Novel The Italian - Essay Example

In the novel, The Italian, the seems to associate power with fear. Fear is connected to power and thisis indicated by the way the various characters in the story relate to each other and the way the balance of power is maintained. The various characters use fear and intimidation as a way to get power, and also act in reaction to fear. The story is the romantic story of a young man, Vivaldi who falls in love with a young beautiful but poor orphaned girl who lives with her aunt, Signora Bianchi. The name of the girl is Ellena. Like most romantic relationships ever depicted in works of fiction such as Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, the love between these two young people is faced with lots of challenges. It is at this juncture where Radcliffe shows the direct connection between fear and power. After Vivaldi’s mother realises that her son is in love with the poor orphan, she immediately takes action to prevent the marriage. She uses Father Schedoni as the hit man to kill the relationship. She promises father Schedoni that she will help him get promoted if he manages to prevent the marriage. Father Schedoni then uses fear and intimidation to separate the two. At this juncture, Radcliffe uses another style of writing to deliver her thoughts on how fear and power is connected. In the story, father Schedoni is seen issuing threats and intimidating Vivaldi. Every time Vivaldi pays a visit to her lover, he meets with a Monk who tells him in an intimidating way that he should leave the girl alone. However, Father Schedoni does not do this in person but rather uses an apparition to appear to Vivaldi. Radcliffe uses this style of writing as a way to not only entertain her audience but also as a way to drive home her point. The story being a renaissance story, it becomes necessary to understand how the inclusion of the spirit world would affect the story. To understand the importance of introducing this side of the story and using this style, one would have to understand how people in the earlier days would react to images of the spirit world. Radcliffe (453-476) discusses the use of ghosts and tries to indicate how this affects Radcliffe’s credibility. There could be a number of reasons why Radcliffe uses this style of writing to deliver her message (Clery, 158). To begin with, the appearance of the father as an apparition and in the form of a monk is an indication of the connection to the mysterious world of spirits, which can make things to be more fearsome. Secondly, although father Schedoni could appear as anything else such as a farmer to Vivaldi, he appears as a monk. A monk is a symbol of power and authority and in this case indicates that power and authority comes by fear, what Radcliffe is trying to tell her audience is the fact that to be powerful one has to be feared. Yet, to be feared, one has to frighten other people, to place their lives at risk in order that they will fear and respect him. This kind of attitude to power can be seen even in the modern Italian mafia. Radcliffe also connects fear and power in other ways. For instance, when Vivaldi’s mother uses Father Schedoni to circumvent the marriage, it is an indication of the fact that she is very powerful and that father Schedoni is also scared of her. This is however not exactly revealed until near the end of the novel where father Schedoni realises that Elena is his daughter. Father Schedoni is on a mission to assassinate Elena when he realizes that Elena was her blood daughter. After the realisation, he has to protect her and to do so, he has to hide her from Vivaldi’s mother, an indication that he was also scared of her. Fear is also propagated when Signora Bianchi, Elena’s aunt, suddenly and mysteriously dies after allowing Vivaldi to marry Elena and made Vivaldi the guardian of Elena. In this case, Radcliffe is trying to show how the powerful can use not only power, but also actual brutality in trying to keep the balances of power in check. Although it is not entirely clear who killed Elena’s aunt, it is clear that it had to do with her being bequeathed to Vivaldi. What follows is another act of fear and intimidation, where Elena is abducted and taken to a remote convent of San Stefano. One after another, there are series of acts of intimidation. Fear plays at least two major role in maintaining the balance of power in the story. First, most of the people in the story act out of fear. This can be seen both in father Schedoni‘s acts as well as Invalid’s mother. Although Vivaldi’s mother is not depicted as being affected by fear, it can only be seen that the reason she did not want her son to marry the young poor girl was because she was afraid of losing her social standing. Being of a better social class, she was afraid that if her son married a poor orphan who did not have ancestry, this would look bad on her and she would lose her social standing. As Clery (158) says, Radcliffe may have been indicating that there is a difference in the way people regard power, and the way power really is. Fear also plays another important role apart from affecting the way people act. Radcliffe uses the characters in the story to indicate that people use fear to get what they want. Whether it is Vivaldi’s mother or Father Schedoni who actually killed his brother and his wife in order to raise his social standards from a low class person to a Father in the church, it becomes clear that fear is a drier for gaining power and maintaining it. Father Schedoni also plays a very important role in depicting fear connected to power. This is because he is clearly placed on both sides of fear. For instance, he uses fear to get what he wants, but also allows himself to be pushed around because he is also afraid. This circle of fear and power drives him until he meets his fate, death sentence for his earlier sins. Intimidation can be seen where the characters are asked that if they are not courageous to speak in the present, they should never to so because they would face negative consequences (Radcliffe, Garber, and Clery 248). However, this does not come to an end until Vivaldi is arrested on orders form father Schedoni, on false accusation of abducting a nun and this is a form of intimidation from a father of the church. Vivaldi’s arrest is the ultimate depiction of power and fear. In the final attempt to have his mission accomplished, Father Schedoni gets Vivaldi arrested in order to intimidate him and Elena. In fact, they re arrested in the blink of getting married. While Father Schedoni is using fear (intimidation) to achieve his goal which will make him more powerful after getting the promotion, he is also acting out of fear because he is obviously afraid of Vivaldi’s mother. It then becomes a cycle of fear begetting power and power begetting fear. Radcliffe, regardless of how she shows that power and fear are directly connected, she also indicates that the power that is born of fear is also temporally and cannot be there in the long term. This is indicated by the fact that all the characters in the story who were using fear and intimidation to get power, end up being on the losing side. One such character is father Schedoni, who gets arrested and sentenced to death due to his early sins of double homicide. Vivaldi, on the other had, because he had never used fear and intimidation to get power, ends up the victor as he is freed after it was realised that he had not commit any crime and that his arrest was wrongful and was incited by Father Schedoni. Radcliffe is probably using this to indicate that any power that is born from intimidation is short lived. She also seems to be suggesting that to be really powerful one needs to not only refrain from using fear to get his or her power, but should also not be afraid or allow others to frighten him. This can be seen in the case of Vivaldi. He not only refrained from using intimidation, but even when he was intimidated, even by figures from the spirit world, he refused to be afraid. This is why he eventually becomes victor in the end and wins over his evil mother and the evil father Schedoni. In the book also, there is the incidence where Spalatro follows Father Schedoni with the intensions of extorting money from him. In the incidence, Spalatro dies mysteriously before he is able to distort any money from father Schedoni. This is very indicative of how using fear and intimidation is the wrong way to get power. Works Cited Clery, E.J. The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762-1800. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Print Clery, J. Women's gothic: from Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley. London, UK: Northcote House, 2004. Print Radcliffe, Ann, Frederick Garber, and E. J. . Clery. The Italian or The Confessional of the Black Penitents. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print Radcliffe, Ann. ‘On the Supernatural in Poetry.’ http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/radcliffe_sup.pdf Shapira, Yael. ‘Where the Bodies Are Hidden: Ann Radcliffe’s “Delicate” Gothic.’ Eighteenth-Century Fiction 18:4 (2006): 453-476 Read More