Author: AnniePaige

When reading “Venus and Mars” by Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper (pseud: Michael Field), it is hard not to think about themes of sexuality, particularly as it pertains to women. I instantly thought of some lines from Freud’s Creative Writers and Day Dreamers:

“…the impulse to create fantasies is universally present… the artist dreams aloud and in public…” (420).

There are several lines from “Venus and Mars” that I think embody a certain fantasy or dream; that of a woman empowered. For example, “She is a fate, although / She lies upon the grass” (1-2). We are introduced in the beginning lines of the poem to our Venus; a woman in a relaxed pose yet containing some supreme power. There is also something ancient and natural about her; “She rears from off the ground / As if her body grew / Triumphant as a stem” (27-28).

Venus is also acutely aware of her power, and that she has harnessed it; “…her eyes alert ; they search and weigh / The god, supine, who fell from her caress  / When love had had its sway” (34-36). Venus has put Mars in a death-like slumber through her own prowess. Whether this has an explicit sexual connotation or not, the implication is that Venus has wielded herself to take down a godly figure.

Perhaps the idea of a woman loudly and powerfully sexual was appealing to Field because they wanted to desperately for women to have more power. Venus represents a strong female figure using her sexual charms to destroy a version of patriarchy.  “…his naked limbs, their fury spent, Are fallen in wearied curves” (47-48) – Mars cannot even move after his interaction with her.

Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper felt constantly that the pseudonym of Field needed to be maintained in order to both sell their work and receive honest critiques. This double-edged sword of hidden identity comes with the price of succeeding to the powerlessness of womanhood during the Victorian Era. Bradley and Cooper knew that no one would take their work seriously if it was known two female authors produced it. Because of this, it makes sense that the pair would portray strong female characters to fulfill a secret wish of having their own agency.

Yet even then there is still a shame of womanhood that carries through into the poem. “Ironical she sees, Without regret, the work her kiss has done / And lives a cold enchantress doomed to please / Her victims one by one” (81-84).  Venus is not ashamed of her dominance over Mars, yet she is fated to continue to perform over him and possibly others forever more. Venus may have a sexual prowess, but she does not have the power to decide when to use it. This stanza sends a few mixed messages about female sexuality. Firstly that it is okay to be proud of one’s beauty and sexual desires or actions, but secondly, that if you are a beautiful and sexual woman then you cannot really choose another path. The control a woman feels over her sexuality, while empowering, is false, and only serves to placate women while the status quo prevails.

The Island of Dr Moreau and The Picture of Dorian Grey both contain characters who are ugly or impure. The core difference lies in where this ugliness is found; on the outside or the inside. The novels, when compared, seem to reveal that as long as a character’s repulsiveness remains on the inside, they are free to be as sinful as they would like.

For the Beastmen of Moreau’s island, there is a constant focus from Prendick on their outward repugnance; “their bodies were abnormally long… they were an amazingly ugly gang,” (Wells 17), “the creature had exactly the mild but repulsive features of a sloth,” (Wells 41), etc. These creatures designed by Moreau are under near-constant scrutiny Their outward monstrosity has deemed them unfit to be a part of the both the animalistic society they came from and the human society they were experimented on to become. There is almost a desire from the Beastmen to prove they can be just and civil like humans; “Not to go on all fours… are we not men?” (Wells 43). This is because their appearance prevents them from blending into any sort of society. They are prejudged not by their actions but by their looks.

Contrastly is Dr Moreau, a Godlike figure who is hardly criticized despite his deplorable experiments. Moreau, seen as a beacon of good because he is firmly, attractively human, can get away with the work he is doing.

Dorian Grey features the same concept. Our young and attractive aristocrat, at the end of chapter 8, resigns himself to living a life of beauty and sin so long as the painting is the thing that changes, and not himself. “…who, that knew anything about life, would surrender the chance of remaining always young…” (Wilde 120). Grey makes explicit that what the painting will reveal now is his soul, just as it had before revealed his looks. What’s worse, Dorian believes “there [will] be real pleasure in watching it [change]” (Wilde 120). Knowing that his sin will never touch his shell, but instead the canvas, is an excuse for Grey to do what he wants and not regret it.

