19C Horror

Horror stories and novels of the nineteenth century

tutorials and study guides on 19C horror stories

Tales of Mystery and Imagination

April 29, 2011 by Roy Johnson

short stories of Gothic horror and the macabre

Tales of Mystery and Imagination is the name often given to collections of Poe’s stories. Edgar Allan Poe is celebrated as the originator of several types of short story – the tale of Gothic horror, the science fiction story, the detective story, the tall tale, the puzzle, and the literary hoax. In fact he was preceded in some of these by E.T.A. Hoffmann, but his influence has been much more widespread, and interestingly, given this influence, he was the first well-known American author to earn his living through writing – though this did not prevent him dying in poverty and neglect (dressed in somebody else’s clothes).

He often starts a story with a philosophic reflection, and the central purpose of the story is to illustrate the idea. But what makes them so striking and memorable is that the idea is both articulated via the narrator’s anguished state of mind and encapsulated in a vivid image – going down in a sinking ship; suffering torture in the Spanish Inquisition; a premature burial; and a heart which continues to beat even after a brutal murder. These are images of the Gothic that have kept the horror movie industry fuelled with content for almost the last hundred years.

Very little is overtly dramatized in Poe stories. Characters rarely engage in conversation. Everything is in the grip of a narrator who is normally relating events at emotional fever pitch. “I was sick – sick unto death … why will you say I am mad … tomorrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul.” These are the voices of existential anxiety we have come to know via Dostoyevski, Nietzsche, and Kafka.

In his stories lots of things happen twice. A man is stranded on a doomed ship, which is struck by another bigger vessel and takes him into the Abyss. A man has a beautiful wife who falls ill and dies. When he remarries, his second wife goes the same way. Another man has a wife who dies giving birth to a girl – who becomes a replica of her mother, and dies the same way. The women in his stories do not last long. Even if they start out as beautiful young maidens, they tend to become sickly, they fade, they die, and are entombed. In one of his most famous doppelganger stories, the protagonist William Wilson is pursued throughout his debauched life by another man who looks exactly the same, and is also called William Wilson. You don’t need a brass plaque on your front door to realise that these are stories of split personality, of guilty conscience, of the duality of being.

Poe is perhaps most celebrated as the inventor of the detective story. In The Murders in the Rue Morgue his super-intellectual hero Auguste Dupin solves an almost impossibly difficult problem (murder in a locked room) by what appears to be a combination of acute observation and pure reason. He is presented with the same eyewitness accounts as the police, but outsmarts them by superior logic. (Actually, Poe cheats slightly by having Dupin locate extra clues).

But Poe is less interested in dramatizing the solution to a crime than exploring the misconceptions that make things seem mysterious or puzzling in the first place’. Dupin spends most of his time explaining why the Prefect of the Parisian police cannot solve crimes because his thinking is trammelled in convention. Despite all the improbabilities of the plot (windows with hidden spring catches, an Ourang-Utang with a cutthroat razor) the tale established a formula for the detective story which has survived to this day.

In terms of the Gothic tradition, Poe piles one effect upon another – entombment, necrophilia, ruined abbeys, murder, alcohol and drugs. Nothing is spared in his quest to express intensity of emotion and horror of effect. In one of the other famous pieces in this collection, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, Poe combines themes of incest, premature burial, and a decaying mansion that ends up split asunder and collapsing into its own moat. All the stories cry out for interpretation, and it is to his credit that despite what are often seen as moments of dubious excess (rotting corpses, a protagonist who extracts all his wife’s teeth before she is dead) they continue to yeild up meaning to a succession of readings even today – more than one hundred and fifty years after they were first written.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Edgar Allan Poe, Selected Tales, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.338, ISBN: 0199535779

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The Island of Doctor Moreau

June 3, 2016 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study resources, plot, and web links

The Island of Doctor Moreau was first published in 1896 in London by William Heinemann. The novel was successful in England and America, and a French edition was produced in 1900. There were later, slightly revised editions in 1913 and 1924. It is worth observing that the note explaining the origins of the narrative (written by the narrator’s nephew) appears in some editions as an introduction, and in other editions as an appendix to the main text.

The Island of Doctor Moreau – commentary

The background

The late nineteenth century was a period of considerable social anxiety. Many intellectuals had lost the consolation of religious belief, and following Darwin’s theories of ‘natural selection’ many people imagined that the human race was destined for nothing other than a brutal survival of only the fittest.

There were popular theories of eugenics (selective breeding) based on the presumption that the world was overcrowded and would only become more so unless checked. Scientific discoveries and industrialisation were also seen in a threatening light. H.G.Wells was aware of these developments. He had studied science and would participate actively in the public debates on all these issues.

He launched his literary career with a series of novels that he called ‘scientific romances’ and we now classify as science fiction. The term ‘romance’ had originally been a literary genre for classifying works that were set in non-real or imaginary worlds. Wells was following the trend set in France by Jules Verne with works such as Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863), Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in 80 Days (1873).

The horror

The Island of Doctor Moreau certainly fits comfortably within the category of ‘Gothic horror’ that was popular towards the end of the nineteenth century – alongside works such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and Dracula (1897).

The element of horror in Wells’ novel is all the more effective for being understated. It begins with the repeated sounds of animals or beings in torment – all of which are recounted from Prendick’s point of view. He is disturbed and mystified, but he sees nothing .

As readers, we too see nothing, but are bound to suspect that Moreau, by his very absence, must be engaged in some activity he wishes to conceal. We are also told that he is a notorious vivisectionist who has been hounded out of England. Even when Prendick is pursued by some of the Beast People, they are not at first described, but exist as menacing presences.

