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One of the most obvious overarching themes of The Island of Dr. Moreau is the colonialism story, reflecting the relationship that England had with one fourth of the world’s population by the 1890s. Colonizing nations took over “less civilized” territories to take advantage of the resources of the land, but under the guise of bettering the lives of the colonized peoples. The Victorians applied Darwin’s ideas about evolution to society to place their culture above those of the peoples they were invading, validating their right to attempt to civilize the people brought into Victoria’s empire by educating them in English language, culture and history. They would “uplift” these peoples’ lives while simultaneously destroying that which connected them to their heritage. This uplift and destruction took place around the world, and Richard Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, sums up the sentiment best when speaking about the point of educating Native Americans in 1892: “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man” (http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/).

Schools meant to stamp out non-western European cultures were set up in all colonized lands, and we see a mirror of this school in the Law that the beast-men live by after Moreau turns them out because he “[began] to feel the beast in them” instead of them retaining a human mentality (Wells 59). The beast-men repeat their law when a new creature arrives, and mistaking the protagonist Prendick for another of Moreau’s vivisected animals, “the Sayer of the Law” begins the process of teaching him (Wells 44). The Law serves two main purposes – to define the place of the beast-men in the island’s society and to prescribe their actions so that they stay ‘men.’

The Law begins by prohibiting certain beast-like behaviors – “not to go on all-Fours…. not to suck up Drink…. not to eat Flesh or Fish…. not to claw Bark of Trees…. not to chase other Men” (Wells 43). By avoiding these actions, the beast-men act more like men, as they desire to do. And if they do any of these things, “evil are the punishments of those who break the Law;” fear tactics and negative-reinforcement training is in place in their society to keep them in order (Wells 44).

The other part of the Law is ascribing characteristics of power and ownership to some male figure – “His is the House of Pain. His is the hand that Makes…. His is the lightning-flash…. His are the starts in the sky,” (Wells 43). The beast-men are worshipping this figure, assigning to him the powers of creation and healing, as well as pain and destruction, basically saying that he is the master of all things, but the figure is never specified. It is likely Dr. Moreau because he is the one that causes these being unimaginable pain, but he is also the one that enables them to have this ability to think and understand, even if in a limited capacity, but it is still never explicitly stated who is being worshipped, or where this Law originated.

Someone had to give the Sayer of the Law these rules and instill this hero-worship, but it is presented to new creatures by one of their own as if this Law is, was, and always will be the natural order of things, even though that is not remotely true. Moreau has only been doing this kind of vivisection for a little over a decade, and there was no way for this Law of the beast-men to be in place before this. But this presentation of a set of constructed societal principles as the natural order of things is exactly how colonized peoples were educated. They were forced into a new way of life, told how to act and punished severely if they showed disobedient behavior, and this forced assimilation was often done at the hands of previous generations of their own people. An example of this is Wallace Denny, who went through the Carlisle Indian School system, a system intent on killing his heritage, and then returned to work for that system as a disciplinarian for other native children. This is how the cycle of colonization is able to continue for generations, often with little input from the colonizer once the system is in place. The only flaw in this scheme, however, is what happens when the colonized begin to take their new knowledge and use it for their own aims, a terrifying possibility which was just beginning to fully set in for the Victorians.

 

 

 

Throughout H.G. Wells’ “The Island of Dr. Moreau” many thematic points of intersection can be highlighted throughout the text. Within these points of intersection I noticed a possible ideological transformation that is solidified within the final moments of the novel surrounding the character of Prendick. Prendick describes himself as being mentally ill after experiencing the Island with Dr. Moreau and is seeing a psychologist in order for him to get through each day, however, I believe that Prendick’s terror, “They say that terror is a disease, and anyhow, I can witness that for several years now, a restless fear has dwelt in my mind, such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion cub may feel” (102) is in reality a transformation of the imperialistic idea surrounding the “white man’s burden”. The white man’s burden which aims to validate the white man’s oppression of native peoples as seen within Prendick, “The little pink sloth creature dashed at me and I cut it over, gashed down its ugly face with the nail in my stick,” (46) occurs many times of the as well as through Dr. Moreau’s practice of vivisection and the Laws of Man he inflicts upon the civilization. However, Prendick’s white man’s burden I believe transforms from a kind of burden to what it truly is which is in reality a horrifying truth that he has contributed to so much pain and suffering and that he himself is in fact an animal. Prendick states, “For that reason I live near the broad free downland, and can escape thither when this shadow is over my soul” (103) the words “this shadow over my soul” is what I believe at one point was Prendick’s own imperialistic white man’s burden however, has now escalated into that searing and horrific realization of the pain that he and other men are able to cause. While the “shadow” originally stems from the idea of the white man’s burden its reality is only illuminated for Prendick once he has already caused and witnessed such harm lead by the misleading “white man’s burden”.

