Sinister histories by Jonathan Dent

Author:Jonathan Dent [Dent, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Criticism, Gothic & Romance, Modern, 18th Century, General, Renaissance
ISBN: 9781784997984
Google: FXa5DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2016-07-01T00:46:22+00:00

‘Gothicising’ the epistolary: Lee and representations of the past

Having now discussed some of the gendered aspects of Lee’s novel, I will move on to a broader consideration of its Gothic elements and, more precisely, the ways in which it furthers the Gothic’s enthralment with the past. The Recess does not only comment on the sentimental novel’s preoccupation with sensibility; it utilises and imitates its very form. As a previous section has shown, Lee’s novel is composed of conflicting sets of letters written by multiple narrators and, in this sense, represents a rare (possibly unique) variant of the epistolary; a form that became synonymous with the novels of sentiment written by authors such as Mackenzie and, most significantly, Richardson. The Recess has major implications for the eighteenth-century epistolary, and it is beyond the scope of the current chapter to consider all of them here.19 Rather, I will focus on the ways in which Lee utilises this popular eighteenth-century form to intensify and develop the Gothic’s obsession with the haunting nature of history. Throughout the forthcoming discussion, the thoughts of Richardson – arguably the most popular writer of epistolary fiction in the eighteenth century – will be used to elucidate the ways in which Lee appropriates this form for the purposes of the Gothic. What makes Richardson useful for discussion here is his propensity for theorising on the nature of the epistolary. He was particularly aware of its potential for mimicry and imitation. In his correspondence, he speaks of his desire for Clarissa (1748–49) to maintain an ‘Air of Genuineness’; for the fictional letters of which it comprises to be ‘thought genuine’ in so far as they ‘should not prefatically be owned not to be genuine’ (Richardson 1964, 85). He desires his epistolary novel to convey an air of authenticity and to ‘avoid hurting that kind of Historical Faith which Fiction is generally read with, tho’ we know it to be Fiction’ (85). It is this quality of the epistolary, its ability to masquerade as a series of genuine documents and to evoke a certain suspension of disbelief, that Lee exploits.20 Walpole’s observation that ‘nothing gives so just an idea of an age as genuine letters; nay, history waits for its last seal from them’, is not lost on Lee (1937–83, 15: 73). She uses the epistolary to mimic historical documents and, in the process, led many eighteenth-century readers into believing that the events related were true and historically accurate.21 Lee ‘Gothicises’ the epistolary by turning its attention away from contemporary events and diverting it towards humanity’s uneasy and disturbing relationship with the past.

The Recess is radical in the sense that it employs the epistolary to write about the machinations of the distant past and not to record recent events. In Richardson’s epistolary novels, the event has usually occurred before it is committed to narrative. Pamela (1740–41) serves as a good example here. Even though Pamela often ‘write[s]‌ on, as things happen’ (Richardson 1985, 150), days have sometimes elapsed before she ‘writes up’ events either in letters or in her journal.

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