is obeyed from sheer weakness"
(Wollstonecraft 154).
The father uses the Divine Right
argument, therefore, only to give moral sanction to a
despotic power he already possesses.
relates this idea to marriage.
Wollstonecraft further
She suggests that the
husband, like the father, uses the Divine Right argument;
therefore, the patriarchal power cloaked in religion
continues to enslave a
wo~
even after she moves from the
status of daughter to the status of wife: "and thus taught
slavishly to submit to their parents, [women] are prepared
for the slavery of marriage" (Wollstonecraft 155).
Udolpho
hints at this near the end of the novel when we see St.
Aubert's patriarchal power passed to Valancourt.
St. Aubert tries to retain further control over Emily
by refusing to allow her to have knowledge of his
discourse.
He asks Emily to burn some important papers of
his "without examining them" (78).
Emily attempts to
question this command, but her question is checked by St.
Aubert's appeal to patriarchal power:
"It is sufficient
for you, my love, to have a deep sense of the importance of
18
observing me in this instance" (78).
St. Aubert, forced by
his impending death to bequeath patriarchal discourse to a
female child, denies Emily access to this knowledge by
appealing to authority, which is hidden under the guise of
love.
He does not order Emily to obey him:
the
sentimentality in which his authority appears to be cloaked
is sufficient to gain acquiescence from Emily.
Emily,
indeed, abides by his wishes, and the patriarchal discourse
St. Aubert denies Emily access to remains a mystery
throughout most of the novel.
Another demand of St. Aubert's which indicates the link
between La Vallee and veiled patriarchal power is his desire
that Emily not sell the estate of La Vallee.
This demand,
like all the other demands made by St. Aubert, Emily obeys,
and, indeed, she exerts a great deal of effort to preserve
the estate of La Vallee.
St. Aubert therefore ensures the
continuation of his patriarchal power by entwining the
institutions of family, religion, property, and discourse.
His attempt to subordinate Emily to patriarchal order is
successful in the dominant story.
Emily says, "0 my father!
After St. Aubert's death,
if you are permitted to look down
upon your child, it will please you to see, that she
remembers, and endeavours to practice, the precepts you have
given her" (92).
Furthermore, Udolpho continues to
emphasize the story of Emily's submission to the law of the
symbolic father, as represented by St. Aubert.
19
The spectre of St. Aubert haunts Emily's experiences
throughout the text and the only doubt she is represented as
experiencing in relation to his authority is related to the
denial of knowledge about his secret papers.
But her
suspicion about St. Aubert is never overtly uttered, and, in
the dominant discourse, it remains a vague fear:
Emily
"shuddered at the meaning [the papers] seemed to impart,"
but the fear is never directly uttered, but continually
displaced (491).
The text affirms that Emily's "faith in
St. Aubert's principles would scarcely allow her to suspect
that he had acted dishonourably" (663).
Although the
alternative discourse suggested by the use of the qualifier
"scarcely," which hints at Emily's ambiguous feelings about
the power represented by St. Aubert, will be explored in
this study, the dominant story appears to affirm this power
throughout the text.
Wollstonecraft discusses the institutions of family,
religion, and property and their relation to patriarchal
power.
She sees the patriarchal family as being designed to
keep women in dependent positions where they are "naturally
weakened by depending on authority" (72).
Because society
conditioned eighteenth-century women to view marriage and
child-rearing as the only desirable occupations open to
them, they became bound to the family, a patriarchal
organization in which they had no legitimate power.
As
Wollstonecraft asserts, "when, therefore, I call women
20
slaves, I mean in a political and civil sense; for
indirectly they obtain too much power, and are debased by
their exertions to obtain illicit sway" (167).
The
patriarchal family, therefore, reinforced eighteenth-century
stereotypes of women as conniving and unreasonable and thus
ensured the continuation of phallocratic power.
Wollstonecraft also perceives organized religion as
having a strong hand in the preservation of the patriarchal
order.
In addition to the Divine Right argument fathers and
husbands use, which asserts that the male head of the
household's power is divinely sanctioned by God,
Wollstonecraft discerns other supports organized religion
lends to the phallocratic order.
In her discussion of Dr.
Fordyce, an eighteenth-century preacher and author of
conduct books for young women, Wollstonecraft discusses the
elevation of women to angels in religious discourse which
dehumanizes them and places all emphasis on their
appearance, thus isolating them from the power structure by
presenting them as the ultimate "other."
Religion demands
that "all women are to be leveled, by meekness and docility,
into one character of yielding softness and gentle
compliance" (Wollstonecraft 95).
Wollstonecraft, therefore,
views religion as another despotic institution which serves
to reinforce the existing power structure.
In Wollstonecraft's view, property serves a similar
function.
Property had a two-fold implication for the
21
eighteenth-century woman.
Property, in the sense of
inherited wealth, was controlled by the father or husband,
and thus was something she was denied access to; the woman
was also property herself in that the patriarchal structure
viewed her as an exchange object.
In
analysis, the two become intertwined:
Wollstonecraft~s
because women cannot
control their own property, they focus their efforts on
preserving themselves as "valuable property" so they can
marry well, which amounts to preserving their reputations:
It is the eye of man that [women] have been
taught to dread--and if they can lull their Argus
to sleep, they seldom think of heaven of
themselves, because their reputation is safe; and
it is reputation, not chastity and all its fair
train, that they are employed to keep free from
spot, not as a virtue, but to preserve their
station in the world. (131-132)
For an eighteenth-century women, therefore, property was a
complex concept.
A woman had to view herself as property in
order to marry and thus ensure her economic security and
also fulfil her "vocation" in life, yet the patriarchal
order denied her control of property in the sense of wealth
or land.
As applied to Udolpho, for instance, Emily
inherits from St. Aubert both the concept of herself as
property and economic property, but she must forfeit her
land and wealth to Valancourt after their marriage, and
indeed a great deal of her anxiety in the dominant story
results from her fears of damaging herself as an exchange
object and thus losing her chance to marry Valancourt.
22
Property, in both senses, thus served as a strong support of
the phallocentric order in eighteenth-century society.
Valancourt, as St. Aubert's successor to patriarchal
control over Emily, plays a major role in the dominant
discourse.
Valancourt represents Emily's means of re-entry
into the phallocentric world of La Vallee, replacing St.
Aubert as the living representative of the symbolic father.
Also, as the sentimental hero, he represents Emily's means
to her "true vocation" (i.e., marriage and childbirth).
Early in the novel, St. Aubert approves of Valancourt as a
husband for Emily.
His primary reason for sanctioning
Emily's romance with Valancourt is that Valancourt, like St.
Aubert himself, is able to cloak his phallocratic power in
sentimentality.
The text states that "St. Aubert discovered
in [Valancourt's] sentiments the justness and dignity of an
elevated mind . . . and this opinion gave him the reflected
image of his own heart" (49).
St. Aubert, therefore, sees
himself reflected in Valancourt, and being increasingly
aware of his own impending death, approves of Valancourt as
his successor.
St. Aubert's early approval of Valancourt is
significant not only because it demonstrates that Valancourt
is similar to St. Aubert and thus will wield the same
cloaked phallocratic power over Emily, but also because it
affirms the patriarchal institution of woman as property.
Although the concept of arranged marriages was eroding in
23
the late eighteenth century, parental sanctioning of
marriages remained prevalent, as the republishing of Lord
Halifax~s
conservative text Advice to a Daughter throughout
the eighteenth century demonstrates (Stone 278).
Although
St. Aubert is representative of the new permissive childrearing theories of the eighteenth-century, his veiled power
has an enormous influence on Emily, and his approval of
Valancourt as a husband is crucial to her, as is evidenced
by her later hesitance to marry Valancourt when she believes
he has become corrupted and is no longer a person of whom
St. Aubert would approve.
upon hearing of
Aubert.
