Quite a lot happens in this chapter as well. I wonder if we'll find, as we continue, that the chapters alternate like that? Maybe not! I dunno!
- Remember the trumpet blasts and the helmet plumes quivering? Manfred briefly feels his guts turn to water and begs the priest to intercede on his behalf.
- He grants Jerome the life of his son, and sets him free.
- Then a servant runs up to say that the trumpet blast was the announcement that a retinue of knights has shown up at the castle.
- Finding the events were mundane, Manfred immediately hardens up again, imprisons Theodore, and sends Jerome off to bring Isabella back, that being the only way he will release Theodore.
- The retinue is carrying, and please take a moment to dwell on this, an enormous sword. It is so large 100 men are needed to carry it, and they "faint under the weight of it."
- As this retinue nears the helmet, the sword bursts from their hands and lands on the ground nearby. No one can shift it again.
- The knights are representatives of Isabella's father, Frederic, who has come to claim his daughter and Otranto, which is his family's by right.
- Manfred is, of course, caught holding the bag. They tell him it's time to either give over the castle and its holdings or duel Frederic's representative.
- He stiffens up, but again as in the previous chapter, it's important to note in passing that he's not just an asshole. He accommodates the knights fairly -- at least at first -- and invites them to supper. After an awkward supper where he keeps trying to have civil conversation and they refuse to even take their armor off or lift their visors, he brings them to his study so they can converse.
- He feeds them the sob story about Hippolyta being his cousin (a lie), and they are sympathetic. He tells them his only son was just killed, on the day of his wedding (true), and he just wants to fuck off and give up everything (veracity unclear, but probably at this exact moment untrue).
- But wait! The whole reason he wanted Conrad to marry Isabella was that it would join Manfred's line to Frederic's, and -- deep breath here
- Manfred's ancestor was the squire of Frederic's ancestor Alfonso, who was the rightful holder of Otranto. Manfred's ancestor showed up from the crusades telling everyone Alfonso had died and given the holding over to him. Frederic is coming to claim his family property back. So Manfred was trying to get his family's claim to the holding legitimated, so his family would no longer be holding it wrongfully. This doesn't come up in this chapter, but he is aware of the prophecy (I think I remember this correctly) and he's trying to circumvent it.
- Yeah, the prophecy, from chapter one, remember that? It's been a while, and there's been a lot, so I don't blame you if you don't.
- While all this is happening, Jerome went back to the monastery, where, for reasons unclear, they think Hippolyta is dead. He keeps telling people that's not true, as he just saw her, but the damage is done. In even greater fear and grief, Isabella has fled the monastery. Jerome turns around and heads back to Otranto.
- So, amidst the meeting, Manfred is now offering to marry Isabella himself, not because he wants to, but because his duty compels him to do so, as his peasants need a ruler, and his only son is dead. And this way, they can avoid violence and bring together the two families. The knights aren't having it, but they haven't yet just told him to go fuck himself.
- This whole time, Manfred has been acting like Isabella is just in her room.
- So Jerome, remember, he was coming back? He forces his way into the meeting with some younger monks. He picks up what Manfred is laying down and shuts up, but the younger monks do not and immediately start talking about how Isabella has run away.
- The knights quite naturally leap up, yell at Manfred, and take off to find her. Manfred accompanies them, and orders his house servants and soldiers to find her -- but to fuck up the accommodations for the retinue so they can't help.
- OK, are you still with me? because this chapter is not over yet.
- Remember Matilda? Well she realizes the entire household guard is gone, because they're dumb (haha, classism), and so they didn't think about whether any guards should remain behind when Manfred said they should go out and search for Isabella.
- Matilda realizes too that this is the only chance she'll have to rescue Theodore.
- There's a tedious but significant scene where he refuses to go without her, and slowly realizes she is not the princess he saved the night before, but now he's super in love with her. She finally shoos him out the front gate. She's in love too, but he'll fucking die if he stays.
- He makes his way to the monastery. Jerome isn't there yet, so he decides to take a walk basically, but into the "haunted forest" with his sword and shield, because it's finally time to prove he's knight material. He comes across the haunted caves. The narrator makes sure we know Theodore assumes it's just bandits or something.
- Guess what? You'll never guess. No way.
- He finds Isabella. She's hiding in the caves. He promises to protect her.
- A knight appears, having been told by some farmers that a maiden passed into the caves. Theodore blocks the way. They fight and Theodore fucks his shit up for him.
- Remember that the knights refused to take off their helmets, even to eat? Yeah, this one is Isabella's father Frederic. He was trying to go incognito.
