Harry Potter and The Castle o f Otranto
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Yet the labyrinth is not always
meant to allow for daring raids and hair raising escapes, it also serves as
a device for hiding and recovering secrets, another critical trope of the
Gothic castle.
Most Gothic architectural structures contain secrets that are
essential to the narrative. In fact, Maggie Kilgour terms “the castle with
its secret buried in its past that will finally emerge to determine the
direction of the future” one of the “most basic gothic ingredients”
(Kilgour 18). Here it is important to remember that Walpolian and
Radcliffean castles both contain secrets, but the key difference is the way
in which their secrets are revealed. Walpolian castles are bursting at the
seams—in the case of Otranto quite literally—to reveal their secrets,
whereas Radcliffean castles require the hero or heroine to find and
interpret the secret(s) themselves. Walpole’s Otranto provides the first
instance of a Gothic castle with a secret to tell. In its case, and in the case
of many Gothic castles, the secret is one of usurpation and murder. In
fact, the entire narrative of Otranto is fueled by Manfred’s desperate
desire to conceal the secret and marry his own line into the legitimate
line of Otranto. His plans are ultimately thwarted by the castle itself and
the ghost of Alfonso the Good who declares Theodore “the true heir of
Otranto” (162), at once ending the usurping line of Manfi^ed and
restoring the rightful heir to possession of the castle. In the Radcliffean
castle, such as the ruined abbey of Radcliffe’s The Romance o f the
Forest, the secret is found in a hidden manuscript that details the
imprisonment and murder of a former occupant. That occupant turns out
to be the late Marquis de Montalt, who was usurped by his brother, the
rapacious and villainous current Marquis de Montalt who is intent to
possess the heroine, Adeline, throughout the narrative. The secret
contained in the manuscript proves essential to the narrative as it is later
revealed that the late Marquis was Adeline’s father and the current
Marquis his usurping brother. Thus, the death of the current Marquis and
his deathbed confession, which serves to “establish Adeline beyond
dispute in the rights of her birth” (353), both reveals the secret and
restores the heir to, in this case, her rightful place. Hogwarts proves no
different from the Gothic castles before it and possesses a seemingly
infinite number of secrets. In fact, readers need look no fiarther than the
titles of the books to find Harry Potter and the Chamber o f Secrets to
discover the importance of secrets to the Potter series. Though an infinite
number of secrets are nestled in the Room of Requirement, a subject I
will turn to in more detail in the next section, the Chamber of Secrets