But then, to learn I had a mother yet alive; to believe I might one day be received in her arms, only endeared by misfortune; full of this melting, this heart expanding idea, I would have sought her prison … My duty to Mrs. Marlowe alone divided my heart: should I desert her, who had neglected every thing for us? What! Are the ties of natural to cancel, in one moment, those of inclination, gratitude, and esteem? Oh, no! (Lee 35)
Both girls acknowledge Mary Queen of Scots as their true mother and set out to find her even though Mrs. Marlowe’s words never leave them, “Your mother lives not for you.” Matilda begins to emulate all she can from her mother. She goes as far as naming her daughter Mary to show her loyalty and love. Matilda writes, “The growth on my child alone marked to me the progress of time. Ah! Moment how sweet art thou yet to my memory, when first her little voice strove at articulation! The blessed name of mother at length broke the drear silence of my prison, and hardly the celestial sounds of hovering Angels, had I been launching into eternity …” (Lee 145). Matilda finds whatever she can to keep close to her mother.
Nevertheless, the women never get to build a relationship with their mother. Matilda and Ellinor get past their loss but never correct their mistake of ignorance, hence, the younger Mary ends up in the same predicament; a surreptitious relationship just as Matilda and Mary Queen of Scots did and ends up poisoned by the wife of her lover.
Alas! What became of me at this crisis! Her paroxysms were scarce more dreadful than those seized upon my soul – every emotion of love, friendship, and kindred, appeared tranquility, when compared with the wild, uncontrollable anguish of the robbed, the ruined mother. … Only horror could be added to a scene like this, nor was it wanting. The centinels weary of waiting and startled by our graons, now abrubtly entered the chamber… they conjured me to leave Mary, now apparently lifeless; but they urged … on her I was so soon to resign to her Creator my whole soul was now fixed. (Lee 320-321)
At the end of the novel, the motherless child, whom in this case is Mary, is reunited with her mother for one last goodbye. As Matilda holds her precious Mary in her arms, she watches her child die.
Amid the political context that is rooted in the historical rivalry between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots for the throne of England, the fictional narrative that develops is coated with romantic relationships (Heiland 20-21). Young and innocent, both girls are victims to their sexuality. Untamed emotions encompass Matilda when she first meets Lord Leicester. At the moment she lays eyes on Leicester, Matilda is love struck. Her first thoughts:
The person of him who pronounced these words, made their difference effect indelible. He appeared something past the blooms of life, but his beauty was rather fixed than faded; of a noble height and perfect symmetry, he would have had an air too majestic, but that the sweetness of his eyes and voice tempered the dignity of his mien. His complexion was of clear and polished brown … his rank not less distinguished than his person. (Lee 39)
Having all kinds of new feelings, this new man instantly steals her heart. Being the first man she has ever met, she says, “Ah! How rapid is the progress of passion, and how, in one moment, does it quicken, nay double every sense and sensibility!” (Lee 41) Matilda is convinced that she indeed loves the earl; however, it is more of an image she is invested in than in the actual person. Nevertheless, Matilda feels an instant sense of trust in Leicester and agrees to help him escape his murderers. She allows him into the Recess and has therefore sealed her fate with him. By the time of his departure, he and Matilda are married and set off to London. As history would have it, they too cannot let anyone know of their marriage or Matilda’s true identity because of the Queen’s fondness for Lord Leicester. The sisters arrive at Kenilworth Castle disguised as women from the Convent, come to the Earl for their superior musical talents. Because the earl was frequently away at court, Matilda was left alone “with too much leisure for this melancholy employment.” Soon after, the marriage of Matilda and the earl is discovered because the Queen proposes marriage to Leicester. They flee to avoid Elizabeth’s wrath but are caught at the Recess, the one place that was guaranteed safety before she met Leicester.
