122 THE FEMALE THERMOMETER uninteresting (the supposedly more "familiar" frame-world of La Vallee and the St Aubert family) Emily, it is often argued, is temporarily caught up in the irrational Udolpho-world, and there subjected to much emotional dislocation, but returns safely to ordinary life in the end Commentators differ, to be sure, over what exactly the irrationalism of Udolpho consists in, some claiming that the castle is in fact a violent realm of moral and political chaos, while others, more psychologically inclined, argue that its terrors are merely notional, the result of the heroine's supercharged sensibility The assertion that Emily develops and learns to control her "hysteria" in the course of her ordeal is a common didactic embellishment in the latter sort of reading Seldom at issue in any of these accounts, however, is the two-world distinction itself (with its normal/abnormal, rational/ irrational, ordinary/extra-ordinary oppositions) or the implicit assumption that certain parts of Udolpho are intrinsically more interesting and worthy of discussion than others This tendency toward bifurcation, it is worth noting, has reappeared even in the otherwise revisionist readings of the novel recently offered by feminist critics.6 But what happens if we reject such reductive impulses and try to read all of the fiction before us? For one thing, the supposedly ordinary parts of Udolpho may begin to look increasingly peculiar Take, for example, the ostensibly normalizing ending Montoni is dead, the putative terrors of Udolpho past, and Emily St Aubert has been joyfully reunited with her lost lover Valancourt Yet Radcliffe's language here, as elsewhere, remains oddly preternatural Emily and Valancourt marry in an "enchanted palace," the Count de Villefort's castle at Chateau-leBlanc, under sumptuous banners "which had long slept in dust." So exquisite is the ceremony Annette the servant is moved to exclaim that "the fairies themselves, at their nightly revels in this old hall, could display nothing finer," while Dorothee, the old housekeeper, observes wistfully that "the castle looked as it was wont to in the time of her youth." The newlyweds proceed, as though entranced, to Emily's beloved childhood home at La Vallee There, in the picturesque spot "so long inhabited" by her deceased parents, Monsieur and Madame St Aubert, "the pleasant shades welcomed them with a thousand tender and affecting remembrances." Emily wanders through her parents' "favourite haunts" in pensive slow motion, her happiness heightened "by considering, that it would have been worthy of their approbation, could they have witnessed it." Bemused by souvenirs of the past, she and her lover seat themselves beneath a plane tree on the terrace, in a spot "sacred to the memory of St Aubert," and vow to imitate his benevolence (671) The mood of hypnotic, sweetish melancholy carries over into the last sentence of the novel, where Radcliffe addresses an ideal reader, likewise haunted by personal history: And if the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it—the effort, however humble, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded (672)