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 \u201cthe black window stared at me like an eye.\u201d (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 \u201cstared\u201d 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 \u201ccivilized\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
This dark liminal space is staring at the narrator \u201clike an eye\u201d (Wells 60). The addition of this metaphor is interesting to me. The fact that the window \u201cstared\u201d 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?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m also interested in how it reverses the more common idea that \u2018eyes are the window to the soul\u2019. Eyes are viewed as a way of seeing into the truth of someone\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 \u201cthe black window stared at me like an eye.\u201d (Wells 60) This line stood out to be for a number of reasons. The blackness of the window recalls the … Continue reading How is a Window like an Eye?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2598,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2598"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}