Course Blog

The ruling of a nation, with the possibility of tyranny, exists as a symbiotic relationship (especially if the ruler possesses no heir). H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau presents the reality of an isolated kingdom, or perhaps twisted theocracy is a better term, that ultimately reverts to a primal state with the death of its leader Dr. Moreau. While Montgomery dies shortly after, but not before exposing the Beast People to alcohol, the remaining man Edward Prendick is not capable of assuming the “throne” of the island. However, he does offer up a new doctrine that temporarily restores a false humanity that eventually fades as the animals revert to their true natures. In chapter XXI during an exchange with the Dog-man Prendick there appears an interesting association of the narrator with the native inhabitants. “That Other who walked in the Sea is as we are.” (126) [1]The question then is: Is Pendrick a beast, are we all beasts, and if so is that why he is not able to maintain the humanity of the island? Thus the death of Moreau signals the end of a world, similar to how Queen Victoria’s death triggered the beginnings of the decline of the British Empire.

In The Longman Anthology of British Literature by David Damrosch and Kevin J.H. Dettmar comes a passage focusing on the relationship of a ruler and their country, analyzing the power and restraints of Queen Victoria. In the passage entitled “Victoria and the Victorians” a newspaper clipping published at the time of her death in 1901 writes that “Few of us, perhaps, have realized till now how large a part she had in the life of everyone of us; how the thread of her life [bound] the warp of the nation’s progress.” (1050) If we as readers think of the island as the British Empire, then what other similarities can we find? Prendick returns to England and lives out his days with the constant fear of every human around him regressing to a bestial form, and while he would not approve of this, we must connect the two “empires” as much as possible for they are eerily similar.

The treatment of women in particular links the island and Britain, especially on the grounds of equal rights and reproductive abilities. Despite facing many hardships throughout her life due to her gender, Victoria was not a fan of “this mad, wicked folly of Woman’s Rights.” (1051) Women were also subjected to the duty to “soothe the savage beast her husband might become as he fought in the jungle of free trade.” (1061) The pink sloth, which I believe to be female, enacts this role by occasionally jolting Prendick awake, causing him to be hyper aware and remember his situation. It tests his humanity and patience, eventually slinking back to the trees. The women are also given a wild repulsiveness (for example the escaped puma, which can be seen as the “New Woman” in an abusive society, constantly in conflict with the queen and sexism).

Doctor Moreau also has problems with reproduction and the role of “females” as was the case, like the queen. Despite having nine children Victoria was also not fond of pregnancy, childbirth, and babies. (1051) Montgomery relates this to Prendick in Chapter XV, “they actually bore offspring, but that these generally died. When they lived, Moreau took them and stamped the human form upon them.” (84) Not only does this speak to the low mortality rates of the lower class, but to the contradictory nature of both the British and Moreau. It is the idea of improving by dehumanizing. As with the missions to spread Christianity into areas like “Darkest Africa” Moreau attempts to create humanity by performing actions that we (and his fellow Victorians) deem inhumane. The narrative of both the British Empire and Dr. Moreau is one of subjugation all in the name of a greater good, the effects of which are still in existence and as a curse prompt us to see the beast in everyone.

[1] I foolishly purchased a different edition by mistake (the only difference is that the font is bigger), and while the pages are only off by a small amount I decided to include the chapter numbers as well.

Religious life during the Victorian Era centered around the strict Evangelical church, which held the Victorians to a rigid ideal of morality (Longman). This strict, self-restrictive religious culture is reflected in The Laws of the Beast Men on the island which read as followed:

“Not to go on all-Fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”

“Not to suck up drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”

“Not to eat Flesh or Fish; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”

“Not to claw Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”

“Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”

And so from the prohibition of these acts of folly, on to the prohibition of what I thought then were the maddest, most impossible and most indecent things one could well imagine (43).