Indeed,
Valancourt~s
Emily~s
first thought
experiences in Paris is of St.
She says, "0 Valancourt!
if such a friend as my
father had been with you at Paris--your noble, ingenuous
nature would not have fallen!" (584).
Because Emily
believes St. Aubert would not approve of her marriage to
Valancourt, she decides to break relations with him, despite
her personal affection for him.
The dominant discourse of
Udolpho reveals, therefore, the sentimental version of the
arranged marriage.
Emily~s
mental linking of Valancourt with her future at
La Vallee further affirms the role of property in the
dominant story.
Emily~s
primary desire to preserve the
estate of La Vallee is her wish to gain Valancourt as a
husband as thus fulfil her "role" in society.
The estate
functions as a dowry, and the text repeatedly emphasizes at
24
least on the surface that Emily's struggle to preserve her
economic property is tied to her wish to be "valuable
property" on the marriage market.
Emily decides to fight
Montoni for her property "for Valancourt's sake" because the
estate would "secure the comfort of their future lives"
(379).
And when she doubts her ability to preserve the
estate, she feels she must resign "all hopes of future
happiness with Valancourt" (435).
Her escape from Udolpho
is initiated by her belief that Valancourt is trapped in
Udolpho, and her immediate thought upon escaping is "the
possibility of recovering her aunt's estates for Valancourt
and herself" (460).
Thus, in the dominant story, Emily's concerns with
preserving La Vallee are linked to her desire to please St.
Aubert and to preserve her dowry so she can marry
Valancourt.
Emily's "goal" in the dominant discourse is to
re-submit herself to patriarchal control by marrying
Valancourt and living at La Vallee again.
The text
explicitly links these three items as the key to Emily's
future happiness:
when Emily is first trapped in Udolpho
she wants to have time "to think of Valancourt, and to
indulge the melancholy, which his image, and a recollection
of the scenes of La Vallee, always blessed with the memory
of her parents, awakened" (191).
In the dominant story,
therefore, Emily's struggle is to re-submit herself to the
25
complex network of patriarchal institutions she was
submerged in at the beginning of the novel.
Udolpho's ending, with Emily's marriage to Valancourt
and her return to La Vallee, affirms the same patriarchal
power and its institutional supports set forth at the
beginning of the novel.
Valancourt wields the same
authority cloaked in sentimentality St. Aubert did.
Emily
marries Valancourt in a place "sacred to the memory of St.
Aubert," and they pass their lives "in happy thankfulness to
GOD" (671).
The text, therefore, appears to re-submit Emily
to patriarchal order through its supports of family,
religion, and property.
Furthermore, Udolpho reaffirms the
patriarchal control of discourse in Emily's inability to
bequeath the legacy given to her by Laurentini to Bonnac.
Her ability to have control of legal discourse is lost
through her marriage to Valancourt, and she must "beg"
Valancourt to bequeath the property on her behalf (672).
Therefore, on the face of it, in Udolpho the dominant
patriarchal discourse is not ostensibly challenged.
However, we will go on to see that fragments of alternative
discourses which threaten to undermine the patriarchal
discourse are evident in Cheron·s and Laurentini's stories
and in the Gothic apace of the castle of Udolpho.
CHAPTER III
MUTED DISCOURSE:
CHERON
The alternative discourses of Udolpho appear in Emily's
relationships to Cheron and Laurentini, and in the
experiences she and other characters undergo in Udolpho
itself. I will attempt to demonstrate that these experiences
take shape in dephallicized areas of the castle and seem to
suggest "space" which provides alternatives to phallocentric
culture.
In the world of Udolpho, Madame Cheron, Emily's aunt,
and her guardian after the death of her father, appears to
represent both a woman who refuses to take her assigned
feminine position in phallocentric society and a woman who
attempts to obtain phallocratic power for herself.
As a
widow, Cheron enjoys privileges in eighteenth-century
society which are denied to the virgin Emily:
she holds
rights to property and sexuality usually reserved for men.
Although the Married Women's Property Acts would not be
passed until the late nineteenth century, eighteenth-century
England saw legislation which protected the property rights
of widows (Stone 244).
Moreover, widows enjoyed a sexual
license reserved primarily for men because for the widow
unlike the single woman, virginity was no longer a factor
on the marriage market (Stone 281).
26
27
Cheron's initial phallic power in the novel is evident
both in the language and imagery associated with her
character and in her conception of Emily as "pure exchange
value," what Luce Irigaray calls the virginal woman in
phallocentric society (This Sex 186).
Emily is handed over
to Cheron by her dying father, and Cheron comes to represent
not only a substitute for the phallic power of St. Aubert,
but a more blatant example of it.
St. Aubert's
phallocentrism is veiled in sentimentality.
St. Aubert's
dying speech, for example, reveals how he uses emotion and
religion to convince Emily to submit to the phallic order.
He says:
"0 my child! . . . let my consolations be yours.
I die in peace; for I know, that I am about to
return to the bosom of my Father, who will still
be your Father, when I am gone. Always trust in
him, my love, and he will support you in these
moments, as he supports me." (81; emphasis added)
St. Aubert's attempt to convince Emily to submit to the law
of the symbolic father, therefore, is successful because it
appears cloaked in sentimentality.
Cheron's power is more
obvious.
The text repeatedly associates Cheron with phallic
imagery and phallic language.
During Emily's first
encounter with her new guardian, Cheron steps from behind a
plane tree (109).
Invested with power over Emily, Cheron
begins to dominate her "with all the self-importance of
person, to whom power is new" (110).
Udolpho continually
28
associates Cheron with the phallic image of the plane tree
throughout the first part of the novel.
The text reinforces Cheron's link to phallocratic power
through the association of Cheron with sight.
As Jane
Gallop notes, sight is associated with the initiation of the
individual into phallocentric society, because in Freudian
terms, the discovery of castration, which first solidifies
the idea of sexual difference in the infant, is a sightoriented activity.
Therefore, the privilege of "the male
genitalia under the phallic order is based on the privilege
of sight over other senses" (Gallop 27).
Cheron's
"penetrating gaze" demonstrates her phallocratic power over
Emily.
In a passage in Volume I of Udolpho, Cheron is
linked not only with phallic power but with the masculine:
[Cheron's] was the blush of triumph, such as
sometimes stains the countenance of a person,
congratulating himself on the penetration which
had taught him to suspect another, and who loses
both pity for the supposed criminal, and
indignation of his guilt, in the gratification of
his own vanity. (120; emphasis added)
This passage is intriguing not only because it comments on
the phallic qualities of Cheron's power but because it
demonstrates how phallic power is associated with the
masculine, at least in eighteenth-century European society.
Although the passage uses the feminine gender to describe
Cheron's blush, the text describes her power in masculine
terms through the use of masculine pronouns.
It appears,
therefore, that Cheron's desire for power is evidence both
29
of her complete absorption of patriarchal ideas and also
evidence of a threat she poses to patriarchal power.
Because of her gender, Cheron threatens the cultural
identification of the phallic with the masculine.
In Lacanian terms, the phallus relates neither to the
biological male nor to the biological female, but represents
the Law of the Father and the power associated with that
law.
No one possesses the phallus; it is the signifier of
desire.
It is important, however, to remember, as Gallop
suggests, that "the difference, of course, between the
phallic suppression of masculinity and the phallic
suppression of femininity is that the phallic represents
(even if inaccurately) the masculine and not the feminine"
(67).
Cheron's desire for phallic power, which places her
in the potential role of usurper, has nothing to do with her
biological lack of a penis, but with her desire for a power
which has been culturally associated with the penis and
hence with the masculine.