Lord Henry seems to agree that outward beauty is an excuse for sinful behavior. “Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly…” Lord Henry argues, Grey’s life will not be as worth living. “When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you” (Wilde 29-30). The message is clear; those who are lucky to have youth and beauty should take advantage, because it is rare and fleeting. What advantages one chooses to take are not specifically sinful, but that seems to be the direction Lord Henry is leading Dorian in; “Be always searching for new sensations… be afraid of nothing… a new Hedonism” (Wilde 30).

The primary complication with outward looks determining one’s behavior is its natural bias towards the attractive. If you are beautiful, you have the freedom to do whatever you please. This happens in society today; beauty is a focus and looks are rewarded; the “bad boy” trope is popular – the sinful but dangerous figure. Looks are used as an excuse to judge, and this superficial outlook allows a lot of sinful behavior by Grey and others to go unchecked.

(Sorry-not-sorry for the image: I couldn’t NOT include it)

In this blog post I want to examine the very last text in Bram Stoker’s Dracula:

“We want no proofs; we ask none to believe us! This boy will some day know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness and loving care; later he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake” (402).

As I was reading this text for the second time in class, I recognized an interesting connection to be made between it and Carol Senf’s critique of the novel, “By the conclusion of the novel, all the characters who have been accused of expressing individual desire have been appropriately punished” (430). Senf’s perspective presents a completely different understanding of the “hero” plot we have understood so far.

Senf’s argument seems to follow the connections we have been making to Christianity, whereby there is some god-like figure who deals out justice to the characters who have committed sin. Dracula, his disciples, and even Mina suffer due to their connection to and involvement in the dark side, which completely undo’s the “men banding together to defeat the enemy” plot line of Dracula. It almost seems as if their actions did not really matter because the Count, as a beacon of evil, was meant to be punished anyways. The idea of free will is undermined and the destiny of Dracula’s defeat is made definitive.

This seems to play into the Victorian “era of fears”. The Victorians were worried that somehow their society could be attacked and contaminated regardless of the actions they might take to prevent it. The English empire would last because it was destined to; God himself looked highly upon the queen and her nation. Yet in Dracula we see a different answer; it is not who we are, nor where we are from, but our good or bad actions that will save or demolish us. Lucy dies along with Dracula, and it has naught to do with her being a woman, or being English, but with her attachment to sin.

I think more broadly this introduces the idea of what I will call the Mirage of Choice; grandly, our actions are inconsequential. God will decide to make things wright or wrong accordingly. The plot of the novel would suggest that men are capable of deciding for themselves these differences – Senf calls them self-proclaimed “agents of God” (430) – while Carol suggests that they are just the opposite, blips of flesh in a universe of God’s bidding.

I think Senf does not present a necessarily negative perspective on choice and justice, however. If we accept that the characters of the novel have free will, we are presented with a group of murderers and rapists. Allowing for destiny to have brought these men together and destroy the Count and his following sheds a more positive light on the events of the novel, at least from a Christian perspective. This is not to excuse responsibility in the novel; I don’t think Senf is making that argument here. I do believe that we cannot ignore the ideas of good versus evil in a religious context just because the novel may not explicitly say so.

 

Perhaps one of Sigmund Freud’s most critiqued assertions was the sexual distinction between men and women. Namely, all of women’s desires could be traced back to some aspect most carnal. His conviction was so strong that it even seeped its way into works such as Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming.

“[Motivating forces] are either ambitious wishes, which serve to elevate the subject’s personality; or they are erotic ones. In young women the erotic wishes predominate almost exclusively, for their ambition is as a rule absorbed by erotic trends” (423).

Aside from cringing, what do we do with this? I will focus on the beginning chapters of Dracula to analyze Freud under the contexts of classic literature of his day (both because I find Dracula endlessly fascinating, as well as the fact that there simply are no women in The Island of Dr. Moreau).

Firstly, we have Lucy Westenra, best friend of Mina Harker. Lucy struggles with the very first-world problem of having three male suitors vying for her hand in marriage. Lucy struggles immensely with the power that choosing a husband gives her; “Three proposals in one day! Isn’t it awful!” (64). Lucy does not know how to choose a husband, nor does she seem to want to. She laments, “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?” (67). This seems to follow Freud’s point; here we have a woman who does not have the ambition to marry in a way that will best suit her (or marry none of them if that would be the best scenario).

