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
Count De Villefort is eager to speak with Ludovico the next morning, but the door is still locked, so the Count goes about this day, thinking little of it. Emily also wakes and goes out walking by the water, where she writes a poem about a shipwreck. Once again, Emily thinks of Valancourt.
Emily’s poem about a shipwreck recalls how she first arrived at the Count De Villefort’s chateau after a storm at sea, but it also reflects her tormented mental state as she continues to wonder whether or not she made the right decision with Valancourt.
Themes
Emily goes back to the chateau, and Count De Villefort decides that, after knocking again on the room where Ludovico is with no answer, he will wake Ludovico up. The Count checks around the chateau, but Ludovico seems to have totally disappeared. Many, including Baron St. Foix, believe that Ludovico’s disappearance must be evidence of an apparition.
Ludovico’s disappearance is one of the strangest events in the story, raising the question of whether he, like the protagonist of “The Provençal Tale,” had an encounter with a murdered spirit from the past. By this point, however, the novel has already established that plenty of seemingly supernatural occurrences have mundane explanations, leaving open the possibility of a similarly rational explanation.
Themes
Count De Villefort summons Dorothée and gets her to explain to him the Marchioness De Villeroi’s death (the same story she told Emily). All his guests leave, with the exception of Emily and Annette, Baron St. Foix, Chevalier St. Foix, and Du Pont. Du Pont continues to pursue Emily, but she resists him. She tells the Count that she’s planning on returning to the convent. The Count advises Emily not to believe that losing Valancourt will haunt her forever, but Emily believes that she can never love again.
Like St. Aubert, Count De Villefort wants to help Emily but sometimes struggles to hand out good advice, given the difficulty of the choices Emily faces. This passage portrays a complicated situation where Emily is perhaps overreacting to losing Valancourt (by threatening to join a convent) but Count De Villefort is also biased in his own way by his friendship with Du Pont, who loves Emily.
Themes
Count De Villefort advises Emily to take Du Pont’s interest in her seriously. Emily is grateful for his friendship but says that is the only topic on which she can’t take his advice. She returns to the convent, where things are peaceful. The nuns there also believe that Ludovico’s disappearance must be supernatural. Some nuns have believed for a while that that chateau was haunted.
Emily’s willingness to disregard the advice of an authority figure like Count De Villefort shows how she has finally begun to trust her own judgement, particularly when it comes to judging the moral character of other people like Valancourt and Du Pont.
Themes
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