Summary
Matilda is perplexed by her father’s words and behavior, and waits anxiously for Bianca, her maidservant. Bianca finally returns and regales Matilda with the tales of the mysterious giant in the gallery. Matilda frets about why her father needed to see the chaplain, and Bianca speculates that he merely wants Matilda married. Matilda does not agree, saying her father has no tender feelings for her.
Bianca rambles on about how Matilda needs a husband, and Matilda sighs. Bianca teases her and says she wants a young hero like the portrait of Alfonso in the gallery, which she stares at for hours. Embarrassed, Matilda says she is not in love with that, but she admires the character of the virtuous prince. She has a sense that there is something about her destiny tied to it, but does not know what. Bianca scoffs and says that Alfonso is no saint.
Finally Bianca says Matilda will probably end up in a convent. She adds that Isabella always lets her talk about men. Matilda chides her and replies that Isabella is cheerful, pure, and simply knows how Bianca babbles.
As the two talk, they hear a strange noise. Bianca weeps, proclaiming the castle is haunted. Matilda tells her calm herself, and says that if there are spirits, perhaps talking to them will appease them. They hear a person singing in the casement below Matilda’s room.
Matilda speaks and asks who is there; the voice replies and says he is a stranger, woken from sleep and trying to sing to pass the time while he is kept there against his will. Matilda notes that his voice and tone are melancholy; she asks if the princess Hippolita might help him, if he is impoverished. He replies that he does not complain of his lot and is young and healthy, but thanks her and will remember her in his prayers.
Bianca is delighted and whispers to Matilda that the stranger thinks she is one of the princess’s servants and they ought to question him more. Matilda does not want to take advantage of his confidence; Bianca says she thinks he must be in love, but Matilda tells her not to presume.
Matilda speaks to the young stranger again and tells him to report to holy father Jerome at the convent near the church of St. Nicholas when he gets out, and to tell the father his story; in turn, she says, the father will talk to Hippolita. The young man thanks her and begs her for one more minute and a request. She is nervous that someone will hear, but she grants him this.
Falteringly, he asks her if it is true that Isabella has escaped from the castle. Matilda is upset, assuming that he is prying into the affairs of the family, and tells him she was mistaken in him and shuts the window.
Bianca tells Matilda that she (Matilda) may have been mistaken, because Bianca and the rest of the servants think he was the one who helped Isabella escape. They also say he is probably a magician. Matilda is annoyed, but Bianca pursues her train of thought. Matilda concedes that Isabella going missing and this stranger being curious about it do seem related. Matilda prepares to ask him about this, but just then they hear the bell ring on the gate of the castle.
Matilda muses to Bianca that the man’s speech was fine and pious. Bianca agrees and then speculates that he must have a special talisman to have gotten out from under the helmet. Matilda sighs that she explains everything as magic, and that a young man who uses terms of Christianity could not cast spells. Isabella must have known he was pious too, she muses, and even though Bianca seems wary of Isabella’s spirituality, Matilda defends her as a sister and someone who loved her.
As they talk, a servant enters and announces that Jerome is below with news that Isabella has been found and is in the convent.
Manfred had heard that the friar wanted to see him but thought it was something about Hippolita’s charities, so he did not ask his wife to leave the room when Jerome entered. When Jerome says he has Isabella, Manfred becomes confused and says this is not Hippolita’s business; he tells Jerome that the two of them should retire to his chamber. Jerome sternly refuses, and asks if Hippolita knows why Isabella fled.
Manfred interrupts and reminds Jerome that he (Manfred) is sovereign here, but Jerome says he serves one greater than Manfred and he must hearken to the one for whom he speaks. Manfred is filled with rage and shame. Jerome says Isabella thanks Manfred and his wife for their kindness and wishes them union and felicity (Manfred trembles); she will remain with Jerome until she learns news of her father or her guardians.
Irately, Manfred says he does not consent, and that the young man was the cause of her flight. Jerome asks sardonically if it was a young man, and even though Manfred grows even angrier, Jerome says she will be safe at the sanctuary. Hippolita speaks up, saying she will remove herself so the friar can talk to Manfred.
After Hippolita retires, Manfred demands Jerome bring Isabella back and convince her to marry him, then dissolve his marriage with Hippolita and force her to retire to a monastery for the duration of her life. She will have money, he adds, and will be pleased to have saved the principality of Otranto from destruction.
Jerome refuses steadfastly, and condemns Manfred for his adulterous intentions. He warns her not to pursue his incestuous designs on his contracted daughter. He encourages him to cry for Conrad and resign himself to the fact that the house of Otranto may not endure, but that he will have “a crown that can never pass away” (48) in the afterlife.
Manfred insists that when he was first engaged to Hippolita she was contracted to another and thus their marriage ought to be dissolved. Jerome is amazed at the wiliness of the prince and wonders what to say, especially since Manfred might turn to another woman if he cannot have Isabella. He finally decides to delay by telling Manfred he will get Isabella to consent, all the while secretly getting the church to oppose a divorce. Manfred is elated.
Manfred pauses and then asks who the youth they found in the vault is. Jerome does not know much about that situation, but decides to sow a few seeds of jealousy in Manfred to hopefully turn him from Isabella. He tells Manfred that the young man was indeed Isabella’s lover. The prince is utterly incensed and orders the young man brought before him.
When the young man is brought in, he knows he can tell the truth now that Isabella has escaped, and answers Manfred’s angry questioning by saying his name is Theodore and he is a laborer in the neighboring village. Manfred asks why he helped Isabella in the vault, and Theodore replies that she seemed to need to get out.
