Content Synopsis

“The Castle of Otranto” takes place in the principality of Otranto, ruled by the prince Manfred. Manfred's castle is inhabited by his wife Hippolita, their daughter Matilda, and their sickly son Conrad. Conrad is about to be wed to Isabella, the daughter of Frederic, Count of Vicenza. Manfred is eager for this wedding, since Hippolita can no longer produce male heirs and he desires to secure his family's rule over Otranto through a grandson. However, the servants also believe that Manfred's urgency is due to a prophecy: “That the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it” (17). This preoccupation with property (and, correspondingly, with the integrity of ancestral lines) manifests itself throughout the novel, and became a recurrent trope in later Gothic fiction.

Before the wedding can occur, a harbinger of the prophecy's fulfillment appears when a giant helmet falls from the sky and crashes into the courtyard, killing Conrad. This event initiates two scenes that reveal both Manfred's character and Walpole's mechanism for generating terror. First, while Hippolita and Matilda grieve for Conrad, Manfred is preoccupied with the helmet: “The horror of the spectacle, the ignorance of all around how this misfortune happened, and above all, the tremendous phenomenon before him, took away the prince's speech” (19). He shows no concern for his family members, but instead asks that Isabella be looked after. When an unknown peasant wanders into the scene, remarking that the helmet resembles that on the statue of Alfonso the Good—the former ruler of Otranto—an outraged Manfred imprisons him under the helmet. Second, Manfred summons Isabella and proposes to her: “Since I cannot give you my son, I offer you myself” (25). In his desperation to secure an heir, Manfred plots to divorce Hippolita and marry Isabella in Conrad's place. Isabella had no fondness for Conrad, because their marriage was one of arrangement, not love. However, she finds marriage to Manfred even less appealing, and she recoils from him.

The incestuous overtones of this second scene are overlaid with the suggestion of (sexual) violence as Manfred ignores Isabella's protests and seizes her hands. The tension of this encounter is heightened by its setting. Isabella, “half-dead with fright and horror,” pulls away; as Manfred pursues her, the moon “gleamed in at the opposite casement [and] presented to his sight the plumes of the fatal helmet, which rose to the height of the windows, waving backwards and forwards in a tempestuous manner” (25). The moonlight, the empty castle corridor, and the huge and threatening proportions of supernatural helmet contribute to the different terrors felt by Isabella and Manfred. The effect of this Gothic fear is physical. During Manfred's proposal, Isabella's hands are cold; a moment later, on viewing the helmet, Manfred is speechless. Similar somatic effects characterize scenes of fear throughout the novel: women faint, characters are rendered speechless or breathless, and blood runs cold. These physical effects are described to induce similar sensations in the audience, transferring terror from character to reader. At the same time, certain tropes are associated with these effects—such as darkness, or immensity.

Isabella flees Manfred only to find herself in another typically Gothic setting: the murky cavern below the castle courtyard. There, she encounters a young man who helps her escape through a trapdoor. As she follows a secret passage to the nearby convent, the young man delays Manfred and is revealed to be the peasant, who has escaped from beneath the helmet. Suspicious of the peasant's connections with Isabella, Manfred is nonetheless impressed by his noble and brave manner. He sends him to a room for the night and, in a ploy to catch Isabella, orders his guards to let no one leave the castle.

As dawn approaches, Matilda, and her servant Bianca discuss courtship. Bianca tells her about the peasant and his resemblance to the portrait of Alfonso that Matilda so admires. Suddenly, they hear him in a nearby room. Through the window, they speak with him and learn of Isabella's flight. Matilda is intrigued by the man's presence and possible affection for Isabella. Meanwhile, the friar, Jerome, arrives from the convent. He has taken in Isabella and approaches Manfred about her plight. As the men talk, Manfred suspects a love affair between the peasant and Isabella, and orders the young man's execution. The youth, who introduces himself as Theodore, is hardly given the opportunity to defend himself. However, as he kneels to be executed, Jerome sees a mark on his shoulder and joyfully claims him as his son.