The laws themselves appear to mirror the format of the Ten Commandments, using “Never to go…” in lieu of “Thou shall not.” The list is clear and incontestable, just as the language of the Ten Commandments leaves little or nothing to interpretation. The Law prohibited the Beast Men from chasing other Men – which when discussing creatures labeled as Beasts by the narrator leads me to believe the chase prohibited is one of malicious intent – just as the Ten commandments prohibit murder of another man. Even the restriction on the consumption of Flesh and Fish, while holding its scientific reasoning to slow the degeneration of the Beast Men back into animals, is reminiscent of the restrictions on consumption of meat during certain periods of the Christian Religious calendar. These restrictions are therefore a reflection of the line of morality in Victorian society, as well as the line of morality within the society of the island itself.

The Sayer of the Law would then take on a Moses-like position within the Beast Men if one were to subscribe to the belief that the Law mirrors the Ten Commandments. Moses received the list of commandments that all must follow in order to avoid punishment in the Christian religions, just as the Law that the Sayer creates must be learned and followed in order to avoid the “house of pain” (43). Moses was the deliverer of the Hebrews, leading them from their enslavement in Egypt to the promised land that God had told him of. The Sayer of the Law did not personally lead the other Beast Men to their new homes in the forests, removed from the House of Pain in which they were created, but his word and law was meant to deliver them from the punishment and pain that Moreau could inflict within his enclosure. His Law therefore kept the Beast Men safe from their creator’s wrath, and in his good graces, just as the Ten Commandments do according to the Bible.

The idea of the House of Pain closely relates to the idea of Hell in my mind, as both are where souls go to suffer the consequences of their immoral actions, which makes the role of Moreau within this entire analogy rather complicated. He is both the creator of the Beast Men, and their punisher, which could equate him to God, who is simultaneously the giver of life and the punisher of the immoral for Evangelicals. However Moreau also rules over the House of Pain, where the Beast Men appear to return to after they break the Law, never to rejoin society. However it is not God, but Lucifer who rules over the punishment of human souls in Hell. The easy answer to me seems to be that Moreau is both God and Satan to the Beast Men, but that then leads me to the question of whether or not HG Wells was proposing that God is also both beings within his own society’s religion.

 

To a modern reader Dr. Moreau is the quintessential mad scientist – he has a hidden laboratory, he has sinister henchmen, and his experiments are evil and grotesque. But to simply dismiss Moreau as a madman would be to ignore the manner in which the doctor both adheres to his own vision of sanity, and manipulates the other characters (especially Prendick, as the end of the novel illustrates) so that they too – whether willingly or unwillingly – are reshaped by Moreau’s warped ideal. He uses the traditional enforcers of Victorian culture – sanity or normality, the willingness to adhere to a dictated social code – to enforce not only his rule on the island but his own moral compass. The Beast-Men worship him, Montgomery obeys him, and even Prendick becomes accustomed to life on the island. Moreau’s power to reshape the idea of sanity is just as chilling as his torturous reshaping of the animals’ bodies.

Moreau’s first description of his own experiments are that they are “nothing very dreadful, really, to a sane man…” (Chapter VII) Throughout the novel he reinforces his own standards of sanity. When at last describing his experiment to the horrified Prendick, he explains his reasons for embarking upon it in the same language: “Then I am a religious man, Prendick, as every sane man must be.” (Chapter XIV) He co-opts the twin standards of Victorian behavior – religion and normality – to defend his indefensible experiments, and does it in such a way that Prendick has no choice but to go along with it. Indeed, Prendick’s own experience on the island erodes his certainty that Moreau’s practices are evil: “I lost faith in the sanity of the world when I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island.” (Chapter XVI) Eventually he adjusts to life on the island, such that he barely notices the gradual disintegration of Moreau’s creatures. Moreau’s twisted world becomes Prendick’s normality.

