Author: Megan

When crafting a list of primary resources for my thesis, I hesitated to include Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights due to the fact that Heathcliff, the character whom I considered to be the primary “monster” figure in this novel, is not the conventional type of monster like those depicted in the works of Frankenstein or Dracula; He is undoubtedly a human, develops and maintains a lifelong (albeit twisted) relationship with Catherine, earns the affection of women, and even manages to somewhat assimilate into Victorian society by becoming a gentleman. On the other hand, however, I felt that Heathcliff’s constant status as a “savage” outsider with unknown origins and “a bloodline [that] is unambiguously tainted by color” might enable me to better achieve my goal of viewing the concept and construction of monstrosity through a postcolonial, imperialistic lens (Sneiden 172). For this reason, in order to solidify the value of this novel for my thesis, I determined that it would be in my best interest to gain an understanding of the significance that race had in the development of societal relations and perceptions during the time period in which Heathcliff inhabited England. It is through engaging in an analysis of the culture of England surrounding foreigners, as well as a brief history of slavery in England, that I will be able to truly assess whether or not Healthcliff can be considered a “monster” figure due to his racial otherness, as well as gain a better sense of how I will define a “monster” within my thesis.

As described by Sneidern in her “Wuthering Heights and the Slave Trade,” the people of England in the late 18th and early 19th century had grown accustomed to placing a large societal emphasis on the success of the country’s slave trade and colonial endeavors. Despite the fact that the legal subjection of those of other races ended in Britain upon the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the emancipation of colonial slaves in 1834, the country’s historical focus on the conquering of peoples of other nations led to the development of a sentiment of racial superiority amongst Englishmen in which “blacks, browns, yellows, reds and non-English speaking Celts were excluded” (Sneidern 173-174). This sense of hierarchy among the English not only placed their own countrymen and race at the pinnacle of society, however, but also undermined the humanity and societal value that Englishmen associated with those of a different race. Often times, the inhabitants of nations that were colonized by England were referred to as “animals” and “savages” that required the civilizing of English intervention in order to be enlightened about the correct way of living (Brantlinger 65). Because these conquered people were almost always of a different race than that of the people of England, the predominately white population of England learned to associate a darker skin tone with a poor, bestial character and an inherent mediocrity. In this way, England’s imperial expansion and colonization of foreign nations served as the catalysts for the people of England to have “a more racist consciousness” and a sense of racial superiority over those of a darker skin color even when the “imperial mission of educating and civilizing colonial subjects in the literature and thought of England” had been achieved (Thompson 186; Viswanathan 2). Ultimately, the civilizing mission of English colonialism not only influenced Englishmen’s relationships and interactions with those of different races, but also caused those persons of different races that inhabited England to be deemed as inferiors regardless of their efforts to assimilate into British culture.

By possessing this more in-depth, historical, cultural understanding, I then used this information to further analyze Healthcliff’s position within the text of Wuthering Heights. While I struggled to find an instance in which Healthcliff was ever termed a “monster,” this cultural context encouraged me to view Heathcliff’s status as that of a hybrid: he is inwardly British due to his upbringing within the country, but is racially and physically foreign. Furthermore, even though Healthcliff recognizes himself as a citizen of England and transforms into a “well-formed,” intellectual man, his actions do not allow him to escape the post-slavery culture in Britain, causing people to always suspect that Heathcliff is an “evil beast…waiting for his time to spring and destroy” (Brontë 107). Like the monster in Frankenstein, it is this societal rejection that causes Healthcliff to eventually carry out the cruel acts that society expects of him, such as inflicting physical and emotional abuse onto his wife. In this way, I believe that I can consider Healthcliff to be a monstrous figure within Wuthering Heights by defining a monster as a figure whose carries out evil acts and who possesses an appearance, often on account of being an “other,” that instills fear in the people of England. Moving forward, I hope to utilize Wuthering Heights in tandem with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre due to the fact that both of these novels depict foreign persons in England as “monsters” that are never fully equals.

Works Cited

Brantlinger, Patrick. Taming Cannibals: Race and the Victorians. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2011. Print.

Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Ed. Pauline Nestor. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.

Sneidern, Maja-Lisa Von. “Wuthering Heights and the Liverpool Slave Trade.” ELH 62.1 (1995): 171-96. JSTOR. Web. 07 Sept. 2016.

Thompson, Andrew S. The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-nineteenth Century. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2005. Print.

Viswanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. New York: Columbia UP, 1987. Print.