Prendick eventually seizes a brief glimpse of Moreau’s laboratory – but the horror is still impressionistic, not specific:

There was blood, I saw, in the sink, brown and some scarlet, and I smelled the peculiar smell of carbolic acid. Then through an open doorway beyond in the dim light of the shadow, I saw something bound painfully upon a framework, scarred, red, and bandaged.

Even later, when Prendick is mixing with the Beast People, they are given names such as Dog Man and Swine Woman, not described in any detail. The reader is provided with general outlines, and left to imagine the worst.

They were naked … and their skins were of a dull pinkish drab colour, such as I had seen in no savages before. They had fat heavy chinless faces, retreating foreheads, and a scant bristly hair upon their heads Never before had I seen such bestial-looking creatures.

Intertextuality

The Island of Doctor Moreau makes reference to several other texts, without labouring the connections or drawing particular attention to them.

The term ‘intertextuality’ is used when discussing one text that makes reference to another. The reference may be slight and trivial, such as a brief quotation or the name of a character, or it might be something on a larger scale such as a setting or an entire plot.

There is a fine line between intertextual references and stealing another writer’s ideas – but the history of Western literature is full of texts that echo or refer directly to texts which preceded them. Most people are aware that Shakespeare took the basic stories of many of his plays from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. The practice is usually acceptable so long as the second author is doing something new with the material and is not relying too heavily on the original.

The first is Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1610). This drama takes place on an island where a single man (Prospero) has pronounced himself lord of the island. He has also enslaved two non-human creatures (Ariel and Caliban) to do his bidding. Ariel has very little substance, but Caliban is actually described as half-beast and half-man. The parallels between Prospero and Doctor Moreau should be quite clear.

The tensions in Prospero’s situation are not resolved until a boat appears at the island and gives them the opportunity to leave it – just as Prendick is only able to leave when the two dead men turn up in a dinghy. Prospero ‘frees’ Ariel and Caliban and leaves them behind – just as the remaining Beast People are left on the island when Prendick finally departs.

The second major ‘influence’ on Wells’ novel is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). This is the story of an ambitious and unscrupulous scientist who pursues experiments using animal body parts to create a new quasi-human creature – all of which he does in secret. Doctor Frankenstein, like Doctor Moreau, also rationalises this step beyond what is acceptable behaviour with a dubious theory of moral superiority.

Victor Frankenstein’s monster eventually feels degraded by his lowly status and rebels against his creator. He takes revenge by murdering Victor’s bride-to-be Elizabeth, and Victor dies in pursuit of his own creation. Similarly, Doctor Moreau’s creations the Beast People strain against the simplistic Rule of Law he has imposed upon them, and they begin to defy its strictures. Eventually, Moreau is killed by one of his own creations – the. puma or Leopard-woman.

The third influence is Defoe’s Robnson Crusoe (1719) who establishes dominance over his desert island because he has the advantage of tools and material supplies rescued from his shipwreck. When the island becomes ‘populated’ by others, he turns Man Friday into his slave, and holds him in submission because he is in possession of a gun – just as Moreau, Montgomery, and Prendick keep the Beast People in submission with their firearms. Ironically, the Beast people are the more ‘natural’ inhabitants of the island, because they have been created there.

The parallels between the two texts become more obvious when Prendick is eventually stranded ‘alone’ on his island following the deaths of Moreau and Montgomery. He constructs an escape device (a raft) just as Crusoe constructs a boat, only to find that he has built it inland, and cannot get it to the sea.

Prendick and Moreau

Prendick is the innocent and lone survivor of a maritime accident in the south Pacific Ocean and is at first relieved to be rescued and taken to the island. He is mystified by what he finds there, and then horrified when he discovers the truth about Moreau’s experiments.

He feels antagonistic towards Moreau, and attacks him – even though technically Moreau is his protector and host. But then Prendick gradually begins to assume the role Moreau has established on the island. As soon as he is in possession of a gun, Prendick starts shooting the Beast People.

When Moreau is killed by the puma, Prendick demands that the Beast People obey the Law that Moreau created – ‘Is the Law not alive?’ He also tells them that Moreau is not really dead, so that they regard him as ‘The Master’ instead. ‘Salute’ he tells them. ‘Bow down!’

As soon as the Beast People are under his command, Prendick immediately downgrades them: ‘I dismissed my three serfs with a wave of my hand’. And he hands out summary ‘justice’: ‘The wretched thing was injured so dreadfully that in mercy I blew its brains out at once’.

Once this wave of slaughter gets under way, Prendick accelerates it, even though the Beast People have let him live amongst them: ‘Presently … I will slay them all’. But more than that, he also commands his slave the Dog Man to kill his fellow creatures.

Moreau is presented as the archetypal ‘mad scientist’ who has pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable practice. He has used non-anaesthetised surgery on live creatures to create hybrids – creatures who are half human, half animal. But at least he has been creative in a perverse sort of way. Prendick on the other hand eventually does nothing but destroy life – and he destroys the very creatures that allow him to live amongst them when he has nothing else left.

His motivation is summed up in an admission that clearly echoes The Tempest even down to the image of Prospero’s symbol of power: Prendick reflects, ‘I might have grasped the vacant sceptre of Moreau, and ruled over the Beast People’. Instead he goes home and lives as a recluse.

The Island of Doctor Moreau – study resources

The Island of Doctor Moreau – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Island of Doctor Moreau – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

H.G. Wells Classic Collection – five novels hardback- Amazon UK

H.G. Wells Biography – paperback- Amazon UK

The Island of Dr Moreau – DVD film adaptation – Amazon UK

The Island of Doctor Moreau – chapter summaries

Introduction Charles Prendick explains the origin of his uncle’s written narrative.

