“Enlightened Gothic” and National Identity in Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron

Abstract

Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron (1777) is an imitation as well as a revision of Horace Walpole’s gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, in which Reeve does away with what she considers extravagance, irrationality and frivolity, and attempts to lead the genre in a more serious direction. She does this by grounding her story in medieval English history, thus purging it of foreignness and unfamiliarity, and weaves into it some of the more pressing issues of her day, that render the work both “gothic” and modern. The novel is particularly concerned with the idea of national identity and the role required of the new ruling classes at a period in which Britain was emerging as a modern nation. In this context, the change of title from “The Champion of Virtue” to “The Old English Baron” is seen as significant. Reeve eschews barbarism and ignorance associated with the “gothic,” and infuses into her gothic past the more enlightened values of the present―the spirit of rationality, prudence and benevolence. Stressing continuity rather than disruption, Reeve uses the reinvented past to transform the present and forge a future by projecting a vision of society that is both backward-looking and forward-looking. This paper explores the novel’s engagement with such a vision from three aspects: military heritage, settlement of property and union with Scotland.