SOURCE: “Ann Radcliffe and the Extended Imagination,” in Contemporary Review, Vol. 258, No. 1505, June, 1991, pp. 300-308.

In the following essay, Bruce reviews the theme of the love of liberty in Udolpho, as well as the love of nature, and compares these ideas with some of Radcliffe's other works, including The Italian and The Romance in the Forest.

‘You, who are so young, have you reason for sorrow?’, Emily St. Aubert is asked at the end of The Mysteries of Udolpho (chapter 38). Emily, the heroine of the book, has every right to answer, ‘Yes’. She has, in a short time, lost both her parents. Her marriage to the exquisite Chevalier de Valancourt has been broken off. There is no end to her troubles. Used though she is to freedom, and rejoicing in it, she is subjected to a series of ever more constricting imprisonments: first in the manor house in...