The text reveals further Cheron's wish for phallic
power in patriarchal society through her desire to place
Emily in the role of exchange object.
As Julliet Mitchell
points out, the exchange of women is one of the cornerstones
of patriarchal society, for it "distinguishes mankind from
all other primates, from a cultural standpoint" (372).
Cheron recognizes Emily's exchange value on the marriage
market and attempts to thwart the loss of virginity which
30
would damage Emily's "value."
Cheron appears to denounce
Emily's secret meetings with Valancourt not because of any
moral violation she perceives in these meetings, but because
she sees the potential for Emily's economic value to be
damaged.
Upon discovering Emily's clandestine meetings with
Valancourt, Cheron says to her, "Let me tell you the world
will observe these things, and it will talk, aye and very
freely too" (110).
Cheron points out, therefore, that loss
of reputation wlll damage Emily's chance of a secure
bourgeois existence.
In eighteenth-century society an
unmarried woman's chastity was her most valuable economic
possession (Stone 503), which relates, as Foucault points
out, to the transformation of sexuality into various
discourses in eighteenth-century European society.
With
this transformation, an individual's sexuality became "a
'police' matter--in the full and strict sense given the term
at the time:
not the repression of disorder, but an ordered
maximization of collective and individual forces" (24-25).
Cheron's "penetrating" enquiry into Emily's sexuality
reflects the institutional (and thus patriarchal) status of
sexuality in eighteenth-century society.
Cheron openly informs Emily of the economic reality of
patriarchal society, which indicates that Cheron's phallic
power is much more obvious than St. Aubert's veiled control
of Emily and thus less dangerous.
When, for example, St.
Aubert tries to gain Emily's submission to the phallic order
31
through the device of religion, it is by subtly associating
Emily's feelings about him as her father with her feelings
about God the Father (81).
Cheron, however, exposes the
repressiveness and phallocentric nature of religion by
threatening to send Emily to a convent, a place where she
will be forced to submit on a daily basis to the Law of the
Father disguised as God the Father (125).
Emily acquiesces
to St. Aubert's demands, but she is horrified by Cheron's
blatant use of her power to make her submit, and lashes out
at her.
The only remorse Emily feels for challenging
Cheron's power is that she may not be acting "with
sufficient reserve" to please her dead father (125).
Cheron agrees to an alliance between Emily and
Valancourt only when she finds out that he belongs to an
aristocratic family.
Cheron wishes "to partake the
importance, which such an alliance would give," and by so
doing increase her share of power (139).
Up to this point
Cheron appears to be a usurper of phallic power, a woman who
attempts to obtain power not in the usual cultural way
(i.e., marriage and childbirth), but through cultural
channels traditionally associated with the masculine.
She
attempts to become an active part of what Luce Irigaray
perceives as the homosocial commerce between men where
"woman exists only as an occasion for mediation,
transaction, transition, transference, between man and his
fellow man" (This Sex 193).
32
Cheron's subsequent marriage to Montoni and her move to
Udolpho alters her status in the text.
Although Cheron
still desires that Emily submit to patriarchal law after her
marriage to Montoni, she is no longer the center of power, a
role slowly transferred to Montoni.
Initially Cheron
presents Montoni and herself as equals in the phallocentric
economy.
She says to Emily, "I am determined, that you
shall submit to those, who know how to guide you better than
yourself" (144; emphasis added).
Before the text moves its
focus to Udolpho, Cheron is still associated with phallic
qualities.
Cheron says to Emily that "though you say
nothing, you cannot conceal your grief from my penetration"
( 150).
Cheron's power, however, begins to be overshadowed by
Montoni's power prior to the move to Udolpho.
While Cheron
assumes a paternal role in relation to Emily, Emily's desire
never appears to be directed toward Cheron, at least not
until their arrival at Udolpho.
If we assume that Emily
went through a "normal" oedipal development, then her preoedipal desire for the mother has been replaced by her
desire for the penis, the organ culturally invested with
phallic power, and, thus, as Luce Irigaray in her discussion
of Freudian theory points out, Emily's desire "remains
forever fixated on the desire for the father, remains
subject to the father and to his law" (This Sex 87).
Because of what amounts to her acceptance of the inaccurate
33
cultural link of the phallus with the penis, Emily cannot
submit herself to Cheron and indeed cannot take Cheron's
phallic power seriously.
In the figure of Montoni, however, Emily begins to
confront a phallic power which she appears not only to fear,
but also to be sexually attracted to.
Although Montoni,
like Cheron, is associated with the phallic "penetration" of
sight, the text's descriptions of Emily's reactions to
Montoni's power are sexually charged:
The fire and keenness of [Montoni's] eye, its
proud exultation, its bold fierceness, its sullen
watchfulness,as occasion, and even slight
occasion, had called forth the latent soul,
[Emily] had often observed with emotion;
while from the usual expression of his
countenance she had always shrunk. (157)
And, as Kenneth Graham points out, the image of Montoni as a
"passionate demon-lover" that the reader comes away with is
"almost wholly the creation of Emily" (167).
Montoni, at
least outside the Gothic space of Udolpho, appears to
represent for Emily a father whose law she can fear and a
father who calls up oedipal sexual desires.
When the
setting of the text moves to Udolpho, Cheron's and Emily's
relationships to phallocentrism become more problematic.
Thus, while Emily's relationship with Cheron brings her
face to face with a woman who both threatens the
phallocentric order and internalizes its principles, Emily's
34
experience of the Gothic apace of Udolpho brings her in
contact with a much more significant threat to
phallocentriam.
CHAPTER IV
MUTED DISCOURSE:
THE GOTHIC SPACE OF UDOLPHO
The move to Udolpho appears to be a move to an overtly
phallocentric environment.
The power of Montoni is more
blatantly phallocratic than Cheron's, not only because of
his gender but because he represents one who has given up
his body and sexuality for phallocratic power.
As Luce
Irigaray observes, within a phallocentric society, a man
gives up "the pleasure of his own body" for the power of law
(This Sex 142-143).
The extreme phallocratic man finds more
sexual satisfaction in economic and legislative discourse
than in the sexual act itself (Irigaray, Speculum 39).
The
text describes Montoni as a man who pursues gambling and
battle "with the ardour of a passion" (182). And while
Udolpho provides few clues as to Cheron's sexuality, it
seems probable that her death by starvation may be read as a
metaphor for lack of sexual fulfillment.
The text describes
Cheron as lying "forsaken and neglected, under a raging
fever, till it had reduced her to the present state" (365).
Therefore, the fever brought on by unfulfilled sexual
desires may be read as a possible cause of Cheron's death.
Montoni denies Cheron his body and overtly prefers the
homosocial economy present in phallocentric society.
35
Emily
36
finds protection as well as threat in Montoni's power, a
protection she does not find in Cheron's presence (186).
Gallop's reading of Kristeva in The Daughter's
Seduction:
Feminism and Psychoanalysis suggests that one
possible way of undermining the power of the phallus is to
expose it, to unveil it.
To deny the phallocentrism of
western culture is in a sense to preserve the mystery and
power of the phallus by keeping it veiled.
But, as Gallop
states, "blatantly, audaciously, vulgarly to assume it may
mean to dephallicize" (120).
I suggest that in the blatant
phallic space of Udolpho there is a dephallicized region
which hints at a pre-oedipal psychological existence.
Although Udolpho has an overtly phallic structure, and its
current owner, Montoni, is an exaggerated example of the
phallocentric man, Udolpho's original owner was a female
relative of Montoni, Laurentini.
As a consequence, Udolpho
appears to be a place inhabited by a space which undermines
the very phallic order it appears to represent.
This space
manifests itself primarily in the underground rooms of
Udolpho, those hidden from sight, which suggests the preoedipal experience which lies beneath the superimposed
phallocentric order.