By the time Prendick is able to leave the island, Moreau’s warped kind of sanity is still dogging his steps. Prendick says that his “discoverers thought [him] a madman,” and that he “had to act with the utmost circumspection to save [himself] from the suspicion of insanity.” (Chapter XXII) In the end, Prendick, no longer “a reasonable creature, but only an animal tormented with some strange disorder in its brain,” (Chapter XXII) is so changed by Moreau’s world that he cannot live in his own – not because they are too different, but because they are too similar. Moreau’s last achievement is this redefinition of sanity: bringing the ordinary world closer and closer to his island, so that the one seems just as insane as the other.

[Apologies for the citations – I am using the Project Gutenberg text, which has no page numbers.]

During the 19^th century, the British Empire was in a position of immense power with imperialist control over approximately 59 countries. (Victorian School) In the midst of the Victorian Era, the British Empire would sometimes employ select leaders to watch over the people and the land that they had recently annexed in order to ensure that everything remained dandy for Britain. In general, military powers or governmental agents were meant to carry weapons in order to discourage rebellion and to enforce quotas for the production of specific materials for the conquered population to adhere to.

The principles of laissez-faire governing system state that those who were “left to their own devices” are apt to “develop habits of sturdy self-reliance” whilst those who are “supported by the state” are bound to “sink into a mode of dependency.” (Evans, BBC.) I believe that the laissez-faire concept alludes to the fact that Britain was eager to profit off of the lands that they invaded and the people that they had exploited without claiming moral responsibility for the state that they had created when things ended poorly. (Economically or even in relation to declining health amongst the population due to exhaustion.)

Throughout the text, there is ample evidence to suggest that the “white and terrible” Dr. Moreau imposes human characteristics and human thoughts upon the beasts against their will. (36.) Much like imperialists in the Victorian Era, men with guns would omit the culture and the natural inclinations of a native population in order to “civilize” them. However, Prendick acknowledges his ignorance of what is natural for these Beasts and states that he “does not know how far they were yet from the human heritage that [he] ascribes to them.” (40.)

I envision Dr. Moreau as the physical embodiment of laissez-faire principles in which Britain keeps producing more power through the acquisition of land and subjects, but it does not accomplish or produce much beyond the creation of chaos. The population becomes too massive to control and both Britain and Moreau have bitten off more than they can chew since they are overextended and understaffed. The idea that only auditory and visible pain could cause Prendick to care about the creatures is a fascinating statement because it bluntly admits to the ugliness of humanity. (54.) Laissez-faire production justifies the acquisition of land and subjects in bulk because it is hypothetically easy to maintain and it rationalizes the belief that the imperialists are not responsible for the horror that they indirectly create. When Dr. Moreau states that he “always falls short on the things [he] dreams,” I am reminded of the insatiable hunger for victory and conquest during the Victorian Era. (58.)

 

 

 

Sources in addition to Wells:

http://www.victorianschool.co.uk/empire.html (Victorian School)

“Laissez-faire and the Victorians” (Evans, BBC)

By Professor Eric Evans

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/education_health/laissez_faire_02.shtml

 

 

 

Throughout the novel, we see Dr. Moreau, through the eyes of Prendick, unsuccessfully attempt to apply a sense of law over the animals that reside on the island. Essentially, Dr. Moreau is trying to use a manmade construction of law and power on animals that are natural to the environment and, expectedly so, act in an animalistic way.

To do so, Dr. Moreau forces the “Beast Folk” (60) to memorize the laws of the land, referring to Dr. Moreau as “He” and “Him” (43), in a way that makes us assume that the animals think of Moreau as their own God.

Attached to these laws are punishments that are inflicted upon any of the beasts that fail to follow the laws. Prendick sees these punishments in action on page 21, stating, “See!  I did a little thing, a wrong thing once.  I jabbered, jabbered, stopped talking.  None could understand.  I am burnt, branded in the hand.  He is great, he is good!” As we see through Prendick’s eyes, Moreau performs experiments on the Ape, a “Beast Folk”, that act out against the governing laws set in motion by Moreau in an attempt to make them more human through vivisection. Moreau is constantly trying to “humanize” the animals and make his dictatorship over the beasts stronger and more effective.

