The novelist Walter Scott said about Ann Radcliffe that she is the first true poetess of romantic genre. And it is confirmed while analyzing her novel “The Romance in the Forest”. The novel may be called both prose and poetic work: the main story is not rhythmic, the events are organized logically and consistently: and they constantly interweave with different sonnets, verses and other poetic forms. This method helps the author to make this novel more emotionally and artistically colored.
The author uses the third-person narration, but it doesn’t prevent her from describing the inner worlds of the characters more extensively and vividly than the reality, surrounding them. The characters of the story cannot be clearly divided into bad and good ones – as for Adeline, Theodore – they are exactly good people, as for marquis – he is bad hero. But as for Peter, Pierre, his wife, they show both their kindness and cupidity and selfishness depending on situation.
Radcliffe as the true representative of a writer of gothic style adds to her novel mystical elements: legends about ghosts, secret rooms, the doors to which are hidden under tapestries. Even the place where the main events take place has gothic atmosphere: the forest seems to be some kind of enclosed space, which is wrapped in horror and danger, and the characters just need to go out of this space, their lives signally calms down and in time goes up.
The story causes different feeling while reading it: sympathizing to Adeline, admiring of her love with Theodore, liking and then “forgiveness” of the La Mottes, hatred to marquis, compassion to Louis and his unhappy love etc. The author successfully put into the plot artistry of images and events, made the novel not just an interesting story about the poor girl and her adventures, but the story about braveness and true love, about willpower and true kindness. She showed that the Good finally always “kills” the Evil.