The effect of the dephallicized space of Udolpho on
Cheron and Emily differs.
Cheron attempts to continue to
assert her phallic power over Emily but finds herself
increasingly threatened by Montoni's power, first, in
37
relation to her property, and then in relation to her life.
Montoni's phallocratic power over Cheron eventually reduces
her to silence and death.
Cheron, who was associated with
the phallic qualities of sight and language early in the
novel, speaks "only a few words" prior to her death, and is
hidden from sight during most of her stay at Udolpho (371).
Cheron's relationship to Udolpho appears to be phallic.
She
never experiences any of the dephallicized "horrors" Emily
or even Montoni experiences, "horrors" such as the veiled
object and the mysterious voice.
Cheron repeatedly denies
Emily's increasing kindness (and perhaps desire) and opts
for the vestiges of her phallocratic power over Emily that
remain.
Emily's relation to the dephallicized space of Udolpho
reveals what may be taken as the pre-oedipal rumblings which
are heard in the castle.
Emily is in a transition stage of
sexual identity, has recently lost both her parents and has
been thwarted in her attempt to submit to the veiled
phallocentrism of Valancourt; the space of Udolpho provides
for Emily a threatening and attractive alternative to
patriarchal sex roles.
The horrors she encounters in
Udolpho reveal a pattern of confusion relating to sexual
identity which may hint at the vestiges of a pre-oedipal
existence present in the psychological space of Udolpho.
In Freudian interpretation, the pre-oedipal
psychological experience of both men and women is analogized
38
to a buried Minoan-Mynacean civilization under the
superimposed culture of the Greeks (Mitchell 119).
The pre-
oedipal stage represents a time when both male and female
infants are psychologically bisexual.
Prior to the oedipal
conflict, both male and female infants desire the mother and
possess a single libido which contains both active and
passive aims (Rose 144).
Pre-oedipal sexuality is thought
to be free from the cultural constructs of femininity and
masculinity:
it is the psychological experience of what
Lacan calls the imaginary, a time when the infant sees
itself as part of the mother and is unable to perceive any
distinction between itself and the world (Moi 99).
Pre-
oedipal sexuality is, therefore, the stage before the infant
enters into patriarchal society and cultural sex roles via
the oedipus complex.
The pre-oedipal period represents, as
Julliet Mitchell points out, the only time a human has
access to the alternative of patriarchal culture, and as
whatever is experienced in the pre-oedipal phase is
repressed by the infant, it remains an area of psychological
experience which "can only be secondarily acquired in a
distorted form" (404).
Many of the mysteries Emily encounters in Udolpho
appear to relate to what may be perceived as pre-oedipal
psychological experiences.
One of the most intriguing of
Emily's experiences in Udolpho is her discovery of the
veiled object behind the locked door.
As Mark Madoff points
39
out, the locked room is a frequent motif of Gothic space
which often represents an area which is both frightening and
alluring because it offers an alternative to the outside
space which is "open, obvious, familiar, and unsatisfying in
its simplicity and rationality" (51).
Emily associates the veiled object with Laurentini, the
former owner of Udolpho, and in her increasing interest in
the mystery surrounding Laurentini, she sneaks into the
locked room and removes the veil.
Emily sees something
behind the veil which remains a mystery to the reader
throughout most of the novel, but which causes Emily to
"[drop] senseless to the floor" (249).
The vision of what
lies behind the veil continues to haunt Emily throughout the
novel.
When the mystery is finally explained in Volume IV,
pre-oedipal psychological experiences appear to be
associated with Emily's fear of the veiled object.
The
object is revealed as being a memento mori, a wax figure of
a man dressed for burial and partially decayed, constructed
as a penance for the Marquis of Udolpho, Laurentini's father
( 662).
Emily, however, as we discover in Volume IV, believed
alternatively that the object was the corpse of Laurentini
or the corpse of someone Laurentini murdered (663).
The
latter assumption suggests the repressed desire to kill the
father which both male and female children experience in the
pre-oedipal phase, when all infants desire the mother.
40
There may, however, be another dimension to Emily~s horror.
The horror she experiences as a result of seeing the veiled
object unveiled might represent not only her own repressed
desire to kill her father, but also a horror associated with
the unveiling of something which poses a threat to all of
patriarchal society.
The unveiling of the dead, symbolic father whose law
rules patriarchal society threatens to expose the falsity of
his rule.
It is the law of the symbolic father who
culturally maintains his rule through the castration threat
which creates the false constructs of sexual identity in
which Emily will be forced to live.
As Julliet Mitchell
observes:
The dead, symbolic father is far more crucial
than any actual living father who merely
transmits his name. This is the story of the
origins of patriarchy.
It is against this
symbolic mark of the dead father that boys and
girls find their cultural place within the
instance of the Oedipus Complex. (403)
The veiled figure, therefore, might represent both
Emily~s
horror at discovering her own pre-oedipal desire to kill her
father and also her horror at discovering that the cultural
system in which she is forced to find her identity is built
on the law of a dead and decaying symbolic father.
Mitchell~s
Julliet
contention that the capitalistic economy and the
nuclear family threaten to undermine the patriarchal system
because they are in contradiction to the kinship structure
within which patriarchy originated seems to apply in this
41
context (409).
The eighteenth century witnessed not only a
rise in capitalism but also the emergence of what we now
call the nuclear family because of the rise in the emphasis
on permissive and affectionate child-rearing (Stone 266).
Emily's fear of the veiled object, therefore, might
represent both the discovery of the fragments of repressed
pre-oedipal desires, and the realization of the dead and
decaying foundation of patriarchal society, a society in
which she has been conditioned to find her identity and in
which she appears to find comfort.
The literary
representations of such fear would be plausible in the
transitional society of the eighteenth century, insofar as
the transformation of sexuality into discourse coincided
with the decline in the deployment of sexuality which
"engender[ed] a continual extension of areas and forms of
control" (Foucault 106).
This transitional phase, however,
may well have provided space to glimpse the dead symbolic
father of the alliance system before the intertwining and
partial transference of his power to the discourse of
sexuality which found expression in the nuclear family.
Emily's other belief, that the veiled corpse might be
that of Laurentini, also appears to be related to preoedipal space present in Udolpho.
Emily encounters many
instances of confusion of sexual identity within Udolpho
which hearken back to a pre-oedipal bisexuality, when sexual
identity was not yet culturally embedded in the individual's
42
mind.
The confusion of the male wax figure with the female
figure of Laurentini may represent one of the dephallicized
spaces Emily finds within the phallic structure of Udolpho.
Another example of the dephallicized ar~as present in
Udolpho becomes evident during Emily's search for Cheron.
Emily finds herself in a chamber where she "dread[s] to
enquire farther" and is seized by an uncontrollable terror
(323).
She sees something in the corner of the chamber,
discerns that it is a pile of clothing, but is unable to
attach any sexual identity to the clothing until upon closer
inspection she finds it is the remains of a soldier's
uniform.
The experience causes Emily to doubt the
trustworthiness of her sight and she flees from the chamber
horrified by "a chilling silence" (323-324).
This episode
may be interpreted as an example of the dephallicized space
of Udolpho.
Emily is frightened of the experience as one
might be frightened of a repressed memory.
Moreover, the
space in the chamber makes it impossible immediately to
discern the sexual identity associated with the clothing and
hints at the psychological bisexuality experienced during
the pre-oedipal phase.
When Emily perceives that the
clothing is soldier's clothing, the text refers to it as
"the old uniform of a soldier," abandoned and devoid of any
phallic power it might assume outside the dephallicized
region (323).
Moreover, Emily's distrust of her sight
within this space suggests suspicion of the sight-oriented
43
features of phallocentric society.