As Henderson and Sharpe document in “The Longman Anthology of British Literature”, these types of governing powers were not all that unfamiliar to the Victorian Era. Queen Victoria herself declared the overarching mission of all empires to be “to protect the poor natives and advance civilization” (Henderson and Sharpe, 1063). Viewing Moreau as the empire of the island he inhabits, he sees his work with experimentation of vivisection to be advancing civilization by revealing new knowledge about animals, in relation to humans, and making large strides during a crucial time for scientific advancements in the Victorian Era. “As befits a scientific age, most authors exhibited a willingness to experiment” (Henderson and Sharpe, 1068), much like what Moreau was doing secretly on the island. He is very much advancing society that Queen Victoria denotes as the most important part of an empire.

Moreau was not only helping to uncover more information about reactions in the body, but he was also applying a sense of power of the animals by constantly reminding them that although they may be learning humanistic actions and partaking in a human-like society, they will be set straight again if they deviate from these laws by receiving pain and punishment administered by Moreau himself, through the form of vivisection under the guise of experimentation.

However, although the idea of government and a general set of rules are very humanistic, the response to pain that anyone would naturally portray if they were sentenced to punishment is strictly animalistic. Moreau is in a continuous, lose-lose battle of trying to make these animals human, and then having the animals respond to pain and revert back to their natural, animalistic self.

As we see Moreau try to apply governing authority over the animals on the island through experimentation that was new and widely followed during this era, we also see the animals natural responses to the attempted taming of the natural, animalistic traits.

“You cannot imagine the strange colourless delight of these intellectual desires. The thing before you is no longer an animal, a fellow creature, but a problem” (56).

Dr. Moreau’s use of the phrase “strange colourless delight” to describe the “intellectual desires” that compel him to conduct  his vivisection experiments reveals the underlying unease that he feels about his experiments in vivisection. By his own description, Moreau himself does not fully understand the nature of his own desires, and his ambivalence towards them creates a cycle in which he conducts his experiments in order to get at the “problem” not only of the animal on his vivisection table, but also within himself.

Moreau suggests that he finds his own delight in his experiments both alien and ambiguous with his use of the phrase “strange colourless delight.” Color typically functions as an identifying characteristic, whether it connotes pigmentation or emotion, and its absence makes both objects and concepts difficult to define. So, while Moreau’s delight is colourless, and therefore ambiguous, the word strange implies that his delight is also alien, or other. The simultaneously strange and ambiguous nature of the delight that Moreau derives from his intellectual desires reveals that Moreau himself has difficulty locating or naming what it is within himself that spurs him to conduct his experiments.

The unknowable nature of Moreau’s “strange colourless delight” echoes the “restless curiosity in research” that Arthur Symons notes as being a defining characteristic of decadence (105). Moreau’s frustration about the ambiguity of his delight could be read as its own sort of “restless curiosity.” In the context of this interpretation, Moreau’s “intellectual desires” are focused both on the “problem” of his animal experiments as well as on the “problem” of the unknowability of his delight.

The phrase “intellectual desires” also suggests Moreau’s cloaked anxiety, created in this case by the contradictory nature of the combination of intellect with desire. Desire pairs oddly with the adjective intellectual, as desire and intellect are not words typically associated with one another. The word intellectual is affiliated with reason, while the word desire correlates with lack of control, or perhaps instinct. The phrase as a whole suggests that Moreau’s “intellectual desires,” which push him to ever greater extremes of experimentation, meld reason with bestial instinct, an anomalous mixture that causes anxiety for Dr. Moreau.