I The narrator Edward Prendick survives a shipwreck in the Pacific Ocean and is picked up alone by a passing schooner.

II The former medical student Montgomery helps to revive Prendick, who is worried by strange animal noises on board.

III On deck, amongst filth and animals, Prendick sees an ugly man with a black head whom he thinks he has seen somewhere before. A drunken captain abuses the black-headed man.

IV Late at night on deck, Montgomery reveals to Prendick that he was driven out of his medical studies in London because of a brief indiscretion.

V Next morning the animals are being offloaded for transit to the island. The drunken captain throws Prendick off the ship and sets him adrift in his own old dingy.

VI Prendick is rescued by Montgomery and the evil-looking islanders who speak a language Prendick thinks he has heard before but cannot understand. Rabbits are released onto the island to breed.

VII Prendick is given a room but forbidden to enter the enclosure. He recalls the case of Moreau, a notorious vivisectionist who was hounded out of England.

VIII Prendick and Montgomery have lunch served by the assistant with a black face and pointed ears. Montgomery refuses to acknowledge the man’s strangeness. Next door the puma screams during a vivisection.

IX Prendick escapes the horrible sounds by exploring the island, where he spots a half-savage creature then a trio of bestial like people whose language he cannot understand. At sunset he retreats, pursued by a creature whom he fights off.

X On Prendick’s return to the enclosure, Montgomery gives him a sleeping draught. Next day he hears the sounds of a human being in torment, but when he goes to inspect, Moreau expels him from the compound..

XI Fearing that he is in great danger, he attacks Montgomery then runs away and hides on the island. He meets another Beast Man and follows him to a ravine.

XII He is taken into the squalid camp of the Beast People, where they chant their ritual of beliefs. Moreau and Montgomery arrive to capture Prendick, but he escapes again.

XIII He thinks to drown himself in the sea, but is ‘too desperate to die’. Moreau and Montgomery corner him and offer to parley.

XIV Moreau claims that the creatures he creates are all animals that have been surgically turned into semi-human forms. He rationalises the pain and torment involved. But the results are not entirely successful: some creatures ‘revert’ to their bestiality.

XV The Beast People are programmed to be obedient, but their animal instincts sometimes emerge at night. Montgomery’s assistant M’ling is more humanised than the others. Prendick becomes accustomed to their ugliness.

XVI Montgomery and Prendick discover that some Beast has killed a rabbit and tasted blood. Moreau calls an assembly at which he is attacked by the Leopard-Man, who is then chased down by the Beast People and shot by Prendick.

XVII Some weeks later Prendick is attacked by the escaped puma which breaks his arm. Moreau pursues the animal and disappears. Montgomery shoots some rebellious Beast People.

XVIII Montgomery and Prendick go in search of Moreau, and find him killed by the puma. Prendick threatens some rebellious Beast People, and tells them that Moreau is not really dead. He destroys Moreau’s current experiments.

XIX Prendick argues with Montgomery, who gets drunk and goes off with the Beast People. Prendick plans to escape, but Montgomery burns the boats then is killed in a fight. Prendick accidentally burns down the enclosure.

XX Prendick commands the Beast People on the beach, where they take all the dead people into the sea. Prendick is unsure of his power, and has run out of food and shelter.

XXI Prendick lives amongst the Beast People and assumes command over them. The Dog Man becomes his assistant. But the the Beast People begin to revert to their animal state. Prendick builds a raft, but it falls to pieces. A dinghy approaches, but it contains two dead men.

XXII Prendick sets himself adrift in the dinghy and is picked up by a passing ship three days later. On return to England he looks on his fellow men as animals and he lives in isolation.

The Island of Doctor Moreau – adaptations

The novel has given rise to a number of film adaptations. The first was in 1913, a French silent film called Ile d’Epouvante which was later re-named The Island of Terror. Most of the film versions take minor liberties with the original text – but there are two interesting features they all have in common. First, the introduction of a glamorous female character – of whom there is no trace in the novel. And second, they all change the character of Prendick to someone with a different and less awkward name.

This is 1932 version called Island of Lost Souls. Directed by Erle C. Kenton. Screenplay by Waldemar Young and Philip Wylie. Starring – Charles Laughton (Dr Moreau), Richard Arlen (Edward Parker) Julia Hyams (Ruth Thomas), and Bela Lugosi (Sayer of the Law). Filmed in the Channel Islands, California, and Paramount Studios, Hollywood.

The Island of Doctor Moreau (1977). Directed by Don Taylor, Screenplay by Al Ramus, John Shaner, and Richard Simmons. Starring – Burt Lancaster (Dr Paul Moreau), Michael York (Andrew Braddock), Nigel Davenport (Montgomery), Richard Baseheart (Sayer of the Law), Nick Cravat (M’Ling), Barbara Carerra (Marie). Filmed in St Crois, the US Virgin Islands.

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996). Directed by John Frankenheimer. Screenplay by Richard Stanley and Ron Hutchinson. Starring – Marlon Brando (Dr. Moreau), Val Kilmer (Montgomery) David Thewle (Edward Douglas), Fairuza Balk (Alssa), Ron Perlman (Sayer of the Law). Marco Hofschneider (M’Ling). Filmed in Queensland, Australia.

The Island of Doctor Moreau – principal characters

Edward Prendick	the author of the narrative
Charles Edward Prendick	his nephew, who presents the narrative
Montgomery	a former medical student
Doctor Moreau	a disgraced vivisectionist
M’Ling	black-faced assistant to Montgomery

More science fiction by H.G. Wells

The Time Machine (1895) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Wheels of Chance (1896) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Invisible Man (1897) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The War of the Worlds (1898) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The First Men in the Moon (1901) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Shape of Things to Come (1933) – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

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The Picture of Dorian Gray

April 1, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) Oscar Wilde’s version of the Gothic horror story, has entered popular consciousness even amongst people who have not actually read the novel. His central image of a secret ‘portrait in the attic’ is frequently used as a metaphor in cases where people seem to be rather unnaturally preserving their youthful looks.