While in the chamber,
Emily waits "for some sound, that might confirm, or destroy
her fears" (324).
reassure her:
In other words, she waits for language to
in Lacanian theory, language is associated
with the entry into the symbolic or phallocentric order (Moi
99).
Emily is overwhelmed by the pre-oedipal silence and
confusion of this dephallicized region.
I will treat this chamber as a place where Emily
discovers fragments of pre-oedipal existence.
In this
context, the "appearance of blood" which pervades the
chamber where Emily undergoes this experience is linked to
the ambiguous and frightening feelings experienced by the
infant in the pre-oedipal phase (324).
The pre-oedipal
phase is a period, as Luce Irigaray observes, when the
infant wishes alternatively to impregnate her mother and
bear her mother's child, while fearing being killed or
poisoned by the mother (Speculum 37).
Thus Emily's
confusion and fear in the dephallicized space is related not
only to the loss of cultural identity based on sex roles but
also to the fear of a death instigated by the pre-oedipal
mother.
Emily's search for Cheron leads her into other
dephallicized regions of Udolpho.
When Barnardine leads her
through the passages of Udolpho in search of Cheron, Emily
encounters other phallic objects devoid of their power.
Like the unthreatening soldier's uniform she found earlier,
44
she finds armor which "appear[s] a trophy of some former
victory" (346).
She finds instruments of torture which are
neutralized in the dephallicized regions of Udolpho (348).
In an experience similar to her experience in the
locked room, Emily finds a curtain which she wants to lift,
but feels frightened "to discover what it veiled" (348).
Emily is reminded of her former experience in the locked
room when "her daring hand" unveiled the wax figure (348;
emphasis added).
The use of the word "daring" in relation
to the lifting of the veils Emily encounters implies a
transgression of acceptable cultural standards in her
actions.
Emily lifts the second veil and discovers a corpse
which she assumes is the corpse of Cheron (348).
But, as in
the former experience, Emily later discovers that the corpse
is that of a man (365).
If the corpse hints at not only Emily's repressed preoedipal wish to kill her father, but also Emily's discovery
of the dead symbolic father, then Emily's refusal, or
inability, to recognize the psychological and cultural
significance of this discovery repeats itself.
It is
perhaps easier for Emily to accept the corpse of the mother
who in "normal" female oedipal development she is encouraged
to hate and encouraged to view as an oppressor in
contradistinction to the potential liberator embodied in the
father (Ramas 155).
Or, from the cultural standpoint, it is
perhaps more palatable for Emily to see the alternative to
45
patriarchal society, as represented by the pre-oedipal
mother, as decaying than to see the symbolic father of
patriarchal culture as "deformed by death" (348).
And
indeed, after the discovery of the corpse, Emily is
comforted by the sight of Montoni, "to whom she no longer
looked with terror" (349).
Emily, therefore, appears to be
reassured by the phallocratic power of Montoni, with ita
implications of fixed sexual identities, after her
experience in a dephallicized region of Udolpho.
Emily
longs for the "liberty and peace" she thinks she can find
outside of Udolpho and expresses her frustration at the
psychological chaos Udolpho has caused her by exclaiming,
"since my father died . . . every body forsakes me" (350351).
Other mysterious occurrences which take place in
Udolpho appear to relate to dephallicized space.
A
mysterious voice and mysterious music are heard within the
castle, noises that I read as pre-oedipal rumblings.
One
interesting occurrence involves not Emily, but Montoni, who
attempts to tell the story involving -his inheritance of
Udolpho at a dinner party with his male friends.
Montoni
tells his guests about Laurentini and says he will repeat
some singular and mysterious circumstances attending that
event" (289).
(289).
An unidentified voice says, "Repeat them!"
This frightens Montoni and he hesitates.
He
eventually continues, but the voice interrupts him again and
46
says, "Listen!" (290).
The experience leaves Montoni
"visibly and greatly disordered" (291).
This incident
represents one of the instances where the text associates
Montoni with fear and uncertainty.
The mysterious voice
episode reveals a chink in Montoni~s phallic armor.
The
fear experienced by Montoni may be interpreted as a fear of
exposure, a fear of the removing of the veil from his
phallic power which would expose his power as "pretense, or
sham, which still fails to recognize its own endogamies,"
what Luce Irigaray calls the ruling power of the phallus
(This Sex 192).
This episode sheds light on what the text hints at
concerning Montoni throughout the text.
Montoni~s
phallocratic power, because it is so overt, is vulnerable.
Unlike the completely veiled power of St. Aubert,
Montoni~s
power is based on a blatant assertion of phallic power.
Montoni lives in a phallic structure, associates primarily
with men (thus revealing what Luce Irigaray perceives as the
homosocial economy underlying patriarchal society), and is
overt in his treatment of Emily as an exchange object.
Montoni~s
fear of any pre-oedipal rumblings which might
suggest an alternative to patriarchal discourse is real.
He
inherited Udolpho from a female relative and one of his male
friends calls Udolpho the castle "he dared to call his"
( 284).
47
The phallocratic power represented in Montoni and
Udolpho is weak because of ita obviousness.
If, as Lacan
suggests, "[the phallus] can play its role only when
veiled," then Montoni'a and Udolpho's unveiled phallic power
deconstructa itself by its very overtness (288).
And
indeed, chinks in Montoni.'s phallic power can be perceived
all through the novel.
He not only inherits Udolpho from a
female relative, but is related to Emily on the maternal
side of the family (189).
Moreover, Montoni is often
associated with silence, an anti-phallic guality, and the
experience of hearing the mysterious voice causes him to
fall into silence.
Also, if we examine Montoni's overall
effectiveness in wielding his phallic sword, it becomes
evident that his actions are surprisingly impotent.
He
fails to obtain Cheron's property while Cheron is alive and
then fails to seize it from Emily.
Ultimately, Montoni is
thwarted by Emily, who outwits him by escaping from
Udolpho.
Montoni's attempts at gaining property and wealth
through gambling, war, and criminal activities never reach
fruition, and Montoni dies, ruined, and probably poisoned, a
manner of death which may be linked to the pre-oedipal fear
of being poisoned by the mother (569).
Montoni, therefore,
has a great deal to fear from any pre-oedipal apace in
Udolpho because his phallic power, while visually and
verbally the loudest in the text, is the most vulnerable.
The mysterious music Emily hears in Udolpho may also be
48
read as an example of dephallicized space.
When Emily first
hears the mysterious music which pervades Udolpho, it
reminds her of her father and she thinks "her dead father
had spoken to her in that strain" (330).
Further
reflection, however, causes her to "[waver] towards a belief
as wild" (331).
Emily then connects the music with
Laurentini and "the mysterious manner" in which Laurentini
disappeared and Udolpho came into the possession of Montoni
(331).
This thought terrifies Emily and she is frightened
by "the dead silence" in her room (331).
When Emily
remembers the music later, it is in connection with
Montoni's attempt to seize Cheron's property (339).
The
second time she hears the music it confuses her again and
"the guardian spirit of her father" fails to protect her,
and she finds herself too disturbed to read (355).
The
music Emily hears could be associated with dephallicized
space in Udolpho. Music is "pre-verbal," and thus may be
related to the imaginary rather than the symbolic order.
Emily perceives the music as being related to Laurentini and
Cheron, two women who appear to have been oppressed by
phallocratic power.
Moreover, the music disturbs Emily so
deeply that the thought of her father brings her no
reassurance, and on one occasion it isolates her from the
phallic structure of language.
The music functions as a metonymy of St. Aubert, whom
Emily immediately associates with the music.
St. Aubert
49
then functions as a signifier for Laurentini and later
Cheron.
This experience may be perceived as a displacement
of Emily's desire for the pre-oedipal existence and/or
mother.
