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Uncle Silas

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Joseph Sheridan (J. S.) LeFanu, despite fame in Victorian times, has mostly fallen off the radar of modern readers. His superlative "Uncle Silas" is clear evidence as to why anyone who loves a good yarn will be immediately drawn in by his considerable gifts. This novel has a well-modulated dark atmosphere, clearly drawn and fully human characters and a superb plot.

The titular Silas is the uncle of our heroine Maud Ruthyn, who becomes the ward of her mysterious uncle upon her father's death. Silas has an unsavory reputation, having once been accused of murdering a man to whom he owed a gambling debt, but he has, by the time Maud first meets him, apparently repented and found religion. She goes to his home willingly, quickly befriends his saucy daughter Milly and is, for the most part, happy in her new surroundings. The plot thickens from there, and without giving away important details, the reader should know that LeFanu lets loose with a ripping good story that ends most satisfactorily and with some wonderful twists.

LeFanu is a skilled writer at the apex of his powers and an astute observer of the human condition. Some of the more telling lines exhibiting his gifts include:

" . . . that lady has a certain spirit of opposition within her, and to disclose a small wish of any sort was generally, if it lay in her power, to prevent its accomplishment."

"Already I was sorry to lose him. So soon we begin to make a property of what pleases us."

"People grow to be friends by liking, Madame, and liking comes of itself, not by bargain."

"She had received a note from Papa. He had had the impudence to forgive HER for HIS impertinence."

"In very early youth, we do not appreciate the restraints which act upon malignity, or know how effectually fear protects us where conscience is wanting."

"One of the terrible dislocations of our habits of mind respecting the dead is that our earthly future is robbed of them, and we thrown exclusively upon retrospect."

" 'The world,' he resumed after a short pause, 'has no faith in any man's conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge.' "

" . . . I had felt, in the whirl and horror of my mind, on the very point of submitting, just as nervous people are said to throw themselves over precipices through sheer dread of falling."

Admirers of Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy and, to a lesser degree, of Charles Dickens will find much to please them in the classic "Uncle Silas."

This is a real rip-snorter of a gothic novel. Eighteen-year-old Maude, whose mother is dead, has been raised by her wealthy father, an adherent to a peculiar Scandinavian science religion. There are dark rumors afoot about the character of Maude's father's brother, the mysterious Uncle Silas, into whose guardianship Maude is entrusted at her father's death. Maude is the only thing standing between the money she will inherit from her father (when she comes of age) and Silas' considerable debt. Laudanum addiction, poison, big old houses with uninhabited wings, a creepy cousin (Silas' son), and an evil French governess: if you like gothic novels, this one's got it all.

"Uncle Silas" has all the ingredients of a great gothic novel: creepy atmosphere, slowly building tension, a sympathetic heroine, and villains you really hate. Don't trust the blurb on the back cover of the Penguin edition, however; it talks about spirits, perception vs. reality, and the like. This is NOT a ghost story. The evil depicted is all too human, which accounts for the story's disturbing effect. A great read.

Uncle Silas lived up to all the rave reviews I had read of it before purchasing the book. Le Fanu's characterization of the Madame was convincingly sinister and he was able to create and maintain a meanacing and forbidding atmosphere throughout the novel. The climax was startling and apropos. What can I say? I love a good gothic novel with excellent plotting and characters. I highly recommend Uncle Silas if you wish to delve into Le Fanu's novels.

"Uncle Silas" by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is considered

one of the great Gothic novels. It is a long, long

novel of suspense- and since it is so long, it must be

a record holder for sustained dread. Chapter after

chapter, you worry about poor little Maud, the

beleaguered heroine.

Actually, I doubt you do. Maud isn't very

comprehensible to the modern reader. She is the

daughter of a rich estate-owner, and she will inherit

everything upon his death. The problem is that her

father frets over his ne'er-do-well younger brother

Silas. He wants to pay off Silas's debts and reform

him, but being woolenly virtuous himself, the plan he

comes up to do it is impractical and may utterly

destroy poor Maud.

Not that you really care about Maud. As a Victorian

heroine, she stands up to her enemies using her power

of very-good-etiquette, and hopes that her stoic

passivity will stir the heart of some passing

nobleman. The most she will do in her own behalf is

stamp her foot. It's hard to sympathise with a weepy

foot-stamper, particularly when imagining what any

modern heroine would do in her place: write a letter

to her lawyer, call in reporters, plan an escape, or

beat the living crap out of old Silas.