 

After Moreau shares the secrets of the island with Prendick, he goes to bed a little unsettled to say the least. He makes the comment that “the black window stared at me like an eye.” (Wells 60) This line stood out to be for a number of reasons. The blackness of the window recalls the blackness of the creatures he first meets. This blackness is a less than subtle racialization of these characters. These characters and with them this window is presented as the other: dangerous and disgusting to the narrator. This blackness “stared” at the narrator. This ascribes it agency and purpose. The specter of blackness is fixed upon the narrator. Now looking at something can have many different connotations. It is potentially something as simple as interest or as sinister as hunting. The sentence does not give us enough context but if we read the blackness as a metaphor for racial anxiety in the British Empire than this stare could be read as aggressive. Colonized nations are become more “civilized” and, to use an imperfect metaphor, self-aware. In many ways they are beginning to stare back at Britain and think about their own position within the empire. This black window is staring at Prendick, in many ways the average man.

I find it very interesting that this blackness is a window. The darkness is not the outside or within. The black is found in this liminal space. A window is both a barrier between indoors and outdoors and a place to pass from in to out. It is not directly one space or the other. It is solid and permeable. Windows allow us to see through but obscure direct connection. Prendick is not describing the outside but the window. Not only is the window black, but it is a center of ambiguity. This is much like the Beast Folk. These creatures are not animal or human. They do not bridge the gap between humans and animals, but they also are a mixer of the two elements. The Beast Folk are not easily categorized. In many ways they are also a liminal space.

This dark liminal space is staring at the narrator “like an eye” (Wells 60). The addition of this metaphor is interesting to me. The fact that the window “stared” implies vision and therefore some type of eye (Wells 60). Perhaps Prendick is thinking of the potentials of vivisection and is seeing the human possibility in everything. Maybe it refers to how the window stared; it stared like an eye would stare. Or more interesting to me, the window is like an eye. Eyes are used for seeing; they transport information to the brain about the world. The window, this liminal, othered, and frightening space is somehow the information and perceptions of the world. These liminal spaces transport information from one clear concept to another. However the eye changes the world as it transports it. Does this sentence mean to imply that liminal spaces change the people that are not liminal?

I’m also interested in how it reverses the more common idea that ‘eyes are the window to the soul’. Eyes are viewed as a way of seeing into the truth of someone’s nature. Prendick often cites the eyes of the Beast Folk as evidence for their inherent humanity or inherent beastliness. The eye it seems in this sentence, has betrayed him somewhat. It is not giving him the truth of the Beast Folk but instead is invoked as a way that the darkness might be seeing into him.

Reading through The Longman Anthology, I was struck by a quote found under the section titled “The Age of Energy and Invention,” which illustrates Karl Marx’s view of the obsession with science and innovation which marked the Victorian era:

“[Marx] saw that through the hoopla of the marketplace, products had acquired a ‘mystical character’ and ‘theological niceties’ of their own. Yet Marx did not regard commodities as proof of God’s existence; instead, he argued that they functioned as deities in their own right. (…) Looking around at the wonders of British industry, Marx decided that people had become, finally, less important that things.” (1055)

I found this quote to be crucial when discussing The Island of Dr. Moreau, because the idea of humanity as something imperfect, something that should (and can be, through the eyes of Dr. Moreau) perfected through the modes of science and technology, acts as the foundation of Moreau’s ideology. One can trace this idea specifically to Moreau’s theory on the nature of pain and pleasure, which he reveals while talking to Prendick about his “praxis”: “The capacity for pain is not needed in the muscle, and it is not placed there (…). Pain is simply our intrinsic medical adviser to warn us and stimulate us. (…) I never yet heard of a useless thing that was not ground out of existence by evolution sooner or later. Did you? And pain gets needless.” (55)

Moreau views pain as an unnecessary trait, and something which he believes can, ultimately, be conquered. He continues, saying: “This store men and women set on pleasure and pain, Prendick, is the mark of the beast upon them, the mark of the beast from which they came. Pain! Pain and pleasure – they are for us, only so long as we wriggle in the dust…” (55)