As Kaja Silverman suggests, displacement involves a
censoring of a desire which is culturally unacceptable
(121).
Therefore, if Emily experiences something outside of
patriarchal order within Udolpho, then these "forbidden"
desires will be displaced and replaced by more culturally
acceptable objects, most notably by her father, who serves
as a representative of the Law of the Father, or patriarchal
order.
Although both the voice and the music are later
explained as being initiated by Dupont, a male prisoner in
Udolpho, the psychological effect of these mysterious noises
on Montoni and Emily suggest something more frightening,
something which threatens the security they find in
phallocentric culture.
Emily's encounter with the mysterious figure in Udolpho
further hints at the confusion of sexual identity present in
Udolpho.
Although after the first glimpse of the figure
Emily resolves to speak to it, she finds herself unable to
speak when she encounters the figure a second time.
The
second visit by the figure occurs right after Emily has been
finding some comfort in nature, moat notably in the
mountains, which may be seen to represent a stable
patriarchal world outside the confusion of Udolpho.
The
landscape outside of Udolpho "soothe[s] her emotions and
50
soften[s] her to tears" (367).
Emily, and robs her of language.
The figure appears, disturbs
The figure beckons to
Emily and she tries to speak to it, but the words "[die] on
her lips" (367).
When Emily finally is able to speak to the
figure, it runs away.
Emily later discovers that two guards
in the castle also have seen the figure and that it has
reduced them to silence and inaction as well.
Emily is
again thrown into psychological confusion and finds her
reason cannot make sense of what is described as "the
terrors of superstition" which have gained control of her
( 371).
This episode is intriguing because it is another
example of the uncertainty about sexual identity which Emily
experienced in both the wax figure episode and the corpse
episode.
Although both Emily and the guards get a close
look at the figure, none of them are able to fix it with any
sexual identity.
Emily and the guards are reduced to
referring to the figure as "it."
Moreover, the sight of the
figure robs them of the phallic construction of .language,
and when Emily finally does speak, it frightens the figure.
The only noise the figure makes is a sound which the guards
find difficult to describe in language.
One of the guards
says, "I heard, all of a sudden, such a sound!--It was not
like a groan, or a cry, or a shout, or anything I ever heard
in my life" (371).
The figure's sound, therefore, is
something which has no language referent in patriarchal
51
society.
Moreover, the psychological chaos Emily
experiences after seeing the figure links it with the other
episodes which relate to dephallicized space within Udolpho.
Udolpho, then, with its decaying phallic structure,
appears to house within its walls an alternative to
patriarchal society, an echo of a pre-oedipal psychological
existence.
Emily's attraction to and fear of Udolpho
represents the lack of fixed sexual identity she experiences
after the death of her parents.
Cheron, who is firmly
entrenched in phallocentric society, although her attempt to
obtain it through masculine means is radical, is not
affected by the dephallicized space of Udolpho, and dies in
a power struggle with Montoni.
Montoni, who, like Emily,
both fears and is attracted to Udolpho, is, by his very
overt phallic nature, already somewhat dephallicized and
thus is disturbed by the spaces in Udolpho which reveal his
vulnerability, yet is also attracted to them.
Emily finds
it necessary to escape from the radical alternative to
patriarchal discourse present in Udolpho, but Udolpho
continues to haunt the rest of the novel, most notably in
Emily's subsequent discoveries about Laurentini.
CHAPTER V
MUTED DISCOURSE:
LAURENTINI
The text's move to Chateau-le-Blanc shifts the focus to
Emily's growing fascination with the Marchioness Villeroi
and her relation to Laurentini and Udolpho.
After leaving
the psychological chaos of Udolpho, Emily finds Chateau-leBlanc and the Marchioness to be "safe" alternatives to the
space of Udolpho.
Upon Emily's arrival at Chateau-le-Blanc,
she hears mysterious music which the servant Dorothee tells
her is associated with the Marchioness.
Emily, however, is
not frightened by the music, and refuses "to be led away by
superstition" as she has been in Udolpho (490).
The only
fears Emily initially experiences in Chateau-le-Blanc are
fears of her own illegitimacy, in other words fears clearly
related to patriarchal order.
Dorothee notices the striking
resemblance between the late Marchioness and Emily, and
Emily remembers the papers her father ordered her to burn,
papers which she fears will confirm her own illegitimacy.
Interestingly, though, the thought of the papers causes
Emily to recall the episode involving the veiled object
which has taken place in Udolpho itself (491).
This suggests that the signifiers of Udolpho continue
to inscribe the text.
Emily displaces her fear of coming to
terms with what she perceived beneath the veil onto the
52
53
question concerning her legitimacy.
Furthermore, both fears
threaten to undermine patriarchal order.
If we assume that
Emily's horror at discovering what is behind the veil is
caused by her terror at discovering the dead and decaying
symbolic father of patriarchal culture, then the fear of her
own illegitimacy is linked to this fear.
Emily suspects, or
fears to assume, that the Marchioness had an affair with her
father and she is the result of this adulterous union.
The
Marchioness's assumed infidelity threaLens to expose the
arbitrary nature of the Name-of-the-Father.
As Gallop
notes, female infidelity is a threat to phallocentric
culture because it exposes the symbolic order for the false
cultural construction it is; it threatens patriarchy because
it "hollows it out, ruins it, from within" (48).
By
discovering that her mother is indeed not who she thought
she was and that her mother was an adulteress, Emily would
lose her secure patriarchal notions about family and law:
she would discover, as she appears to have done in her
experience with the veiled object, that patriarchal society
is built on arbitrary cultural constructs, not on "truth."
Emily would discover, as Silverman points out, that the
signifiers "father" and "mother" have no relation to
individual fathers or mothers (164).
Emily continues to be fascinated by the story of the
Marchioness and her mysterious death, and her search for
information about the Marchioness leads her back to Udolpho
54
and Laurentini, who has now become the nun Agnes.
Emily
first meets Agnea/Laurentini when she returns to the convent
she stayed at after her father's death.
Emily ia "pleased
to find herself once more in the tranquil retirement of the
convent," which suggests that she ia finding comfort in safe
patriarchal establishments after her experience in the
"dangerous" apace of Udolpho (566).
The convent represents
an institutional support of phallic power within which God
the Father serves as the representative of the Law of the
Father.
Within this patriarchal institution, Laurentini/Agnea,
is a disturbing presence.
Upon her first encounter with
Emily, she says to her, "You are young--you are innocent!
I
mean you are yet innocent of any great crime!--But you have
passions in your heart,--acorpions; they sleep now--beware
how awaken them!--they will sting you, even unto death!"
(574).
Laurentini/Agnes, driven mad in the convent, warns
Emily not to transgress patriarchal law, and ahe serves as a
warning of what happens when an individual attempts to
challenge the Law of the Father.
The abbess subsequently
tells Emily that Laurentini/Agnea ia an adulteress who
rebelled against an arranged marriage instigated by her
father by having an affair with "a gentleman of inferior
fortune," and then waa put in the convent by her father
(577).
Although the text reveals subsequent information
about Laurentini/Agnes, at this point, Emily associates
55
Laurentini/Agnes with the Marchioness:
these associations
can be read as displaced signifiers for the arbitrary nature
of patriarchal law which Emily discovered in the
dephallicized space of Udolpho, but fears to come to terms
with.
In the abbess's story of Laurentini/Agnes, she assumes
the same position as the Marchioness assumes in Emily's
mind:
the position of one who attempts to subvert the Name-
of-the-Father through infidelity.
In the abbess's version
of Laurentini's/Agnes's life, Laurentini/Agnes defies her
position as exchange object by becoming sexually involved
not only with someone other than her husband, but with a man
of lower social station.
