Category: 2018 Blog Post

The Longman Anthology highlights several themes of the Victorian era. Two of these themes, modernity and religion, are highlighted and called into question in Dracula, reflecting Stoker’s doubts in regards to the Industrial Revolution, the subsequent urbanization of the city, and the crisis of faith that occurred in Victorian England, which is also addressed in Dracula.

Signs of modernity are juxtaposed by those of the old-world at every turn in Dracula. The Longman Anthology says that “the ‘newness’ of Victorian society—its speed, progress, and triumphant ingenuity—was epitomized by the coming of the railway.” Dracula essentially lives in gothic times; it requires a coach and carriage to reach his home. However, the further and further one travels from Transylvania and the closer one gets to London, the more modernized transportation becomes. Transylvania is also where Harker comes across people who don’t follow “modern” religion. The Longman Anthology discusses the clash of different sects and variations of Christianity, but more importantly that modern scientific discoveries cause a crisis of faith.

Harker states that he is an Anglican, dismissing the beliefs of the innkeeper and other village people in Transylvania as an old-world religion—superstition not yet updated according to Darwin or other recent discoveries. However, Stoker proves that Harker’s way might not be the only way. For example, the villagers seem to know a truth that Harker, his mind limited to things he can understand through science, does not have access to. Despite Harker’s dismissive attitude towards the act of the innkeeper’s wife putting a crucifix around his neck, the power of the crucifix is later verified which, in turn, begins to validate some beliefs of old religion. This is further confirmed by Van Helsing’s method of care for Lucy, which requires a marriage of western and non-western practices to protect Lucy from whatever is hurting her. While he does use the very modern technique of blood transfusions to restore her several times, he also covers her in garlic flowers based off of the superstition that garlic wards off vampires, and this succeeds in deterring Dracula on several occasions.

In his use of both modern beliefs and old beliefs, Stoker shows that he is necessarily condemning modern religion in favor of ancient religion, or vice versa. He is simply suggesting that the people of Victorian England, who are so set on thoughts of advancement and the new, might do well to avoid complete desertion of the old

Bram Stoker’s Dracula places emphasis on the stark divide between good and evil, especially in the beginning of the novel with Jonathan Harker and Count Dracula. Told through Jonathan’s eyes, the story creates a very one-sided image of the Count as the living embodiment of pure evil and fear. Today, vampires have a more mysterious reputation in our pop culture—they are seen as brooding and misunderstood immortal beings. Take the blockbuster film Interview with the Vampire, for example, which graced the world with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and an incredibly young Kirsten Dunst as vampires.

There is a stark contrast of good and evil in this film too, between Tom Cruise’s Lestat and Brad Pitt’s Louis, but this contrast works more as a display of Louis’ humanity despite his vampiric form. Louis makes us sympathetic to him, as he is portrayed as a vampire who is capable of love and care. Before his re-birth, he was just widowed and in grieving despair. He does not forget this, and he comes to care for the little girl Claudia, his accidental creation. He strives to protect her from her youthful, unstoppable desire for human blood, but inevitably fails and is forced to watch her die by his own kind, sucking all the passion out of him. Like Dracula, the drama of Interview with the Vampire unfolds like a diary entry, but through the vampire Louis’ eyes. Narrating, he implores the audience to feel his pain. We see Louis struggle to come to terms with his loss of his human life—-he even refuses to feed on human flesh for a time, opting for rats and animals instead. The vampire Louis straddles the fine line of good and evil.

Stoker gives us no context to Count Dracula—why he is the way he is, or where he comes from. The image of the vampire today has grown to accommodate people’s want for a dramatic story, complete with a dramatic transformation yet more relatable characters. People want to be entertained, but also crave connection. By the end of the movie, we feel bad for Brad Pitt and are scared for him as Lestat suddenly re-emerges to haunt him in the 1990s. Reading Dracula after having watched this movie this summer (it was entertainingly bad), I find myself wanting to know more about the character of Count Dracula. I want to be able to see SOME redeeming quality of humanity in him (or maybe I am just crazy?). If we had the Count’s background story, would he read more as Brad Pitt’s tortured Louis? Today, the lines between good and evil aren’t as black and white as they may have seemed in the nineteenth century.