In the ensuing confusion, a herald arrives at the castle. He claims that the “knight of the gigantic sabre” has arrived, representing Frederic, Isabella's father, and challenging Manfred as “the usurper” of Otranto (61). The knight accuses Manfred of bribing Isabella's guardians for her hand in marriage to Conrad and demands that he abdicate his seat at Otranto. Here, the history of Otranto is revealed: Alfonso, ruler of Otranto, had died without issue, leaving Frederic's and Manfred's ancestors in dispute over its ownership. Manfred's more powerful ancestors had won, but in arranging Isabella's marriage to Conrad—and in hoping to gain her as his own bride—Manfred had planned to unite the warring lines. To earn Frederic's approval of this plan, Manfred invites the knight in. An enormous retinue—including “an hundred gentlemen bearing an enormous sword”—enters, laying the giant weapon next to the helmet (65). These giant objects are harbingers of the prophecy, but also emphasize the problem of inheritance at the heart of the story, and the supernatural forces intervening to establish rightful ownership.

Meanwhile, Isabella has disappeared from the convent, and Matilda frees Theodore from a chamber in the castle. Upon setting eyes on each other, the two fall in love, but Matilda gives him a suit of armor and convinces him to flee. In the nearby woods, Theodore encounters Isabella and mistakenly defends her from the knight of the gigantic saber, who has gone looking for her. Theodore attacks him, only to learn he is Frederic himself in disguise. The two men make amends and return to the castle with Isabella. There, Frederic tells of a dream warning him about Isabella's safety, and his encounter with a hermit who directed him to the gigantic saber. It is inscribed with a cryptic message about Isabella being rescued by “Alfonso's blood” (82).

All parties retire for the night, and Isabella and Matilda discuss their mutual interest in Theodore. Hippolita interrupts their conversation to inform them that Manfred has promised Matilda to Frederic. Both of the young women are dismayed, and Isabella reacts to the news by divulging Manfred's secret plan to divorce Hippolita. Hippolita immediately goes to Jerome for counsel. At Alfonso's tomb, they discuss Manfred's plan for a double marriage, which Jerome opposes. There is a statue of Alfonso at the tomb, and this suddenly and ominously begins to drip blood. Jerome interprets this as a sign that the blood of Alfonso's line will not mix with that of Manfred's.

Manfred continues to suspect a love affair between Theodore and Isabella, and questions Bianca about Isabella's affections. She cannot carry out his request for spy work, however, because she sees a giant hand at the bottom of the castle stairs. Frederic, accused by an increasingly paranoid Manfred of conspiring against him, refuses to agree with the proposed double marriage. Yet, he still feels lust for Matilda. Entering the castle chapel, he sees a figure in robes. It turns on him to reveal “the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton” (106): it is the ghost of the hermit from the woods. The figure admonishes Frederic for allowing his desire for Matilda to distract him from the sabre's message.

Meanwhile, Manfred is informed that Theodore is alone with a woman at the convent chapel. Thinking it is Isabella, he steals upon them and stabs the woman—who turns out to be Matilda. Overwhelmed with regret, he tries to kill himself. He is prevented, and all return to the castle. There, as everyone grieves over the dying Matilda, Theodore and Jerome reveal that Theodore is the direct descendant of Alfonso. Manfred, in turn, admits that his grandfather, Ricardo, poisoned Alfonso and inherited Otranto through a fraudulent will. In exchange for founding a church and two convents, St. Nicholas allowed Ricardo to retain his rule in keeping with the conditions of the prophecy. As soon as Matilda dies, the castle walls fall, and the giant figure of Alfonso appears to pronounce Theodore the rightful heir to Otranto. The prophecy fulfilled, Manfred and Hippolita retire to nearby convents, leaving Otranto to Theodore, who, after a time of grieving over Matilda, enters a happy marriage with Isabella.

