The Gothic Monster and Victorian Morals - Research Paper Example

The Gothic Monster and Victorian Morals The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) by H. G. Wells, and Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker are all examples of Gothic fiction. The following discussion will focus on the monster or monsters in each of these three novels. The monsters similarities and differences will be considered; whether it is their actions or their appearance that makes them monsters will be examined, and the Victorian social taboos that the novels and their monsters address will be identified. Despite sharing a genre and being published within eleven years of one another the novels, on a superficial consideration of their plot have little in common. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Henry Jekyll begins experimenting on himself by drinking a potion that unleashes his dark side, a violent, brutish misanthrope named Edward Hyde. Eventually, he becomes unable to control the shift in personality chemically and it begins to overtake his upstanding persona and psyche as Dr. Jekyll. The novel itself is in the form of Dr. Jekylls last will and testament as it has fallen into the hands of his solicitor. The Island of Dr. Moreau tells the story of Edward Prendick who is shipwrecked in the South Pacific and finds himself on the island of Dr. Moreau. Moreau was a famous London physiologist who was shunned when his experiments in vivisection were revealed. He has exiled himself to this island where he can continue his experiments in vivisection unhindered by public opprobrium. Prendick learns that Dr. Moreau has created a collection of Beat Men who may, or may not, be under his control and resistant to their animal tendencies. Bram Stokers Dracula has multiple narrators although its principle one is Jonathan Harker, a London solicitor. Harker journeys to Transylvania to assist a client, Count Dracula, with a real estate transaction. Subsequently, Dracula arrives in England and begins to work his evil on a British woman, Lucy Westenra. As she wastes away the Dutch vampire expert, Abraham Van Helsing, eventually joined by Harker and his fiance, Wilhelmina Mina Murray, wages war against Dracula. Lucy and her mother both die after a wolf attack; the struggle eventually returns to Transylvania where Dracula is exterminated; one of his hunters, Quincy Morris, is also killed; and, Mina is freed from the mental and emotional thrall of the evil vampire. In each of the novels the monsters are clearly others, both by their actions and their physical appearance. They are, simply put, obviously monsters behaving monstrously. Indicatively, Moreaus creations are known as the Beast Folk. They appear to be neither people nor beasts but rather an amalgam of both. They are person-like but with obvious traits from the animals that they have been cut and pasted with. “The Satyr was a gleam of classical memory on the part of Moreau,—his face ovine in expression, like the coarser Hebrew type; his voice a harsh bleat, his nether extremities Satanic.” They clearly appear as others, monsters that are neither man nor beast. Moreover, they struggle with primitive animalistic urges that human beings have conquered. Their Law relates to appropriate man-like behavior: “Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” “Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” “Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” “Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” “Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” Their repeated protests that they are men mark them as not men. They are others, able to only appear to act like men and physically obviously not men: They are monsters capable of monstrous behavior such as chasing other men and eating flesh. Dracula is also quite obviously an other. He comes from an unknown and mysterious part of Europe. He is undead, outside the normal human cycle of birth and death. He drinks blood and spreads his venom and bizarre existence between life and death by sucking the blood of his victims. He communes with the inmate of an asylum. He is polymorphously sexual, and sunlight is fatal to him. He is a deviant, undead creature of darkness. Like the Beast Folk he is plainly not human: He is a monster. Edward Hyde is physically repulsive a decided contrast to the urbane and educated Londoner known as Dr. Henry Jekyll. In the words of one of the staff, “"It was for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?" Upon the readers first introduction to Hyde he is bowling over a young girl like juggernaut – a religious hysteric mindless of physical safety of himself and others. He is physically dangerous and proximity to him makes ones hair stand on end. Clearly, in behavior and appearance Edward Hyde is a monster. All of these monsters also clearly challenge Victorian medical and scientific taboos about the impact and morality