ABSTRACT
The bifurcation of Ann Radcliffe’s life, divided between an eventless life and sensational literature, is in many ways a subject of her work, especially her most famous creation, The Mysteries of Udolpho, which explores the relation between female madness, passion, and the dangers of the indulged imagination. Like Maria’s madhouse, Udolpho is a place of confinement in which the repressed female imagination is able to escape and run riot. In their uses of gothic conventions, both William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft are reacting to the works of Ann Radcliffe, traditionally seen as the originator of the conservative female gothic. Radcliffe rather flagrantly redeems Rousseau through revision; he is magically transformed from a transgressive individual and notoriously irresponsible father into the paternal setter of limits. From Walpole Radcliffe inherits a concern with inheritance itself, and the question of the rightful ownership of property.