Historical Context

William Marshal, Gent, originally published “The Castle of Otranto” in 1764 as the translation of a medieval Italian tale. This first edition included a preface describing “English Baron” (1778), “Otranto's” self-proclaimed “literary offspring.” In 1765, a second edition was published, with a new preface and the initials “H. W.” While these additions revealed the text was fiction, perhaps the most significant change was the new subtitle: “A Gothic Story.” This provided a name for a literary genre Walpole described in his second preface as a “blend” of the older romance and the contemporary novel (9). In contrast to the positive reception of the first edition, this second edition was derided as a ruse (see, Monthly Review 32 (1765): 97–99, 394). However, Walpole's slim novel spawned a long line of imitators, beginning with Clara Reeve's “Old English Baron.”

The British eighteenth century was shaped by the Enlightenment, the intellectual movement emphasizing rational thought as a means of progress beyond the superstitions and insular traditions of the past. Enlightenment thought influenced the ideologies behind the French and American revolutions, which in turn had an impact on Britain's national identity, challenging Britain's power as an empire and calling into question the validity of its social organization—class divisions based on a feudal system of land ownership and inheritance. Walpole's theme of property passing into the wrong hands is in keeping with this historical context. As E. J. Clery notes, the novel is set in the feudal past, but addresses the “live issue” of property inheritance, illustrating the tensions between the rising middle classes and the established landed ones, as well as the philosophical “conflict between aristocratic and bourgeois ideals of social being” (Walpole xxxi). These conflicts, and in particular the question of the divine rights of kings, drove the revolutions in France and America. Because Walpole's plot ultimately upholds the principle of primogeniture, restoring Otranto to Alfonso's closest heir and ousting Manfred as an upstart usurper, it can be read as a conservative reaction to these changes. At the same time, however, it can also be understood “as a study of revolutionary politics: it celebrates the overthrow of a tyrant, after all” (Ellis 34). Perhaps the most compelling reading of the novel, however, emphasizes not its politics but its theme of terror in portraying “the nightmarish collapse of a system of power that contains the seeds of its own destruction” (Walpole xxxii–xxxiii). The fear so central to this Gothic novel could reflect the anxieties stirred up by a long century of turbulence and uncertainty.

Societal Context

Walpole's generation of fear is clearly linked to certain tropes, such as the landscape (the gleaming moon), darkness (murky passageways), and size (the immense helmet). This is in keeping with the aesthetic principle of the sublime, which was defined in 1757 by Edmund Burke, as “the strongest emotion the mind is capable of feeling” (Burke 36). Whereas beauty stimulates feelings of pleasure, the sublime finds its source in “whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain,” or “operates in a manner analogous to terror” (Burke 36). Although Burke names awe or “astonishment” as the primary quality of the sublime, he emphasizes that this awe is necessarily tinged with fear or “terror” (Burke 53). Thus, whatever suggests a sense of power and force—such as the grandeur of mountains—is a source of the sublime. In using many of the sources named by Burke, such as “obscurity” and “magnitude,” Walpole stimulates awe in the reader in order to create the sense of being overwhelmed or overpowered—in short, to create fear. Many of Burke's other sources of the sublime, such as power, privation, pain, difficulty, and physical sensation, are clearly central to Walpole's plot, and recur in later Gothic novels. The supernatural, a distinguishing characteristic of Gothic novels, is also used to stimulate fear-tinged awe. As a sign of overwhelming, unknown forces, the supernatural is also a source of the sublime.

