|
This novel, first published in 1792, takes place in fifteenth-century Spain, when the fifteen-year-old 'illustrious orphan' Elvira lives at the Castle of Vancenza with her guardian, the Count of Vancenza, the last male heir of his line, who retired sixteen years earlier from his public life. Also living there are his sister, the Marchioness de Vallorie, and her daughter, the seventeen-year-old Carline. The Marchioness is a thirty-seven-year-old widow of an Italian whose husband died in a duel and who since then has enjoyed her retirement from the fashionable world.
Prince Almanza is brought into the Castle, wounded in a boar hunt, and Elvira falls in love with him; his companion, the Duke del Vero, falls in love with her. The prince leaves after he recovers from his wound but the Duke stays, and, disguised as the prince, invites Elvira to meet him at night to marry him in secret. Although she knows that to do so will cause her to lose her self-esteem and would make her unworthy of the prince, she agrees. When she goes to marry him, she discovers the ruse and leaves, unharmed.
She becomes depressed, and after the Marchioness fails to cheer her up with excursions, the Count takes them to Madrid, in hopes that this will help. They visit Madame de Montalba, a female libertine who is welcome everywhere both because she appears respectable and because she can change her self-presentation to please whomever she sees. At her home, they meet the son of a farmworker who passes himself off as the Marquis Petrozi. He has been the lover of Madame de Montalba but now wants to seduce Carline. As the Count and his family are leaving a masquerade party at Madame de Montalba's house, the 'Marquis' stages a quarrel between two other men to distract the Count so that he can abscond with Carline. The Count comes to her aid but the Marquis stabs him with a poisoned poignard. The prince arrives and saves Carline.
The Count dies the next morning after giving Elvira a key, 'the last solemn gift of---' (I: 152). The Marchioness and the two young women leave for Vancenza, where they may remain for one more year before it passes to others. Several weeks later, the prince decides that he loves Elvira and that while her mysterious past might show her to be low-born, her personal qualities make her worthy of anyone.
When the prince goes to propose, he mistakenly thinks that Elvira loves the Duke, as does the Marchioness. They then learn that Elvira loves the prince, and the prince and Elvira prepare for marriage. When one great hall in the castle is being prepared, Elvira finally finds the panel to which her key fits behind the portrait of a beautiful woman. Behind this panel, she finds a golden casket which contains the document giving Elvira's mother's history, hence Elvira's true history too.
She falls into a fever, and when the prince arrives, ready to marry her, she exclaims, 'I cannot wed MY BROTHER!' (11: 146). She has discovered from her mother's history that while the Count was off fighting in the siege of Grenada, he left his sister, Madeline, with the Prince and Princess of Almanza, the parents of the current prince, and their six-year-old son - Elvira's fiancé. After the death of the Princess, the widowed Almanza wooed Madeline and she thought 'his addresses honourable'. He used his good reputation and her trust in him to hide his 'black... purposes', allowing him to 'prey on her weakness' and 'triumph... over that honour he was bound to protect, by all the laws of truth and hospitality' (126-7), making her 'the credulous victim of an illicit passion' (II: 122). Her brother returned and she hid her state for as long as possible, not wanting her brother to seek vengeance, and then, when visibly pregnant, left for the environs of Madrid, where she passed as the widow of an officer. After giving birth to Elvira, she had the infant sent to the Count as the orphaned daughter of a close friend, not revealing the truth even to him. She then died before Elvira was two years old. Given this new insight into her parentage, Elvira realizes that her lover is her half-brother: his father is likewise hers.
When Elvira falls into a fever, the young Prince Almanza thinks that Elvira is raving, and after she dies, he is not told the truth. He becomes a soldier. The Marchioness goes to Italy, resigned to sorrow; and when the Marchioness dies, ten years hence, Carline enters a convent.
The novel also contains the encapsulated story of a pilgrim who is living a life of penitence. The Marchioness, her daughter, and Elvira meet him on their way from Madrid to Vancenza and sympathetically alleviate his pain by sharing their story with him; he reciprocates. He had fallen in love with a young novitiate and wooed her into eloping from the convent with him. After they had enjoyed a few years of wedded bliss, her brother saw them and tried to 'rescue' his sister and kill her seducer. In self-defense, and not realizing that his adversary was his wife's brother, the pilgrim-narrator killed the brother. The pilgrim-narrator's wife then died too. The pilgrim inveighs against Catholic families who entomb their daughters in monasteries, decrying the 'base and little pride; which too frequently sacrifices the younger female branches of illustrious, but indigent families, to a barbarous and perpetual imprisonment' (II: 64) in the 'deep and cheerless gloom' of convents (II: 48).
© 1999 J A Shaffer / Sheffield Hallam University
|
