Ann Radcliffe
July 9th, 1764
In 1797, just after the release of her final work to be published in her lifetime, The Italian, the English pioneer of the Gothic Novel, Ann Radcliffe, went mad.
Stark, staring, absolutely bonkers, raving mad.
She spent the last 26 years of her life, a recluse, locked in an attic, dribbling into a bowl of porridge, her puny female brain turned to a confused jelly by the ravishing, ravaging, tortured prose of her own literary creations. Nobody ever saw her in public again, the gates to her dilapidated seaside mansion locked firmly shut against prying eyes by her evil husband, whom she had married at the age of 23, William Radcliffe. William, torn apart by the jealousy of his rich and adored wife, couldn’t stand that for The Italian, she had received a payment of £800, three times his annual salary, a figure that made her the best paid author of her time. And so, he had her committed to the attic where she lived out her final days until dying of a broken heart or some shit.
With no explanation available to her legion of adoring fans, speculation as to what William had done to her, and just how insane her own creations had sent her, spiralled. Her own physician gave details of her fragile mental state. Ann’s own mind, which was seemingly capable of creating the rich and vibrant literary landscapes that saw her called the Shakespeare of the romantic novel and the most universally admired and popular writer of her day, simply could not cope with the worlds she had created, for some fucking reason, probably because she was a woman and therefore a bit weak.
So, she went mad.
Because that’s what women who don’t want to talk to you are. Mentally ill. If a woman just wants you to leave her alone, thanks very much, and live a nice quiet life by the sea with the husband she called her ‘nearest relative and best friend’, without any kids, spending the money she had earned, without being bothered by anyone, then she must have gone absolutely insane.
Because what’s the point in being a woman unless everyone, especially the public, gets to look at you and then tell you either how fabulous you are or how fabulous you aren’t, as if that’s any of their fucking business?
Great Garbo famously went mad, her insanity popularized for all eternity by famously just asking people to leave her alone now, please, thanks. She, too, famously never left her house, apart from when she did, every day, to go for a walk around New York City, one of the least private places on Earth, or to go on vacation in the South of France, or to attend dinner at the Whitehouse. And people were fascinated by her desire to be alone, too, because she was famous and therefore, they thought they owned a bit of her.
Some men turn somewhat reclusive sometimes, but then they just become a weird eccentric and nobody really wants to get a look at them. Some, like Howard Hughes, do go a little bit funny, but mostly a man who just disappears into the private life they love are just retired, or fishing, or ‘working on their next project’. The standards are different.
Joseph Heller famously wrote Catch-22 and then did nothing much for the best part of the next 15 years apart from come up with the best answer to an interview question ever. When an interviewer remarked that he’d never written anything as good as Catch-22 since, he simply replied “Well, who has?”.
Ann Radcliffe didn’t go mad. She just spent the rest of her life doing what she wanted.
She was born in London in 1764, the only child of William and Ann Ward and the family moved to Bath in 1772. She was 23 when she married William Radcliffe, a journalist and they moved back to London for his work as editor of the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, a campaigning publication that championed the French Revolution and freedom of the press.
Theirs was a happy marriage. They had no children and when William was away working in the evening, Ann began to write. She published her first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, aged 25, which was an immediate success. The money she earned allowed William to quit his job and they travelled, with their dog Chance, around Europe, with Ann publishing the travelogue A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 as a result. They returned to England the following year, William took up another editor’s post and Ann published The Italian and then they lived happily ever after.
No really. They did. The rumors that Ann had been secluded in a house in rural Derbyshire were offset by her appearance every Sunday at St James’ Church, her frequent visits for daily walks in the sunshine in Hyde Park and her love of the opera. She lived the life of the literary gentlewoman and found pleasure in running her household.
She continued to write, including poetry and another novel, Gaston de Blondeville, and she, William and Chance took frequent carriage journeys around the country, in pleasant luxury and idleness, just enjoying themselves.
Which isn’t good enough for some people, especially if you’re a famous woman, even in the 1820s. Women have to be available, even if it’s only to gawp at and criticize. Any woman who doesn’t want to be available to be gawped at and criticized is a lunatic or mentally ill.
Just like women who, say, would rather meet a bear in the woods than a strange man. They must have something wrong with them. Why wouldn’t they wish to be with a man? Don’t the stupid bitches know that bears are dangerous? They deserve everything they get! Let the bears pay for their dates then, fuck them…..
That particular train has never been late.
Ann died after catching a chest infection in 1823, aged 58. She had suffered from asthma all her life. William died in 1830.
Gaston de Blondeville was published after her death, along with some of her poetry and an essay of her writings explaining the differences between terror and horror, On the Supernatural in Poetry, which still to this day is a great tool for horror movie fans to explain the special nuances that make a good horror movie better than a bad one.
Terror and Horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them.
Her work featured strong female leads who broke out of traditional molds to become the dominant heroine figures. She painted vivid literary Gothic landscapes, pioneered the narrative of Catholic guilt in the Gothic novel, brought the supernatural alive and inspired Walter Scott, Edgar Allen Poe, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.
In 1875, Paul Féval wrote a story starring Radcliffe as a vampire hunter, titled La Ville Vampire: Adventure Incroyable de Madame Anne Radcliffe.
Dostoyevsky remembered how:
I used to spend the long winter hours before bed listening (for I could not yet read), agape with ecstasy and terror, as my parents read aloud to me from the novels of Ann Radcliffe. Then I would rave deliriously about them in my sleep.
Her works may have driven Fyodor Dostoyevsky slightly mad, but they didn’t send her mad.
By contrast, they made her seemingly very happy.
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