The Mysteries of Udolpho

CHAPTER XVII

Chapter XVII resolves several long-standing mysteries from earlier in the narrative. It explains the origins of Laurentini’s disturbing claim that Emily is the daughter of the Marchioness de Villeroi, clarifies that Laurentini was innocent of any murder at Udolpho, reveals the true nature of the wax figure in the west chamber, accounts for Emily’s fearful silence about what she saw there, and confirms Emily’s true parentage. The chapter closes with a moral reflection on the nun whose unchecked passions led to a lifetime of guilt and penance.

Laurentini’s Resemblance Observation and Parentage Claim

Laurentini had long noticed the strong physical resemblance between Emily and the late Marchioness de Villeroi, and this likeness was the source of her earlier alarming behavior toward Emily. In her dying hours, when her conscience continually conjured the image of the Marchioness, the nun became more acutely aware than ever of this resemblance and, in her frenzy, mistook Emily for the very woman she had wronged. Upon recovering her senses, Laurentini boldly asserted that Emily was the Marchioness’s daughter. This assertion arose from a suspicion rather than a certainty, for Laurentini knew that her rival, when she married the Marquis, was attached to another lover, and she therefore scarcely hesitated to believe the Marchioness’s honor had been sacrificed, like her own, to an unresisted passion.

Laurentini’s Innocence of the Suspected Udolpho Murder

Although Emily had suspected, from Laurentini’s frenzied confession of murder, that the nun had been instrumental in a death at the castle of Udolpho, Laurentini was in fact innocent of any such crime. Laurentini herself had been deceived about the spectacle that had once filled her with terror and which had led her, for a time, to attribute the horrors of the nun to a guilty conscience over a murder committed in that castle.

Origin of the Udolpho West Chamber Wax Figure

The narrator recalls that in a chamber of Udolpho hung a black veil, behind which was concealed a ghastly human-like figure. The figure was not in fact human at all but was a waxen image fashioned to resemble a corpse in its decayed state, with worms visible on its features and hands. Its history, while extraordinary, is not without parallel in the records of the fierce severity that monkish superstition has sometimes inflicted on humanity. A former member of the house of Udolpho, having offended against the prerogative of the church, was condemned to the penance of contemplating this waxen image for certain hours each day as a memento of his own mortality. The penance was designed to rebuke the pride of the Marquis of Udolpho, which had greatly provoked the Romish church, and the offender believed that observing it would obtain pardon for all his sins. He made it a condition in his will that his descendants should preserve the image, under penalty of forfeiting part of his domain to the church, so that they too might profit by the humiliating moral. The image was therefore allowed to remain in the wall of the chamber, although his descendants excused themselves from performing the penance itself.

Emily’s Misidentification of the Wax Figure and Silence

Because the waxen image was so horribly lifelike, it is unsurprising that Emily mistook it for the object it resembled. Combined with the extraordinary account she had heard concerning the disappearance of the late lady of the castle and her knowledge of Montoni’s character, she believed the figure to be the murdered body of the lady Laurentini, with Montoni as the contriver of her death. The situation in which she discovered the image at first caused her surprise and perplexity, but the vigilance with which the doors of the chamber were subsequently secured led her to believe that Montoni, not daring to confide the secret to anyone, had suffered the remains to decay in this obscure room. The ceremony of the veil and the circumstance of the doors having been left open, even briefly, occasioned her wonder and some doubts, but these were not enough to overcome her suspicion of Montoni; it was the dread of his terrible vengeance that sealed her lips in silence concerning what she had seen in the west chamber.