Having chosen to narrow the focus of my thesis to the ways that the concept of monstrosity in 18^th and 19^th century Gothic novels drew upon British imperialism, colonialism, and contemporary xenophobic fear, it has become necessary for me to develop a deeper understanding of Britain’s history in order to engage in effective racial readings of my primary texts. For this reason, much of my research has been dedicated to discerning how to draw parallels between the fictional, monstrous figures of novels and the racial stereotypes that spurned fear and loathing from the British public during this time period. In trying to identify the ways in which monstrous characters reflect the societal notion of the threatening “Other,” therefore, I have utilized my key search terms, such as “imperial gothic” and “monstrosity” in order to discover sources that will provide me with the information I am seeking. Choosing to tackle the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein first due to its lack of more obvious connections to racism and imperialism, I stumbled upon H. L. Malchow’s article “Frankenstein’s Monster and Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” This article has not only enhanced my understanding of the various overlaps that exist between British imperialism, racism, and Shelley’s fiction, but, when read in tandem with Shelley’s novel itself, has enabled me to have a new outlook on The Modern Prometheus and its interaction with racism.

I am particularly fond of Malchow’s article because it sets up clear connections between British imperialism and the country’s attitude towards those of other races and ethnicities in the 19^th century. Because British imperialism and Britain’s construction/conception of racial identity and racial hierarchy are fairly expansive topics, I have found it challenging to narrow down my historical research or pick out which works will be most valuable to my thesis. By reading Malchow’s article, however, I have not only gained a more focused understanding of the “Napolenic Era” and Britain’s century-long development of the concept of the “Other,” but have also been introduced to the events and literature that filled Mary Shelley’s world with “both positive and negative representations of the black man…[particularly] in Africa and the West Indies” (99). Furthermore, this article also introduced me to other resources, such as Philip D. Curtin’s The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850 and Douglas Lorimer’s Colour, Class, and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, that center on the idea of savagery and monstrosity that shaped public opinion and societal conventions in Britain.

In addition, I was also enticed by this article due to its overall structure and its primary topics of focus. In each section, Malchow emphasizes how the portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster drew on either Britain’s attitudes towards foreigners, the fears and hopes of abolition of slavery in the West Indies, components of the Enlightenment, or “the expansion of the power of British empire over non-white populations in Asia and Africa.” This enables the article to draw straightforward connections between the text of Frankenstein and the development of the racist, Eurocentric perspective (93). For example, Malchow notes that Frankenstein’s hesitation to create a mate for his monster because he fears he will spawn a “race of devils” directly corresponds with the way in which Britain feared having “blacks free from the discipline of the white master [in which they could] …breed like animals unrestrained by decency or prudence” (Shelley 210;Malchow 113). In this way, Malchow’s article not only expanded my historical knowledge, but also gave me the opportunity to understand how to incorporate this knowledge into a textual analysis of Frankenstein.

When I first read this article, I possessed a general knowledge of British imperialism, but had never dedicated a significant amount of time linking the country’s imperialist actions to its impact on British culture and racial perceptions. While I admit that my first reading took a significant amount of time due to the fact that I had to research figures and topics with which I was not familiar, my subsequent readings allowed me to understand how Frankenstein’s monster not only exists as a representation of the racial “Other” in the novel, but serves as embodiment of the racial stigmas associated specifically with blacks by the British public. Frankenstein’s monster, like the stereotyped black of 19^th-century Britain, is portrayed as “wild and dangerous, unpredictable and childlike” with a “dark and sinister appearance” and a lack of parental connections (Malchow 105, 102, 115). In this way, this article has enabled me to uncover how Frankenstein portrays the inevitable inferiority and assumed villainy of non-whites in 19^th-century Britain; Despite the fact that the monster begins with an innocent desire for knowledge, freedom, and acceptance, he, like blacks of this time period, is trapped in a role of subordination and exclusion due to Britain’s patriarchal, color-prejudiced society.

In choosing to focus my thesis on the concept of monstrosity and literature of terror in 18^th and 19^th century Britain, I determined that it is important for me to gain insight into significant events, ideas, or societal changes that inspired fear in the British public in order to analyze the connection that literary monsters may or may not have to the society in which they were formulated. For this reason, the emerging scientific theories of Charles Darwin and Henry Maudsley during the late 19^th-century are of significance to my thesis and the concept of societal fear because their theories caused late Victorian Englishmen to express a newfound sense of anxiety about their inability to discern whether one’s degeneration, or gradual loss of morals and virtue, stemmed from one’s social influences or one’s ancestry and biology. It is though gaining insight into Darwin and Maudsley’s theories regarding heredity, genetics, and evolution that one is able to identify the ways in which emerging scientific theories spurred societal terror and helped to mold late 19^th-century literary monsters in Britain.

The publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, coupled by the work’s surge in popularity towards the end of the 19th century, paved the way for the society and scientists of Britain to work towards accepting the concept of biologically determined moral degeneration (Paul 214). Advocating the validity of “Darwinism,” or the “theory of evolution of species by natural selection,” Darwin’s Origin of Species utilized scientific data to demonstrate that animals and peoples’ traits are passed down from one generation to the next and that each individual is formulated by a culmination of physical characteristics that were previously possessed by familial ancestors (Darwin;Paul 214). This scientific work not only sparked a war between science and religion amongst the late-Victorian population of Britain by fueling confusion about whether or not God plays a direct role in shaping individuals, but undoubtedly caused many Englishmen to fear that their actions and morals were not under their individual control (Kent 667). Similarly, Henry Maudsley’s Body and Mind (1870) also caused a stir among the people of Britain by proposing that “multitudes of human beings come into this world with a weighted destiny against which they have neither the will nor power to contend; they are the step-children of nature” (Maudsley). By stating that a “multitude of human beings” are biologically and inwardly immoral from birth, Maudsley advocates that the possession of an inward deviance is a common plight among people. In this way, these two theories worked collectively to perpetuate the societal fear that certain individuals are born with a predisposition for deviance and immorality that cannot be controlled.

By gaining insight into the prominent scientific theories of the fin de siècle and their impact on the fears held by the British public, I have been able to gain a better sense of the primary novels that I want to work with moving forward and have developed further lines of inquiry that I want to pursue for my thesis. For example, at the start of my thesis journey, I planned to focus my work entirely on Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Goblin Market because I had chosen to define monsters as non-human beings with demonic appearances. Now that I have analyzed these scientific documents, however, I hope to utilize my thesis as a method for connecting monsters to the societal fears that existed during the time period of their inception, enabling me to expand my definition of monsters to one that touches on their ability to embody the social and moral concerns that confronted the people of late 18^th and 19^th century Britain. For this reason, I plan to also include Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in my thesis because they treat humans as monster-like figures and directly touch on the societal fear of degeneration that existed during the time of their publications. In addition, this work with primary sources has encouraged me to continue to link literary monsters with the societal fears of Britain regarding issues such as morals, colonialism, gender, and science in order to truly encompass the various facets that make up Britain’s literature of terror in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. While, ultimately, I will have to narrow my focus to one or two major social themes, this exercise has enabled me to better understand the objective of my thesis, incorporate the historical lens that I had hoped to utilize, and understand the multiple opportunities my topic affords me.

Works Cited

Darwin, Charles and Morse Peckham. The Origin of Species. [Electronic Resource]: A Variorum Text. Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959. Evidence-Based Acquisition (PALCI EBA) Discovery Record (JSTOR).

Maudsley, Henry, Body and Mind: An Inquiry into Their Connection and Mutual Influence , Specially in Reference to Mental Disorders: An Enlarged and Revised Edition: To Which Are Added Psychological Essays (London: Macmillan (1870) 1873).

Kent, John. “Review.” Rev. of The Post-Darwinian Controversies, by James R. Moore. Journal of Biological Studies 2 Oct. 1980: 667-69. JSTOR. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

Paul, Diane B. “Darwin, Social Darwinism, and Eugenics.” The Cambridge Companion to Darwin. By J. Hodge and G. Raddick. 2nd ed. London: Cambridge UP, 2003. 214-39. JSTOR. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, one of the motifs that stood out to me is that of liquid. In numerous instances, bodies of water, such as streams and rivers, not only serve as the primary locations in which characters undergo significant experiences, but also function as entities whose attributes are used to describe and convey the characters themselves. While this theme of liquidity is pervasive throughout the text, its symbolism shifts between light and darkness, life and death. It is through recognizing the differing uses of water and liquid within Beloved that one is able to better understand the novel’s various characters and the ways in which components of their lives are as seemingly uncontrollable as the water used to describe them.

