Democratic Sublime in The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe

I’ve always been interested in Edmund Burke’s discussion on the sublime in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. The sublime, as Burke describes, is a mixed feeling of pleasure and pain. He situates the sublime as a masculine quality. Ann Radcliffe, in The Romance of the Forest, reshapes Burke’s notions of the sublime as a masculine experience. To do this, she utilizes the features he discusses that help invoke the sublime, but reshapes their purpose. Radcliffe empowers her heroine, Adeline, by allowing her to indulge in an experience that was previously stereotyped as male. Radcliffe creates a more democratic sublime, in which females may partake. Thus, she reforms the sublime’s historical context and empowers her female heroine; simultaneously, she illustrates her ability as a female author to utilize and reshape a male-dominated experience and a male-originated genre (the Gothic).

Adeline experiences the sublime early on in the novel. After Peter applied the light upon the ruins, “The partial gleams” and the “obscurity of the greater part of the pile heightened its sublimity, and led fancy on to scenes of horror” (18). To experience this sublimity is Adeline:

Adeline, who had hitherto remained in silence, now uttered an exclamation of mingled admiration and fear. A kind of pleasing dread thrilled her bosom, and filled all her soul. Tears started into her eyes: - she wished, yet feared, to go on...(18).

 Burke discusses the influence of “obscurity” in creating the sublime. He states, “To make any thing very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary” (Burke xix). Although Radcliffe utilizes this notion of obscurity, she reshapes it by allowing a female to experience it. In this instance in the novel, Adeline is the only character to have reached this level of sublimity, highlighting her elevated role as a female, while the others simply stood by. Furthermore, after having experienced the sublime, Adeline looked at La Motte with a “hesitating interrogation” (18). She is now accessing reason and questioning whether to proceed further into the abbey with La Motte. In stark contrast with La Motte’s earlier experience of sublimity, where he simply “conveyed the vastness of the place,” Adeline’s experience resulted in rationale (16). This is in defiance of 18^th century gender constructions that insist women cannot or should not access reason.

Radcliffe continues to use this notion of obscurity to demonstrate her empowerment of the female character. Adeline is described to have had “uneasy dreams” causing her to recollect her “sorrows” and cry (22). To calm herself, Adeline proceeds to the window and the morning scene is described as thus: “The dark mists were seen to roll off to the west, as the tints of light grew stronger, deepening the obscurity of that part of the hemisphere...” (22). Although Radcliffe is attributing Burke’s notion of obscurity onto the scene of nature, she is manipulating its effects. Because of nature, “Adeline’s heart swelled too with gratitude and adoration” and “the scene before her soothed her mind...” (Radcliffe 22). Thus, Radcliffe has allowed Adeline to calm herself by accessing strength from nature. Radcliffe demonstrated Burke’s discussion of obscurity to empower the female heroine. Thus, she has challenged the notion of a masculine sublimity.

Reading Burke’s Enquiry really helps you to put into context how Radcliffe is creating the sublime experience, and also helps you to see how she takes the sublime even further than Burke and makes it democratic. Here is a link to Burke’s Enquiry:

 http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/

Part II focuses heavily on the sublime and its various attributes.

Citation:

Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime

and Beautiful. UK: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1987.