Pain and pleasure are two characteristics that are unmistakably human, and without the capacity for those two things, there is little that distances humans from machines – and yet, it is exactly those two things that Moreau wants to eliminate. Moreau sees pain and pleasure as weakness, and he wishes to conquer that weakness just as one would fix a bug on a computer, or replace a rusty screw. In this regard, Moreau embodies Marx’s notion that people were becoming less important than things, and that humanity was becoming increasingly replaced by science. The obsession with invention and the endless striving towards an ever-greater perfection can be summed up in a quote towards the end of The Island of Dr. Moreau:

“A blind fate, a vast pitiless mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabric of existence, and I, Moreau by his passion for research, Montgomery by his passion for drink, the Beast People, with their instincts and mental restrictions, were torn and crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid the infinite complexity of its incessant wheels.” (74)

To me, this “vast pitiless mechanism” is representative of the obsession with science and the attempt to shape and perfect nature, to “cut and shape the fabric of existence,” that I have been trying to outline in this blog post – it is the central conflict, and the engine that gives power to the novel as a whole.

The Island of Dr. Moreau deals with intensely gruesome subjects – not only in the physical monstrosity of the Beast People, with their “strangely distorted talons” which evoke a “quivering disgust” (44), but in Moreau’s morally repulsive experiments full of sadism and wanton cruelty. Yet as the full depth of the island’s gruesomeness becomes clear, I began to find the language surrounding it increasingly strange. The language the characters use is often far less graphic than one might expect, as we begin to understand what exactly they’re referring to; the terms used to explain the actual horrors occurring on the island are often vague. Even after Prendick has come to a full understanding of the island’s horrors, the euphemisms persist. This seems counterproductive; in a book so full of shock and revulsion, why bother trying to maintain language that downplays them?

Early on in the novel, Moreau tells Prendick, “‘This is a biological station – of a sort’” (Wells 19). There is a good deal more going on in Moreau’s island than merely biology, but Prendick doesn’t know this yet; it’s a handy lie for Moreau, easily palatable for a fellow scientist. Shortly after, Moreau changes his tone: “‘Our little establishment here contains a secret or so, is a kind of Bluebeard’s Chamber, in fact. Nothing very dreadful really – to a sane man’” (21). While “biological station” sounds relatively simple, even tame, “Bluebeard’s Chamber” is far more objectionable. Moreau could have called his island a biological station if he was experimenting on different types of grass. His allusion to “Bluebeard’s Chamber,” on the other hand, holds a deadly and deceptive conflict. Bluebeard is a character in a fairy tale – removed from reality, ostensibly harmless, figuring only in a child’s imagination. This fairy tale quality makes the allusion itself seem harmless, placing Moreau’s island in an innocuous context. But Bluebeard was a renowned wife-murderer, and his chamber was kept a secret because it was full of dead bodies. The apparent safety of Moreau’s answer is undermined by the nature of his euphemism. Although this tendency seems natural now, when Prendick is new to the island, Prendick himself maintains the euphemisms surrounding the worst of the island’s horrors, as if he can’t bear to name them.

Prendick and Moreau both use the term “vivisection” most often when referring to Moreau’s work, and although the clinical ring of the word seems to excuse it from being a euphemism, I think it’s another link in a chain of sustained euphemisms for something so horrible neither character nor writer can  address it openly. “Vivisection” means “living dissection” – yet it sounds much cleaner cloaked in Latin. Prendick never asks himself, “Can Moreau really be cutting apart live animals in order to make them more like humans? Can he dissect live humans?” Instead, he says, “Could the vivisection of men be possible?” (37). While vivisection is ostensibly the most applicable scientific term, it is also used exclusively; there are no other more graphic (and realistic) terms applied to Moreau’s research. I think that this repetition, to the exclusion of any other term, reflects a fear of the actual process, even after we understand it.

Chapter 19 is titled “Montgomery’s ‘Bank Holiday.’” This holiday consists of Montgomery losing his hold on his sanity and eventually being killed by the Beast People. The “bank holiday” is a new euphemism, used perhaps for dramatic purpose (to withhold the details of the next chapter) but I think more importantly for the way it reveals Prendick’s discomfort with the events around him. To Prendick, and perhaps to Moreau also, the horror of the “science” happening on the island is so strong that they can’t bring themselves to name it.