The novel is also packed full of witty epigrams and paradoxes (usually expressed by the character Lord Henry Wotton) which Wilde re-used in the stage plays that made him famous. Within twelve months of publishing Dorian Gray he was at the height of his fame as a writer, a wit, and a dandy. And within another three years he was in jail – convicted of having commited acts of ‘gross indecency’ with other men in private – providing a wonderful example of the claim made in his essay The Decay of Lying (1891), that “Life imitates Art more than Art imitates Life”.

The Picture of Dorian Gray was first serialised in Lipincott’s Monthly Magazine (Philadelphia) starting in the issue for July 1990. But this version was Bowdlerised by the magazine editors without Wilde’s knowledge. He subsequently revised the text for its publication as a one-volume novel by Ward, Locke and Company in 1891.

The Picture of Dorian Gray – critical commentary

The Double

The ‘double’ theme gets an interesting twist here. Instead of two human beings we have a human and a painting – a work of art. They start out looking identical. The portrait is an accurate record of Dorian’s beauty as an eighteen year old young man. But as time passes, Dorian remains the same, whilst the portrait ages and acts as a reflector of the sins that Dorian commits.

In most instances of the double, one character acts as the alter-ego of the other or commits acts on behalf of the other. But in Dorian’s case, he actually commits the acts himself, whilst the portrait internalises their effects. (It is also interesting that so few of his debaucheries are recorded.)

Structure

The narrative was first published in thirteen chapters as a serial in Lippincott’s monthly magazine, and later as twenty chapters in one volume. The additional matter for the first book publication does not add anything substantial.

The narrative essentially falls into two parts, with a two chapter bridge between them. Part one establishes Dorian’s desire for eternal youth, his relationship with Sibyl which turns out badly, the mysterious changes to the portrait, and his decision to lock it away in the attic.

The bridging section in which almost twenty years pass is filled with an account of Dorian’s cultural tastes for decadent writers and his passion for collecting ornate embroidery and obscure musical instruments. During this period he establishes a social reputation for debauchery.

Part three deals with his downfall. First he commits murder, blackmails his friend, and then is pursued by Sibyl Vane’s brother – but appears to escape justice. But suffering both from a sense of guilt and horror at what his life has become, he decides to rid himself of the the thing that acts as a constant reminder – the portrait.

The title

It is interesting to note that whilst the title of the novel is The Picture of Dorian Gray, it is almost universally referred to amongst the general public as The Portrait of Dorian Gray – and with some justification. Because the painting is a portrait. The term picture is more ambiguous: it could mean ‘the impression created by Dorian Gray’ or ‘the picture owned by Dorian Gray’. Whereas the whole shocking effect of the story is that the portrait ages horribly in the attic whilst Dorian in person retains his youthful good looks.

The Picture of Dorian Gray – study resources

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Penguin CLassics – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Penguin CLassics – Amazon US

The Picture of Dorian Gray – York Notes (study aids) – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Norton Critical edition – Amazon US

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Cliffs Notes (study aids) – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – BBC full-cast 2CD audio – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – BBC unabridged audio book – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – eBook versions at Gutenberg

The Picture of Dorian Gray – 2009 DVD film (Colin Firth) – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – BBC Oscar Wilde 3 DVDs – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – 1945 DVD (George Sanders) – Amazon UK

The Picture of Dorian Gray – plot summary

Lord Henry Wotton meets Dorian Gray in Basil Hallward’s studio where he is having his portrait painted. He is struck by Dorian’s youthful beauty, and preaches to him a philosophy of self-realisation (and self-indulgence) before Time ages him and his appetites wane. Dorian takes up these ideas enthusiastically, and wishes to remain as youthful as he appears in the very successful portrait, which he is given as a gift.

As a result of his desire to live life more fully, Dorian meets and falls in love with Sibyl Vane, a young actress. Her mother encourages the connection, but her brother is jealous of Sibyl’s reputation and suspicious of Dorian’s motives, because he comes from the upper class. However, it is revealed that Sibyl’s father was ‘a gentleman’.

Dorian wishes to show off Sibyl to his friends, but when they visit the theatre her acting is disastrously bad. She now believes that love for Dorian is her true vocation in life. Dorian feels humiliated by the episode and brusquely rejects her. He returns home to find that his portrait has changed for the worse.

Next day Lord Henry reports that Sibyl has committed suicide, and persuades Dorian that he can not be considered responsible for her death. Dorian hides the portrait in his attic and will not let Basil see his own work, knowing that the portrait will age whilst he continues to look young.

Dorian gives himself up to a life of self-gratification and debauchery, based on his reading of the Decadent writers and Lord Henry’s philosophies. As the years go by he develops a scandalous reputation, whilst retaining his youthful looks. His friend Basil implores him to reform before it is too late – whereupon Dorian confronts him with the portrait, then kills him.

Dorian then blackmails an old college friend Alan Campbell to dispose of the evidence, which is successful. He feels free of any suspicion, until James Vane re-appears and threatens to kill him because of Sibyl’s death. Vane pursues Dorian to his country estate, but he is shot by accident during a hunting party.

It is then revealed that Campbell has committed suicide – presumably to avoid some sort of scandal. Dorian feels relieved that he has completely escaped detection, and although other people’s lives have been ruined, he is glad to look as youthful as ever.

