Uncle Silas -Le Fanu- Classic Gothic Literature Review
Carmilla - Vampire Novel Cover
It took me a long time to crawl through this one, I must admit. But once I got to the end the reward felt almost worth it! It’s not Sheridan Le Fanu’s best novel, see Carmilla for that, but it certainly does stand up as an attempt at a traditional Gothic novel, even if the references are a little bit obvious.
Uncle Silas is a story about a young girl called Maud who lives with her father in an isolated Derbyshire home. She is happy, so she claims, and trundles along in her rather insular life until her father’s untimely death from cardiac arrest. She is then sent to her Uncle Silas’ house, to be cared for by him until she becomes of age. At first, all seems rather normal, until it begins to emerge that Silas' may not be as nice as he seems.
The story is an excellent attempt at a Gothic novel in the traditional fashion. There are references to Radcliffe and a few more subtle hints at Jane Eyre and Northanger Abbey. But even so, the actual techniques of Gothic don’t seem as present as they should be. The settings are not built up in the reader’s imagination, a key part of Gothic novels, and the character of the governess is rather overdramatic than frightening.
The character of Maud, though irritating, is characterised well. Her ditzy, overly optimistic outlook on life is well explained by her insular life in Derbyshire and this specific characterisation allows for much of the rest of the novels events to seem more plausible. Contrasting that, Uncle Silas’ is characterised purposefully opaquely, so that readers are taken in by Maud’s shining view of him. This, of course, sets up the climax at the end of the novel.
The climax is not the most explosive I have read in a Gothic novel, but it certainly is creepy. Sheridan Le Fanu, for all his faults in this novel, certainly knows how to do creepy. The last 100 pages are probably the most skin crawling I have read in Gothic literature. For that reason, I give this a 5/10