Ellinor’s fate is not quite like Matilda’s. Though she does find love later in the novel, Ellinor does not get the happy ending with Lord Essex. She recognizes that love represents a delusion, an error, in which the self is engulfed by the charms of its chosen object (Wright 22). When the Queen finds out about Leicester’s marriage to Matilda, Ellinor is the one who suffers the consequences. First, she is abused Elizabeth’s impeccable aim at her head with a large book sitting by her side. After being recovered by the attendants, Ellinor states, “A ribbon from whence hung the dearer part of my existence, those testimonials of birth, which were one day to fix my rank in life, attracted the eye of Elizabeth” (Lee 171). Elizabeth discovers the true lineage of the girls and Ellinor suffers for them both. It is after this knowledge arises that she is tricked by the Queen’s agents to sign a document titled:
“the voluntary confession of Ellinor, on behalf of herself and sister Matilda; and set forth, that soon after Mary Queen of Scots sought shelter in England, for divers politic and ambitious reasons, she resolved to pretend to have made a marriage with Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk; and by the aid and confederacy of his sister, the Lady Scrope … this declaration is made and signed on the spot where Ellinor owns herself and sister were thus secretly brought up to wit, the Abbey of St. Vincent, the seat of the late Lord Scrope, in the presence of, &c.” (Lee 179)
In signing this document, the Queen states that Mary’s life will be spared. Mary is beheaded anyway. Along with this stipulation comes the marriage to Lord Arlington to ensure Lord Essex remains alive as well. Ellinor agrees to these conditions without knowing that Elizabeth’s vengeful wrath takes no consideration into account. This event shows the ignorance of Ellinor in trusting the Queen that leads to cruel and dreadful consequences to those involved. The combination of all these events leads to her downfall into madness.
Planning to take her rightful place on the throne, Ellinor stages a relapse in insanity in order to escape the confines of the Abbey and Lord Arlington. With the help of her maid Alithea, Ellinor feigns the same fatal epidemic fever seized by another maid in her employ. As she discloses in her letter, “I saw it was only to methodize the most wild and romantic plan, however, unfeasible it first appeared” (Lee 217). Successfully staging her death and escaping the Abbey, Ellinor is free of her husband and goes in search of Essex. Months after escaping, she returns to England to find that Lord Essex is dead. She decides a private visit to the Queen to demand explanation for the beheading of Lord Essex is in order. The ‘uncanny,’ in Freud’s famous formulation, is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar, and that which ought to remain secret be brought to light – that which is both strange and familiar (qtd in Wallace 59).The utilization of the uncanny in this novel occurs through dreams, visions, and voices. However, the most significant use of the supernatural occurs when Ellinor visits Elizabeth as a ghost.
As witnessed by Lady Pembroke, she writes:
The door flew suddenly open – a form so fair – so fragile – so calamitous appeared there, that hardly durst my beating heart to call it Ellinor. The Queen started up with feeble quickness, but had only power to falter out a convulsive ejaculation. I instantly remembered Elizabeth believed her dead, and imagining this her spectre. This beauteous phantom sunk on one knee and while her long garments of black flowed gracefully over the floor, she lifted up her eyes toward heaven, with that nameless sweetness, that wild ineffable benignity, madness alone can give. (Lee 266)
The Queen is chillingly terrified of Ellinor that she grabs hold of Lady Pembroke and asks to be saved. Elizabeth wholeheartedly believes that she is being visited by a ghost for all her wrongdoings and in turn abruptly faints. The fact that there is a completely reasonable explanation for Ellinor’s appearance is not nearly as significant as the interpretation that Lee allows by having the Queen experience the inexplicable (Isaac 203).
Irrefutably, Ellinor’s life comes to an end when she comes in contact with a portrait of her beloved Lord Essex at the storming of Cadiz. Ellinor’s speechlessness establishes the imminent state of madness that will finally and literally kill her. Alliston states,
“Ellinor survives her lover, her fictionalizing, her sympathy, and her own consciousness, hence even herself. She does not, however, survive the sight of a painting of the storming of Cadiz that contains a portrait of her lover, Essex. That the historical painting literally kills Ellinor is significant, especially since she is the "fictionalizing" sister. The primary symptom of her madness is her inability to recognize anyone, including her lover, her substitute mother, and her sister--the ultimate failure of sympathy. In a rhetorical sense, this means she has survived the grave, since she had told Essex earlier that she would cease to recognize him only in the grave. It is thus an "undead" Ellinor who much later inherits that painting of the storming of Cadiz, long after she has lost the ability to know anyone. When she comes upon it in a moment of lucidity, recognition kills her” (167).
