I find the character of Doctor Moreau extremely interesting, because he has an entire island, medical background, and plenty of resources at his disposal, and he chooses to create a society completely borne from pain, proclaiming it as means to the ends of science and knowledge. Studying Moreau’s language when he explains his experiments to Prendick is very revealing. At first read, we can somewhat understand Moreau’s motivations and potentially view him as a scientific man who is simply above menial human emotions such as compassion for animals. But if we look more closely at his speech, he reveals himself to be extremely narcissistic, and quite frankly, evil.
Moreau claims that he just wishes to advance the practice of vivisection for its usefulness to the scientific community. But looking at his word choice, we can see that he wants to make vivisection his, he wants it to be his legacy. “And yet this extraordinary branch of knowledge has never been sought as an end, and systematically, by modern investigators, until I took it up!…I was the first man to take up this question armed with antiseptic surgery, and with a really scientific knowledge of the laws of growth.” (53). Moreau is stressing to Prendick how he was the first one to really investigate into vivisection, and all the scientific knowledge that he has to do it with. Moreau wants the credit for all the pain and suffering he has caused on his island. This is reminiscent of the Ledger and Luckhurst introduction to the Fin de Siècle, when they discuss the anxiety of the century’s moving on, and where that leaves the people of the 1890’s. People wanted to be remembered, to leave a legacy. For Moreau, creating human beings to worship him as God was the way to do it.
Moreau claims to have chosen the human form as a model “by chance” (54) but this is clearly insincere. Moreau was making creatures in his own image, playing God. He instilled a religious law in the Beast People in order to control them, to make them more human-like, and also so that they would continue to worship him like humans do to God. Animals don’t do that. Moreau’s language when talking to Prendick indicates that he believes that his way is the only way of intelligent people, and any other mode of thinking he dismisses immediately. After he says that the main difference between a man and a monkey is the larynx, Prendick narrates “In this I failed to agree with him, but with a certain incivility he declined to notice my objection. He repeated that the thing was so, and continued his account of his work.” (54) Only a page later, he uses the same dismissive tone with regards to religion: “Then I am a religious man, Prendick, as every sane man must be. It may be I fancy I have seen more of the ways of this world’s Maker than you- for I have sought his laws, in my way, all my life, while you, I understand, have been collecting butterflies.” (55) This reminded me of the “Longman’s Anthology” section on the “Age of Empire”. Britain, specifically Queen Victoria, at this time felt it was its duty as “more advanced, superior” people to essentially force the British way of life on people around the world. Their duty was to spread their culture on more “savage” people, the same way Moreau forced the Beast People to be like him. Moreau is at once both removed from society, and the complete embodiment of British society.
I think you make some really interesting points about Moreau. He is definitely an extremely narcissistic and entitled character, and this is easily seen through his emphasis on his knowledge about vivisection and all of the advancements he has made in the scientific field. But it’s even more interesting how this is contrasted in the way he forces the Beast Folk to worship him, as if he were insecure about his power over the animals. He puts on a very forceful, egotistical front in terms of his scientific research, while simultaneously second guessing his true power over the animals. Moreau proves to be a confusing and complex character that goes far beyond his scientific achievements.
The last sentence of this post is very interesting, because it not only describes Moreau but Queen Victoria herself. She was the Queen, so she was the symbol of Victorian society, but as a person she was quite removed from everyday life. And there are definitely parallels between Queen Victoria and Moreau – the Longman introduction describes Queen Victoria as a symbol of Propriety, “the head of [society’s] morality” (1051). Similarly, Moreau is the one who dictates morality to the Beast People – and with both of their deaths, their moral systems decay.
The notion of Dr. Moreau as not only a godlike figure, but a person trying to take credit for the creations that come from “playing god” intrigues me. In my post, I examined the notion of Moreau as a godlike figure, but has not thought about the claim to the process of vivisection or the recognition he hoped to gain from it. It also fascinates me that even though he declared himself a religious man in the passage you quoted, he does not seem to put those religious beliefs into action or exhibit them in any way other than verbalizing them. Your connection between Moreau imposing his beliefs and Britain imposing culture reminded me of the Longman Anthology statement, “Abroad, as at home, it was an Englishman’s duty to rule whatever childlike or womanly peoples he came across, for their own good” (1063), which seems to support your assertion of embodiment.
Your points about Moreau’s experiments and subsequent authoritative position among the beast folk revealing his desire for a form of apotheosis intrigued me, although I disagree that his end goal was deism in the eyes of his subjects. I agree with your analysis of his motivation as being a desire for legacy, although it could just as easily stem from the end of the century’s focus on science (hence the vivisection) combined with the colonial views of Britain to exert English dominance. In either case, your arguments for his project having no goals before his narcissism were convincing.