The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1, Or The Return of Mina, Plus Others

So as the last novel we read for my Gothicism course, we chose Alan Moore's graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1, which is a work rich with allusions to Victorian literature, and because of its employment of famous literary characters, there is a great deal of Gothicism floating around.

First, and most obviously, we return to the exploits of Mina Murray from Dracula, now divorced, disgraced, and employed by a shadowy branch of military service. She returns here as leader of the League, a collection of various heroes and villains from Victorian literature: Allan Quatermain, the Great White Hunter; Captain Nemo, Scourage of the Empire; Hawley Griffin, Invisible Man; and Dr Jekyll, with Mr. Hyde in tow. Mina is the leader because she "has experience with monsters," i.e., the abhuman and the Other. Each of her subordinates, with the possible exception of Quatermain, has something specifically Gothic about them.

Furthermore the overreaching plot, especially the confrontation with Moriarty, brings to mind the human Gothic that we found in Bleak House and Northanger Abbey; we are confronted with a perfectly ordinary man as the antagonist, while the Others and the abhumans become the heroes of the work; quite a turn around from Dracula.

The Chinese Devil Doctor, however, relates to the sense of Orientalist fears to the east that plagued England during the Victorian era, as well as the sense of foreboding that permeates Dracula. That we find ourselves constantly in opium dens, crowded sidewalks, underwater, underground, and in the bat-like aerial ship seems a very codified use of the urban Gothic's restriction of space; meanwhile, the constant crush of people in the city street reinforces that element.

All right, so that wraps up the blog for the time being. I hope to continue on this summer, as I've just received a copy of Dracula: The Un-Dead, which is supposed to be the official sequel to the classic novel. Thanks for reading!

The Picture of Dorian Gray, or 'Twere Beauty, Killed the Beast

So this week, I read The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), the only published novel of the great Oscar Wilde. Not only is it one of his most famous works, but a great many of his quotable quotes comes from this book, and the preface outlines his aesthetic and artistic theory. Nevertheless, for a work that defines art and beauty, the novel seems to be saying quite a few pointed things about Hedonism.

Dorian, of course, retains his outward, youthful appearance as his portrait shifts and alters with time, not only aging instead of Dorian, but also absorbing the ugliness that is the byproduct of sin. In removing the consequences of action, the portrait allows Dorian to act only in pursuit of pleasure, regardless of its effect on those around him. In doing so, Dorian both experiences the supernatural, Gothic element of the work, while allowing himself to become the abhuman figure--as monstrous inwardly as the portrait is outward.

Furthermore, though the novel contends that art must hide the artist to be successful, the underlying gay subtext of the novel leads me to conclude that Wilde is, in some ways, rather close to the surface. Not only does the adoration of Dorian by Basil and Harry seem at least homoerotic, the fact that the majority of lives ruined by Dorian are men cannot be overlooked. Even the description of Dorian's short friendships with other men calls to mind romantic interludes. The stereotypically dandyish behavior that Dorian exhibits doesn't help in this regard.

The novel is also greatly concerned with art and the meaning of art. Whether it is Wilde speaking directly in the preface, or the art theories espoused by Basil or Harry, or the vast differences between Sybil's acting abilities, the treatment of art as valuable for it's own sake is a foremost theme. Dorian's various obsessions in the midst of his societal prominence point toward the enjoyment of art for art's sake, rather than for a didactic or moralistic reason.

As for the Gothic, we again have the motif of the portrait showing the truth, something of a throwback to Otranto and the like. We have also an anti-hero figure; Dorian's slow, tragic fall, I would argue, prevents him from being a Byronic Hero. There is the supernatural element, coupled with a scientific reasoning. It is interesting that, as usual, the supernatural seems to come from a reality of angels and demons. We also have the corrupting influence of the city, albeit in a smaller dose than in Dickens. Rather than concerning itself with the horrors of the Victorian Age, the novel satirizes the upper class avoidance of the topic.

So next week, we'll be reading Dracula (1897), one of my all time favorite books, as well as viewing both Nosferatu and "Buffy vs. Dracula."