It makes some sense that Wells would try to conceal some atrocities; published under Victoria in an era of strict social decorum, the novel could have been shunned had it been judged too appalling. Yet we see atrocities aplenty. Instead, the euphemisms reveal such a depth of disgust and fear for the island’s events that Prendick (and Wells) could not bear to name them. Instead of calling horror by its own name, Wells constantly conceals and obscures it; the euphemisms he uses for the island’s horrors indicate a discomfort deeper than simple revulsion. I think that these euphemisms reflect a social and moral disgust with Moreau’s science, and perhaps science as a whole, that neither Prendick nor Wells can fully articulate.

Throughout The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H.G. Wells, there seems to be a continuous commentary on the idea of laws. In the very beginning of the text, before Prendick even gets to the island, he is faced with the concept of laws that he does not understand, with the drunken ship captain: “Who are you to tell me what I’m to do. I tell you I’m captain of the ship– Captain and Owner. I’m the law here, I tell you– the law and the prophets,” (9). Seeing this as early as the third chapter, I found that I was confronted with the concept of an authority figure who assumed power via ownership. It was very interesting, also, that the religious aspect was drawn in this early, too. The captain said how he was “the law and the prophets,” turning his power on the ship into an almost religion to follow. Moreau does the same thing on his island, with the Beast Folk. He has quite literally created them: he takes ownership over the responsibility of their existences. Whether or not he has facilitated it, Dr. Moreau has become a deity of sorts to the Beast Folk, through the implications of ‘the Law.’ These beasts have been quite literally created by the mysterious Dr. Moreau, and they worship him through the recitation of ‘the Law.’ “A horrible fancy  came into my head that Moreau,  after animalising these men, had infected their dwarfed brains with a kind of deification of himself,” says Prendick (43). Though Prendick removes all agency from the Beast Folk to have put Moreau on this pedistal on their own, he does make a point, in that Moreau has become a religious figure to these Beast Folk. The reciting of ‘the Law’ can be eerily compared to that of a religious mass: “A kind of rhythmic fervour fell on all of us; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing law,” (43). They are worshiping the standards of Dr. Moreau, almost the same that the civilised humans with which Prendick was familiar might worship God’s standards. Prendick even makes a point to say that he has no idea who the He/His/Him in the chants could be, and yet, he continues to follow in the almost spiritual aspects of the reciting of ‘the Law,’ following as blindly as he did when dealing with the drunken captain in Chapter 3.  

I think the passage where we first encounter the chanting is more of a commentary on the worship of authority figures. The laws as dictated by humanity don’t seem to apply in this book, but in their place, are the law of the authority figures. The way the chanting comes off as a religious experience, just as much as it does an internalising of laws that are followed because the authority figure says so, not just because they have been deemed reasonable to follow, speaks to that idea. Later in the text, Mongomery even says, “Much the brutes care for the Law, eh– when Moreau’s not about?” (66). Plenty of religions have this same idea: the idea that you shouldn’t murder because God says not to, not just because murder is a terrible thing to do.

One thing that The Longman Anthology made clear was that the end of the 19^th century was riddled with anxiety about the death of Queen Victoria and the end of the British Empire. The century was colored by colonial wars, religious insecurity, and the belief that Britain had a duty to civilize and improve other races. The Island of Dr. Moreau clearly uses these ideas. In the end, with the death of Dr. Moreau (the ruler), comes the fall of society on the island (the empire).

Dr. Moreau is not the first character to use the language of law in the novel. Davis, the drunk, redheaded captain of the Ipecacuanha states, “I am the law here, I tell you––the law and the prophets” (9). Davis is not only the captain but also the owner of the ship. He is the self-declared “king” and therefore has the power to decide exactly who is allowed on his ship, and who (Prendick) is not (14).

Moreau is a monarch-like figure, as well. This can be seen even before Prendick encounters the Beast-People and their Law. After Davis’ insistence that Prendick leave the ship, he turns to his previous savoir, Montgomery, who, “nodded helplessly at the grey-haired man beside him, to indicate his powerlessness to help me” (14). Back in the presence of Moreau, his monarch, Montgomery has no more autonomy. He yields completely to the silent authority of Moreau. When Moreau eventually saves Prendick from his sinking dingy, he reminds the man several times that he was not invited to the island. He is only there because of Moreau’s pity and kindness, and must follow the rules of the land.