Although by the late eighteenth
century arranged marriages were being challenged by
individuals due to the rise in emphasis on the individual
and on permissive modes of child-rearing, marriage outside
of one's social class was considered a violation of
patriarchal law (Stone 241).
Laurentini/Agnes, therefore,
at this point in the text assumes the status of one who
attempts to erode patriarchal law from within (though
adultery), and one who openly defies it by becoming sexually
involved with a man from a lower social class.
She also
assumes the status of a woman who, by openly defying the law
of her individual father, is punished by being imprisoned in
the patriarchal institution of religion:
she is forced to
serve the symbolic father disguised as God the Father.
56
Emily's subsequent contact with Laurentini/Agnes
solidifies the uncertainty she feels in connection with the
fear of her own illegitimacy and the fear of what she
experienced in Udolpho.
The revelation that Agnes is
Laurentini causes Emily great psychic stress (646).
It is
intriguing that this revelation comes through a miniature of
Laurentini given to her by Laurentini/Agnes.
Emily's first
fears of her own illegitimacy were connected with a
miniature of the Marchioness which Emily found among St.
Aubert's possessions after his death.
Laurentini's
miniature is associated with Udolpho, and Emily hesitates in
revealing to Laurentini/Agnes that she recognizes her from a
portrait she saw at Udolpho because she fears "to discover
too abruptly [Laurentini's] knowledge of Udolpho" (647).
Both miniatures cause Emily psychological stress and may be
seen as objects onto which Emily displaces the fear of
discovering the "secret" behind patriarchal society, that it
is a false cultural system.
When Emily reveals her
knowledge of Udolpho to Laurentini,
know me then .
Laurentini says, "You
. . and you are the daughter of the
Marchioness" (647).
Laurentini, therefore, links the two
related fears Emily has been experiencing.
Both are linked
to Emily's experience of dephallicized space within
Udolpho.
Emily is shocked by Laurentini's assertion and
exclaims:
(647).
"I am the daughter of the late Mons. St. Aubert"
Emily attempts to appeal to the memory of her
57
father, who functions as a representative of patriarchal
law, in order to reassure herself of the stability of
phallocentric society which Laurentini is threatening.
It
is not, however, Emily's paternity that is in question:
her
assertion, therefore, is a defense of the phallocentric
order itself.
Emily finds the only way to deal with the
assault on patriarchal order is to affirm that she is the
daughter of the symbolic father, that she is, as Silverman
notes, "structured in relation to the phallus" (190-191).
Laurentini responds to Emily's defense by saying, "At least
you believe so," thus further asserting the arbitrary nature
of knowledge and truth, and by implication patriarchal
culture ( 647).
Laurentini, however, having been re-submitted to
patriarchal culture and re-named the nun Agnes, serves not
only as a voice of transgression, but also as a mirror of
Emily's feelings about Udolpho.
When Emily mentions
Udolpho to Laurentini, she says, "Do not urge me on that
subject .
. . what scenes does the mention of it revive in
my fancy--scenes of happiness of suffering--and of horror!"
(648).
Laurentini, therefore, feels ambiguous about her
experiences in Udolpho much in the same way Emily does.
The
variety of feelings she describes--happiness, suffering, and
horror--all relate to the infant's pre-oedipal experiences.
Laurentini's emotions relating to Udolpho cause Emily to
experience again the horror she felt when she lifted the
58
veil from the object.
Emily becomes "lost in a labyrinth of
perplexities" and can speak only "in broken sentences"
(648).
Laurentini~s experience, therefore, mirrors Emily~s
so closely that Emily experiences the same psychological
confusion and loss of language she did in the dephallicized
space of Udolpho.
The text~s subsequent revelations about Laurentini
further solidify her role as transgressor of patriarchal
law, and further reveal her connection with Udolpho.
The
story of Laurentini is told to Emily following Laurentini's
death and the subsequent discovery that Emily is her heir.
Although the abbess at the convent relates the story to
Emily, the text presents the account in an unusual way.
text states:
The
"we shall omit the conversation that passed in
the parlour of the convent, and mingle with our relation a
brief history of LAURENTINI DI UDOLPHO" (655).
In a text structured around the subjective psychological
experience of Emily, the presentation of Laurentini's story
as a objective historical document is curious.
The story relates that Laurentini, after a permissive
and inconsistent upbringing in which she is led to believe
"she had conquered," loses both her parents in the same year
I
(655).
After this, Laurentini indulges in sexual license
within Udolpho, "disdainful of the opinion of the world"
(656).
She becomes engaged to the Marquis de Villeroi, but,
after discovering her blemished virtue, he refuses to marry
59
her, but keeps her as "his mistress" (656).
Montoni, a
distant cousin of Laurentini, attempts to win Laurentini's
hand, but Laurentini loves Villeroi with "the delirium of
Italian love" and thus refuses (656).
After discovering
that Villeroi has married, Laurentini goes to France to find
him.
She contemplates murdering Villeroi, his wife, and
herself, but upon renewing her sexual relations with him,
plots his wife's murder (658).
It is revealed that the
Marchioness married Villeroi "in obedience to the command of
her father," yet loves someone else (658).
Villeroi and
Laurentini give the Marchioness a slow-working poison.
After her death, both Laurentini and Villeroi suffer extreme
guilt.
Villeroi threatens to turn Laurentini in, but
decides instead to confine her to a convent.
The story also
reveals that the Marchioness was St. Aubert's sister, and
St. Aubert concealed this story from Emily "whose
sensibility he feared to awaken" (660).
Furthermore,
Laurentini is revealed as being the one who played the
mysterious music heard at Chateau-le-Blanc.
This story
causes Emily to be "variously affected" but releases her
"from an anxious and painful conjecture
. concerning her
birth and the honour of her parents" (663).
Laurentini's status as transgressor of patriarchal law
is reinforced by the "true" account of her life.
In her
childhood, Laurentini appears not to be submitted to
patriarchal society.
She feels she has conquered her
60
parents, which is in direct contradiction to a "normal"
development in which the individual is defined in relation
to the power of the phallus:
death of Laurentini's parents.
this becomes clear after the
Laurentini engages in sexual
license, which was culturally denied to an eighteenthcentury woman, especially a single woman who had to preserve
her virginity in order to have economic value on the
marriage market.
Laurentini's enjoyment of her sexuality
suggests a deviance from "normal" female psychological
development, in which female sexuality is negatively defined
as "lack," and the "goal" of the woman is to structure her
life in relation to the power of the phallus, through
marriage and childbirth.
Within Udolpho, however,
Laurentini is able to live "disdainful of the opinion of the
world" (656).
Laurentini's relationship with Villeroi, however,
brings her face to face with patriarchal order.
She
discovers that her loss of virginity has made marriage
impossible for her, due to the eighteenth-century double
standard which encouraged pre-marital sex for upper-class
males, but denied the same experience to upper-class females
(Stone 543-544).
Laurentini's move away from Udolpho to
France moves her closer to patriarchal order.
In Udolpho,
Laurentini can transgress patriarchal law, but outside of
it, she finds she is subject to the rules of the symbolic
father.
61
And, indeed, Laurentini's experience in France may be
read as her initiation into phallocentric culture.
Her
involvement with Villeroi and the Marchioness suggests an
oedipal triangular structure in which Laurentini learns to
desire the father and hate the mother.
Villeroi and
Laurentini, however, both transgress phallic order by
murdering the Marchioness.
If this situation is read as
Laurentini's belated entry into the symbolic order, then
Villeroi, as the father figure, transgresses the law of the
phallus by desiring Laurentini sexually.
As Luce Irigaray
observes, "once the penis itself becomes merely a means to
pleasure .
the phallus loses its power" (This Sex 193).
Laurentini not only desires the father, but kills the mother
figure to obtain him.