Wuthering Heights, or Heathcliff is Such a Bastard, Amirite?

So this week I read Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847) and watched the Masterpiece Theater version from 2009. First off, there's literally only one worthwhile person in the whole book, and that's Nelly, our narrator. Every other character is either incredibly evil (Heathcliff) or spoiled (Cathy, Linton, Edgar, Isabella Cathy II...). And it becomes incredibly difficult to understand why Heathcliff and Cathy's relationship is so romanticized. I mean, she dies halfway through the book! It's hardly about her. And Heathcliff is such a terrible person that he can hardly be termed a Byronic hero at all. I mean, the Byronic hero is meant to earn redemption through his or his lovers actions, right? If we take Rochester as our quintessential Byronic hero (which he is) then Heathcliff doesn't count.

Which leads me to my next question: who is supposed to be the protagonist of this novel? Nelly? Lockwood? Don't get me started. They're the perfect narrators. And every other major character is only around for half the novel, or is Heathcliff. And while Heathcliff certainly creates conflict and makes the story unfold, those are hardly the actions of a protagonist, really. Villains act, while heroes react. But there's nobody to react against Heathcliff.

So Cathy, meanwhile, is a madwoman in the attic character. Even disregarding the fact that she literally goes mad, her obsession with Heathcliff--they're sharing a soul especially--is incredibly off-kilter. Furthermore, she is constantly being contained by the Grange or the Heights, both as a child and as an adult. Her daughter's cloistering amounts to almost the same treatment.

I think one of the major themes that runs through the novel is that evil begets evil. Everything that Heathcliff does (that anybody else does) is a reaction to the wrongs done to them by others. And given this theme, the very abhuman-human nature of Heathcliff should be examined in detail. More than once we have him described as a fiend or demon--his actions certainly correspond. The other abhuman-humans we've encountered (I'm thinking specifically of the vampiric Tulkinghorn from Bleak House) have corresponded to their Gothic roles even without the need of the supernatural.

All and all, though, this is a fabulous book. So long as you don't bring the baggage that Twilight would saddle you with. Next week, we'll talk Oscar Wilde and The Portrait of Dorian Gray.

The Vampyre and Carmilla, or We've Finally Gotten to Vampires. Geez That Took Forever. I Mean Really.

So this week I read two novellas about that most famed abhuman figure, the vampire. Polidori's The Vampyre (1819) is a literary relative to Frankenstein and both it and le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) are, obviously, ancestors to Stoker's Dracula. What I find most fascinating about the two works is the way in which each takes the time to explicitly spell out what, exactly, a vampire is. I mean, they obviously aren't new, per se, but Polidori and le Fanu are taking a figure of folklore and distilling it into a literary figure. Reading from a modern perspective, I'm again struck by how un-ironic the presentations are. I mean, yes, each vampire book spells out exactly what kind of vampire we're dealing with, but at least Polidori is making history with his description. From that moment on, we all know what a vampire is.

Furthermore, I'm also thinking about the very different way that these two works treat women in comparison to Dracula. Here, the women are again be acted on rather than acting. It feels like we're backsliding, even though we aren't, simply because we've just read Braddon and Alcott. Clearly, the discussion of the New Woman wasn't all one sided.

Speaking of gender, the discussion of sexuality presented in the two works is also fascinating, given that vampires are often analyzed as metaphors for sex. Carmilla's sapphism is especially interesting in the context of a Dracula/Jonathan subtext. If we were to explore vampires as the sexual Other, there's plenty to go on. The sexual-predatory nature of Lord Ruthven is clearly followed in other vampire fiction, i.e., Lestat, Angel, Edward, Dracula. And the use of the vampire as the Byronic hero (or villain) is well documented also.

So, things that these sire texts teach us about vampires: drinking blood with pointy teeth, damsels in distress, ennui and languidness, decapitation, tombs, sleeping in blood, crazy professor guy, aristocratic, shape shifting, moving through walls, etc. The entirety of vampire fiction rests on these two texts as foundation. The fact that Twilight moves us so far away from these traditional aspects is only possible in a postmodern literary world.