For Sethe and Beloved, water represents the concepts of birth, renewal, and clarity. Upon being first introduced in the novel, Beloved is directly connected to the water. She does not possess a personal history or familial relations, but is a woman with aquatic origins whose existence is predicated on having merely “walked out of the water” (60). Although Beloved is a young adult and makes it clear that she has undertaken a journey, she is described as having “emerged” from the water with “new skin, lineless and smooth,” as if her true birthplace is the water instead of the womb (60, 61). Similarly, water also serves as a symbol of birth and new life for Sethe because it is in a flooding canoe that she delivers her daughter, Denver. Although Denver is not described as a water-nymph like Beloved, her birth is made synonymous with the water because it appears as though Sethe’s “own water broke loose to join it [the river]” (98). In this way, not only do the water and Sethe’s womb collectively encourage the birth of Denver, but Denver’s birth and the river are eternally ‘joined.’ Furthermore, even though the water serves as the birthplace of both Beloved and Denver, it also exists as a place of renewed life for Sethe. When experiencing mental anguish, Sethe relies on an imagined riverside to ease her suffering. Referring to her mental defense against painful, resurfacing memories as “heavy knives” that protect her from “misery, regret, gall, and hurt,” Sethe determines that the only way to find peace and achieve a renewed sense of self is to place these ‘knives’ “one by one on a bank where clear water rushed” (102). In this way, water and liquid are not only emblematic of birth, but also serve as sources of renewal that help to wash away the cruelties of reality.

Conversely, for Denver and Paul D, liquid is synonymous with loneliness and death. When walking through Sethe’s house for the first time, Paul is consumed by the sadness and evil of Sethe’s dead child and experiences a “wave of grief [that] soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry” (11). In this instance, grief and sadness are emotions that act like water; They wash over one’s entire body like a ‘wave,’ leaving them overwhelmed by negative feelings as if the emotions have ‘soaked’ through their clothes and left their body cold and heavy. Similarly, when Denver fears that Beloved has permanently abandoned her, her experience and emotions are connected to water. For Denver, the thought of being left alone makes her feel “breakable, meltable, and cold,” as if she is an “ice cake torn away from the solid surface of the stream, floating on darkness” (145). In this instance, water signifies human fragility and the ways in which one’s loneliness is as destructive and uncontrollable as being a ‘breakable’ piece of ice floating in ‘darkness.’ In this way, for Denver and Paul D, negative emotions are directly connected to the characteristics of moving water because they limit one’s sense of control, emit a sense of coldness or darkness, and have the ability to make one feel submerged.

Although the motif of liquid varies in its relation to different characters, its overall usage seems to symbolize the larger theme of movement. For all four characters, the concept of liquid is utilized to express a swift, uncontrollable change that takes place in their lives or emotional states. This seems to emphasize the notion that the lives of the characters are fluid, causing change and movement to often be involuntary and inevitable.

Throughout the last three weeks in English 403, the concept of power has emerged as a central theme in almost all of our readings and class discussions. Generally defined by Merriam-Webster as the “possession of control, authority, or influence over others,” the word “power,” as we have seen, is not only employed in order to demonstrate the strength of a person, group of people, or an entity, but is also utilized as a method for creating or bringing focus to a dichotomy that exists between those that possess power and those that face subjugation under that specific source of power (“Power”). For this reason, analyzing the ways in which different works engage with the concept of “power” and its effects allows individuals to identify the multiple, unique facets of various power dynamics and gain a better understanding of the seemingly universal precursors that must exist in order to enable the possession of societal power.

Two works that seem to make the most significant use of the word “power” include Judith Fetterley’s Introduction to the Resisting Reader and Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In Fetterley’s piece, she grapples with the idea that American society and literature feel a “commitment to the maintenance of male power” that directly causes and encourages “powerlessness [to] characterize women” (994, 992). Similarly, in Mulvey’s piece, she also describes a lack of power amongst women by analyzing how films have encouraged a reality based in “sexual imbalance” in which “the active power of the erotic look” is held solely by men (668, 671). Although both writers are concerned with the societal promotion of female powerlessness, it is their analysis of “power” in regard to different mediums that is most revealing. For Mulvey, “power” is a visual concept. She argues that films utilize women as “objects of sexual simulation through sight” by purposefully depicting women as sexual beings that exist solely for men’s visual enjoyment (672). In addition, it also a woman’s appearance, or “visually ascertainable absence of the penis,” that causes her to be relegated to the periphery and made powerless (672). In contrast, Fetterley is not focused on the visual aspects the define “power,” but rather, on the way in which education and literature determine “power.” For Fetterley, one’s power stems from the written works with which they interact and the authors that they are exposed to. For this reason, Fetterley believes women are powerless because they are taught through literature that they must think and act like men and become “intellectually male” (996). In this way, although Fetterley and Mulvey both point to a sexist societal hierarchy that renders men powerful and women powerless, their differing engagements with “power” enable one to understand the various ways in which person(s) achieve and maintain power at the societal level.

