Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Uncle Silas Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

The novel is a first-person narrative told from the point of view of the adolescent girl Maud Ruthyn, an heiress living with her sombre, reclusive father Austin Ruthyn in their mansion at Knowl. Through her father and her worldly, cheerful cousin, Lady Monica Knollys, she gradually learns more regarding her uncle, Silas Ruthyn, a black sheep of the family whom she has never met; once an infamous rake and gambler, he is now apparently a fervently reformed Christian. His reputation has been tainted by the suspicious suicide of a man to whom Silas owed an enormous gambling debt, which took place within a locked, apparently impenetrable room in Uncle Silas's mansion at Bartram-Haugh. In the first part of the novel, Maud's father hires a French governess, Madame de la Rougierre, as a companion for her. Madame terrifies Maud and appears to have designs on her; during two of their walks together, Maud is brought into suspicious contact with strangers that seem to be known to Madame. The governess is eventually dismissed when she is discovered by Maud in the act of burgling her father's desk.