The Novel: Please Enjoy Responsibly

Having recently read Catherine Gallagher’s Nobody’s Story, which discusses extensively the social role of the reading of fiction in the eighteenth-century, I was specially attuned to mentions of reading in Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest. Throughout the novel, Radcliffe posits literature as something that offers much to its readers. We learn early that Adeline, the novel’s heroine, has benefited from reading: “From books, indeed, she had constantly derived her chief information and amusement: those belonging to La Motte were few, but well chosen; and Adeline could find pleasure in reading them more than once. When her mind was discomposed . . . a book was the opiate that lulled it to repose” (82). Especially important here is the fact that reading has offered Adeline not only entertainment but also education and comfort. As we observe Adeline’s relationship with literature throughout the rest of the novel, it seems that this sense of comfort is that which Radcliffe figures as the most constant benefit of reading. Whether suffering from loneliness at the abbey or grief at Leloncourt, Adeline takes solace in poetry and plays (82; 236; 261). Indeed, the narrator even goes so far as to mention, in one of the moments in which Adeline turns to literature for comfort, that poetry “had seldom forsaken her”; this indicates that, in a life in which instability and betrayal are the norm, the written word alone has been steadfast. Clearly, then, Radcliffe posits reading as beneficial. She does not do so, however, without some degree of caution.

There are two instances in The Romance of the Forest that, although not directly related to reading, respond, I believe, to an uneasiness about reading that we have seen intimated by other early novelists. Like Sarah Fielding, through the example of the beggar in The Governess, and Charlotte Lennox, through the example of Sir George in The Female Quixote, Radcliffe cautions her readers against readily assuming the veracity of a story and instead urges discernment by writing of Adeline’s encounter with Theodore’s suspect surgeon. In order to support his claim of “infallible judgment,” the surgeon tells Adeline a story of a patient who passed away while under his care. With the utmost confidence, he asserts that this death was the result of fatal mistakes made by the physician who first administered to the patient: “Depend upon it, said I, you are mistaken; these medicines cannot have relieved him; the patient is in the utmost danger”(183). The surgeon goes on to tell of his final efforts to save the man through an alteration of the first physician’s prescriptions but concludes finally that “all would not do, my opinion was verified, and he died even before the next morning” (184). As Adeline is a careful listener, Radcliffe expects us to be discerning readers; we are to notice, like Adeline, that this patient’s condition improved with the care of the first physician and worsened immediately when the surgeon assumed his care. Because Adeline attends the story with caution, she is able to conclude that this other physician is far more fit to tend to Theodore, and ultimately, Theodore lives as a result. Clearly, then, one must exercise prudence when the audience to a story.

Another anxiety with which British society regarded reading by the late eighteenth century is well represented metaphorically by Radcliffe’s account of Clara and her lute. According to Gallagher, novel readers were, by this time, pejoratively figured as so embroiled in the emotions of fictional characters that they often failed, and sometimes disastrously, to attend to the immediacies of their actual lives. Clara, similarly, is so enthused upon receiving a lute from her father that she “played it again and again till she forgot every thing besides” (249). Her zealous interest in the instrument soon results in her neglecting a needy family, losing valuable instructional time with her father, and missing dinner with her family (249-253). Ashamed at her lack of discipline, Clara attempts to return the lute to her father; in doing so, however, she proves to him that she has gained command of her impulses, and he no longer fears the instrument a perilous distraction. Counseling her on her further engagement with the lute, Clara’s wise father offers her the following: “Since you have sufficient resolution to resign it when it leads you from duty, I doubt not that you will be able to control its influence” (253). These words seem readily applicable to reading and, thus, strike me as Radcliffe’s soliciting her audience to approach reading in such a way that it, too, may be enjoyed responsibly.