If Moreau’s statement does in fact reveal that he, perhaps unconsciously, feels anxiety about how his “intellectual desires” affect him, then his later, more explicit statement about the purpose of his experiments is in fact an articulation of the cycle of anxiety, experimentation, and further anxiety that characterized Moreau’s work on the island. Moreau states, “Each time I dip a living creature in the bath of burning pain, I say: this time I will burn out all the animal, this time I will make a rational creature of my own” (59). In light of the underlying anxiety evident in Moreau’s description of his “strange colourless delight,” I believe that his desire to “burn out all the animal” and “make a rational creature of my own” is in fact an attempt to reconcile the contradictory nature of his own “intellectual desires,” the combination of desire for reason and animal instinct that drive him to conduct his experiments in the first place.

Moreau’s own anxiety about the delight that his partially bestial “intellectual desires” inspire in him connects to the larger anxieties and ambivalences that characterized the late 19th century. If Moreau’s experiments are in fact part of a cycle in which he tries to locate the “problem” within himself in the bodies of his “fellow creature[s],” then it is possible that Arthur Symons’s definition of decadence as “an intense self-consciousness, a restless curiosity in research, an over-subtilizing refinement upon refinement, a spiritual and moral perversity” is a list of the symptoms inspired by the simultaneous anxiety and ambivalence experienced at the close of the 19th century (105). Decadence, then, and the delight suggested by its name, is its own cycle of anxiety, experimentation through “self-consciousness, restless curiosity… over-subtilizing refinement,” and a resulting “a spiritual and moral perversity,” which creates further anxiety necessitating investigation.

Playing very much on the hero worship cultivated during the end of the eighteenth century (The Victorian Age, 1068), H.G Wells presents Dr. Moreau as an omen of what such worship can lead to.  Becoming a symbol of rule and power for his fledgling society in much the same way that Victoria influenced England, Moreau’s reign is cut abruptly short, presenting a far bleaker scenario to warn readers with.  While the death of Victoria leads certainly to a degree of chaos and loss of purpose resulting in the decline of the British Empire, her people do not as a whole die out and run themselves into collapse in the way the beast people do.

Beginning with the the chapter “The Sayers of the Law”, Wells presents the blind dedication the beast people have towards the Law through Prendick’s less than subtle reactions to hearing it recited.  The “mad litany” as our oh so judgmental narrator terms it served its purpose, as: “a kind of rhythmic fervour fell on all of us; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing law” (Wells, 43).  Although Prendick first holds the belief that this recitation is inane, insane, and entirely disconcerting, he quickly changes his opinion on the matter.  Faced with a repeating list of stipulations and mandates of which he understands not the first cause of, Prendick soon finds himself taken up by the chanting, following along whether or not he believes the words himself.  However, Prendick does stipulate his participation by explaining it as a purely superficial action.  The important question becomes not whether or not he believed his own act, but whether his faith in the Law actually matters or not.

Whereas Prendick’s confided thoughts reveal him to be caught between laughter and disgust, his fellow practitioners of the Law cannot possibly suspect his infidelity to the tenets by which they abide.   As such, they have nothing but him professing his belief in the Law.  Were someone else to come along and ask him about his beliefs, it could be reasonably assumed that Prendick would once again support them, so as to superficially fit in.  If this newcomer was unsure what to believe, however, he may be swayed to take up the Law after Prendick’s support of it.  In such a scenario, Prendick’s closely guarded disregard for the Law becomes irrelevant, as only his open beliefs matter to the continuance of the society.

By way of this short and seemingly innocuous reaction to the saying of the Law, Wells manages to present a small scale scenario where the blind support of a law (even if the support is mere lip service) can be viewed with its consequences.  If one were to turn such support towards any nations laws and not share their disagreements, how then could flaws be addressed and amended?  And if the authority for this uncontested law comes to be rooted in a mortal figurehead, what is to be done when said figurehead passes on?  In Wells’ tale, this dissolution of authority leads to a reign of chaos and disorder which horrifies readers who can imagine their own society in such a way.  Through his extended parallels between Moreau and Victoria as mortal figureheads of their law, Wells presents the greatest flaw in such a system, giving grim warning to those who read his omen.

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”.