Walpole: political and historical significance

Walpole

The two cultures of the real and the fantastic -- Horace Walpole's the Castle of Otranto viewed through C.S. Snowe's Two Cultures

According to the scientist and novelist C.S. Snowe, after the Industrial Revolution the way that human knowledge was classified experienced a catastrophic schism. Today, scientists and literary critics "have a curiously distorted image of each other" and are separated by a "gulf of mutual incomprehension" of one another's pursuits. (Snowe, 1963, p.3) Once upon a time, it was believed that wise persons could and should have a broad as well as a deep knowledge of what are now called the sciences and the humanities. Now these two ways of knowing stand opposed.

In fact, long ago, there was not a strict division between these two genres of knowledge, rather knowledge as a whole was fused into one. But as science grew increasingly specialized and literary culture began to concern itself with what was fantastic and psychologically true, rather than what was proven and 'real,' two intellectual cultures began to develop. For Snowe, this divide was dangerous. (Snowe, 1963, p.65) This was not merely because he believed that an atmosphere of "hostility and dislike" and a "lack of understanding" because of such "polarization" was a loss to the "intellectual life of the whole of Western society." It was also a loss from a practical as well as intellectual and creative level, as scientists lost a sense of humanity, and literary critics lost a sense of judgment and purpose for their works. (Snow, 1963, p.3).

This notion of a divide is evident in the way that modern literary critics frequently interpret the 18th century Gothic novel such as The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. The Gothic genre is 'read' as a Romantic manifestation of the turning away from the rationalism, realism, and Neo-Classicism of the Enlightenment to emotion, fantasy, and Medievalism. Viewed as such, the Gothic genre becomes a kind of refuge from the rapidly industrializing and more socially mobile and unstable environment reality of England.

Horace Walpole's Gothic classic The Castle of Otranto, because of its 12th century, Medieval setting and highly fantastic and supernatural plot thus seems like a perfect example of a Gothic refuge from reality. However, Walpole himself did not see his novel as merely a diverting tale. Rather, in his second preface to his novel Walpole stated that his novel was "an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. In the former all was imagination and improbability: in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success... The author of the following pages thought it possible to reconcile the two kinds." ("The Castle of Otranto," Wikipedia, 2006) Walpole thus saw himself as attempting to bridge two cultures in his novel, along similar lines as Snowe. He was trying to find a blance between art and nature, between what was the self-conciously artificial and a realistic psychology of the individual.

Gothic tales are usually seein as existing in a state of removal from the very real concerns of real life. On the surface, it seems like chance rather than human will governs the plot of Walpole's novel. The original marriage of two of the protagonists, Conrad and Isabella, is thwarted when Conrad is crushed to death with a fallen helmet. The characters are constantly beset with messages from the gods. "Heaven itself declares against your impious intentions!" cries the dead Conrad's fiancee Isabella to Manfred, when Manfred reveals his intention to divorce his current wife and marry her. (Walpole, Chapter 1) The 'good' characters advocate submission to fate rather than active resistance to the supernatural will of heaven, like Manfred. "My gracious Lord," said Hippolita, "let us submit ourselves to heaven. Think not thy ever-obedient wife rebels against thy authority. I have no will but that of my Lord and the Church." (Walpole, Chapter 4) Despite Manfred's attempt to control the world, the forces of heaven cannot be thwarted in their determination to right the wrongs committed by Manfred's grandfather, Ricardo, and prevent Manfred from committing further mischief. The characters experience helplessness and terror in the face of the forces of beyond, rather than any sense of empowerment that they can control them with science. Morality, rather than reason enables them to survive.

The realism that Walpole perceives in his narrative is the morality that the characters struggle with, in attempting to do the 'correct' thing. Finally, at the end of the novel, Manfred realizes his ancestor's crimes and repents: "Thou guiltless but unhappy woman! Unhappy by my crimes!" Manfred says to his first wife Hippolita, "my heart at last is open to thy devout admonitions... what can atone for usurpation and a murdered child? A child murdered in a consecrated place? The characters that submit to fate, rather than try exercise scientific control triumph, affirming Snowe's theory that there was a growing divide between science and human emotion in terms of how the culture perceived these systems of knowledge. Despite Walpole's attempts to show reason in the actions of the character, they live in a world that can be explained primarily through story, not through reason. The world does not obey a mechanized, predictable pattern of being, as in an industrial society, and the codes of society are feudal, religious, and moral that persons must obey.

Of course, the characters at times must exercise a certain amount of judgment and reason in grappling with the supernatural. For example, even in this novel, where forces of prophesy are undeniably real, the 'real' can be taken for the supernatural and vice versa, as occurs in Chapter 4 when Manfred mistakes Theodore for a specter: "Theodore or a phantom, he has unhinged the soul of Manfred." Like scientists, the characters must struggle to analyze the world around them and the messages from the beyond so they can comprehend the will of the supernatural forces that threaten or cajole them away from error at every turn.