It doesn't matter. In early Gothic novels, you were

expected to care about the heroes and heroines, but as

the genre evolved, the emphasis shifted to the

villains. And "Uncle Silas" has mesmerizing villains.

There's the grotesque Frenchwoman Madame de

Rougierre, who is at turns pathetic and terrifying.

There's Silas's son, who could have been a young

gentleman if he hadn't been raised in bitter poverty

by his father. And finally, there's Uncle Silas: you

don't know what to think of this old opium-addicted

ruin. Is he a victim of other people's cruel

prejudice? Is he a man who got off to a poor start

and was never allowed to make it up? Will Maud be able

to rehabilitate him?

You can find out by reading the book.

An interesting aspect to Le Fanu's Uncle Silas is that there is something going on outside and beyond just the leading character, Maud's, narrative focus. Her being easily agitated and frightened, which she reiterates often, lends credence to the notion that we can't take everything she sees with perfect accuracy. Is there more than meets the eye when she feels the dread and gloom at Uncle Silas', or is this just an overly active imagination? Is she really feeling or seeing the darkness of characters such as Madame or Uncle Silas, or is her anxiety getting the best of her? The reader can take a step back, and come to their own conclusions as they follow the plot. Le Fanu might not entertain and enthrall contemporary audiences like he did in his day, but his method of ambivalence and uncertainty gives the novel the Gothic, mysterious quality that can "get under your skin." He seems to go with the idea that "what you don't know or see" is far more terrifying than what you do; subtle hints, shady pasts, eerie settings and strange characters all give the novel a creepy, suspenseful, dark feel.

The basic premise of the novel is this: Maud Rhuthyn, after her father's passing, is required to live at her Uncle Silas' estate until her twenty first birthday, partly as a means to clear her uncle's name. While some, such as her aunt, are strictly opposed to Maud's going to the creepy house for such a long time, Maud is a bit undecided. Maud's only knowledge of her uncle is a portrait of him which hangs at the Rhuthyn estate. She learns that Silas has an allegedly dark and mysterious past and that he was once suspected of the murder of a man, but it was ruled a suicide. He has changed his ways, and now lives a reformed life, although there is a somber, soft-spoken manner to him that makes Maud question who he really is. After Maud's arrival, she begins to adapt to life there, but begins to see some of the questions of the past unraveled, albeit in a slow manner because she rarely gets to see him. Eventually, a villainess from the past, Madame de la Rougierre, her father's governess who was fired for stealing, resurfaces at Uncle Silas' just as the plot begins to thicken.

The gloom and foreboding mood at Uncle Silas wreaks some havoc on Maud's fragile state, and there is uncertainty what is real or exaggerated. At one point, Maud is looking through the house and is terrified out of her wits to see the face of Madame de la Rougierre. She immediately tells Silas' daughter or this and considers the room haunted. Maud also wavers between being intrigued with her uncle, and having him be her source of abject terror: "Gentle he had been to me...but it seemed like the talk of one of those goblins of the desert...Was, then, all his kindness but a phosphoric radiance covering something colder and more awful than the grave?" A puzzling fear seems to permeate Maud's existence at Uncle Silas, but we only learn later what the real story is.

De Fanu's novel is comparable to a Wilkie Collins mystery, although I'd say Uncle Silas has a darker feel to it. The gothic, supernatural nature is created slowly and subtlety, but nevertheless, it is there. I enjoyed this suspense, and would love to read more of De Fanu's other novels and short stories.

(WARNING - SPOILERS!!!)

The question mark refers to the word "misunderstood", not to the word "masterpiece". I don't think there is much question that "Uncle Silas" is a masterpiece. According to E. F. Bleiler, an expert on the genre, it is the greatest mystery novel of the 19th century, one of only a handful of 19th century novels that are still read purely for pleasure today. But I do think that it has been widely misunderstood.

The virtually unanimous opinion on "Uncle Silas" is that it has a wonderfully Gothic and ghostly atmosphere, but no actual ghosts. I beg to differ - I think that the supernatural absolutely pervades the book in a very fundamental way. True, LeFanu never makes the supernaturalism explicit - he leaves you free to interpret the events in the novel naturalistically if you want to. But it seems clear to me that he himself had quite a different idea of what "Uncle Silas" is really all about.