It is also worth noting the casting choices made in this movie. Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are well-known for their looks, and each has been named Sexiest Man Alive at least once. Kirsten Dunst is also known for her beauty, which she evidently harbored even as a young girl. The pure beauty of all the vampires in this movie (luscious long-haired Antonio Banderas also makes an appearance) is important regarding the idea of sexuality in Dracula, as in the scene of Jonathan’s encounter with the three vampiric women, and the mention of Lucy Westerna’s exaggerated beauty in death and re-birth as a vampire. For Stoker, the emphasis on beauty is placed only on his women, as he describes Count Dracula with animalistic features: “his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin….The backs of his hands…were rather coarse —broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm” (25). Pop culture’s vampires, however, are all rendered beautiful no matter their gender. Vampires are thought to be sexy (women AND men, now) and Interview with the Vampire corroborates that. In fact, how would that change Stoker’s Count Dracula if he had described him less beastly? Would it take away the sense of horror? Or does the idea of a beautiful seductive vampire give an even more horrific tone, since they look more like us?

Dracula now clearly defines the term “vampire,” including the outward appearance and the methods for keeping them at bay—garlic, stake through the heart, crucifixes, beheading, coffins. In today’s society, however, there is a much thinner line between good and evil, as there is a growing fascination with the study of humanity and what exactly makes people tick. Interview with the Vampire juxtaposes the classic gothic tale Dracula and raises questions of the meaning of Stoker’s story in a new context of the twenty-first century.

(Note: Interview with the Vampire is a book by Anne Rice, which the movie is an adaptation of—I have not read the book)

Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst’s introduction “Reading the ‘Fin de Siècle’” offers an overview of many moving parts of the late 19^thcentury.  Throughout the introduction, the authors describe how the time period embodied an “ambivalence of modernity,” where technological and social advances were accompanied by moments of decline and disaster.  Ledger and Luckhurst specifically discuss the evolution of the New Woman, as well as ideas of degenerates, and how sexually active women function in both of those.  In Dracula, Lucy Westenra is an example in which ideas about female sexuality and female independence have moments of coinciding and conflicting with each other during the late 19^thcentury. Analyzing Lucy through Ledger and Luckhurst’s introduction to the fin de siècle and specifically through their descriptions of the New Woman and degenerates, allows one to see the comparisons and conflicts within the changes of the advancing new century or what Ledger and Luckhurst call the ambivalence of modernity.

In Dracula,Lucy Westenra is introduced through Mina Harker’s letters and journal entries. While Lucy later goes on to respond to the letters, keep a journal herself, and appear in other characters’ narratives, she appears first and foremost in the intimate written exchanges between her and Mina, her best friend of many years.  That being said, Lucy and Mina’s letters are very detailed and honest because of their close friendship.  Through her exchanges with Mina, it becomes clear that Lucy embodies the double coded idea of the New Woman as described by Ledger and Luckhurst. She encompasses “an image of sexual freedom and assertions of female independence,” but also “dangers of sexual degeneracy” (Ledger and Luckhurst 17).  In one pivotal letter to Mina, Lucy describes how she was proposed to by three different men in a single day.  After describing how she had to reject two of the men, Lucy writes to Mina, “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?” (Stoker 67).  Lucy exercises the female independence and sexual freedom of the New Woman when she declines two of her suitors, as well as when she proposes this radical idea of marrying more than one man, more specifically as many men that desire her. Yet at the same time, she embodies the role of “the degenerate” as described by Ledger and Luckhurst, or the person who is moving “backwards” in the face of so much technological and social advancement.  One of the roles that Ledger and Luckhurst list when describing the idea of “the degenerate” in their introduction is the sexually active woman.  A woman being sexually active is indicative of a lack of control or giving into instinctual almost animalistic tendencies.  While it can be assumed that Lucy is not sexually active because she has not married yet, her statement about wanting to marry more than one man classifies her as both a sexually free and independent New Woman, but also a degenerate who should be condemned for halting the advancement of society and giving in to instinctual urges.  Lucy’s double classification emphasizes what Ledger and Luckhurst call the ambivalence of modernity, or the contradictions that exist within the push for expansion.

