osprey_archer | Book Review: The Castle of Otranto

It seems that I have been remiss in telling you about all the classic novels I have been reading. This is unfortunate, because classic novels are really, really weird. Case in point: Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, which commences with a giant helmet falling out of the sky and crushing the heir to the titular castle on the morning of the day he was meant to marry the lovely Isabella.

“I know!” his father Manfred cries. “I shall set aside my wife Hippolita and marry Isabella myself! We can make a new heir.”

Isabella: “I do not like this plan!”

Hippolita: “Well, if my beloved lord wishes it...”

The reader: “WTF, Hippolita!”

Isabella flees! Hippolita waffles about whether it’s her duty to step aside and let Manfred marry Isabella! The heir, who died but that morning, is utterly forgotten. Once his death kickstarts the plot, Walpole apparently forgets that the poor chap ever existed. More gigantic pieces of armor appear out of nowhere, which hovers between “ludicrous” and “so bizarre that it’s actually a little creepy.”

So bizarre it’s actually a little creepy is a good description of most of the book, in fact. I have noticed that pre-Austen novels often seem more like chronicles as novels: this happened and then this happened and then this happened, but there’s not necessarily a sense of psychological continuity underlying all that happening. The characters act as they do because it’s convenient to the plot; what motivations they have a pretty thin. For instance, they’ll do something because they’re in love; but there’s no sense of what makes those two characters love each other.

This doesn’t mean it’s a bad read. If you go into it for weird random castle creepiness, it’s pretty good. But there’s not a whole lot of depth to it.