Summary
Manfred is quite distressed. He thinks Jerome knows of an affair between Isabella and Theodore. He also thinks Frederic might be involved, and is very troubled by Theodore’s resemblance to the portrait of Alfonso. He knows he can either resign his principality, which offends his pride and ambition, or he can try to bend Isabella to his will. He decides on this latter course once and for all, and he tells Hippolita his plan. She meekly consents. This pleases him and he thinks he will prevail.
Walking through the hall of the castle, Manfred encounters Bianca and tries to compel her to tell him what she knows of Isabella and Theodore, but Bianca frustrates him and has no relevant information. He asks her to find out.
Manfred then sees Frederic about Matilda; while they are conversing, Bianca bursts in, screaming about the giant. Manfred is inclined to think she is overreacting, but Frederic believes she is telling the truth. He becomes concerned that the castle is haunted as Bianca regales them of tales of armored giants. He concludes he might not marry Matilda because the house is cursed. It seems that heaven is against Manfred. However, Frederic decides to see if Hippolita has already consented to the divorce before he definitively decides.
The dinner banquet is a melancholy affair. Isabella and Matilda are quiet. Manfred drinks copiously to bring levity to the situation, but this fails.
After the banquet Isabella retires to her room and Manfred follows her. Matilda stays with her mother.
Frederic had been watching Matilda throughout dinner and concluded he still desired her. He goes to see her, but comes across an empty apartment full of gloom and a strange figure in woolen weeds. The ghostly figure asks him if he seeks Hippolita. When it turns, Frederic is horrified to see that it is a corpse, which he recognizes as the hermit. The sepulchral figure asks if he forgot the sword and the prophecy, then orders him to forget Matilda.
Frederic swoons; Hippolita finds him there and tries to figure out what happened. Manfred also tries to talk to Frederic but the marquis shuts himself in his room.
A servant alerts Manfred that Theodore is meeting privately with a lady from the castle by the tomb of Alfonso in St. Nicholas’s church. Manfred is incensed, knowing in his heart that this lady must be Isabella.
Manfred rushes to the tomb and takes out his dagger, plunging it into the heart of the woman. To his horror, he realizes it is Matilda. Everyone prevents him from tearing himself apart, and Matilda calmly resigns herself to her fate. She even forgives her father as she is dying.
When Hippolita sees the train of people bringing her daughter into the castle, she swoons in grief. Manfred is convulsed in paroxysms of despair and self-hatred.
Theodore wishes to be married to Matilda before she dies, but Jerome does not consent. Everyone cries over her as she expires. Theodore throws himself on her.
The moon illuminates the courtyard and a sound of thunder bursts from the sky. When Theodore stands the castle walls throw themselves down and Alfonso appears in the ruins. The specter tells the crowd to behold the true heir of Otranto. Everyone falls to the ground and acknowledges the divine will.
Jerome explains that Theodore is the heir because his wife was the daughter of Victoria, the wife of Alfonso. Alfonso had tried to keep the nuptials hidden until after the crusades, but he died and Victoria was left pregnant.
Manfred’s grandfather was Ricardo, a chamberlain to Alfonso, and a fictitious will gave him power after he poisoned Alfonso. He was guilty and promised St. Nicholas he would build a church and two convents if he reached Otranto. He did this, and the deal was that his progeny would remain in Otranto until it was no longer tenable.
Manfred relinquishes the domain, and he and Hippolita retire to religion. Theodore takes over and eventually marries Isabella once he realizes she is the only one who can understand his grief.
Analysis
Walpole ends his novel with the most horrific example of mistaken identity: Manfred accidentally killing his own daughter rather than Isabella. This brings the prophecy to fruition, for Manfred has certainly grown too large to reign, and Theodore has arrived to take his place. Manfred finally realizes the error of his ways and is utterly ravaged by his actions. His retirement into religion is not necessarily the most believable with regard to his personality, but it would be the only suitable option for someone who committed such wrongs.
In a classic expository scene, Jerome reveals how Theodore is eligible to rule and Manfred reveals how his ancestor stole the title. This is a text, as critic Sue Chaplin writes, “obsessed with the legitimacy and origin of the rule of Law.” Walpole’s concern with this is not surprising given his own father’s role as Prime Minister and his as an MP. Chaplin articulates the role Law plays in the text, beginning by noting its association with Logos, or truth. In the West the Law has always been “rigorously disassociated from the domain of the imagination, the place of reverie, of myth and, one must add, of the feminine.” The Law defines one’s self-identity as well, for the legitimacy of kinship succession is based on the paternal principle and reason. That paternal principle demands proof of origin, though, which “cannot satisfactorily be guaranteed by the order of reason instituted by the law.”
A paternal “name” is timeless, almost mythological: it does not have a temporal origin and is manifested in insignia, real estate, and other tenuous entities. This is the spectral quality of the law: it makes itself present “only by means of a metaphorical economy without material origin.” Manfred sees his power and self-identity disappear under the weight of the authority of the “true ruler” who is announced via signs and symbols. Manfred’s usurpation of power (his ancestor’s, to be more precise) is faulty and he knows it, so he tries to legitimize it by having an heir. However, he cannot occupy space in the symbolic order. He tries to control it in various ways, such as imprisoning Theodore under the helmet that symbolizes the inauthenticity of his rule, but this fails.
Theodore’s claim to legitimacy is also problematic. There are only spectral signs that he is meant to rule. Nothing more secure exists, and there is also nothing in the novel to connect Alfonso to Otranto. Chaplin writes, “the foundation of this right to power is lost to history and asserts itself in the text only by means of references to Alfonso as ‘good’, and through the force of an ancient prophecy which is concerned as much with the illegitimacy of the usurper as it is with the legitimacy of Alfonso.”
We would be remiss not to discuss The Castle of Otranto’s comedic elements. Many critics point out the comedic elements but tend to find them insignificant or simplistic. Others acknowledge the elements are artfully employed and complex but coexist with the dramatic elements uneasily. There are certainly laughable scenes of terror in the novel. The tone vacillates wildly; exaggeration and rapid narrative pace are conspicuous. Critic Ahmet Süner sees the novel as a comedy that is actually exquisitely designed to seem as if it is not a comedy. He lauds Chapter One’s absurd dialogue between Manfred and his servants Diego and Jaquez. These lowly “domestics” abruptly intrude and “their unbearable verbal ineptitude [has] a strange effect on the reading experience: the servants distract us, readers, just as they distract Manfred.”
Walpole is keen to assert that laughter and the supernatural are not mutually exclusive or implausibly combined. His novel generally adheres to the dramatic form while adding supernatural elements and comedy. He praises Shakespeare’s confluence of the dramatic and comedic in the second preface to Otranto. As for Walpole’s own work, Süner notes that its “use of comic elements dramatically fail to bring the sufferings of the tragic characters into sharper relief” but “the use of laughter serves the deflate the higher station of the novel’s noble characters.” Bianca’s absurd, self-interested rambling in front of Manfred and Frederic, two men she ostensibly should not be able to burst in on, moves the novel away from tragedy.
Overall, the novel is a Gothic romance, tragedy, comedy, and horror tale; it is also a fascinating commentary on the way narratives are constructed.