Nevertheless he feels oppressed by feelings of guilt and wishes to reform. Feeling that the portrait has somehow cheated or deceived him, he resolves to destroy it – but destroys himself instead. In the final scene the painting has become young again, whilst Dorian is dead with a knife in his heart – a wrinkled, withered, and age-ravaged old man.

Mont Blanc – special Oscar Wilde edition

Principal characters

Lord Henry Wotton	aesthete and wit
Basil Hallward	painter
Dorian Gray	wealthy and good-looking young man
Lady Agatha	Lord Henry’s aunt
Lord George Fermor	Lord Henry’s uncle
Margaret Devereux	Dorian Gray’s attractive mother
Victoria	Lord Henry’s wife
Sibyl Vane	a young actress
Mr Isaacs	Jewish impressario
James Vane	Sibyl’s younger brother
Lord Radley	Dorian Gray’s guardian
Lady Gwendolen	Lord Henry’s sister
Victor	Dorian Gray’s servant
Mrs Leaf	Dorian Gray’s housekeeper
Alan Campbell	chemist friend of Dorian’s
Lady Narborough	society hostess

Film version

1976 TV version – Jeremy Brett and Sir John Gielgud

Film version

1945 Original movie trailer – George Sanders

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The Sandman

October 4, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, web links, and further reading

The Sandman was first published in 1817 as one of the stories in a collection called Die Nachtstucke (The Night Pieces) by E.T.A. Hoffmann. He was a German writer who formed an important link between Romanticism and the Gothic fiction of the later nineteenth century. His novel The Nutcracker and the Mouse was the basis for Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker, and two of his other stories were turned into the ballet Coppelia.

The Sandman – commentary

The horror story

The Sandman was written in 1815 and has become famous as an early nineteenth-century horror story – for a number of reasons. First it is an excellent, if sometimes rather puzzling story in its own right. Second, it was used as the basis for a popular opera by the Jaques Offenbach in 1861 and then turned into an English ballet filmed by Michael Powell in 1951. Third, it was the subject of an essay written by Sigmund Freud in 1919 called The Uncanny in which he offers an interpretation of the story in psycho-analytic terms. This has become celebrated as an explanation of horror stories and their attractions.

The principal element of the story that has attracted most attention is that of a human being who falls in love with a work of art – in this case a mannequin or mechanical doll. This is a story which goes back as far as Greek mythology. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with the statue of a beautiful woman (Galatea) that he had carved. This idea has been the basis of stories, poems, stage plays, paintings, operas, and ballets – as the Wikipedia entry demonstrates.

However, this is only one element of The Sandman, and as you will see from the interpretation that follows, not its most important part. Olimpia the mechanical doll is an attractive feature of the story, but its deepest meanings are centred in the psychology of the protagonist, Nathaniel.

Pygmalion and Galatea

The narrative

There is an interesting anomaly in Hoffman’s approach to the form of this narrative. The story begins as the exchange of three letters. The principal character Nathaniel writes to his friend Lothar describing the childhood origins of his fears and the menacing figures of Coppelius and Coppola (the Sandman). But he mistakenly mails the letter to his sweetheart Clara, who is Lothar’s sister. She replies suggesting that the evil figure Nathaniel sees in Coppelius is largely imaginary – a figment of his imagination. Nathaniel then reports to Lothar that he has taken up studies with Spalanzani, who has a very attractive daughter, Olimpia. Following this introduction the story reverts to a traditional third-person narrative mode.

The interpretation

The story lends itself to a variety of interpretations. In his essay discussing the story, The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud has no hesitation in equating the Sandman’s threats to tear out Nathaniel’s eyes with an unconscious fear of castration. Freud also assumes that the source of this threat will be Nathaniel’s father. And it is true that the father and Coppelius not only act in unison, but are fused in Nathaniel’s mind.

When Nathaniel feels he is being threatened by the two men (both dressed in long black smocks) his father “looked like Coppelius”. And even though the father is horribly disfigured as a result of the household explosion, he returns to his normally serene appearance in his coffin: “his features were once again as mild and gentle as they had been during his life”. There is therefore a strong case to be made for a psychological transference between the father and Coppelius as castration threats on Nathaniel’s part.

But this explanation seems to leave a number of important questions unanswered. For instance, why does Nathaniel fall in love with an automaton? And why does he end up killing himself? These questions are answerable with a slightly more nuanced, though still psycho-analytic interpretation.

This approach sees Nathaniel as in fear of female sexuality. He claims to be in love with Clara, but when she moves to live in his father’s house, he has the most serious attack of subliminal fear centred on the figure of the Sandman. Moreover, Clara is not particularly attractive, and he finds her cold and unresponsive. In fact he is attracted to women who are impassive.

This explains the curious detail of Nathaniel mailing the first letter by ‘mistake’ to Clara instead of Lothar. Nathaniel is not aware that the figure of Coppelius (later Coppola) is a metaphor of his sexual fears. He thinks of him merely as an ugly and menacing figure who is threatening to put hot coals in his eyes. But at an unconscious level Nathaniel wishes to avoid the sexual intimacy that marriage to Clara would involve. So he gives a full account of the origins of his psychological problem and mails it to the person for whom it has the greatest relevance – Clara, the woman he fears he is expected to marry.

The poem he writes about their marriage reveals his secret fears – that the event will be to him a form of death. This is in fact the second ‘warning’ he conveys to her. She dismisses the poem out of hand, offering him a perfectly reasonable explanation for his fears – telling him they lie within himself (which is true). But he rejects her suggestions. In fact he rejects them twice – just as he twice selects a cold and unresponsive female as the object of his love.

The second instance of his choosing is even more intractably unresponsive, since she is in fact an automated doll. Nathaniel also falls in love with Olimpia by viewing her through a pocket telescope – a device guaranteed to keep him at a distance from the object of his affection and the source of his secret fears.