Merely a few lines prior to her claim for wanting multiple husbands, Lucy contradicted the idea of the New Woman by emphasizing the stereotype of female weakness and traditional gender roles of women.  She wrote to Mina, “I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him” (Stoker 66).  Lucy is lumping herself, Mina, and all women into a stereotype of weakness as a result of their sex.  She builds on the stereotype of female weakness and inferiority by arguing that she, and all women, marry men because they are too afraid to deal with life and their fears on their own.  Lucy paints herself as vulnerable and in need of male protection.  Lucy’s claim not only contradicts her later statement about wanting to marry multiple men, but also contradicts the sentence that directly follows, “I know now what I would do if I were a man and wanted to make a girl love me” (Stoker 66).  Stoker has written two consecutive sentences that both confirm and challenge traditional gender roles in the late 19^thcentury.  In one sentence, Lucy lumps herself into a stereotype of female inferiority, and in the following sentence, she challenges traditional gender roles by imagining her behavior if she was a man.  Analyzing these two statements through Ledger and Luckhurst’s introduction to the fin de siècle allows one to see the ambivalence of modernity functioning in a novel written during the time period.

In his 1908 “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming,” Sigmund Freud asserts that peoples’ phantasies could be associated with mental illness. He states, “If phantasies become over-luxuriant and over-powerful, the conditions are laid for an onset of neurosis or psychosis” (424). Bram Stoker’s Dracula is full of “over-luxuriant” and “over-powerful” descriptions that reveal his obsession with the changing gender roles of the time.

For instance, when Jonathan Harker is being cornered by three, sexualized, vampire women, Stoker uses intense animalistic and sexual descriptions to set the scene. He writes from Jonathan’s perspective, “There was a voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth” (45). By saying that she “lapped” her teeth with her tongue Harker describes her in a way that resembles that of a dog. The woman is clearly threatening and holds the power in the scene, but she is also sexualized. Harker goes on to say, “Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat” (45). He then “closed [his] eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited – waited with beating heart” (96). There is a passionate sexual atmosphere in this scene because Jonathan waits in “ecstasy” anticipating the touch of the woman’s “scarlet lips.” By sexualizing this scene, and creating an intense feeling of Jonathan’s anticipation, the scene seems to be one of “over-luxuriant” descriptions and passion. Furthermore, Jonathan is intrigued by the woman’s erotic nature, considering that he uses terms that would connect her with a canine.

Freud might suggest that Jonathan’s anticipation reveals an inner desire for erotic sexual relations with a powerful woman. This would connect to The Longman Anthology’s description of the role of women during the Victorian Era. Many women had been seen as “physically and intellectually inferior, a ‘weaker sex,’” but women were starting to ease their way into a new role during the 19^th century (1061). In conjunction with the challenge to the “weaker” role of women, masculinity was also being challenged. When women had been seen as the “weaker” sex, the man was supposed to be the dominant, powerful figure. The expectations of how women and men were supposed to act individually, but also in relationship with each other, were changing during the 19^th century, and Bram’s depiction of Jonathan Harker and the vampire women could be interpreted as the 19th-century challenge to conventional gender norms.

Going back to what Freud said about there being only a slight difference between phantasies and mental illness challenges the audience to question Bram’s mental state. Since The Longman Anthology asserts that inversions of the conventional relationships between men and women were popular in Victorian literature, it would be logical for Bram’s novel to not only address gender norms a few times throughout the book, but to intentionally refer to these gender inversions as a motif–which it does. Additionally, regardless of whether Bram was sane, his intentional use of inverted-gender-norm motifs reveals that he was phantasizing about them, and perhaps his phantasies were so passionate that they led to a mental illness. If that was the case, it would just be stronger evidence for how influenced 19th-century society was by the changing gender roles. Therefore, readers can determine that Dracula is Bram’s critique of conventional gender norms during the Victorian Era, and the audience can use Dracula to analyze the roles of feminity and masculinity as the 20th-century was getting ready to begin.

The Fin De Siecle is characterized as a time of both massive progress and debilitating decline in all aspects of society. The electron was discovered during this time, yet physiognomy was considered scientifically valid. Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, in their introduction to Reading the Fin De Siecle” further identify this time as “a time fraught with anxiety and with an exhilarating sense of possibility” (L&L 1). Women were not free from the grasps of this confusing dichotomy, and thus the concept of the “New Woman” was born during this time. Ledger and Luckhurst define the New Woman as “double-coded,” in which a woman could own the “image of sexual freedom and assertions of female independence” while also warning against the “dangers of sexual degeneracy” and “the abandonment of motherhood” (L&L 17). I other words, “New Women could themselves be advocates of conservative causes” (L&L 17).

