Sisters of Gore

Seven Gothic Melodramas by British Women, 1790-1843

John C. Franceschina

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781134820894
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The plays collected in Sisters of Gore span the development of Gothic melodrama from the 1790s to the 1840s.

1 The Ward of the Castle A Comic Opera In 2 Acts

by Burke

DOI: 10.4324/9780203760826-1

Nothing is known about Miss Burke (or Mrs. Burke as she is called in TheLondon Stage)¹ but her The Ward of the Castle is, perhaps, the first Gothicmelodrama written by a woman. Complete with subterranean passageways, incarceratedyoung ladies, forced marriages, narrow escapes, mistaken identities, exotic, if notspectacular, effects, and comic servants, the so-called “opera” follows in thetraditions of the Gothic novel (and its various theatrical incarnations²) established by Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lee, as well as Pixérécourt’sParisian melodrama with its emphasis on “violence, show, moral simplicity, emotionaldistress, rhetoric, and music” (Booth, Prefaces to English Nineteenth-CenturyTheatre 24). Miss Burke’s single dramatic effort was given threeperformances at Covent Garden beginning 24 October 1793 and drew generallyunfavorable reviews from the press.³ But even though only the songs and choruses were published (Nicoll 3: 378),and the play never revived, the work has more than mere curiosity value. By means ofan interesting metatheatrical device in which Jacquinetta’s romance novels virtuallydictate her code of behavior and parallel the action of the play, Miss Burke’s operaprovides sensational escapist entertainment along with a brief, though significant,look into the reading habits of women at the end of the eighteenth century.

Like Polly Honeycomb, the title character of Colman’s farcical “Dramatic Novel”(1760), Jacquinetta is addicted to reading. Both characters appear to escape theactual reality of their temporal situation through the virtual reality of the novel,and Polly’s affection for conceit-laden domestic fare is closely related to thepicaresque romance favored by Jacquinetta.⁴ While the one might turn on highly ornamental prose and doggerel verse andthe other on action and adventure, the author of the literary satire TheAge (1810) suggests that the following table may be used to transform anyromance into a domestic novel, or vice versa:

Where youfind:
A castle	put An house.
A cavern	A bower.
A groan	A sigh.
Agiant	A father.
A blood-stained dagger	A fan.
Howling blasts	Zephyrs.
A knight	A gentleman without whiskers.
A lady who is the heroine	Need not be changed, beingversatile.
Assassins	Killing glances.

A gliding ghost	A usurer, or an attorney.
A witch	An old housekeeper.
A wound	A kiss.
A midnight murder	A marriage.

(qtd. Summers 35)

More important, perhaps, than the subject matter is the male reaction to the ladies’reading. Exclaiming “Bah, nonsense… Stuff, stuff, stuff!” the Duke throwsJacquinetta’s book out the door and argues “How dangerous it is to suffer a Woman toread at all” (8–9). Honeycomb responds in kind to what he considers his daughterPolly’s madness:

Was ever man so heartily provoked? … Instead of happiness and jollity, myfriends and family about me, a wedding and a dance, and every thing as itshould be, here am I, left by myself;— deserted by my intended son-in-law,bullied by my attorney’s clerk, affronted by my own servant, my daughter mad,my wife in the vapours, and all in confusion. This comes of cordials andnovels. Zounds! … a man might as well turn his daughter loose in Covent Garden,as trust the cultivation of her mind to a circulating library. (16)

While circulating libraries connected to publishing houses had been in existencesince the Restoration, by the second half of the eighteenth century, they had earnedthe reputation of pandering to the escapist fantasies of young women and wereconsidered “vile places, indeed” (Sheridan 10). One of the more notorious of thesevile places was the Minerva Press on Leadenhall Street whose proprietor, WilliamLane, “made a large fortune by the immense quantity of trashy novels⁵ which he sent forth …” (qtd. in Summers 73). But irrespective of the literarymerits of these novels, it was the ideas they put into women’s heads that causedconcern. Miss Burke reflects this attitude in the Duke’s interrogation ofJacquinetta:

Duke

I make no doubt but that innocent book is full of the wickedest intrigues —

Jacquinetta

(aside, shaking her head). Notone—

Duke

And elopements—

Jacquinetta

(aside). O yes, eleven times—she and her maid.

Duke

Amorous billets convey’d in the bills of pigeons.

Jacquinetta

(aside). As sure as fate he has been reading it himself. It’slucky for me I have the last nine volumes in my closet. (8)

Jacquinetta is not the first young lady in literature to be seduced by Mile, deScudéry’s ten-volume romance, Clélie (1654–60), translated by JohnDavies (1656–71; 1678).⁶ Like Jacquinetta, Arabella of Charlotte Lennox’s The FemaleQuixote (1752) is obsessed with the Roman legend of Cloelia who, havingbeen given as hostage to an Etruscan king, escaped his clutches, swam the Tiber, andreturned safely to Rome. Both Jacquinetta and Arabella live in the realm of romanceand their expectations of day-to-day reality are shaped by the idealized exploits ofmythical heroes and heroines.⁷ It is significant that Jacquinetta affirms to the Duke her belief that herlittle book “contains the whole duty of man” (8) and that Arabella was “taught tobelieve that love was the ruling principle of the world; that every other passion wassubordinate to this; and that it caused all the happiness and miseries of life”(Lennox, qtd. Summers 26).

Polly, Arabella, and Jacquinetta all attempt to make real life correspond to theirfantasies. But unlike Polly and Arabella, whose realities are vastly different thanthose portrayed in their favorite novels, Jacquinetta is living the life of a Gothicheroine. Her books describ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Fm Chapter
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Fm Chapter
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Ward of the Castle A Comic Opera In 2 Acts
• 2 The Mysterious Marriage; or,The Heirship of Roselva A Play In 3 Acts
• 3 The Old Oak Chest or, TheSmuggler's Sons and the Robber's Daughter A Melodramatic Romance In 2 Acts
• 4 Raymond de Percy; or, TheTenant of the Tomb A Romantic Melo Drama
• 5 St. Clair of the Isles; or,The Outlaw of Barra A Scottish Historical Melodrama
• 6 The Bond A Dramatic Poem
• 7 Dacre of the South; or, TheOlden Time A Drama
• Appendix A: The Old Oak Chest (Published version)
• Appendix B: Glossary
• Appendix C: Playlist
• Bibliography