The Castle of Otranto - Summary

The Castle of Otranto Summary, Character List and Themes The Castle of Otranto tells the story of Prince Manfred and his family, which includes his wife (Hippolita) and his children (Conrad and Matilda). The story begins on the wedding day of Manfred’s son, Conrad, and the Princess Isabella. The wedding does not take place, however, for Conrad is crushed to death by a giant helmet moments before the event. Among the crowd is a handsome young peasant named Theodore, who muses that the helmet is like the one from the statue of Otranto’s founder, Alfonso. Though he has no reason to truly suspect Theodore of Conrad’s death, Manfred makes a big to-do about the peasant’s putative guilt, and imprisons him under the helmet. The death of his son terrifies Manfred that a prophecy that the castle will pass on from their family is beginning to come true. Manfred plots to divorce his wife, Hippolita, on the grounds that she has failed to bear him a proper heir (he also claims they are related) and marry Isabella himself. Even though strange things begin to happen in the castle, Manfred is not deterred. When Manfred tells this to Isabella, she is horrified and flees into a passage beneath the castle. There she meets Theodore, newly escaped from the helmet; he aids her in escaping to a nearby convent. The search for Isabella continues until Manfred confronts Theodore in the vault of the castle. Theodore says he has no knowledge of Isabella, but Manfred’s pride and rage persist. Matilda hears Theodore’s woeful singing and speaks to him briefly, admiring his piety and wondering if she can help him. Father Jerome arrives from the convent and assures Manfred of Isabella’s safety, but he adds that Manfred’s plan to divorce his wife and marry the young girl offends Heaven. Manfred orders the execution of Theodore. As Theodore removes his shirt, Jerome recognizes the mark below his shoulder and identifies him as his own son, lost for years. Theodore, then, is the heir to Jerome, who was once the count of Falconara before his house was ruined and he turned to religion. Jerome begs for his son’s life, and Manfred offers to spare him in exchange for the release of Isabella. They are interrupted as a herald enters, proclaiming that a great knight has arrived to rescue Isabella. The wily Manfred invites the mysterious knight, whose face is not seen, to palaver. The conversation ends and the search for Isabella recommences. In the meantime, Matilda frees Theodore from his imprisonment and helps him arm himself and flee the castle. Theodore finds Isabella in the woods and hides her in a cave, vowing to protect her. The great knight arrives and demands the girl, but Theodore, thinking he is an ally of Manfred’s, engages him in battle. Wounded seriously, the knight says he is Frederic, Isabella’s father who was presumed dead in the Holy Land. Isabella weeps over him, and Theodore helps her take him back to the castle. Back in the castle, Frederic’s wounds are declared not too serious, and Manfred works on convincing him to wed Matilda if he will get to marry Isabella. His intention is to keep Otranto in his name, as he knows that Frederic’s line has also claimed lineage from Alfonso. Frederic is wary at first, but he is very attracted to Matilda and therefore agrees. Manfred tells Hippolita the truth about his plans, and, ever the dutiful wife, she seeks counsel from Jerome about a divorce. She also tells Matilda about her planned nuptials to Frederic, but by this time Matilda has realized she is in love with Theodore and is quite dismayed. Manfred believes that Isabella will be meeting with Theodore for a tryst at the church, so he takes a knife with him. It is actually Matilda who is meeting Theodore, but Manfred does not know this and accidentally kills his own daughter. Shock reverberates through the family and everyone else. Theodore is eventually revealed to be the true prince of Otranto with Matilda dead, and the grieving Manfred is left to repent. He abdicates the principality and retires to religion along with Hippolita. Theodore becomes prince and is married to Isabella, for she is the only one who can truly understand his sorrow. Character List Manfred A lord? A familial dictator? Manfred is both. As The Castle of Otranto's antagonist, Manfred the tyrannical husband of Hippolita and the obsessive father of Matilda and Conrad. The tyranny he inflicts upon his family and those visiting his castle make him a prime example of a Gothic villain. His passion obscures his ability to reason, and he becomes so obsessed with the death of his son that he feels he must divorce his wife and marry his deceased son's intended bride. The terror that ensues following his chase of Isabella is grotesque and morally reprehensible, but it is also the driving force behind the novel's suspenseful plot. Isabella Isabella, lovely, virtuous, and self-assured, is this novel's damsel in distress. Threatened by kidnapping, rape, and an overall unwanted marriage, she tries to escape from the castle after the death of her intended husband, Conrad. She narrowly escapes Manfred's grasp, preventing a nearly incestuous and non-consensual marriage from taking place. She is rescued by Theodore, the soon-to-be revealed legitimate heir of Otranto, and marries him during the novel's resolution. Conrad The teenage son of Manfred and Hippolita, Conrad is betrothed to Isabella, but on the way to his wedding he is crushed to death by a symbol of the curse of the Otranto castle: a supernaturally-charged falling helmet. Matilda Manfred's ultimate display of tyranny occurs when he mistakenly stabs his daughter Matilda to death. Matilda, a young woman of extreme sympathy, virtue, and sentimentalism, falls in love with Theodore; however, unable to get approval from her parents to be with him, she is instead betrothed to Frederic, Isabella's lustful father. Hippolita The wife of a villainous lord and the mother to soon-to-be deceased children: these are Hippolita's roles. Manfred desires to divorce his wife because she cannot provide another heir, but he tries to justify the divorce by saying that the couple is actually related. Submissive, excessively religious, and depressed, Hippolita remains under the influence of her husband, catering to his whims despite her own longings for happiness. Theodore Theodore, the son of Friar Jerome and savior of Isabella, is the true heir of the Castle of Otranto. His initial role in the novel is to illustrate the relationship between the fallen helmet and the prophecy of the true heir being revealed. He