The relationship of Moreau and the Beast-People is similar to the relationship between Great Britain and her colonies in the 19^th century. Moreau creates these human-like creatures, but wants them out of his sight. He instills in them the Law, a quasi-religious list of commandments to make them more human, and leaves them mostly alone in their own village. Unlike colonialism, Moreau is not getting goods, or trade, or land from his people. Rather, the people are his goods. I think this can easily represent the “White Man’s burden” that spurred on British imperialism (The Longman Anthology 1064). They felt a duty to spread their own culture and religion throughout the world, for the benefit of lower races. Moreau is creating his own colony of newly civilized people. His justification for this is almost nonexistent, and basically amounts to, “why not?” Wells represents in Moreau the lack of reason that drove British imperialism, or as J. R. Seeley phrased it “We seem…to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind” (The Longman Anthology 1064).

Moreau’s demise comes at the hands (paws? claws?) of his own creation, the vivisected puma. Despite Prendick’s desperate attempt to maintain humanity in the Beast-People, they inevitably return to their animal ways. Moreau’s civilization could not survive without him there to enforce the Law. As if that’s not symbolic enough, Wells also (sort of) shows us the fall of Captain Davis. Prendick is saved from the island by a small boat drifting ashore. In it are two bodies, one with “a shock of red hair like the captain of the Ipecacuanha” (101). Whether it’s really Davis or not, is sort of irrelevant. Wells presented two monarch figures in his novel and by the end, they’re both dead and their empires (the island and the ship) are gone. So, will that be the case when Queen Victoria dies? And if the British do fall, isn’t that for the best?

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.

When I read in the Longman Anthology introduction, the line “The medical establishment backed the conventional view that women were physically and intellectually inferior, a ‘weaker sex’ that would buckle under the weight of strong passion, serious thought, or vigorous exercise” (1061) was incredibly interesting. It occurred to me that one of the few mentions of female Beast People in The Island of Doctor Moreau was the fact that the “pioneers” of the ignoring “decency” – that is, ignoring the need for clothes – were “all females” (96-97). So the females are clearly portrayed as the weaker sex, quicker to succumb to the pressure of animalistic desires and all the “indecency” that entails.

But what if Wells was using one of his brief mentions of females to make some social commentary? The Longman Anthology also mentions that marriage was a complete loss of identity for a woman: “A woman lost the few civil rights she had as she became ‘one body’ with her husband” (1062). Monogamy allows males to have more control over the females, to – in a way – absorb them and become one unit in the eyes of the law. This idea, of two humans coming together to create one being, can be traced back to Plato’s Symposium – although his ideas had more to do with love than unions for profit or improved social standing.

Monogamy is a way to increase control over the female’s children, (supposedly) assuring the male that the female’s children are his (should the female stay faithful) and ensuring that his genetics will continue on. However, monogamy is not the only way of life – polygamy is Mormon practice, and sexual unions of animals are all over the map from polygamy to polyandry (polyandry being the practice of one female mating with multiple males so that all of the males help raise the child/children in the hopes that they are protecting their genes from extinction). In this dynamic specifically, females hold all the power – whereas in monogamous relationships, they hold almost none.

The female Beast-People in The Island of Doctor Moreau attempt to form monogamous bonds as per the Law – although Wells makes sure to point out that since the female Beast-People were “less numerous… [they were] liable to much furtive persecution” (62). While some animals are monogamous, most are not – and trying to force monogamy on them only decreases the power of the females even further, as they are taught that monogamy is the Law and yet, they are still accosted by multiple males who are stronger than they are, bringing them a fear of punishment from breaking the Law.

However, the female Beast-People are the first to ignore the need for decency as the Law starts to decay (96-97). By ignoring clothing, the female Beast-People are better able to advertise their availability for sexual union – many female animals have a sort of display to indicate that they are ovulating. Biological Anthropology: The Natural History of Humankind (3^rd edition) explains that “around the time of ovulation, the rump of a female primate may change color, produce a fluid-filled swelling, or emit odors, any of which will signal males in the vicinity that she is ready to mate” (204). Advertising her availability allows the female to attract males, giving her the choice of who she would like to mate with, rather than the male having all the power in the decision of who to mate with – that is, marry – as often happens in human society.

Wells shows, with his few mentions of female Beast-People in The Island of Doctor Moreau, that monogamy allows human males to strip females of their independence – but that some of this independence can be regained in a more free sexual society, one that was beginning to bloom in the time after Queen Victoria’s death.