Nevertheless, Nathaniel actually decides he wants to marry Olimpia, but when he approaches her, wedding ring at the ready, he collapses into another nervous fit, apparently brought on by the appearance of the evil Coppelius, the embodiment of his fear of female sexuality. But his fainting fit is his unconscious (but well-conceived) avoidance strategy for what he fears most – sexual intimacy.

Having recovered from his indisposition a second time, he is presented via an inheritance with a ready-made family home and estate. All he needs to do is marry Clara, who is still reassuring him. He takes her up the town hall tower to look into their future – the countryside, where their home is located.

At this very moment it looks as if his fate is sealed: he cannot escape matrimony and its sexual implications. So he conjures up the vision of Coppelius again (using the pocket telescope he has bought from him). Anyone sceptical about this interpretation should observe carefully what happens next.

Nathaniel sees Woman and Marriage as a threat – so his first impulse is to remove the cause of this existential fear. He tries to throw Clara off the tower into the market square below. But this manoeuvre is thwarted by the arrival of Clara’s brother Lothar, who eventually saves her.

It should be noted however, that Nathaniel whilst climbing the tower has locked behind him not just one but two doors leading to the parapet. This suggests rather strongly that he has gone up the tower with some sort of pre-meditated evil intention.

Having failed to remove the source of the threat by killing Clara, he then takes the only alternative open to him – he removes himself from the threat by plunging to his death below.

As if to underscore this interpretation of events, the story concludes some years later with a pastoral idyll in which Clara is happily married to a handsome young man with whom she has two young children. This is the very scenario which embodies all Nathaniel’s poorly suppressed fears. So the story is not about a man who falls in love with a mechanical doll, but a parable of the fear of domestic intimacy and the socio-psychological price that must be paid to enjoy it.

The Sandman – study resources

The Sandman – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

The Sandman – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Tales of Hoffmann – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Tales of Hoffmann – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Freud: The Uncanny – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Freud: The Uncanny – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Sandman – story synopsis

Nathaniel writes from university to his friend Lothar after a disturbing incident involving someone he recognises from the past. He recalls childhood memories of being sent to bed early with the threat that ‘the Sandman is coming’. He is told that the Sandman throws sand into children’s eyes, which jump out of their heads and are fed to his own offspring, who have hooked beaks like owls which they use to pluck out the eyes of naughty children.

Nathaniel’s mother tried to reassure him that there was no such person as the Sandman, but the image remained alive in Nathaniel’s mind. He heard the Sandman climbing the stairs to visit his father, and one night hid in the room to confirm his fears. The Sandman turned out to be a hideous lawyer Coppelius who threatened to put burning coals into Nathaniel’s eyes. His father pleaded for mercy, and Nathaniel fell into a swoon. Coppelius disappeared from the town.

A year later Coppelius reappeared for what Nathaniel’s father said would be the last time. That night the father was killed in an explosion, and Coppelius again disappeared

Nathaniel mistakenly posts his letter to Clara, Lothar’s sister. Clara in her letter of reply suggests that Nathaniel’s continuing fears are imaginary. She argues that Evil lies within the Self, and it is in Nathaniel’s own power to shake off the Sandman’s pernicious influence.

Nathaniel replies to Lothar rejecting Clara’s advice. He reports on a new enthusiasm for Professor Spalanzani and his beautiful daughter Olimpia.

An outer narrator then takes over the narrative, describing the difficulties of representing uncanny experiences. The story backtracks to describe Clara and her brother Lothar moving to live in Nathaniel’s family home. Nathaniel is engaged to marry Clara, but he leaves to study at the city of G***. When he returns home, Clara continues to argue that Nathaniel can overcome the malign influence within himself. He is irritated by her coldness and unresponsiveness.

Nathaniel writes a dramatic poem describing his wedding to Clara and Coppelius’s disruption of it that reveals Clara to him as an image of death. Nathaniel reads the poem to her: she tells him to throw it in the fire. They quarrel; Lothar rebukes him; but all three are eventually reconciled.

On his return to G*** Nathaniel lives opposite Spalanzani and his statuesque daughter Olimpia. Nathaniel is visited by Coppola, who tries to sell him spectacles. Nathaniel buys a telescope from him instead. When Spalanzani gives a ball. Nathaniel dances with Olimpia and makes overtures of love to her, oblivious to everyone else’s amusement.

Following this he reads his poetry to her and eventually decides to marry her. But when he arrives at her house with a wedding ring, Coppelius is arguing with Spalanzani over possession of Olimpia, who is revealed as a mechanical automaton. Nathaniel goes mad with fury and is taken off to a lunatic asylum.

Nathaniel awakes from a dangerous illness in his father’s house where he is being tended by Clara. The family unexpectedly inherit an estate from a distant relative. Clara and Nathaniel climb the tower of the town hall to view the countryside. Nathaniel finds the telescope in his pocket and immediately tries to throw Clara off the tower. She is saved by Lothar, but Nathaniel sees Coppelius in the crowd below and throws himself off the tower to his death. Some years later Clara is happily married with two small children.

More 19C Authors
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Trilby

May 25, 2016 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study resources, plot, and web links

Trilby was first published in serialised form in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in seven monthly instalments beginning January 1894. As was common practice at that time, each episodes carried illustrations featuring key figures and moments in the story. These were produced by the author himself, since George du Maurier was primarily a cartoonist and illustrator, even though he is best remembered today as the author of this novel, which he wrote at the suggestion of his friend Henry James.

The book was an immense international success when it appeared, and it led to a version as a play (by Paul Potter) to various spoofs and parodies, and of course to the popularity of the trilby hat, which was a feature of the theatrical production. There were several later film versions of the story produced between 1914 and 1954 – one of which is featured below. George du Maurier was the grandfather of the English romantic novelist Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989).