helps Isabella escape from the castle during Manfred's suspenseful pursuit, while also attracting the attention of both Matilda and Isabella. He marries Isabella after the death of Matilda. Friar Jerome Isabella escapes t o a monastery located outside of the castle where she finds Friar Jerome, the long-lost father of Theodore. Manfred tries to bend the friar to his will by employing the friar to legitimize the divorce, but the plan does not come to fruition. Jerome stands his ground and criticizes Manfred's incestuous and evil desires, saying that heaven does not approve of them. Bianca Matilda's tart-tongued and opinionated maidservant who encourages Matilda to marry. Diego and Jaquez Two servants in the household who report mysterious sightings of the giant. The hermit Frederic discovers this dying hermit in the woods, who imparts a secret that St. Nicholas told hm about the dissolution of Manfred's claim to the Otranto principality. Alfonso The handsome and noble ancestor of the castle and principality of Otranto. Theodore resembles him quite strongly. Themes The Gothic Villain As a Gothic text, The Castle of Otranto provides various tropes through which terror and disgust are expounded upon. The characterization of Manfred in particular is intriguing in that he is portrayed not only as the novel's antagonist, but also as a man who succumbs to villainous behavior because of his own lack of self-control. Manfred defines the Gothic villain perfectly: he is a powerful male figure who allows his sinful passions and evil nature to obscure the reason and goodness he possesses. Self-control, the Christian virtue that was often discussed in other literature of the period, is something that he utterly lacks. Manfred abandons Christian virtues in favor of Gothic passion -- a passion so intense that it obscures his ability to reason, resulting in his seeking an incestuous affair and the dissolution of his legitimate marriage. Incest as Sin As a Gothic villain, Manfred's choice of sin is incest, creating a conflation of erotic, romantic, and familial love that inhibits his ability to reason. Manfred cannot seem to avoid incest, regardless of whether or not he remains married to Hippolita. He first decides to divorce her on the grounds that they are related so he can attempt to marry Isabella, a daughter-figure. Manfred seems only to be concerned with his engagement in this incestuous relationship when he realizes that it can provide grounds for divorce; it is when he realizes that it can benefit his political and social agenda that he becomes concerned with his decision to engage in such sin. This incest drive is a mortal sin and one that hearkens the end of his rule of Otranto. It sends his family and the social order he has created into disarray. Mistaken Identity and Doubling Mistaken identity and doubling contribute to the suspenseful nature of the Gothic novel and are major drivers of events in Otranto. Isabella and Matilda are practically interchangeable; this results in Manfred murdering his own daughter (of course, Isabella might as well have been his daughter, hence the impropriety of his incestuous designs upon her). Theodore mistakes Frederic for a knight of Manfred's, also resulting bodily injury. Theodore is the spitting image of Alfonso and Manfred mistakes him for that very figure. In the end Theodore marries Isabella, something that also suggests the strangeness of the world the characters inhabit. Language and Form The language of The Castle of Otranto is deliberately archaic, and the dialogue is stiff and unnatural to evoke a sense of translation; this is in keeping with the first edition of the novel, in which Walpole claimed his novel was a translation of a medieval Italian tale. Most notable about the language is the distinct lack of similes and metaphors, and the unmarked dialogue of the characters. This, alongside the five-act structure, confers to the novel a dramatic element that draws the reader in, and could explain the thinly drawn, stock characters. Similar to medieval plays that personified and made symbolic use of Vice and Virtue as characters, Walpole polarizes good and evil characters in his novel in their limited psychological complexity. (It should be noted that The Castle of Otranto was the genesis of the archetypal Gothic characters: the noble peasant, the damsel in distress, and the evil tyrant). The purely narrative form of Walpole’s novel, then, creates a fast-paced, immersive plot that mirrors the all-encompassing saturation of history and its consequences, which is a central theme of the novel. The Sins of the Father In a tongue-in-cheek fashion, Walpole-as-Marshal points out that The Sins of the Father is main moral of the story. Indeed, this classic biblical and literary trope is central to Otranto. Don Ricardo fabricated his claim to the principality and set in motion the deleterious events that would lead to the killing of innocent people, designs of divorce and incest, violence, and disarray. Children are fated to bear out what their fathers do, which is a reminder to men and women to lead virtuous lives lest, their sins continue to echo down the generations. The Right to Rule The right to rule undergirds the text. Manfred is not legitimate because his grandfather stole the claim to the principality. He is able to hold on as long as he can because said grandfather also made a promise to pay for his sins by building convents and accepting that one day his line would be kicked out of the principality. Even though Manfred and his forefathers are powerful, wealthy, and capable of administering control over their holdings, they are butting up against a greater force of law. Theodore descends from Alfonso the Good, a ruler whose claim to Otranto is never actually fleshed out in the text but remains a touchstone. Everything in Nature and Heaven supports Theodore, manifesting that support in signs, omens, specters, and storms. Naturalism and Sensibility Walpole plays with both of these elements throughout the text and shows how they can coexist. He wants his characters to react naturally to the strange phenomena that they see and hear; in the second preface he lays out his frustrations with neoclassical fiction, in which characters responded in patently absurd ways. However, he also creates an intense melodrama in which mental anguish is ubiquitous. Critic Nick Groom notes Walpole's "almost morbidly pathological sensitivity to the torrents and tides of emotion." This is sensibility at its most conspicuous, existing even as the characters act in more-or-less believable ways.