of vivisection, the role of the physician, the ethics of self-medication and experimentation and the broadest implications of science. In this sense they restate many of the themes that first appeared in Frankenstein. Dracula adds to that set of issues, questions of sexual orientation and promiscuity that Victorians preferred to pretend did not exist at all. All three of the texts are amenable to other readings also. Readings that are more interesting, more challenging and, arguably, more revealing than the preceding analysis. That is not to say that this typical assessment is inaccurate: Only to note that a closer reading of the texts, with attention to historical details reveals a more nuanced picture of the role of Gothic monsters in Victorian fiction. Both Moreau and Jekyll and Hyde raise questions about the darker side of Victorian normalcy. Interestingly, both men are medical doctors. Medical doctors who transgress the boundaries of Victorian medicine, and become monsters for their presumption. Arguably, Moreau is the monster on his island for creating the monsters – the Beast People – that populate it. In the same way that Doktor Victor Frankenstein was a monster for having created the Modern Prometheus, eighty years earlier. The true monster is a once esteemed physiologist who has undertaken to alter person-hood, to presume the role of the Almighty, and committed hubris. Jekyll and Hyde is responsive to a similar interpretation. The evil acts are committed by Edward Hyde, but it is the respected Victorian professional, Dr. Edward Hyde that chooses to develop and self-administer the transformative potion. Dr. Jekyll chose to develop the potion and he makes the decision to become Edward Hyde. As Moreau does, Jekyll also presumes to alter person-hood and challenge the very definition of humanity. In this sense the two novels reside in a wave of cultural/intellectual developments that ranged from impressionisms enshrinement of personal perspective, Freuds theories of the unconscious and Darwins theory of the evolution of species. All of these socio-cultural developments raised anxiety about person-hood, individual motives and the role of he Divine: Itches that were scratched by Jekyll and Hyde and Moreau. This reading of these two novels supports Halberstams characterization of Victorian, Gothic fiction: “Gothic infiltrates the Victorian novel as a symptomatic moment in which boundaries between good and evil, health and perversity, crime and punishment, truth and deception, inside and outside dissolve and threaten the integrity of the narrative itself.” Drs. Moreau and Jekyll challenge these boundaries with profound and complex consequences and are “the deviant subjectivities opposite which the normal, the healthy, and the pure can be known,” according to Halberstam. (Halberstam, 1995, p. 2) In this broader perspective European threat literature – spies, secret weapons and impending invasions were a staple of adventure novels – was a common subject of the penny press. Manifesting the existential dilemmas noted above and, also, the shifting European balance of power in the wake of German unification Dracula can be seen as the ultimate, super-natural European threat. Not just European, but from an unknown and underdeveloped region in the Carpathian mountains steeped in violent traditions and arcane superstitions. A mortal enemy he is himself undead. He is pan-sexually aggressive manifesting as male and female, lesbian and heterosexual. He is detectable by the insane and seeks protection from Gypsies. He is the ultimate unfathomable and unknown European threat. Both of these readings of these three novels confirm Halberstams assertion, “Monstrosity (and the fear it gives rise to) is historically conditioned rather than a psychological universal.” (Halberstam, 1995, p. 6) In the final decades of the nineteenth century, running beneath the stern, staid, and straight-laced propriety of the Victorians were historically conditioned fears. Those being fear of a vague European threat expressing anxiety around a newly emergent unified Germany, militarily, technologically and economically the dominant power in Europe and existential questions surrounding the role and extent of medical science, the perfection of Gods creation, and the emerging science of psychiatry. Bibliography Halberstam, Judith. (1995). Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke University Press: Durham, NC. Web.http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=97539080. Stevenson, Robert Louis. (1886). The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. http://ia331303.us.archive.org/2/items/drjekyllmrhyde00stevuoft/drjekyllmrhyde00stevuoft.pdf. Stoker, Bram. (1897). Dracula. http://ia331335.us.archive.org/0/items/draculabr00stokuoft/draculabr00stokuoft.pdf. Wells, H. G. (1896). The Island of Doctor Moreau. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/159/159-h/159-h.htm. Read More