A Sicilian Romance

Attempts by fathers to oppress their daughters form the basis of the novel’s plot and emphasize patriarchal gender roles that dictated society when the novel was written. The marquis sees himself as the ruler of his family, even choosing to imprison a wife when she becomes “dull” and inconvenient for him. As for his daughter, the marquis informs Julia brusquely of the fate he has chosen for her:

The Duke de Luovo has solicited your hand. An alliance so splendid was beyond my expectation. You will receive the distinction with the gratitude it claims, and prepare for the celebration of the nuptials. [...] [T]he joy occasioned by a distinction so unmerited on your part, ought to overcome the little feminine weakness you might otherwise indulge (48).

The marquis’s speech encapsulates several patriarchal tenets about the role of women: that they exist solely to be wives and daughters, that their pleasure should derive from furthering men’s ambitions, and that they are generally weak and unworthy of the little attention men give them. Julia’s multiple efforts to disabuse her father and the duke of these notions are ignored, and her predicament is replicated in several relationship stories in the novel. Louisa and Orlando, Cornelia and Angelo, and the nameless young woman and the cavalier have all been subject to the whims of patriarchal oppression. For each of these, there are only unhappy choices: flight, death, loveless marriage, or dedication to a nunnery.

Patriarchal oppression of women is also revealed during Julia’s time at the monastery, where she finds herself surrounded by women but still answering to the dictates and whims of the Abate. Like the marquis, the Abate addresses Julia with fatherly condescension, lectures, and the suggestion that she cannot make her own decisions. She finds herself caught between two patriarchal forces that aim to control and subordinate her, and her only escape is through the help of her brother or a marriage to Hippolitus. Julia seeks her own freedom, but only men can give it to her.

When Ferdinand contradicts patriarchal authority and tells Julia to “[f]ly [...] from the authority of a father who abuses his power, and assert the liberty of choice, which nature assigned you” (53), he is expressing a rare viewpoint for his time in the 16th century and Radcliffe’s in the 18th. However, Julia clings to another value of her time: the purity of her good reputation, “which was dearer to her than existence” (54). By asserting her own independence and rejecting obedience, society suggests that Julia runs the risk of sacrificing a key part of what it means to be a woman.

Though the novel suggests that both Ferdinand and Julia are rewarded for their idealism with their happy fate at the novel’s conclusion, there are so many unhappy examples of patriarchal power ruling the day that Julia’s happy ending is shown to be the exception, not the rule.

In Gothic literature, nature is often a representation of the sublime and transcendental. It emphasizes a connection between the natural world and the human experience that is separate from religion or other institutions. In the early chapters of the novel, nature is a transformative force, in which Julia can take refuge when the demands of family and civilized society overwhelm her: “The beauty of the scene, the soothing murmur of the high trees, waved by the light air which overshadowed her, and the soft shelling of the waves that flowed gently in upon the shores, insensibly sunk her mind into a state of repose” (37). Through descriptive passages like these, nature is presented as capable “in her most sublime and striking attitudes” of elevating “the mind of the beholder to enthusiasm [and] reverential awe” (91). Even at their most tormented, the characters (even those as evil or loathsome as the Duke de Luovo) never fail to find solace in a lovely sunset, shelter in a shaded wood, or hope in a ray of light.

Radcliffe’s romanticization of the natural world contrasts with her more critical views of the civilized world in general and Catholicism in particular. Naples, a large and bustling city, is where the marquis and Maria de Vellorno choose to spend their time in dissolute pursuits, rather than the Sicilian countryside where Emilia and Julia are cloistered in solitary innocence. Throughout the novel, mansions and monasteries, those “monument[s] of monkish superstition and princely magnificence” (101), are often falling into ruin, suggesting that human institutions fall to decay. Meanwhile, Radcliffe elevates the experience of nature to something divine, and when Madame involuntarily utters the words, “from Nature up to Nature’s God” (91), she is making explicit the link between the natural world and the divine.

Radcliffe uses vivid figurative language to develop the motif of Landscapes to provide a sense of nature mirroring human emotion. When the duke is frustrated in his search, a storm arrives. When Hippolitus is confused in his search for Julia, he finds himself literally lost in the woods, at a fork in the road. When the day begins clear and cloudless, Julia finds hope again. The text’s enthusiasm for nature is also present in the odes and other poems Radcliffe includes throughout the novel, in which the natural world is used to express Julia’s innermost thoughts and longings. Nature is represented as a purer and more honest way of representing human experience than other institutions; while the narrative frequently says that it would not be possible to describe the emotions overtaking the characters, Radcliffe is never at a loss for words to describe the world around them.