- They realize their error, Theodore brings Isabella, and they finally get him patched up and sent to Otranto, as the closest place to get help.
- Chapter end.
That's so much stuff. Holy shit. What I want to talk about this time is hesitation and how that feeds into the psychological factors. That will also prep us very well for the discussion on fear, horror, terror, and dread. Let me include a passage here, which I haven't done yet.
The tenderness Jerome had expressed for him concurred to confirm this reluctance; and he even persuaded himself that filial affection was the chief cause of his hovering between the castle and monastery.
Until Jerome should return at night, Theodore at length determined to repair to the forest that Matilda had pointed out to him. Arriving there, he sought the gloomiest shades, as best suited to the pleasing melancholy that reigned in his mind. In this mood he roved insensibly to the caves which had formerly served as a retreat to hermits, and were now reported round the country to be haunted by evil spirits. He recollected to have heard this tradition; and being of a brave and adventurous disposition, he willingly indulged his curiosity in exploring the secret recesses of this labyrinth. He had not penetrated far before he thought he heard the steps of some person who seemed to retreat before him.
Theodore, though firmly grounded in all our holy faith enjoins to be believed, had no apprehension that good men were abandoned without cause to the malice of the powers of darkness. He thought the place more likely to be infested by robbers than by those infernal agents who are reported to molest and bewilder travellers. He had long burned with impatience to approve his valour. Drawing his sabre, he marched sedately onwards, still directing his steps as the imperfect rustling sound before him led the way. The armour he wore was a like indication to the person who avoided him. Theodore, now convinced that he was not mistaken, redoubled his pace, and evidently gained on the person that fled, whose haste increasing, Theodore came up just as a woman fell breathless before him. He hasted to raise her, but her terror was so great that he apprehended she would faint in his arms. He used every gentle word to dispel her alarms, and assured her that far from injuring, he would defend her at the peril of his life. The Lady recovering her spirits from his courteous demeanour, and gazing on her protector, said -
"Sure, I have heard that voice before!"
"Not to my knowledge," replied Theodore; "unless, as I conjecture, thou art the Lady Isabella."
First, note that Theodore's thinking is described. This was actually somewhat rare for a lot of history, at least in western literature.
In fact, the case has been made that Hamlet is the first time that a work in the English language provided an interiority to the characters that was not immediately expressed. The soliliquy exists basically to make us aware of what characters are thinking, right? But Hamlet is engaged in a game of cat and mouse, his friends even working for the king to catch him out. The entire plot hinges on Hamlet hiding how he feels from others. There's one line that is very often cited in this topic:
But I have that within which passes show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
(Hamlet I.ii.88-9)
The very idea that a character, particularly on a stage, might feel one thing and say another, without telling the audience what they were actually thinking, was revolutionary. Think of Iago, who carefully describes the way he lies to Othello. He doesn't tell Othello he's lying, of course, but he tells us. If you've ever studied Hamlet in a classroom you've probably been asked if you think Hamlet is crazy or not. We don't know. There's no way to definitively say yes or no.
All that is relevant because Walpole loved Shakespeare, and used his plays as the perfect model of literature. And here, in Otranto, we see characters described as thinking in a complex way. We're told, it's not left as a mystery, but the depth of a character's possible feelings has been enlarged. Theodore convinces himself it's filial piety that makes him stick around -- and not, as the narrator doesn't state in that paragraph, that he wants to see Matilda again.
Then, in the scene with Theodore and Isabella, it's somewhat comedic, but it really shows off the sort of fear and hesitation that marks out the Gothic. No one is sure of anything, so they hesitate. And hesitations fuck things up -- but there's no other way to go about things, right? You have to stop and think about things before you act -- or you end up killing some innocent guy who just wants to find his daughter.
This hesitant reaction to things -- so out of the ordinary that they stun the character, basically -- survives into contemporary gothic. If you've ever been annoyed that a character in a haunted house movie hesitates and doesn't immediately flee when the ghost appears, this is why. I distinctly remember sitting in an armchair rewatching Night of the Living Dead back in grad school and feeling as though an idea really did click, like I could hear it click, because the main character is so "useless" in that movie because she's Isabella, she's the classic gothic protagonist. This is how genre can help define the way characters behave. And remember, Walpole was pressing back against the way characters in chivalric romances behaved. He wanted to intervene in the genre, make the characters more realistic, but still have what he saw as the good stuff, ghosts and knights and duels and shit.
The gothic is basically about taking one's worldview and destabilizing it. The characters become increasingly uncertain about everything, because everything they had taken to be true is not -- there are ghosts, Jerome's son is alive.
