‘Under that Veil Conceal the Irregularities of her Heart’: Criticisms of Women’s Conduct Literature through the Gothic Veil Motif in Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk and Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho
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In 1763, the conduct book The Lady’s Preceptor was translated from French into English and distributed to young British women. When discussing the fraught subject of female social transgression, the author writes that
One who is guilty of all those Transgressions, which we’ll rather imagine than mention, if she will
but put on the Mask of Bashfulness and Modesty, will please at least in this respect, and under that
Veil conceal the Irregularities of her Heart, especially from those who have not had flagrant Proofs
of them (D’Ancourt, 16).
D’Ancourt dares not to tear the veil of ‘Bashfulness and Modesty’ from the hypothetical female transgressor, and even more cautiously feigns from indulging his female readers ‘of all those Transgressions,’ lest they conjure such unspeakable actions, even privately within their own thoughts. But what should happen if one should tear away this veil? The Gothic literary tradition seeks to do just that. Growing to prominence during the end of the eighteenth-century, it is no coincidence that the Gothic tradition should gain such notoriety alongside the growing popularity of female conduct literature. Anne Williams states that Gothic literature is ‘pervasively organised around anxieties about boundaries’ (Williams 16). The veil – both literal and symbolic – acts as a gendered boundary; it conceals, inhibits and polices the female individual, ensuring that she abstains from those inconceivable actions that are better ‘imagined than mentioned.’
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