Accordingly, the discourse of the sublime shaped Gothic conventions, although it was employed for different purposes by different authors. In its heyday in the 1790s, the Gothic novel was transformed by Ann Radcliffe, whose deliberate use of sublime landscapes was “partly a desire to exploit contemporary aesthetic fashions and partly an attempt to pitch [her] work toward the high end of the literary market, for sublimity and terror were associated with tragedy and epic, the two most prestigious literary forms” (Miles 43). Although Radcliffe's Gothic novels mark a departure from Walpole's sensational and heavy-handed plot, they also reveal how his “blend” of different literary traditions set many of the conventions for a definable genre. Gothic novels were best-sellers in the last decades of the eighteenth century; they shaped the publishing industry and reading public, influenced the literature of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and generated a lively and ongoing critical discourse, one that generally credits Walpole's text as the first Gothic novel.

Religious Context

Religion represents protection, justice, and revelation in Walpole's plot. Characters find peace and safe haven in convents and seek counsel from friars. Jerome provides guidance and protection for innocents, but more importantly, he holds the information needed for the plot's resolution. Jerome is privy to the hidden history of Alfonso's line, persistently referring to the prophecy that will be Manfred's undoing, and ultimately reveals why Theodore is Otranto's true ruler. (It is another religious figure, St. Nicholas, who sets the prophecy in motion in the first place, and who appears at the end of the story to show that justice has been done.) It is unclear if this representation of religious figures as benevolent authorities is ironic or not, given Walpole's two prefaces. While the first disdainfully suggests the tale was written by a priest seeking to “confirm the populace” of the dark ages “in their ancient errors and superstitions” (5), the second reveals that the tale and “William Marshal” are counterfeits. In any case, Walpole's representation of a dark age shaped by religious superstition is in keeping with an eighteenth-century Gothic revival—an interest in the ornate architecture and imaginative literature of the Middle Ages (Walpole x). The text's double-edged tone might reflect the double-edged attitude toward more “barbaric” times: “on the one hand, a growing enthusiasm for the superstitious fancies of the past; and on the other, a sense that this kind of imaginative freedom was forbidden, or simply impossible, for writers of the enlightened present” (Walpole xi).

Scientific & Technological Context

Science and technology do not play an explicit role in the story; although the text is medieval, the setting is in keeping with the eighteenth-century Gothic revival. In this respect, the text could be read as a reaction to the scientific advances and empiricism of the Enlightenment, or as a critique of the superstitions—the lack of scientific rationalism and progress—of the past.

Biographical Context

Horace Walpole (1717–97) was born Horatio Walpole in London, and educated at Eton and Cambridge. As a young man he was friends with the poet Thomas Gray, and the pair completed the Grand Tour of Italy and France in 1739–41. During this trip, Walpole was elected to a place in Parliament, representing a borough in Cornwall. His father, Sir Robert Walpole, is considered the First Prime Minister of England. Sir Robert's retired from politics in 1742, and was given the title of Earl of Orford. His son Horace continued to be a Member of Parliament for twenty-five years, and became the fourth Earl of Orford in 1791.

In addition to his political career, Horace Walpole was also an active writer, antiquarian, and social commentator. In 1749, he purchased the villa Strawberry Hill near Twickenham, and refurbished the building in the style of, an extravagant neo-Gothic villa. Strawberry Hill embodied Walpole's particular interest in Gothic architecture. This building influenced the Gothic revival of the eighteenth century and was also a tourist attraction. It was there, he claimed, he had the dream that inspired his Gothic novel:

Walpole established a printing press at Strawberry Hill, where he published “The Castle of Otranto.” He also wrote the Gothic drama “The Mysterious Mother” (1768), and published several volumes on painting and catalogues of major collections of art and antiques. He began writing his memoirs in 1751, while living at Strawberry Hill, and continued writing them until 1791. These writings, and Walpole's many letters to his contemporaries, provide a first-account of Georgian politics and society. His last publication, in 1768, was about King Richard III. In the same year, he retired from Parliament.

Despite a successful and multi-faceted career, Walpole's life was affected by sensationalism and scandal. He was known for being effeminate, wrote pamphlets and historical accounts that outraged politicians and historians alike, and was (wrongly) implicated in the suicide of Thomas Chatterton in 1770. He suffered gout for much of his life, and died without in 1797.

Works Cited

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