SOURCE: "Uncle Silas: A Habitation of Symbols," in Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland, second edition, Lilliput Press, 1991, pp. 148-94.

In the following essay, originally published in 1980, McCormack offers a symbolic interpretation of Le Fanu's novel Uncle Silas.

In Chronicles of Golden Friars Le Fanu tried to create a fictional context in which nature and society, surrounding a Great House, take on more active roles than those we have observed in The House by the Churchyard. In the three tales collected under this title, and in one or two more using the same setting, he introduced the village of Golden Friars which, as even the name suggests, carried idyllic or paradisal associations; in the longest of the chronicles, 'The Haunted Baronet', it is seen

standing by the margin of the lake, hemmed round by an amphitheatre of purple mountain, rich in tint and furrowed by ravines, high in...