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The Romance of the Forest is a fine gothic novel; it has so many qualities that make the genre so appealing to me.

There’s the usual dark and spooky setting (an abbey in a remote forest) and there’s a strong atmosphere of mystery and suspense surrounding the location. It’s also not very clear what the characters motives are and who exactly may be out to abuse the heroine, Adeline. She seems isolated in a world full of tyrannical males that pursue and entrap her. There are multiple men with villainous behaviour, each of which has their own dark secret. This uncertainty pushed the story into an impressive conclusion with a surprising plot reveal. I really did not see it coming, I was impressed!

In all truth, I’ve been reluctant to read Ann Radcliffe for a very long time. The reason being, Jane Austen satirises her work heavily in Northanger Abbey. That much so, it becomes quite hard not to agree with Austen’s perspective that deems the writing of Radcliffe to be trashy, predictable and cliché. If a writer as great as Austen complains about her, even though she clearly influenced her, then there’s bound to be something wrong. That being said, I wish I’d given Radcliffe a go much sooner because there’s a great deal she does very well here.

The gothic elements are what make the story and, yes, some of it is very typical of other gothic stories but that’s not always a bad thing because Radcliffe was a pioneer of the genre. She helped kickstart it. She was one of the first to use these tropes. And it is clear how strongly she has influenced other writers. Her novels may be a little samey but, then again, so were Austen’s despite their individual brilliance. I particularly liked the way Radcliffe described the forest and the eeriness of it.

However, despite the terrific amount of narrative tension and uncertainty created through the plot and its mysterious characters, the structure of the novel suffers. I think this is mainly because at this time writing novels was still quite experimental. The novel was quite new, and it hadn’t quite been perfected. Here there are a few blunders that affect the storytelling quality. Its not as refined as it could be and there are large sections at the end that add little to the work. The last third of the story could have been reduced down quite considerably as the focus was lost a little.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this and it certainly won’t be the last Radcliffe novel I pick up. There's just something special about early gothic novels like this.

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