What diverges from Freud is seen in Lucy’s motives. Lucy does not seem to register that marrying three men would also imply a sexual attachment to all of them. Lucy is a dreamer; she wants to marry for love, like Mina has. She even mentions to Mr. Morris, “Yes, there is one I love, though he has not told me yet that he even loves me” (67) and seems to be quite sincere in her belief about the way to pick a spouse. Lucy is not thinking about sex and does not seem to even view it as the most prudent aspect of marriage.

Dracula often makes quite explicit feelings of a sexual nature. For example, Jonathan Harker feels “in [his] heart a wicked, burning desire that [the women of Dracula’s castle] would kiss [him] with those red lips” (45). It is purposeful that Lucy is so pure and unaware of sexuality, and at the same time a woman with desires that do not dip beneath the surface of love and loyalty, seeking protection from a man, is a direct contrast to Freud and his claims.

The Island or Dr. Moreau features many binaries classic to Victorian literature; nature vs. technology, religion vs. science, etc. One binary that is strongly featured in this novel is that of luck vs. safety, that which we can control versus that which we cannot, and how belief in this binary controls Edward Prendick’s actions throughout the novel.

Prendick’s narration from the very beginning perfectly outlines this concept:

“But in the first place, I must state that there never were four men in the dingy; the number was three. Constans… luckily for us, and unluckily for himself, did not reach us” (1).

Here we have not merely a description of how our main character came to be on the dingey later found by Montgomery, but a story of chance and safety, and more specifically, odds.

It is by pure chance that Prendick has become the narrator of our story, and this changes the way readers might understand personal power throughout the tale. Edward survived the sinking of the Lady Vain, and he survived again when the other members on the dingy did not, but this is not because of any assertive action on Prendick’s part, but mere coincidences stacked upon each other.

From the very beginning, H.G. Wells presents us with this idea that “safety” as it exists in the novel is arbitrary. While Prendick has described how he came to be on the Lady Vain’s dingy, he has also given us a paragraph of numbers to sift through. There could have been four men on the dingy, but there were only three. One page later, Prendick is the only man left on the dingy, following his companions’ brawl and slip overboard. Here Prendick claims, “I remember laughing at that and wondering why I laughed” (2). This laugh is resonant of Edward recognizing his own mortality in the face of forces beyond his control. He is the last man standing, and who can say that he has the ability to keep things this way? The novel is not one in which Prendick’s choices guarantee his safety, which we see time and time again.

The Island of Dr. Moreau poses that luck and safety mere perceptions. Beyond this, any attempt to secure safety for yourself and others is futile. Edward mentions how while his companions on the dingey struggled, he “intended to help Helmar by grasping the sailor’s leg” (2) but this did not change the outcome of neither man surviving. Prendick might as well have done nothing, for all of the good his assistance proved to be. Our narrator learns early in the novel that personal agency does not guarantee a change of outcome, and this affects his behavior for the rest of the novel.

We see Prendick fall victim to the whim of others despite his own attempts to secure safety for himself. He choses to trust Montgomery when he rescues our narrator yet is then cast adrift by Moreau and the boatmen when he is not wanted. How does Prendick respond to this decision? “I suddenly began to sob and weep as I had never done since I was a little child” (16). It is not until “the islanders, seeing [Edward] was really adrift, took pity on [him]” that our narrator is allowed onto the island to stay (16). Later, when Prendick believes he has discovered the truth about Dr. Moreau’s experiments, he decides to drown himself rather than be a victim of the doctor, but in the end cannot do it, noting “It was not in me then to go out and drown myself” (47). It is unclear if Edward can truly be safe whether he drowns himself or chooses to stay alive on the island, to the point where his “choice” is arbitrary.

While The Island of Dr. Moreau does not outright declare that safety is a matter of luck, it seems obvious from Prendick’s own actions that one cannot really choose to make his life safer. Rather this occurs from a series of actions outside of one’s personal control. I think this perfectly demonstrates the feelings of many in the Victorian era who strode to make their lives better, or even just to make their lives livable. It is not realistic to say that we always have a choice and can always use choices to make our lives better. However, Prendick does survive the novel, and perhaps this is a positive note; that while we cannot always choose the trajectory of our lives, there is some way in which we can keep ourselves going, and not give up searching for better.