Alice Labourg, University of Rennes 2
The publication of Icônes gothiques : le portrait dans les romans d’Ann Radcliffe (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2026) coincides with the ongoing project “Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now”. I had no idea. I was so engrossed in the writing of my book that it completely passed me by. I only became aware of it, a couple of weeks ago, as I was checking Angela Wright’s email address online to inform her of the release. Serendipity.
Ann Radcliffe, Then: I met Angela twice, in Sheffield. The first time was at the Eighteenth Century Gothic conference which she organised in 2008. I was just beginning my research and it provided me with a stimulating springboard. The second time was in 2014, at the “Ann Radcliffe@250” conference, a memorable event entirely devoted to the “Great Enchantress” which she also organised. The deadline for abstract submission was November 30th, 2013, the very day I defended my PhD on Ann Radcliffe and the Pictorial Imagination. Serendipity, again.
Ann Radcliffe, Now: When Angela enthusiastically answered my message and suggested I should write a blog entry for the “Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now” project website to present my book, I was thrilled! This definitively fits, no such monograph on the subject has ever been written…
Icônes gothiques aims to explore the various forms taken by portraiture in Radcliffe’s novels. Departing from the historical and cultural approach prevalent in Gothic Studies (see Kamilia Elliott’s Portraiture and British Gothic Fiction, The Rise of Picture Identification, 1764-1835), the book adopts a formal text-image perspective, combining research in intermediality (Liliane Louvel) to visual arts, linguistics, stylistics, gender studies and psychoanalysis.
The first part (L’object pictural) focuses on portraits as material objects. As such, they are active agents in the unfolding of the plot and the creation of mysteries. Anecdotal in the earlier novels, full length portraits and miniatures are central to The Mysteries of Udolpho. They shape true pictorial enigmas, functioning both as exhibits of the “crime” and as clues in the solving of the “case”, turning the Gothic romance into a proto-detective novel.
Everyone remembers Udolpho’s terrifying “veiled picture” but miniatures too contribute to the creation of the Gothic. They feature in all Radcliffe’s novels. As bourgeois icons, they reflect their aesthetical, semiotic and cultural values within the text. These sentimental and intimate objects are turned into fetishes, materialising the pre-oedipal attachment to the maternal figure (the Marchioness de Villeroi in The Mysteries of Udolpho, Julia’s mother in A Sicilian Romance, Adeline’s mother in The Romance of the Forest). They may also serve as go-betweens in interpersonal relationships, or be the recipient of perverted sentimental “investment” and base economical interest.
The second part (De la transparence de l’image à l’opacité de la représentation) deals with portraits as images and representations. In painting, portraiture is a specific genre and mode of representation. The literary text symbolically appropriates its codes to express its own questionings, from the transparency of the pictorial sign to the opacity of Gothic representation. Portraits are mirrors which question the identity of the female subject in relation to the dead maternal figure, a central theme in the female Gothic. The issue of likeness, which is at the very heart of portraiture in the visual arts, is explored through the theme of the “maternal imprint”1 which visibly shows in the portraits of mothers, and on the living faces of daughters seen as portraits.
The heroine is caught in a web of uncanny resemblances which she often resists and denies. Likeness is regarded as an “objective” proof of filiation and a tool for identification. Emily (The Mysteries of Udolpho), in particular, has to go beyond the pictorial “mirror stage”2 to access her own identity by recognising her own image in the maternal other. The abjection of otherness is emblematised in the unveiling of the veiled picture. This “portrait” which is not a portrait stands as the ultimate Gothic icon, not just as an object of terror but as a “metapicture”,3 a picture which reflects the functioning of the literary text as a pictorial representation.
The final part of the book (Entre figurations et défigurations, le portrait dans le prisme du texte) tackles portraits as “iconotexts”,4 “virtual” pictures created by words. Pictorial clichés are used to encode stereotypical representations of gender identities. The Gothic heroine is typically described as an icon of sensibility whose pictorial model is made explicit in The Italian with the reference to Guido Reni to describe Olivia, the heroine’s mother.5 Masculine portraits evoke Salvator Rosa’s banditti,6 ambiguously glorifying a sublime and heroic form of virility which makes the Gothic villain appear more attractive as a fantasised “dark lover”7 rather than the pale, “feminised” sentimental hero.
Radcliffe’s “word-painting” also freezes characters into pictorial poses and tableaux which may recall actual paintings as in the burial scene of Madame Montoni with its mention of Domenichino’s “dark pencil”8 (The Mysteries of Udolpho). Reality indeed often seems like a representation. Portraiture even pervades the workings of the mind in a form of “psychological picturesque”. Painting is used as a metaphor to describe feelings and emotions as well as expressive physiognomies, often hidden but also revealed by a veil (double portrait of Schedoni in The Italian). The veil in itself is a metatextual image of painting, and of Gothic representation. Wrapped in sheer or opaque fabrics, bodies are ultimately figured and disfigured in the shift from the pictorial to the spectral.
Portraiture, along with landscape descriptions, thus appears as a defining element of the Radcliffean Gothic, the pictorial quality of Radcliffe’s writing singling her out in the very canon she helped to establish. Just like suspense and terror, it partakes in the long-lasting impression of her work on the readers’ minds, now, in our image-saturated world, as then, when she was praised by Walter Scott as “a painter with the spirit of a poet”.
I have followed other pursuits since the defence of my thesis, thinking that I had escaped the Gothic maze. The publication of this book has proved otherwise. The Great Enchantress had cast a spell on me. Back then, another volume on landscape was also planned, as a pendant pair. Who knows what other serendipity may eventually preside over its birth…
Alice Labourg, PhD, is a teaching fellow at University of Rennes 2, France. Her research focuses on the relationships between literature and the visual arts. Besides Icônes gothiques, she has written various papers on Ann Radcliffe.
- Susan Greenfield, Mothering Daughters, Novels and the Politics of Family Romance, Frances Burnett To Jane Austen, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2002.
↩︎ - For Jacques Lacan, the mirror stage is part of the formation of the ego in which the infant first identifies with its own specular image.
↩︎ - Thomas W. J., Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Theory, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994.
↩︎ - Liliane Louvel, Poetics of the Iconotext, Karen Jacobs (ed.), Farnham, Ashgate Publishing, 2011.
↩︎ - Guido Reni (1575-1642), Italian Baroque painter appreciated at the time for his representation of sentimental femininity. The context of the episode recalls Guido’s representation of St. Cecilia in ecstasy with her eyes turned to heaven.
↩︎ - Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), Italian Baroque painter much appreciated at the time for his “Landscapes with Banditti” seen as visual illustrations of the Burkean sublime.
↩︎ - Cynthia Griffin Wolff, “The Radcliffean Gothic Model: A Form for Feminine Sexuality”, Juliann Fleenor (ed.), The Female Gothic, Montreal, London, Eden Press Inc., 1983.
↩︎ - Domenicho Zampieri (1581-1641), Italian Baroque painter famous for his contribution to the development of landscape painting. The episode may have been inspired by a copy of Domenichino’s The Liberation of Saint Peter (1604), a lost work characterised by a strong chiaroscuro. See my chapter in Jacub Lipski, Jacek Mydla (eds.), The Enchantress of Words, Sounds and Images, Anniversary Essays on Ann Radcliffe, Palo Alto, AcademiaPress, 2015.
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