For instance, there is all the talk of the Swedenborgians in the first third of the novel, to the effect that we are continually surrounded and being watched by invisible presences - the souls of the dead, as well as angelic and demonic forces. LeFanu spends many pages on this sort of thing, and it is all quite pointless (except as atmosphere) if it does not directly relate to the plot in some way.

The father of the heroine (Maud), Austin Ruthyn, is himself a Swedenborgian. I believe it is LeFanu's intention to suggest that, although Austin Ruthyn dies early in the book, his spirit continues to be an active force for good, protecting his daughter from the evil forces he has unwittingly subjected her to (through an ill-considered will), and possibly being instrumental in the ultimate destruction of those very forces. For example, at one point Maud hears a disembodied, unidentified voice in an empty room warning her against Uncle Silas. Another time, she enters some kind of trance state and awakens talking to her dead father, whom she seems convinced is present. Near the end of the book, in another strange trance state - indeed, seemingly possessed - she utters words of doom to her two main persecutors, Madame de la Rougierre and Uncle Silas himself, using the very words that had been spoken to her by her father in a dream. Silas' reaction to Maud's appearance in this scene is instructive. He asks her, in a terrified whisper: "Where do you come from?" - a very odd question to ask his niece, who is living in his own house. The entranced Maud whispers in response: "Death! Death!"

Regarding Maud's two evil persecutors, there are numerous strong hints that they are actually demons in human form, or humans possessed by demonic forces. Maud describes Madame as "ghosty", "like an evil spirit in a dream", and has a supernatural dread of her. Indeed, Madame's movements about the house mysteriously mimic the sights and sounds of two of the house's legendary ghosts. Madame even sings a song at one point explicitly comparing herself to one of the demons that possessed the swine in Mark's gospel. As for Uncle Silas, one of the main (good) characters says of him: "Perhaps other souls than human are sometimes born into the world, and clothed in flesh." By the end of the book, I think that every reader will agree that this description suits Silas very well.

There are other examples of the supernatural to be found - such as the gypsy fortune-teller who predicts the book's climactic scene with great accuracy - but you get the idea. All of these things can be, and generally have been, taken metaphorically and/or psychologically by most readers, and LeFanu does leave that door open to us, as I said. But he was a religious man - the son of a priest and a semi-Swedenborgian himself - who definitely believed in spiritual realities. I think that, in his own mind, the events of "Uncle Silas" were not merely metaphorical, but rather reflected the workings of a hidden supernatural order. But he didn't want to insist that the reader share his own beliefs, and so kept the supernaturalism implicit (though strong). The novel is all the richer and more fascinating due to the ambiguity of LeFanu's approach.

A misunderstood masterpiece (no question mark).

As another reviewer said, you have to be patient to enjoy this, I think. Fairly long passages can go by seemingly without anything significant happening, but Le Fanu's writing style is very nice and definitely vintage so if you like the words you probably won't mind. It's probably true that the book could have been trimmed down by a hundred or do pages to focus on the darker, suspenseful aspects, but I don't think that melodrama was what Le Fanu was going for. He argued for it not to be classified as "sensationalist". That probably makes the book seem boring, but there are moments interspersed throughout that are very engaging and the entire latter part of the book is masterful in its anxiety and culminates in a great climax that will not disappoint. The book has sunny spots and characters, but a majority of the characters are dark and mysterious and a lot are unpleasant interactions for Maud.

Not exactly a gothic novel, and not all psychological thriller, this is a book I could see being disappointed in if you came into it thinking it was overtly either. But if you drop your expectations for what you want it to be because of what you heard it is, you probably won't regret it.

And everybody interested in seeing the original movie adaptation starring Jean Simmons should go over and vote for it to be released on DVD at [...] -- it only has 10 votes as I'm writing!

This is one of my favourite books, and certainly the most outstanding "Gothic" I have read. The pace is leisurely but it has a real grip, the characters (Maude especially) are convincing, and I like Le Fanu's long-breathed sentences.

"Uncle Silas" offers the elements of the Gothic tradition but surpasses all offerings I have encountered. Le Fanu's writing style is more direct and accessible and his psychological insight allows for less reliance on coincidence than, say, Bronte's "Jane Eyre" or Radcliffe's "Romance of the Forest." The characters advance the plot and the plot is riveting.