The Castle of Wolfenbach
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4.0 • 27 Ratings
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Publisher Description
Synopsis
The Castle of Wolfenbach is the most famous novel written by the English Gothic novelist Eliza Parsons. It contains the standard gothic tropes of the blameless young woman in peril, the centrality of a huge, gloomy, ancient building to the plot, the discovery of scandalous family secrets and a final confrontation between the forces of good and evil. Its resolutely anti-French Roman Catholic, pro-English Protestant sentiment is also a feature of the genre. First published in two volumes during 1793, it was one of the seven "horrid novels" recommended by the character Isabella Thorpe to Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey and was an important early work in the genre, predating both Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Monk Lewis's The Monk.
The Author
Eliza Parsons (1739 – 5 February 1811) was an English gothic novelist. Her most famous novels in this genre are The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) and The Mysterious Warning (1796) - two of the seven gothic titles recommended as reading by a character in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey. At an early age she married Mr. Parsons, a turpentine merchant, at Stonehouse, near Plymouth, by whom she had a numerous family. But when the health of Mr. Parsons visibly declined Eliza Parsons was left with her young family, wholly unprovided for, and dependent on her exertions alone for their future subsistence. In circumstances like these, she had no resources but to become an author.
Contemporary Review
The British Critic, 1794 - This novel is opened with all the romantic spirit of the Castle of Otranto, and the reader is led to expect a tale of other times, fraught with enchantments, and spells impending from every page. As the plot thickens, they vanish into air—into thin air, and the whole turn out to be a company of well-educated and well-bred people of fashion, some of them fraught with sentiments rather too refined and exalted for any rank, and others, deformed by a depravity, that for the honour of human nature we hope has no parallel in life. Taken as a whole, the Castle of Wolfenbach is more interesting than the general run of modern novels, the characters are highly coloured, and the story introduced in a manner that excites curiosity, and in the language of the drama, abounds with interesting, though improbable situations.
Customer Reviews
Slow progression leads to climatic fortitude...
Parson's novel is very much filled with colorfully designed characters each in characteristic of their times consumed with moral and social standing obligations which are poised to create a tale echoing in some ways the present modern traits of human behavior in the higher social classes, while other times reaching beyond the extremes of human actions.
The beginnings lead you to believe as the reader the novel is at it's onset a darkly gothic ghost tale, thus hooking those who are inclined to enjoy such tales, however the novel itself indeed does have its "horrifying" elements their isn't enough to be considered by definition a "horror novel" as it is sometimes referred to in selective circles. If anything, the only horrors in this novel are instances of malignant actions revealed with little ado by characters without the depth of shock value many looking for descriptives will feel are lacking. Of course one must take into consideration the era in which this novel was written and the fact of it being written by a woman which isn't as prevalent in the times this novel was written.
It is, in my opinion, a very intriguing novel which does enrapture the reader into the times it's written of, the people of those times and quite possibly the actions and true beliefs of those people which could possibly be the norm for such a time period as it's written into. It could also possibly be construed such characteristics are still a possibility in modern society thus why Parson's novel is still an accredited classic with parallels in the centuries which follow it's publication.
If you do not like novels that seem a tad drawn out you won't reach the end of Parson's tale because the tale is slow to take you into the true core of its design, but if you're a willing and adamant reader you will be rewarded for your patience as the climatic events unravel closer toward it's ending. This seems to suit the novel well as there could be no other way to have it carried out.
I would say it is more of a "Cinderella" type novel with its concentration more on the deeds and misdeeds of an upper class society of characters. I would label it a "Gothic Romance" novel but not a romance of love so much as a romantic conveyance of good versus evil.
As a lover of literatures of old, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and would recommend it as a credited addition to ones collection of the classics. I would however, liked to have seen the formatting of the novel as an ebook and in this particular translation to be of higher quality as is seen in other formats and translations.