This transgression of patriarchal law
causes both of them extreme guilt:
Villeroi perhaps because
he has challenged the Law of the Father for his own
pleasure, by breaking up the family structure, one of the
institutional supports of the phallus; Laurentini, because
she attempts to possess the father sexually, not just desire
his phallic power.
For Laurentini, this experience may be read as her
entry into phallocentric culture.
Up to this point, she has
I
not known guilt because she has lived apart from patriarchal
law.
Indeed, in early descriptions of her life in Udolpho,
she bears similarities to the pre-oedipal child.
She is
described as living a sort of existence where she is
62
"mistress of all" (656).
This corresponds to the concept of
the imaginary where the infant feels itself part of the
world and the mother, an experience where the infant "is
dominated by identification and duality" (Silverman 157).
And since her sexual license is not described in
heterosexual terms, it might be read as the auto-eroticism
of the pre-oedipal infant, or the love of the infant for the
pre-oedipal mother.
After her initial involvement with
Villeroi, the text describes Laurentini as focusing her love
on him as an object:
"her whole heart being devoted to one
object, life became hateful to her, when she believed that
object lost" (657).
The individual's entry into the
symbolic order takes place when the individual is "taught to
value only those objects which are culturally designated as
full and complete" (Silverman 178).
For the female, this
culturally designated object is the father, who serves as
the signifier of the phallus.
After the murder, Laurentini
is denied Villeroi's body and is submitted to the phallic
order through her confinement to a convent.
Villeroi, too,
submits to patriarchal law, and in a manner similar to
Montoni's:
he gives up his sexuality for phallocentric
discourse in the forma of war and business (659).
If we read Laurentini's story in this way, it may be a
"true" document because it can be read as a representation
of the female's entry into phallocentric culture.
Unlike
the abbess's story of Laurentini, this story represents a
63
move from a pre-oedipal existence, where the female can
partake in pleasure, to an existence where the female must
submit to the Law of the Father, and is taught to view her
sexuality in a negative light.
Although, if read in this
light, Laurentini~s case is an extreme and "abnormal"
example of female psychological development, the outcome is
the same.
Laurentini~s confinement within the convent is
similar to the individual's confinement within a system
built on the Law of the Father.
St. Aubert's attempt to suppress the "truth" about
Laurentini merits further comment.
Laurentini~s
story
provides not only a startling example of the repressive
power of patriarchal order, but also exposes the "danger" of
heterosexual relationships within phallocentric society.
The Marchioness turns out not to be a transgressor of
patriarchal law, but a submissive, "model" eighteenthcentury woman, a role model, in fact, for Emily.
The fact
that she is slowly poisoned by her husband and Laurentini
hints at the essential sado-masochistic nature of
heterosexual relationships within patriarchal society.
As
Maria Ramas notes, "the essential social relations between
men and women are structured in terms of dominance and
submission, sexual union is understood accurately as a power
relation" (151-152).
This is clear in Villeroi's
relationship with the Marchioness, for she submits so
obediently that it results in her death, and also in
64
Laurentini and Villeroi's relationship, for Laurentini is
forced to submit to patriarchal order in the form of a
convent.
This dominance/submission theme is echoed earlier
in Montoni and Cheron's relationship, and as Mary Laughlin
Fawcett notes, all the heterosexual relationships in Udolpho
point to her reading of the "primal scene
dominance and submission (493).
as one of
St. Aubert's desire to
suppress the blatant examples of this in Laurentini's story
is understandable from a phallocentric point of view, as it
might make Emily reluctant to follow the "normal" course of
womanhood in phallocentric society (i.e., marriage and
childbirth) .
Interestingly, though, St. Aubert's suppression of
Laurentini's story leads Emily to thoughts which pose an
even more significant threat to patriarchal order, by
causing her to doubt her own legitimacy and hence come
closer to the realization of the arbitrary status of the
Name-of-the-Father and the Law of the Father.
The abbess's
early story about Laurentini serves the same function by
hinting at her infidelity and by presenting her as
challenging the direct representative of the symbolic
father, her own father, rather than the more displaced
father figure represented in Villeroi.
In Laurentini·s
story, therefore, the text once again reveals Udolpho as a
place where an alternative to patriarchal order may be
experienced.
Although on the surface Udolpho appears to be
65
the most dangerous area in the text, it appears to be the
only space in Udolpho which offers the possibility of
experience outside of phallocentric culture.
And from a
patriarchal perspective, the idea of experience outside of
the culture is dangerous in itself because it is a threat of
danger, not to the transgressive subject, but to the order
being transgressed.
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
Udolpho corresponds to Showalter's model of dominant
and muted discourses.
The dominant discourse manifests
itself in the apace associated with La Vallee and in the
stories associated with the "heroes" of the dominant story,
St. Aubert and Valancourt.
The muted discourse finds
expression in the apace of Udolpho and in Cheron's and
Laurentini's stories and their relationships to Emily.
While Emily's position in Udolpho is on the surface a
victimized one, Udolpho is the only area in the text where
she is given choice and where she can behave assertively.
As Sherman observes, the classic Gothic motif of the castle
~ovides a space where "the heroine can play a double
part":
she can play an active role, as she searches for the
"secret" of the castle while still remaining in a victimized
position (285).
Thus the classic Gothic space of the castle
allows Emily to explore actively dephallicized apace while
still remaining in an apparently "helpless" position which
corresponds to the conventions of the sentimental novel.
Furthermore, Emily's resistance within Udolpho often
assumes a form which deconstructs the dominant story.
While
within the dominant story Emily's silence is part of her
victimization, within the muted story (which manifests
66
67
itself in the space of the castle), it becomes a means of
combatting the phallic order, an order associated with
language.
Emily uses silence as a means of protesting
against Cheron·s attempt to submit her to the phallic order
(150):
this silence is associated with the pre-oedipal
rumblings, which represent an alternative to phallocentric
experience.
As Sherman and Holland note, the space within
the Gothic castle houses a secret "which will ultimately
prove more important than the strength of stone and iron"
until the return to the conventional space and the familiar
resolution in marriage (286).
Thus in my reading of
Udolpho, the core of the muted discourse lies in the
"secret" housed within Udolpho, the "secret" of pre-oedipal
psychological experience which threatens the patriarchal
establishment and therefore the dominant discourse.
Classic Gothic space, therefore, appears to represent a
textual area conducive to feminist psychoanalytic
criticism.
The narrator·s suppression of information about
the burned document and the veiled object opens a space
where the reader, like Emily, can project what Holland and
Sherman call "some hidden secret" (286).
Like St. Aubert·s
withholding of information from Emily, the narrator·s
withholding of information from the reader challenges the
phallic order by opening up an alternative space within the
text. The crucial scene in which Emily lifts the veil from
the object is presented in mysterious (and hence suppressed)
68
terms by the narrator, who says only that "what [the veil]
concealed was no picture" (249).
This suppression is echoed
in St. Aubert's withholding of Laurentini's story, a
document he psychologically coerces Emily into burning and
which leads her to speculations which appear to challenge
the phallic order.
Furthermore, the narrator suppresses
Laurentini's document from the reader as well, and the
narrator reveals the story not through the subjective
experience of Emily, but as an objective document.
While
in the dominant story this suppression of information is a
method of preserving the phallic order, in the muted story,
it becomes a means of exposing and thus deconstructing the
power of the phallus.
And although both suppressed stories
are eventually revealed, these explanations take place near
the end of the novel, and hence the exposure of the
arbitrary nature of phallocentrism is already accomplished.
Therefore Udolpho provides within the conventional framework
of the sentimental novel something other "escapist" novels
of the period do not, "anger, ambivalence, and resistance in
the very realization of the fantasy" (Holland and Sherman
290).
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