Bram Stoker’s Dracula explores the role of women through two female characters who exemplify characteristics of the New Woman, but from opposite ends of the spectrum. We meet Lucy Westenra through a letter she writes to her friend Mina Murray (eventually Mina Harker). She is in a fit of emotion as she believes she is in love with Mr. Holmwood: “Oh Mina, couldn’t you guess? I love him. I am blushing as I write… oh, Mina, I love him; I love him; I love him” (Stoker 64)! The repetition of “I love him” is important. Lucy is able to state what she is feeling and physically show that feeling with her “blushing,” all in a normal fashion. She is neither stone cold nor hysterical as was the typical depiction of women before this time period.  Additionally, she is given the agency to state that she loves Mr. Holmwood instead of waiting for a man to choose her or choose someone for her.

This idea is further exemplified in the next letter Mina receives from Lucy, in which Lucy is faced with the very “difficult” problem of having been proposed to by three different men. She is again given agency to choose which man she wants to say yes to, a dynamic that is very different from the forced marriages that were common before. In fact, Lucy is so uncomfortable with this new found power that she “burst into tears” (Stoker 67), suggesting she has never been given this power before. Lucy then questions “why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble” (Stoker 67)? While Lucy may not have fully understood this when she wrote it, her suggestion of one woman marrying as many men as she wants (thus establishing sexual relations with many men), hints at the sexual freedoms Ledger and Luckhurst note as one of the defining characteristics of the New Woman. Lucy exemplifies many of the characteristics of the free spirited Victorian woman.

On the other hand, Mina lacks much of the emotional presence in her writing that Lucy has. Her letters act more as a log of events than passionate descriptions of her feelings, and require more in depth analysis to understand the sentiment behind the words. Our introduction to Mina’s accounts of the story are through her letters to Lucy. She speaks of being busy with “the life of an assistant schoolmistress” and her studies of shorthand. Though it is exciting that Mina is a working woman and educating herself, she is working in a job that is conventionally held by women, thus limiting her powers within the workforce. In addition, Mina remains devoted to Jonathan, her fiancée and eventual husband, throughout the entire novel. She is available to him whenever he needs her. Her thoughts do not wander in her writing toward inklings of thinking about other men or the possibilities of having desires toward other men. Further, her education in shorthand is for Jonathan, so that she “shall be useful to [him]” when he returns and begins his business. Mina exemplifies the conservative side of the New Woman. She embraces some agency, but most of it is in service to the men in her life.

Lucy and Mina are both Victorian women grappling with the newfound freedoms and struggling with the restrictions still present. While Lucy may lean more toward the free version of the New Woman, and Mina may lean toward the conservative version of the New Woman, both show characteristics of conservatism and progression. Thus, the juxtaposition and intersections of Mina and Lucy’s characters perfectly exemplify the “anxiety” of opposites so present in the Fin de Siecle, as noted by Ledger and Luckhurst.

One outside text that helps shed light on Dracula is Sigmund Freud’s “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming”. In this piece, Freud talks about the idea of fantasy and what people will do in order to achieve it. Freud argues that fantasies are an effect of the past, present, and future happening simultaneously. The idea in this article that stands out the most, in relation to the novel, is Freud’s categories for the motives behind fantasy. Freud believes that fantasies “fall naturally into two main groups. They are either ambitious wishes, which serve to elevate the subject’s personality; or they are erotic ones” (Freud 423). While the novel does depict fantasies that fall into these categories, it also shows other categories that Freud’s article has overlooked.

One moment that does represent Freud’s categories is when the three female vampires confront Jonathan Harker in the hopes of sucking his blood. Harker’s reaction to the situation demonstrates an erotic fantasy: “There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips” (Stoker 45). It is clear through the language of this quote, that Harker’s fantasy to have the female vampires kiss him is erotic in nature. The words “longing” and “desire” help represent the sexual tone of the scene. Both words suggest that a part of Harker needs this interaction to occur. There is an underlying force that is driving him to want them to kiss him. That underlying force helps depict Freud’s theory that fantasies are oftentimes created out of an erotic desire.

However, Freud’s categories of the driving force behind fantasies are too limited. Freud’s argument does not allow room for other options, which are clearly present in the novel. One of those moments that help demonstrate another force behind fantasies is when Dr. Seward is studying his patient. Renfield has been suddenly overcome with fits of rage and has escaped the insane asylum and Dr. Seward is at a loss for why. Dr. Seward wishes he “could get some clue to the cause. It would almost seem as if there was some influence which came and went… We shall tonight play sane wits against mad ones. He escaped before without our help; tonight he shall escape with it” (Stoker 118). This quote helps show that fantasies can also be driven by curiosity and the eagerness for knowledge. Dr. Seward just wants to “get some clue” so he can understand why Renfield is behaving like so. He realizes that in order to do so, he should provide an opportunity for Renfield to escape again. Dr. Seward imagines that after this helped escape, he will be able to understand what is affecting Renfield. This fantasy of Dr. Seward’s is purely driven from an academic standpoint. The doctor is being faced with a patient whose problems he cannot understand, so he is creating a controlled experiment in order to learn more. This driving force behind Dr. Seward’s fantasy does not fall into Freud’s categories. It is clear that this does not arise from an erotic nature nor does it serve as a way for Dr. Seward’s personality to rise.

