"How have we deserved this accumulation of evils?" (p. 98)
If Matthew Lewis was the Johnny Rotten of the Gothic (as Stephen King so delightfully described him), then Sophia Lee was the Debbie Harry. They both have indisputable credentials as influential trendsetters on the ground floor of their scenes, but in retrospect, what they actually produced doesn’t have much resemblance to the stereotypes of their genres. A happy little song like Blondie’s “Denis” doesn’t sound like what people expect of “punk rock,” and The Recess, so frequently name-checked as a quintessentially Gothic work, largely lacks the trappings associated with that label. It makes up for it, however, in the incredible catalog of woe suffered by its heroines, and their extreme emotional sensitivity: "A still agony, more dreadful than the wildest tumults of the passions, numbed my very soul; every hair seemed to start from, and pierce my too-sensible brain." (p. 311)
Originally published in 1783, the book starts out like an Elizabethan Flowers in the Attic, and turns into a dual historical romance, in which everyone follows their hearts, but the basic genre of romance does not yet guarantee a happy ending for, well, anybody. Two sisters, who have been raised in an isolated underground structure, cavelike, but made up of rooms with high windows (the “Recess” of the title), turn out to be the secret daughters of Mary, Queen of Scots; their existence has been kept secret from a jealous and conniving Queen Elizabeth. As they are drawn into the world, each sister gets involved with one of the two men most associated as romantic favorites of Elizabeth’s: Lord Dudley, the Earl of Leicester (the character Joseph Fiennes played in Elizabeth), and Lord Essex. The effect is rather as if someone wrote a romance novel about sisters who run afoul of Jackie O. by falling in love with JFK and Aristotle Onassis. Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Philip Sidney also make guest appearances in the various romantic machinations that take place in and around the court, where Elizabeth rules everyone’s love lives, and there seem to be more secret marriages than open ones.
On the very first page of the book, the narrator warns us that "it is the dear-bought privilege of the unfortunate to be tedious!" but tedium was far from the response I made to the variety of unfortunate events. On the contrary -- when one of the sisters was spirited off to Jamaica and, on the very verge of being forced to marry a villain, was rescued by the sudden, violent outbreak of a slave revolt, I started to think things were getting a little out of hand. But since this was only on page 138, this was, if not the beginning, far from the end, with many more opportunities for the heroines to justly cry out that “misery once more struck iron fangs through my quivering heart.” (p. 227)
Despite the books' more obviously dramatic shipwrecks, abductions, and murders, I especially appreciated the frank description of the problem of unplanned pregnancy: enough to worry about in 2003, with modern medicine and contraception! "Imprudent love had produced a new misfortune...Throbs of terror were thy first symptoms of existence. This accumulation of misfortune seemed to benumb my reason. I knew not what to resolve on." (p. 94)
Unlike many of my selections, this book is actually in print and available in a shiny new trade paperback edition, from the University of Kentucky Press’ series of Eighteenth-Century Novels by Women. It comes fully stocked with footnotes detailing the actual historical names, dates, and events behind the story, with which Lee felt as free to take liberties as Hollywood does now. There’s also a substantial introduction by editor April Alliston, who describes getting The Recess back in print as “a long-cherished dream” (p. vii). Obviously a woman after my own heart.