While this is happening, Matilda heads to visit her mother; as she is walking by, however, she hears her father and the voice of Theodore. She sees that the young man is handsome, noble, and seems to resemble the picture of Alfonso almost exactly. She hears her father rage at his bravado and demand that Theodore tell him the truth about who he is.
At that moment Bianca rushes in and says the princess is dead. Manfred and the peasant are shocked, but Manfred decides it is not true and prepares to deliver a deathblow to Theodore. All hearts witnessing this are softened except Manfred’s, but he ultimately agrees to let Theodore have a confessor.
Jerome is called in and feels terribly about what he has accidentally done to Theodore. He begs Manfred to reconsider, but Manfred cannot be dissuaded. Jerome tells the young man he is his murderer and is despondent. Theodore offers his forgiveness.
Manfred becomes impatient with this spectacle. Theodore unbuttons his collar and kneels to pray. The friar sees the mark of a bloody arrow on Theodore’s shoulder and starts, proclaiming that Theodore is his son.
Passionate embraces and tears ensue; the spectators are awestruck. Jerome weeps copiously. Manfred is astonished, but his pride will not let him turn away from his aim. Even the attendants cry out for him to spare Theodore. Jerome tells him that Theodore has noble blood in his veins because he is of the house of Falconara. He wonders how Manfred can refuse a father his long lost son. Manfred scoffs that he lost his own son as well. Jerome apologizes, but says it is nature that pleads for this boy. Theodore nobly proclaims that he will die, and that his father must protect the princess.
The sounds of horses and horns ring out before anything else can happen. The sable plumes on the helmet rustle as if shaken by some invisible wearer.
Analysis
The dramatic events of the tale pile up on one another in this chapter. There is the meeting of Theodore and Matilda, Jerome’s stern discussion with Manfred about his adulterous and incestuous desires, the discovery that Theodore is Jerome’s son of noble blood, and the arrival of mysterious visitors who, by their mere presence, make the supernatural helmet’s feathers tremble. The mood remains fraught with excesses of emotion that permeate every page.
Interestingly enough, Christianity and the supernatural coexist quite easily in this novel. At the same time that Manfred is able to comprehend a portrait coming to a life and a giant helmet crushing his son, he can also ask the Church for a divorce. At the same time that giants covered in armor stalk the gallery, Matilda frets about marriage and taking the veil. Religion is particularly affiliated with the women in the story. This is not surprising given that Christianity’s code of moral behavior set forth the ways in which women had to be subordinate and protect their virtue and innocence. Virtue was indelibly tied to being a good Christian, at least for women. Both Christianity and the patriarchal organization of society repressed women’s freedom in all capacities; Hippolita acknowledges this very fact later in the novel when she comments, “heaven, our fathers, and our husbands, must decide for us” (84). Walpole sticks to fairly conventional depictions of female characters, with Isabella and Matilda as the classic virtuous-damsels-in-distress and Hippolita as the long-suffering wife. Matilda’s virtue is almost excessive, for she can barely countenance talking to Theodore lest someone get the wrong idea, and her passive acceptance of death at her father’s hands is usually quite astonishing to readers. Similarly, Hippolita’s lack of protest when she learns that Manfred wants to divorce her (on the basis of a lie he disseminated, to wit) and marry the young woman who is like a daughter and was engaged to their son just one day prior reinforces the sense of her victimhood and status as a token of exchange rather than a fully-realized human being.
It is likely Walpole was aware of the excessive victimhood and virtue of his female characters, but there is still no attempt to make them more nuanced. In fact, Walpole’s own sexuality comes into play when discussing the characters and the relationship between the masculine and the feminine. Many critics have focused on Walpole’s alleged homosexuality and how it might manifest in the novel. Max Fincher, for one, acknowledges that there is nothing overtly homoerotic about the novel’s focus on incest, marriage, and desire, but that it is “preoccupied with the threat and fear of public exposure in its plot, which centres on Manfred not embodying the nobility and honor he gives the appearance of possessing through his false claim to the castle.” Manfred possesses the secret of his grandfather being a usurper to Otranto and spends the course of the novel desperately trying to keep that secret and subvert its likely effects of ousting him from power. Manfred, Fincher notes, has an intense homophobic personality in his hypermasculinity and displays of power and privilege. His fear of “being outed” is similar to what a homosexual would have feared.
Manfred has internalized the corrupt genealogy of his family to the extent that he barely even recognizes it anymore, convincing himself of numerous things that aren’t true in order to achieve his aims. When confronted with an element of that internalization and repression he reacts with extreme terror, as when he mistakes Theodore for Alfonso later in the novel. Fincher writes that Manfred’s fear “is produced by contemplating the effects of power by one individual over an(Other). The catastrophic resolution and dispersal of bodies at the end of the novel implies the fear of outing, of identity being revealed, resides in the prospect of knowledge being used as a powerful instrument over the will of the individual.”
Fincher also suggests that Walpole might be trying to excise aspects of the feminine in the male subjectivity to protect his true identity, but that what he ends up doing is revealing an internalized homophobia. The helmet, a masculine symbol, kills the sickly and weak Conrad; Manfred wonders if heaven ordained this on account of the faulty foundation Conrad posed. The aforementioned misogynistic portrayal of the female characters is also a form of homophobia. As for Theodore, he “may symbolize the disrupting presence of the homoerotic Other.” He has honor and compassion unlike the aggressive Manfred, and when Manfred encounters him he is always astonished, confused, and angry. He frustrates Manfred’s “clearly defined notion of masculinity” and “becomes associated in Manfred’s unconscious with his erotic life and his ambition being thwarted, and with the feminine.”
