“You will, perhaps, think better of me than to suspect that I came here [to the Spanish Inquisition] for my own pleasure”: Subverting the Status Quo in Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian

Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian subverts (see note 1) the status quo by turning ideas, people, forms, genre inside-out, reflecting their outsides, inward, and their insides, outward. The literary-criticism usage of subvert–“To challenge and undermine (a conventional idea, form, genre, etc.), esp. by using or presenting it in a new or unorthodox way”–was not in place until 1956, according to OED, but in her 1796 novel, Radcliffe “challenges and undermines” the conventional idea of British social hierarchy “by presenting it in a new or unorthodox way”: namely, by showing how these ideas “would” (fictionally, hypothetically) play out not so long ago (30 years prior) in a galaxy not that far away (in Naples, Italy, 1,300 miles from London as the crow flies).

Radcliffe starts the novel with an Englishman’s astonishment at the un-civilization of Italy–“‘Why, my friend,’ observed the Italian, ‘if we were to shew no mercy to such unfortunate persons [assassins], assassinations are so frequent, that our cities would be half depopulated” (see note 2)–and ends not with a return to the (lop/one-sided) “frame” narrative to nicely tie “things” up but with a bizarre exchange from Paulo, the fictional servant within the fictional frame narrative. (Does this “subvert” his fictionality?) After all, if the frame narrative was a diving-board into the text, then Radcliffe offers us at the text’s end no means of escaping what “was, in truth, a scene of fairy-land,” the “delightful villa, belonging to Vivaldi, .. on the opposite shore to that which had been the frequent abode of the Marchesa” (see note 3).

Within the bowels of the Inquisition, Vivaldi’s “mind resembled the glass of a magician, on which the apparitions of long-buried events arise, and as they fleet away, point portentously to shapes half-hid in the duskiness of futurity,” illustrating the inside-out functionality that the backwardness, the reversed morals of Inquisition creates. “A superstition … usurped his judgment” (see note 4). In The Italian, characters’ moral compasses are constantly being skewed by the plot-twists orchestrated by the contorted psyche of Schedoni, the Italian (see note 5). Even the vicar-general of the Inquisition reveals “such glorious candour” that “could not have excited more powerful sensations of esteem and admiration” in Vivaldi: “‘An inquisitor!’ he repeated to himself, ‘an inquisitor!’”

One of the most important–and comedic–subversions in The Italian is Paulo’s “choice” to “go to the Inquisition,” as if it was a destination, its own grand tour. Who else would say, of the Inquisition, “… you will, perhaps, think better of me than to suspect that I came here for my own pleasure” (see note 6)? Appropriately, it is Paulo and Vivaldi’s relationship that provides the axis around which the idea of hierarchy turns. It is not Vivaldi, the master, who has freedom to choose, but rather, his servant; Vivaldi’s servant becomes the agent of his liberty. “Paulo’s warm heart had subdued even the coldness of [the noble spectators’] pride” (see note 7), and the power of Paulo’s transparent demeanor is further illustrated when he not only “was permitted to be present at the marriage of his master” but was “perched in a high gallery” over him (see note 8). To that end, Paulo can be read as Schedoni’s alter-ego, the alternative force of good which turns within this novel’s sublimation of evil. The dueling forces of warm versus frozen “hearts” culminate in a set of divine/sublime coincidences that allow an orphaned child to become the “Queen” (see note 9) of the “fairy-land” that ends the lop-sided relation/tale of the “the confessional” that serves as readers’ launch-point into this topsy-turvy world of the sublime, where:

Who, I say, would have guessed we should ever be let loose again! who would have thought we should ever know what it is to be happy! Yet here we are all abroad once more! All at liberty! And may run, if we will, straight forward, from one end of the earth to the other, and back again without being stopped! May fly in the sea, or swim in the sky, or tumble over head and heels into the moon! For remember, my good friends, we have no lead in our consciences to keep us down! (see note 10).

Notes

1. To subvert, according to OED, is “To raze (a building, town, etc.) to the ground”; “To overthrow (a nation, government, ruler, etc.); to bring down, depose, put an end to; to defeat, vanquish”; “To overturn (an established or existing practice, belief, rule, etc., or a set of these); to change completely (a state of things)”; “To undermine without necessarily bringing down (an established authority, system, or institution)”; “To corrupt or pervert (a person, or a person’s mind, soul, etc.); to turn (a person) away from a path or belief regarded as right or proper. Also in neutral or positive sense: to transform the beliefs or character of”; “To cause a person to lose (faith, hope, etc.)”; “To corrupt (a moral code, a concept, a person’s outlook, etc.); to alter from what is right or proper; (also) to distort (truth). In neutral or positive sense: to transform, change”; “To upset or overturn (an object); to break up or turn over (ground)”; “To impair the functioning of (an organ); to alter (a normal physiological or a pathological process), usually injuriously; esp. to upset (the stomach); to suppress (the appetite).”
2. p. 4
3. p. 390
4. p. 303
5. Schedoni is the only other character in this world of so-called “Italians” to be described as “the Italian” other than the guide at the beginning, at the tip the lop-sided “frame” narrative, which opens up all sorts of other possibilities in thinking about this text as a subversion, a mirror-image or, more accurately, a funhouse made up of so many mirrors it’s hard to tell where the “reflections” and “reality” separate (spoiler alert: they don’t).
6. See p. 334, for an explication of the reversal of prejudice that the inquisitor spurs in Vivaldi, and p. 340, for the guards’ comical reaction to Paulo’s making them “hear a little plain truth, for once in their lives.”
7. p. 387
8. p. 390
9. See p. 391: “The dresses of the higher rank of visitors were as splendid as the scenery, of which Ellena was, in every respect, queen”; queen of the “splendid” “dresses” and “scenery”; of fashion, and of nature. For more on this theme of reversal, see Andrew Warren’s “Designing and Undrawing Veils: Anxiety and Authorship in Radcliffe’s The Italian” (The Eighteenth Century, vol 54, no. 4, 2013, pp. 521-578).
10. p. 393

Work Cited

Radcliffe, Ann. The Italian. Oxford, 2017.