In addition, it is also significant to note the way in which the word “power” in both of these works is often accompanied by the word “unconscious” or “universal.” While Fetterley and Mulvey wrestle with different channels in promoting gendered power dynamics, they are unified in their assertion that people within society have been unconsciously molded by social formations into expecting and accepting a patriarchal society and its “universal” norms. By utilizing the words “unconscious” and “universal,” Fetterley and Mulvey not only emphasize the pervasiveness of male power, but recognize that power dynamics are often so ingrained in a culture that they are not fully recognizable or actively thought about by that culture’s members. In this way, Fetterley and Mulvey not only shed light on the tight link between “power” and culture, but stress that power can only be shifted if people recognize what societal institutions and conventions have enabled those powerful persons or entities to thrive.

Works Cited:

Fetterley , Judith. “Introduction to the Resisting Reading.” Reader-Response Criticism , pp. 990–998.

Mulvey , Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema .” Psychoanalytic Theory , pp. 667–675.

“Power.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, 2017 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/power.

In Goodbye Lenin!, the Kerners’ crisis symbolizes the people of Germany’s struggle to balance remembering and retaining parts of their past with embracing their country’s present after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. In particular, the scene in the film in which Laura and Alex are fighting while Alex’s mother, Christiane, is celebrating her birthday in the adjoining room is valuable to one’s understanding of this theme of past vs. present because it underscores the power of walls as both physical and psychological barriers to change and reality. Like the Berlin Wall that separated East Germany from the progress and influence of the outside world and enabled the government to have complete control, the four walls of Christiane’s bedroom also create an isolated reality because Christiane’s world is constituted solely by the actions and decisions made by her son. It is the ways in which these sets of walls, despite their differing scales and political purposes, are portrayed as having the ability to shift power, limit agency, and distort reality that connects the Kerner family to the history of Germany.

The staging and production of this argument scene highlights Laura and Alex’s differing views regarding the incorporation of the past and how reality can and should be constructed. As a whole, almost all of the visual focus is placed on Laura. Laura’s facial expressions are directly captured on screen and are portrayed through both her direct eye contact with the camera and her reflection in a mirror. This staging choice not only captures the severity of Laura’s disgust at the situation by illuminating her emotions and reactions, but also touches on her individual viewpoints regarding the past. In the same way that Laura looks at the Kerner’s unchanged house through the mirror, Laura is willing to reflect on her past and her existence as a former member of a communist nation, but is unwilling to accept the recreation of the past that has been created by Alex within his mother’s mind and bedroom. Laura is shown aggressively leaving Christiane’s room and shedding her old, eastern German clothes as if she is attempting to rid herself of her past identity and the discomfort that she feels on account of her and Christiane having their existences be altered and restricted in the Kerner’s house as if they are still members of a communist East Germany.

Conversely, the way in which Alex is portrayed in this scene highlights his dedication to the containment of the false reality within his home. Even though Alex is a central figure within this scene and dialogue, his face is almost always turned away from the camera. This staging suggests that Alex is not ready to confront the present time period within his country and actively decides to turn his back on the events taking place outside of his mother’s room. This decision to portray Laura directly and Alex indirectly is also significant because it reveals the psychological wall that has come between the couple on account of both the physical Berlin Wall ceasing to exist and the four walls that contain Christiane’s reality. Because Alex is committed to his created reality, he is constantly lying and creating deceptions, ultimately causing him to be slowly and mentally severed from the outside world, Laura, and his past self that was committed to the fall of the communist party. It is this disconnect between the couple that is embodied in their unparalleled portrayals within this scene.

One of the other dominating features in this scene is the way in which Laura and Alex’s fight is shown alongside the celebration contained within Christiane’s bedroom. Relegated to her room, Christiane is depicted as being a separate entity from that of her party guests and the argument between her son and Laura. Unlike her friends who are singing and celebrating, Christiane is only shown on screen as being quiet and alone, as if her bed serves as a wall between herself and other people. It is this decision to show Christiane as being disconnected from those in her room and from Alex and Laura that embodies her separation from the reality beyond her walls, as well as her isolation and loss of personal agency even in her own home. Like the people of East Germany who were trapped within the Berlin Wall and, consequently, lacked the power or the ability to explore life beyond their enclosure, Christiane is also mentally and physically trapped, leaving her alone in a past that no longer exists.