Trilby – critical commentary

Historical background

In 1848 Alexander Dumas published The Lady of the Camellias (La Dame aux camelias) – a novel that established the fashion for stories set in the bohemian world of the demi-mondaine – a woman who trades her sexual favours in exchange for living in style. Dumas’s heroine has the additional interest that she is suffering from tuberculosis. The novel was immediately followed in 1852 by a very successful stage adaptation, and this in its turn was used as the basis for Giuseppi Verdi’s opera La Traviata.

Around the same time Henri Murger wrote his Scenes from Bohemian Life (Scenes de la vie de bohème) a loosely related collection of stories which originally appeared in the literary magazine Le Corsaire, all of them set in the Latin Quarter of Paris . They became known collectively under the title La Vie Bohème. These stories too gave rise to the romantic and sentimental plot for operas such as Puccini’s La bohème (1896) and various other adaptations for the stage and (later) the cinema.

Bohemia

“To be young, to be fond of pleasure, to care nothing for worldly prosperity, to scorn mere respectability, and to rebel against rigid rule – these are the qualities which alone may be regarded as essential to constitute the Bohemian.” That’s how the Westminster Review, a British journal, defined Bohemianism in 1862.

These literary predecessors to Trilby were second rate inventions, full of unrealistic cliches of artistic life – people with artistic aspirations living in cheerful poverty; whores with hearts of gold; sentimental love attachments, and eternal friendships sworn between men. George du Maurier featured all of these in Trilby, and added plenty more besides.

And yet the three principal males in Trilby – Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee – are anything but genuine bohemians. They all have private incomes, they dine in the best restaurants, and they dress like City stockbrokers. They form a vaguely homo-erotic trio who accept Trilby on her boyish, de-sexualised arrival, but are scandalised (Billee in particular) when it is revealed that Trilby is working as an artist’s model, posing in the nude.

Du Maurier’s novel is an appalling production as a literary artefact. It is full of stock characters, poor construction, bad plotting, digressions and irrelevancies, and a laboured literary style that groans under the effort of fulfilling the demands of the monthly instalment.

But like other works in the genre of Gothic horror – Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde (1886), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and Dracula (1897) du Maurier had a dramatic trump card that lifted a badly-written novel into the realms of the first modern best-sellers. That trump card was a psychological angle to the story that resonates beyond its historical milieu – the transformative power of hypnotism.

Hypnotism

Hypnosis derives from mesmerism, popularised by the German physician Franz Mesmer in the early nineteenth century. By the end of the century public demonstrations were commonly staged, and it is worth noting that some of the earliest researches into psycho-analysis (Freud and Charcot in 1885) used hypnosis as an attempt to access what we now call the unconscious mind.

The central character and villain Svengali uses hypnotic techniques, first of all to cure a painful condition of the eyes from which Trilby is suffering. At this point in the narrative she dislikes him intensely, and shortly afterwards she leaves Paris and the plot of the novel. In the five years that follow, she makes her way back to Paris and Svengali, where he hypnotises her again in order to teach her singing. At the same time he also makes her virtually his wife.

It is significant (for this novel) that an alternative name for mesmerism was ‘animal magnetism’. Trilby by the latter part of the novel has been living with Svengali in the intervening five years as his musical and life companion and is utterly devoted to him. The only logical explanation for this change in her attitude is that she is under his persuasive influence.

Svengali has hypnotised her into loving him – at the same time as teaching her to sing . He has done this with the use of his suggestively symbolic ‘little flexible flageolet’. Du Maurier seems to be unaware that a flageolet, apart from its metaphoric male counterpart, is anything but flexible.

The sexual element

Du Maurier also seems to be completely uncertain about his heroine – presenting her first as an androgynous boy-like figure, then as the whore with a heart of gold. In some passages Trilby is aware that her reputation is compromised, yet in others the narrative (which is firmly in the voice of its author) gives the impression that it is completely unblemished. However, it has to be said that given the social and literary conventions of the time, nobody would have published a novel that featured as its heroine a prostitute, heart of gold or not

And although it remains unacknowledged, that is what Trilby is. She is from a poor background with alcoholic parents, and she has been molested by an elderly friend of the family. She lives in the louche Latin Quarter of Paris, and poses in the nude as an ‘artists model’ and works occasionally a laundress. These are all what in the late nineteenth century were cyphers for prostitution.

She offers to live with Billee as his mistress because she loves him – but does not think she ought to marry him. She realises that her social reputation is tainted – and she feels shame about the ‘things’ she has done. She writes to Sandy:

And I have done dreadful things besides, as you must know, as all the Quartier knows. Baratier and Besson, but not Durian, though people think so. Nobody else I swear – except old Monsieur Penque at the beginning, who was mamma’s friend. It makes me almost die of shame and misery to think of it: for that’s not like sitting I knew how wrong it was all along – and there’s no excuse for me, none.

The implication is that she has had sexual relations with these artists, as well as posing nude for them. Later in the narrative she claims she ‘could never be fond of [Svengali] in the way he wished … I used to try and do all I could – be a daughter to him, as I couldn’t be anything else’.

Du Maurier is trying to redeem his heroine, but he seems to be struggling with his own ambivalences and contradictions, because in the same speech Trilby goes on to reveal ‘I always had the best of everything. He insisted on that … as soon as I felt uneasy about things … he would say “Dors, ma mignonne” and I would sleep at once – for hours, I think – and wake up, oh, so tired! and find him kneeling by me’.

The clear implication is that Svengali puts Trilby into a hypnotic trance and has sex with her – which accounts for her tiredness on waking. Yet du Maurier seems hardly aware of these inferences – because he no doubt wished to present his heroine as untainted.