However, this does not deter the female relationship Lee notably emphasizes in The Recess. The most crucial connection with the fiction of women's correspondence is the recurrent idea of the resistance to marriage and the establishment of female correspondences, if not of actual communities, to replace marriage as the primary form of relationship for women (Alliston 26). You first see this with the marriage of Ellinor and Lord Arlington. She tells of her mind being abstracted with the nuptials thinking of a thousand different ideas (Lee 182). There is a break in the letter then she proceeds, “Wedded –lost- annihilated- the woeful mistress of a magnificent solitude, where my inward eyes traced for ever the reverend steps of those who were no longer to be found on earth, one only consolation could my exhausted heart supply” (Lee 182). Her only outlet to sanity is the knowledge that Lord Essex remained alive. She was willing to sacrifice herself for his freedom. In addressing his portrait after a fight with her husband, Ellinor stresses:
"Alas, my Lord . . . those dear wishes, a higher power has annihilated:--nor while the tie which robbed you of this trembling hand subsists, can I suffer it to be thus pressed in yours. Yet recollect at the same moment, the influence you still have over my heart--an influence virtue alone contests with you--Ah, gentle Essex, fix not an angry eye upon me--you know not the wound you give--the horrors you may occasion."--The wild accent of my voice struck even my own ear, and not daring to trust it with another syllable, I strove to bury my agitation and sensibility in a silence. . . . A suffocation more painful than fainting ensued. (qtd in Alliston 173)
Throughout the novel, the solid foundations of female friendships are present. Because most of the relationships with men are saturated with secrets and lies, Lee used friendships amongst the women as a way to incorporate the importance of the female bond founded on trust. Among the most notable friendships are those of Rose Cecil, Anana, Lady Pembroke, and Lady Southampton.
Rose Cecil follows Matilda all the way to France in order to show her unflagging devotion. When she is imprisoned in Jamaica, Matilda finds comfort, companionship, and eventually liberty through the friendship of the Governor’s black concubine, Anana. And Lady Arundell and Lady Pembroke are constant sources of support in London. Ellinor, too, is very dependent on friends. Lady Southampton follows her not only to Ireland, but through a shipwreck and imprisonment in a Scottish castle. (Isaac 214)
Lee takes advantage of blurring the lines between probability and historical truth by focusing on character emotion. One example of shaping history is through the relationship between Elizabeth and Mary. Instead of focusing on the events that take place throughout this time period, Lee concentrates on the type of relationship that ensued between them. When Mary Queen of Scots fled Scotland, she traveled to England in hopes that Elizabeth would help her. Of course, Elizabeth not one to rely on her sentimentality, thought it all a guise to dethrone her. Instead, she had Mary imprisoned until she had her beheaded. Throughout this time however, she managed to win the heart of one on Elizabeth’s favorites the Duke of Norfolk. And so the love story begins when they have to hide from Elizabeth in order to spare their lives. This bit of history gives Lee a chance to show the sentimental side of Mary and the unemotional of Elizabeth. In the course of the novel, the only emotion you perceive from Elizabeth is jealousy. This is Lee’s way of feminizing the patriarch of the novel. This is apparent when she believes Mary is trying to get to the throne and when Leicester turns out to be married again. At this time, Lee’s account of these women was not farfetched. She did invent details as were needed for the novel but the model for the women if history we based on fact. Including accurate facts in the novel added to the significant importance of this novel to Gothic fiction. Mary’s beheading and Essex’s rebellion are just a few accounts of real history.
The Recess takes the Gothic and adds an essence not seen before to its novel. The correspondence between the female protagonists ensures the sympathetic attitudes of reader. This not only gives you a realistic sense of participating throughout the novel, but offers the different perspectives of the romance. Lee’s innovation of the historical romance changed the way gothic literature was written. With her emphasis on the dangers of secrecy, ignorance, and the value of female friendships, Lee uses the gothic novel in a fashion that is both entertainingly sympathetic and indisputably praiseworthy (Isaac 216).
Works Cited:
Alliston, April. Virtue's Faults: Correspondences in Eighteenth-Century British and French
Women's Fiction. California: Stanford University. 1996.
Heiland, Donna. Gothic & Gender. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. 2004.
Isaac, Megan Lynn. “Sophia Lee and the Gothic of Female Community.” ;
Summer96, Vol. 28 Issue 2, p200, 19p
Lee, Sophia. The Recess. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. 2000.
Smith, Andrew and Diana Wallace. “The Female Gothic Then and Now.” ;
May2004, Vol. 6 Issue 1, p1-7, 7p
Wright, Angela. “To live the life of hopeless recollection’: Mourning and Melancholia in Female
Gothic, 1780-1800.” ; May2004, Vol. 6 Issue 1, p19-29, 29p
Wallace, Diana. “Uncanny Stories: The Ghost Story as Female Gothic.” ;
May2004, Vol. 6 Issue 1, p57-68, 68p