This mammoth, prolix book--the first wildly popular gothic novel--is indifferently written, poorly planned,and inconsistent in purpose and tone. Radcliffe's style is irritating, filled with continual redundancies, superfluous commas and dialogue that is often stilted and improbable. The plot doesn't even get in gear until a third of the way through(two hundred pages!), and it loses its focus and dissipates its power in the last one hundred and fifty pages or so when Radcliffe introduces some pallid new characters and orchestrates a few second-rate thrills that--in their similarities to events of the earlier narrative--verge on self-parody.

Yet the novel has an undeniable power and charm. A lot of this is due to Emily, the virtuous and loving (but never stuffy) young lady protagonist who would certainly become a model for Austen (as well as a source of parody) not only because of her sensible moral nature and highly developed sensibility but also because of her willingness to modify her often mistaken judgments when confronted with more reliable information.

The villain Montoni is also memorable, the prototype of Heathcliffe, Rochester, de Winter and many more. He is not really evil so much as thoroughly selfish, completely arrogant, convinced of the absolute privilege of patriarchy and nobility. He is believable, and therefore infuriating, a worthy ancestor of a long line of gothic villains.

A great deal of the charm of this book, however, comes from the characters' appreciation of the beauty and power of landscapes: fathers educate daughters through landscapes,lovers gaze and comment upon landscapes to each other, evaluate the sincerity and subtlety of one another's character and consciousness based on their reaction to landscapes, and later, when circumstances have forced them apart, they will comfort themselves with the solitary contemplation of landscapes. The villains show no interest in landscapes whatsoever, and the good people, when oppressed and harried by evil, cease to be moved even by the beauties of nature, no matter how sublime they may be. Besides, I believe one of the reasons the book shifts from France to Italy--in addition to signaling a shift in narrative from pastoral simplicity to Machiavellian malice--is in order that the heroine may move from contemplating the tranquil landscapes of Claude Lorrain to surveying the craggier and threatening vistas of Salvator Rosa. "Landscape as character" is as important to "The Mysteries of Udolpho" as it is to "Wuthering Heights" or any Anthony Mann western. If you pay close attention to the landscapes of "Udolpho" (and Emily and Montoni as well) you just might enjoy--as I did--this unwieldy and often infuriating novel.