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
Ludovico gets the keys from Dorothée and goes to investigate the Marchioness De Villeroi’s old room. On initially going in, he sees nothing but tells the Count De Villefort that he will spend the night there. The Count leaves Ludovico and goes to join the others. That night at a late hour, the Count hears the mysterious music.
Ludovico once again proves his bravery and his selflessness by going into the Marchioness’s old room to protect everyone else. The mysterious music that the Count hears continues the motif of unexplained sounds that could be supernatural, but which still allow for rational explanations.
Themes
While Ludovico is spending the night in the room, he reads a book that contains an old story called “The Provençal Tale,” about a noble Baron who meets a knight. In the middle of reading the story, Ludovico thinks he hears a noise but continues. Over the course of the story, the Baron realizes that the knight he meets might actually be the ghost of a knight who was murdered. Ludovico closes the book, thinking for a second that he sees a face watching him, but when he looks again, he doesn’t see anyone.
The story within “The Provençal Tale” seems to connect to Ludovico’s current situation. At first, the supernatural elements of the book’s story may seem to foreshadow that Ludovico himself will encounter the supernatural. But it’s also possible to draw the opposite conclusion: that “The Provençal Tale” represents that supernatural ghost tales are just stories that stimulate people’s imaginations, not anything based in reality.
Themes