Throughout the novel, many fantasies occur. While some of those may fall into Freud’s two categories, like Harker’s interaction with the female vampires, others do not. Dr. Seward’s study of Renfield shows that academia and a desire for knowledge can be a driving force for fantasy. This helps demonstrate that there can be many driving forces behind a person’s fantasies and it is really up to the individual who is experiencing them to know what that force is.

 

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.

While reading H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, I was focused on the recurring theme within the text of the transition and fluidness between human and non-human characteristics. This is specifically seen towards the end of the novel, as Prendick is left alone on the island with Moreau’s experiments – all of which gradually revert to a more wild version of themselves. The influence of the creatures on Prendick is exemplified in his acknowledged friendships between some of the creatures, as some of them he has a “friendly tolerance” (96) towards and his outright kinship with the Dog-Man “After the death of this poor dog of mine, my last friend, I too adopted to some extent the practice of slumbering in the daytime, in order to be on my guard at night” (100). This quote also shows his transition to a more nocturnal lifestyle due to the totally immersive state of being surrounded by half-animals.

Additionally, the significance of Prendick’s closet companion on the island having been derived from a dog suggests that only the most docile and domesticated animals are trustworthy and worthy of being by the side of humans: “I scarcely noticed the transition from the companion on my right hand to the lurching dog at my side” (97). Dog Man is the only creature on the island that Prendick willingly allows to touch his hand, but only after Dog Man calls him ‘Master’ and pledges servitude to him: “The thing was evidently faithful enough, for it might have fallen upon me as I slept….extending my hand for another licking kiss” (93). Part of this honored position, however, can be traced directly to the creature’s willingness to serve humans “The Dog Man scarcely dared to leave my side“ (95) and in this way it can be argued that Prendick retains the human ability to domesticate creatures and does not completely devolve into just another animal on the island.

However, Wells also parallels Prendick’s degeneration to a more animalistic version of himself alongside the reversion of the creatures on the island to a more wild and truer form of themselves – “I, too, must have undergone strange changes…. I am told that even now my eyes have a strange brightness, a swift alertness of movement.” (98). Prendick defines the shift in his nature as a result of having “caught something of the natural wildness of my companions” (102). This shift appears to be both permanent and irreversible both in the case of Prendick and the creatures. On a grander level, this fear of “catching” less-than desirable characteristics can be connected to the Victorian fear of being conquered and overrun by the societies that they had previously taken control over. It contributes to the general fear of outsiders/aliens – anything that is different has the potential to upset the foundation of Victorian society and way of life. These moments in the text can also be read as a question of what separates humans, and in the case of this class and novel, specifically Victorians, from other animals and other cultures. The fear that Victorians might resemble other races too closely to be comfortable also shines through as a large part of what I believe Wells was exploring in writing this novel was how easy is it for another race to become passably colonized or “domesticated”.

 

“And so from the prohibition of these acts of folly, on to the prohibition of what I thought were the maddest, most impossible and most indecent things one could well imagine. A kind of rhythmic fervor fell on all of us ; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing law. Superficially the contagion of these brute men was upon me, but deep down within me laughter and disgust struggled together” (p. 43).

This passage, in the chapter entitled “The Sayers of the Law” in H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, follows Prendick’s first introduction to “the Law” of Moreau’s creatures. Upon hearing parts of their recitations, Prendick concludes that they are “acts of folly… the maddest, most impossible and most indecent things one could imagine.” By judging their rules so quickly, Prendick distances himself from the situation and proclaims the inferiority of Moreau’s creatures. Prendick exacerbates the supposed differences between himself and the creatures through dehumanizing language. He denotes that the “contagion of these brute men” infects him, characterizing the creatures as diseases that impair his being. Even as he labels them as contagious diseases, Prendick gives no agency to the creatures. They are not human enough to have infected him, but their “contagion” spread on its own course “upon [Prendick].” His description of his warring reactions, “laughter and disgust,” further degrade the creatures to being worthy of two equally humiliating responses. By repeatedly shaming Moreau’s creatures, Prendick places himself on a pedestal above them.

