Shifting Perspectives

After reading the first five chapters or so of The Romance of the Forest, I happened to scan over the description of the novel on the back of the Oxford Edition: “the novel follows the fate of its heroine Adeline, who is mysteriously placed under the protection of a family fleeing Paris for debt.”  Sixty pages into the novel, Adeline’s place in the description did not fit with what I was expecting.  Until this point, I considered Madame La Motte and Pierre de La Motte to be the focal points of this story.  Upon reading on, especially keeping in mind the context of the description, I began to notice the shift Radcliffe makes from focusing on the La Mottes to focusing on the perspective of Adeline.  In the first chapter, the reader only really sees Adeline as she exists in relation to the La Mottes, partly due to the fact that she is ill and can’t exercise her power of agency, and partly due to the frame the very beginning of the novel sets in place.  The reason I focused so much on the La Mottes, considering Adeline only a side character who would eventually lose importance (or so I thought), was that Radcliffe begins with a thorough description of Monsieur La Motte: “Pierre de La Motte was a gentleman, descended from an ancient house of France.  He was a man whose passions often overcame his reason, and, for a time, silenced his conscience, but, though the image of virtue, which Nature had impressed upon his heart, was sometimes obscured by the passing influence of vice, it was never wholly obliterated” (2).  This lengthy description (trust me it goes on and on) contrasts with Radcliffe’s surface-level, choppy description of Adeline.  I felt as if I was reading a mystery through the eyes of La Motte, trying to figure out Adeline’s story.

Then it all changes and the reader finds out Adeline’s sad past and begins wondering what La Motte has done to so anger the Marquis, and oh yeah, why exactly is his family fleeing Paris again? And where is it that he disappears to all the time?  The mystery switches the alignment of the reader, identifying them with Adeline, who trying to figure out all the same things.  Why does Radcliffe begin the novel with La Motte and Madame de La Motte setting off from Paris instead of beginning with Adeline leaving Paris with her father?  Are we supposed to identify with the La Mottes in order to question Adeline’s character before using her perspective to challenge the others?  Is the beginning supposed to be symbolic of the helplessness of women?  After all, Adeline does go from the care of one strong male figure (her father) directly into the care of another (La Motte).