Anti-semitism

Even the most enthusiastic reader will not fail to notice that the characterisation of Svengali is an almost grotesque example of anti-Semitism on du Maurier’s part. Svengali lives off the generosity of his relatives somewhere in Austria, and du Maurier describes him quite uncompromisingly (and redundantly) as an ‘Oriental Semite Hebrew Jew’. Svengali is physically filthy, with long hair, a big nose, and dirty fingernails. He borrows money that he does not repay, and he speaks in a (well-rendered) parody of Judeo-Teutonic speech. Unlike the three upright British heroes of the novel, he is licentious and deceitful too – since he has a wife and children whom he has abandoned. He has ‘special skills’ (his musical ability) as well as being a master of occult practices (hypnotism) that give him mastery over Anglo-Saxon maidens such as Trilby. He is also filled with malevolent intent towards all and sundry:

Svengali walking up and down the earth seeking whom he might cheat, betray, exploit, borrow money from, make brutal fun of, bully if he dare, cringe to if he must – man, woman, child or dog

As an intrusive and more-or-less first person narrator, du Maurier puts no distance between himself and the relentless prejudice manifest towards this character. And to underscore the fact that his attitude is racially motivated (rather than the criticism of an individual) he demonstrates the same attitude to the minor character of Mimi la Salope – Svengali’s earlier pupil, who is also Jewish:

she went to see him in his garret, and he played to her, and leered and ogled, and flashed his bold, black, beady Jew’s eyes into hers, and she straightaway mentally prostrated herself in reverence and adoration before this dazzling specimen of her race. So that her sordid, mercenary little gutter-draggled soul was filled with the sight and sound of him, as of a lordly, godlike, shawm-playing, cymbal-banging hero and prophet of the Lord God of Israel-David and Saul in one!

Trilby – study resources

Trilby – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Trilby – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Trilby and Other Works – Kindle – Amazon UK

Trilby and Other Works – Kindle – Amazon US

Trilby – film version

John Barrymore in 1931 film adaptation

Directed by Archie Mayo. Screenplay by J. Grubb Alexander. Starring John Barrymore (Svengali), Marian Marsh (Trilby O’Farrell), Donald Crisp (the Laird), Bramwell Fletcher (Little Billee), Louis Alberni (Gecko), Filmed at Warner Brothers Studios, California, USA.

Trilby – chapter summaries

Part First In a bohemian studio in Paris, the pianist Svengali meets artist’s model Trilby, who sings out of tune. Trilby is from drunken Irish-Scottish parents, but is a simple boyish soul who enjoys the company of English gentlemen.

Part Second The unscrupulous and dirty Svengali hypnotises Trilby to cure the pain in her eyes. Little Billee is teased by fellow students at Studio Carrel, but is a good artist. Trilby acts as a housekeeper and friend to three English friends. Svengali makes strenuous amorous advances to her.

Part Third Trilby poses in the nude at Carrel’s studio, which shocks Little Billee. She is upset and decides to give up modelling. Preparations are made for a Christmas feast. Little Billee feels self-righteous after tending a drunken fellow lodger.

Part Fourth A rowdy Christmas dinner takes place at the studio. Little Billee gets drunk and asks Trilby to marry him. In the new year Billee’s mother Mrs Bagot arrives to contest the engagement. Trilby agrees not to marry Billee and leaves Paris with her brother, who dies shortly afterwards. Billee falls ill with the disappointment. He goes back to live in England, and later finds fame as a painter, but he does not recover the power of feeling.

Part Fifth Taffy and the Laird leave Paris and wander around Europe. Five years later they meet Billee who has become successful, but has tired of being taken up by the rich and famous. Billee takes them to a house party where they overhear rapturous accounts of Trilby’s singing voice. Billee goes to Devon where he is smitten by his sister’s friend Alice. He confides his feelings to her pet dog, as well as explaining his anti-religious beliefs.

Part Sixth Taffy, the Laird, and Billee are back in Paris. They visit their old studio. They attend Trilby’s Paris debut, where she astonishes everyone with the artistry of her singing. Billee’s capacity for feeling is restored, but he is consumed by jealousy. Taffy reveals to him that he too once proposed to Trilby.

Part Seventh Next day the three friends see Trilby with Svengali passing in a carriage, but she ignores them all. Svengali assaults Billee, but when a duel is proposed he doesn’t respond. In London Svengali beats Trilby, quarrels with Gecko, and is stabbed by him. Trilby fails to sing at her London debut; Svengali has a heart attack; and Gecko is arrested. Trilby is ill; she denies ever singing; and she recounts her story of the ‘lost’ five years when Svengali rescued her.

Part Eighth Svengali dies, and Trilby goes into physical decline. Mrs Bagot forgives and befriends Trilby, who prepares for her death. On receiving a photograph of Svengali, Trilby goes into a trance and recovers her singing voice for the last time, then dies. Many years later, following Billee’s death, Taffy is in Paris on his honeymoon with Billee’s sister. He meets Gecko, who reveals how Svengali hypnotised Trilby into a creature acting under his own will.

Trilby – principal characters

Talbot Wynne (Taffy)	an ex-soldier and Yorkshireman
Alexander McAlister (Sandy, the Laird)	a Scot and student of painting
William Bagot (Little Billee)	a young English art student
Mrs Bagot	Billee’s mother
Svengali	a Jewish pianist and hypnotist
Gecko	a violin player (Polish?)
Trilby O’Ferrall	a tall artist’s model
Jeannot	Trilby’s little brother
Durian	a sculptor

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Trilby

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Trilby – study resources

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Trilby – chapter summaries

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