The second sentence of the passage, however, provides opposition to this placement. Rather than separating himself from the creatures, Prendick notes that “[a] kind of rhythmic fervor fell on all of [them]; [they] gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing law.” The indication that Prendick himself also falls under the spell of the “rhythmic fervor” and recites the Law with Moreau’s creatures, participating in their most revered ceremony, acts as a sort of induction into their group. The word “gabbled” itself acts as an equalizer between Prendick and the creatures because it gives the impression of madness and unintelligible noises. It seems that Prendick attempts to counter this inclusion by claiming that “[s]uperficially the contagion of these brute men was upon [him].” That is, the fervor affecting Prendick is only surface-level and is caused by the disease of the creatures. He, however, calls the creatures “brute men” in this phrase, highlighting that he feels some sort of connection to them, as he could just as well call them monsters. Prendick’s induction and mutual awe of the “amazing law” illustrates that he and the creatures are more similar than Prendick realizes.

Prendick’s struggle between relating to and separating himself from the creatures relates to views of the lower class by wealthy individuals during the fin de siècle. According to Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst’s “Introduction: Reading the ‘Fin de Siècle,” the “often unsympathetic accounts of working-class city dwellers fueled existing fears of degeneration” (xvi). In terms of the selected passage from The Island of Dr. Moreau, Prendick is akin to the wealthy upper class individuals who saw the lower class as degenerates that were dangerous to the English race. Dr. Moreau’s creatures would take the place of the lower class, misunderstood people who were looked down upon, as Prendick degrades the creatures, and feared, again as Prendick does. The “laughter and disgust” Prendick describes as “[struggling] together” within him are similar opinions some wealthy, upper class individuals would have towards the poverty-stricken lower class they were unable to understand, yet innately similar to.

“Then I heard a key inserted and turned in the lock behind me. After a little while I heard through the locked door the noise of the staghounds, that had now been brought up from the beach. They were not barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious fashion” (21).

This paper will provide a close reading of the passage in which the narrator is first shown where he will be staying on the island. This scene is one of the first where our narrator becomes aware that something unusual is going on on the island. The emphasis on the locked door and the repetition of the word “heard” in the passage reveals Mr. Prendick’s unawareness of what is happening on the island.

There is great emphasis placed on the locked door throughout this passage. Within two sentences, we see the words “key”, “lock”, and “locked door”. Even though the first sentence very explicitly lets the readers know the door is locked, the author reiterates it again in the next sentence by saying “locked door”. This repetition reveals that there is information our narrator is unaware of that is intentionally being kept from him. He is literally being locked out by not being able to physically go through the door, but he is also figuratively being “locked out” of information. The repetition of “lock” builds the curiosity of the reader, as they are at this point also unaware of the secret being kept from the narrator. The mention of “the beach” in this passage can be seen as a contrast to the room the narrator now finds himself in. The beach often evokes feelings of freedom. If we think of the beach as an allusion to freedom, and our narrator is no longer down at the beach, then we might consider our narrator as no longer free. By having an allusion to freedom in the middle of a passage talking about locks and locked doors, it suggests the room the narrator is now in, or perhaps the island as a whole, is incompatible with freedom.

Not only is there a great emphasis on locks in the passage, but there is also an emphasis on sound. Throughout this short passage, the word “heard” gets used twice. There is also emphasis on sound in the words “noise”, “barking”, “sniffing”, and “growling”. It is important that the narrator is hearing things instead of seeing them. He hears the key get inserted in the door and he hears the staghounds, but he is not actually seeing what is going on. The fact that he is hearing, but not seeing, could allude to the fact that he is unaware of what is happening on the island. If he could see the staghounds “sniffing and growling”, then he would know what they were reacting to. Instead, he can hear them growling behind the door, which could suggest there is something unusual or unsafe behind the door, but the narrator does not get to see what it is. Similarly, the reader does not get to know why the dogs are growling. The use of staghounds, rather than say a poodle or dachshund, could also be meaningful. Staghounds are hunting dogs, and are very protective. The narrator can hear these protective dogs, but they are behind the door, and therefore in a place he is not allowed to go. This could symbolize the narrator losing protection once he got to the island. The emphasis on hearing instead of seeing reveals the narrator’s knowledge that something unusual is happening on the island, but his unawareness of what it is.