“Adeline at the Window” opens like a book, and portrays my favorite scene in Ann Radcliffe’s early gothic novel, The Romance of the Forest. Far from being a helpless maiden, Adeline rescues herself from a scheming Marquis by climbing out a window, and goes on to save the other characters.

Opening a book opens a metaphorical window for the reader, a process which Radcliffe’s characters enact by deciphering older, hidden texts for clues to their own stories. Gothic novels, like assemblage art, celebrate the process of discovery.