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Volume 3, Chapter 10
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Mysteries of Udolpho, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Marriage, Love, and Inheritance
The Wonders of Nature
Mystery and Superstition
Mortality
The Value of Education and Art
Summary
Analysis
Still in Languedoc with the Count de Villefort’s family, Blanche wakes up the next morning and once again marvels at the splendor of nature. She wonders why anyone would ever lock themselves in a convent when it seems that God’s influence is most prominent in nature. She walks around the local area, then sits in the woods for a while to write a poem about a butterfly.
Blanche’s enthusiastic appreciation for nature and interest in composing poems both make her a clear parallel for Emily. The novel has a complicated relationship with monastic religious figures like monks and nuns, sometimes presenting them as kind and generous hosts while other times presenting them as strange and closed off from the real world.
Themes
Blanche goes back inside the house and explores it. While she’s exploring, she runs into Dorothée. Blanche asks about a door that’s always locked, and Dorothée replies that that’s the room her lady, the Marchioness De Villeroi, died in, and she hasn’t used the room for anything since. Blanche notices that Dorothée is crying.
The locked door that Blanche discovers provides yet another parallel between Blanche and Emily, with Blanche’s explorations of her new chateau mirroring Emily’s experiences wandering the mazelike interior of Udolpho.
Themes
After a while, even the Countess de Villefort begins to get more used to rural life. She starts preparing a pavilion on the property so that she can host guests. That night, she, the Count de Villefort, and Blanche all go for a walk, and they pass a monastery, where the strange singing fascinates Blanche but makes her melancholy.
Although the Countess de Villefort seems at first to be a figure like Madame Montoni who doesn’t appreciate rural life, she demonstrates here that she is a more sympathetic character who is capable of adapting. Meanwhile, Blanche’s experience of hearing the strange singing from the monastery continues the book’s ambivalent portrayal of monks and nuns, while also calling back to the many types of strange music that Emily has heard so often.
Themes
The Count de Villefort, Countess de Villefort, and Blanche stop at the monastery, where they speak with the abbess and accept refreshments. As they’re talking, it starts to thunder. They wait until the storm quiets, then they go home. When they get back, they hear guns going off somewhere. Blanche looks out and sees a boat caught at sea in the storm. The Count’s servants help bring the boat in, and at last, it docks safely. It turns out this boat holds Emily, Du Pont, Ludovico, and Annette.
As is often the case, bad weather is an omen for something momentous. Thunder may seem to be a dangerous sign—and indeed it is for Emily and the others who nearly wreck their boat in the storm—but ultimately the Count and Countess de Villefort have no reason to fear their new guests, perhaps even allowing for the possibility that the thunderstorm is a kind of natural miracle that brings them together.
Themes
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The Count de Villefort and Du Pont are old acquaintances who greet each other joyfully. Du Pont introduces Emily, and the Count invites everyone to supper. While it’s a joyous meal, that night, Emily is disturbed, as she wonders whether Valancourt is still even alive.
The fact that Count de Villefort and Du Pont already know each other seems to again suggest that the travelers meeting with the Count and Countess de Villefort wasn’t just an act of chance but instead one of fate.
Themes
