The Castle of Otranto by
Horace Walpole made for an interesting read. I was not a big fan of this book
for a couple of reasons. One, the plot line could occasionally be hard to follow;
there was a jump from topic to topic. There were also a lot of characters being
introduced throughout the story making the story hard to follow considering you
never really got a sense of who is who. It was hard to connect with the
characters and see the story from their point of view. They call this book
gothic, but in my opinion a couple of creepy touches doesn’t quite do the
trick. I feel that the gothic parts of this novel were almost distracting.
There should have been more emphasis put on the characters and the back-story.
The big reveal happened at the end of the book and was too brief. Overall I see
more cons than pros for this novel.
I agree that the changing voice, due to the third person omniscient point of view, made it difficult to connect with any of the characters. Also, as the perspective constantly transitioned among the characters, the plot was obstructed by mistaken assumptions, making it difficult to understand what was actually occurring.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your thoughts on this!
I agree with your post on this book. I, too, found it a hard story to connect with due to how scattered it felt when I was reading it. I also like what you said about the gothic aspect of it - that it isn't really gothic, but rather has a few eerie or creepy touches.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughts and honesty!
I can definitely see why one would have difficulty following the plot of this novel. It is not a consistent story line that is easy to follow. I, however, have always believed that this is due to the writing style of the author. I would imagine that Gothic authors have a skewed way of thinking and that, without a doubt, translates in their writing. Their mind is probably all over the place and before they complete one thought, they are already moving on to the next.
ReplyDeleteI also found it difficult to connect with the characters in this novel, and that was a bit saddening to me because I love getting an in-depth feel for who a character really is. The characters and my ability to sympathize and relate to them, is what usually gets me invested in a story. Therefore, just like you, I was left a little dissatisfied with the book, although it was not entirely bad.
The lack of in-depth characterization in the novel is a mark of the development of the novel: 18th century novels were often action-driven and episodic more than character driven. Even novels with a titular main character, like Defoe's _Robinson Crusoe_ or _Moll Flanders_ or even Fielding's _Tom Jones_, had little development of the character's mental and emotional interior. This focus on character is one of the innovations of the "novel of manners" in the second half of the eighteenth century (arising out of Richardson's epistolary novel, _Pamela_), and it is something the Jane Austen did extremely well.n The gothic novel is an odd mixture of the episodic mode of the earlier 18th century novel and the new focus on psychological interiors developed by Richardson.
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