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Volume 1, Chapter 2
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
St. Aubert begins his journey with Emily by carriage to Languedoc for his health, choosing the route that will give him the best view of the landscape as they traverse the Pyrenees. The journey is solitary, but the natural environment around them is majestic. Michael drives their mules. Suddenly, they all hear the sound of a firearm going off.
This chapter once again emphasizes the beauty of the natural environment around St. Aubert and Emily. Although St. Aubert is suffering due to his illness, the beauty of the landscape around them makes his suffering seem less significant when compared to all this splendor.
Themes
Michael stops the mule, and St. Aubert draws his pistol. They come to a young man who is dressed as a hunter. He introduces himself as a “wanderer” who doesn’t live in the area. He takes them toward a village where they might be able to spend the night. But when they make it to the town, nobody seems to have any available rooms for Emily and St. Aubert. At last, seeing St. Aubert’s sickly condition, the stranger offers his own bed, which is in a cottage in town, to St. Aubert. The man’s name is Valancourt.
Although Valancourt’s initial gunshot raises the possibility of a threat, he quickly proves that he has generosity to match St. Aubert’s. St. Aubert lived his life caring for the people around him, such as Emily and his pensioners, and his reward is that now, when he needs it, people come to his aid.
Themes
A woman at the cottage greets St. Aubert, Emily, and Valancourt. The cottage is peaceful, until all of a sudden, they hear Michael in a dispute with the hostess about where to keep the mules—the hostess is afraid they’ll hurt her boys. Valancourt intervenes, offering his new bed to her boys so that Michael and the mules can stay where they are. Valancourt ends up sleeping by the door on just his cloak.