Frankenstein, or Frankenstein is Totally the Scientist Guy

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is at once many things. Widely considered the first Science Fiction novel, Frankenstein is also a Romantic discourse between from Shelley to her contemporaries as well as the first example of Kelly Hurley's abhuman (that is, the creature which is both human and nonhuman concurrently; the liminal figure of the wolfman, the vampire, and, arguably, Frankenstein's monster (192)) we encounter in the context of this course. Finally, the novel is inherently problematic given its appropriation into popular culture--most spectacularly through film.

As a science-y novel, the classification of Frankenstein as Gothicism is somewhat contentious. As Kelly Hurley remarks, science fiction can be, and frequently is, recognized as separate from supernatural occurrences (191). Nevertheless, like Radcliffe before her, Shelley's work fall directly into the previously defined weird--the hints that Shelley drops about the nature of Frankenstein's creation of Adam, our monster, clearly mark an impossibility. Even given our modern medical understanding, the return of life to dead tissue is an inherently rare or miraculous act--at the time of writing, even more so. Furthermore, the other aspects of the Gothic that Hurley uses to define it, as well as my own definition, include gloomy and dangerous settings, taboo, transformative, and transgressive themes, hyperbolic and suspenseful atmosphere (191). All of which, it happens, are contained in Frankenstein.

The often-overlooked element of Romanticism in the novel, meanwhile, differentiate this novel and others from that of the Victorian. Likewise, the until-recently-overlooked Shelley make her very distinctive presence known in the novel. Her quotations of both Wordsworth and Coleridge meant that this novel acts as a discourse between her and her Romantic contemporaries. It cannot be overstated that Shelley was very much a player in the intellectual games of her time. The mark of the French Revolution, with its rejection of Christianity and its concern with the individual experience, permeate the novel. This is one of the least religious novels we've read thus far, yet, with Adam's reading of Paradise Lost, this book takes up the same kind of questioning that we found in Lewis--most obviously, what are the responsibilities that a creator owes its creation? Furthermore, the fact that we hear from the abhuman figure directly cannot be accidental, given the importance of democracy to the Romantic discourse as well as the failure of the French Revolution. This novel is one of the very few times that we hear the viewpoint of the abhuman--no one, for example, knows what Dracula is thinking. The moments where Shelley enters into the literary and intellectual discourse of her contemporaries points toward her novel's staying power.

The treatment of Frankenstein in film is, arguably, one of the most controversial aspects of the novel. Gone, on film, is the personal explanation from Adam's own mouth. In its place, the creation scene involving lightning that has so dominated popular culture. The 1931 version of the film with Boris Karloff is especially interesting in this regard. Not only is Shelley credited under her husband's name, Frankenstein and his confidant switch names, Elizabeth is no longer Frankenstein's adopted sister, and a school professor in the vein of Van Helsing is added. Even more fascinating is the Mel Brooks parody Young Frankenstein, if only because Frankenstein is twenty in the book. How much younger need he be? Arguably, the vast difference between these two versions mark a similar occurrence in the previous century on the stage. I would argue that the tendency toward parody returns somewhat to that ever-present theme of self-parody, brought on, no doubt, by the highly stylized elements of Gothicism. As one final comment, I find it interesting that, with the method of framing that Shelley uses, there is no neutral narrator voice--each of the narrators has an agenda. This is one of the main reason, I think, that the novel is so unfilmable as written.

Finally, the elements that Frankenstein contributes to Gothicism include, obviously, the mad scientist; the human-created monster; and, most likely by accident, the sequel-hook. All of these elements make their way into B-movies, if nowhere else. As one of the strands that binds Gothicism to the present, Frankenstein is a big one, only second to the popularizing of the vampire.

Newt week, I'll be discussing Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1818), written well before this novel, but published as a contemporary.

Hurley, Kelly. "British Gothic fiction, 1855-1930". The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold Hogle. Cambridge UP. Cambridge, 2002