182 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 37, Number 2  June 2014 The Well-Born Chris Gavaler

The dual-identity hero—millionaire playboy original, privileged, dual-identity heroes is lost in by day, crime-fighting do-gooder by night—is contemporary renderings of the character type. one of the most enduring staples of American Evolution, devoid of the protective hand of comic books, most famously embodied by Providence, presented two assaults to late nine- and ’s 1939 . The teenth and early twentieth-century social struc- hybrid figure, however, originates decades ear- ture: degenerates from below, and degeneration lier and encompasses a multi-generic, transat- from within. The was the solution to lantic array of texts unified by the central both. Although the name is associated with the trope of controlled, individual transformation creation of and Joe Shus- employed for social good. Early literature of ter, Superman was the central term of the dual-identity hero spans not only comic introduced by Bernard Shaw in 1903 books but plays, silent film, radio, popular (with only a tangential reference to Nietzsche). novels, and pulp fiction magazines, in an The hybrid figure of the dual-identity hero expanse of genres that, in addition to super- emerged at this cultural moment when many hero narratives, includes adventure, western, eugenicists were popularizing Mendel’s principles crime, science fiction, and romance. While of hybridization. Beginning with Baroness Or- these characters have no single point of origin czy’s The Pimpernel, supermen of aristo- and influence, the superhero’s duality evolved cratic birth rescue the ruling class by within cultures that exhibited a larger preoccu- metaphorically blending their identities with the pation with superhuman transformation. objects of their fear. Refiguring gothic tragedies The contemporary superhero character type is of interbreeding into narratives of triumph, the in part a product of the British and American dual-identity hero—part well-born, part criminal eugenics movements of the early twentieth cen- commoner—absorbs the threat of the unfit, while tury. “[R]egardless of the literary form in which it simultaneously improving the well born by purg- is presented,” write Lois A. Cuddy and Claire M. ing the upper class of its degenerative parasitism. Roche in Evolution and Eugenics in American By transforming the idle rich into noble adventur- Literature and Culture, 1880–1940, “the Darwin- ers, eugenic hero narratives safeguard their class’ ian way of seeing the world and had inheritance as rightful rulers. Where selective taken root,” and science “empowered upper-class, breeding promised the eventual biological trans- educated, white men to enjoy the only thing they formation of the ruling class into a ruling race of could believe with absolute certainty: their own supermen, fantastical supermen of genre litera- preeminence in a world of constant change” (47). tures popular before comic books delivered the While continues to embody that eugenic in a single bound. pre-eminently upper-class white man champion- As the first and most influential dual-iden- ing the status quo, the generative context of the tity Superman, Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel

Chris Gavaler is an assistant professor of English at Washington and Lee University, where he teaches the course “Superheroes.” He blogs about pop culture at the Hooded Utilitarian and at his own site, www.thepatronsaintofsuperheroes.wordpress.com. The Journal of American Culture, 37:2 © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The Well-Born Superhero  Chris Gavaler 183 established hybridity as a paradoxically reac- artificial aristocracy, which, like all aristocracies, tionary trait for the well-born hybrids to fol- would seek to perpetuate itself” and therefore “[s] low in the emergent genre. As eugenics pecimens of humanity that fail to meet the aristo- widened its cultural hold, hero hybridization cratic standards [would] become ‘weeds’” (72). expanded, particularly into pulp fiction, mani- The objection, while common in the 1930s, had festing a range of iconic characters that include been eugenics’ primary rationale: humanity Tarzan, the Gray Seal, and . When needed to be weeded. eugenics declined in the late 1920s, the hero Social philosopher Sir Francis Galton, cousin formula mirrored that change too. As the of Charles Darwin, coined “eugenics” in 1883, the Superman found its ultimate expression in year published Also Spake , a race of artificially evolved superhu- Zarathustra. The term is a translation of “well mans shifted from societal goal to societal born” into Latin. After researching the alumni threat. While still maintaining cultural fascina- records of Oxford and Cambridge, Galton argued tion with the figure of the Superman, 1930s for the inherited intellectual superiority of Eng- pulp fiction subverted the marriage plot to iso- lish families such as his own and theorized that late superhuman heroes and thwart narratives the human race could be improved through the of reproduction. In their final, comic book selective breeding of their bloodlines. Nietzsche, incarnations, supermen abandoned eugenics to responding to a similar evolutionary impulse, defend the egalitarian principles the movement coined “Ubermensch” to name one such race of opposed. Early comic book creators were not intentionally evolved . directly responding to eugenics, but the The Superman’s eugenic and literary incarna- pseudo-science provided the name and the cul- tions were conceived to battle the same threat. tural foundation for their new genre. Action Analyzing “the shock Charles Darwin caused Comics was not the Superman’s first embodi- with his theory of evolution,” Andreas Reichstein ments but its last. concludes that “the Batman myth” and its Jekyll- The role of eugenics in literary history, while Hyde duality “exemplify the fear Darwinism gen- well analyzed in other genres, remains unexplored erated” in the last decades of the nineteenth cen- for some of the most popular fiction of the period. tury (346). H. G. Wells imagined humanity The figure of the Superman, moreover, survived replaced by the “Coming Beast,” “some now and continues to thrive in only one contemporary humble creature” that “Nature is, in unsuspected character type, presenting the superhero as an obscurity, equipping...with wider possibilities of ongoing reflection of eugenic history. An analysis appetite, endurance, or destruction, to rise in the of the well-born, dual-identity hero in its original fullness of time and sweep homo away” (12). context bridges the historical gap by reconstruct- In addition to battling other species, Victorians ing the genre’s evolutionary foundation and feared that human evolution could reverse. E. Ray revealing eugenics’ enduring presence in the Lankester in his 1880 Degeneration: A Chapter of American hero tradition. Darwinism dismisses the “tacit assumption of universal progress” as “unreasoning optimism,” reminding readers that “the white races of Eur- On the Origin of Supermen, ope...are subject to the laws of evolution, 1883–1905 and are as likely to degenerate as to progress” (59– 60). “Possibly,” Lankester warns, “we are all drifting, tending to the condition of intellectual Articulating resistance to eugenics in 1928, Barnacles” (60). In addition to “criminals, prosti- Waldemare Kaempffert wrote in the New York tutes, anarchists, and pronounced lunatics,” Times that selective breeding “would establish an argues Max Simon Nordau in 1895, “degeneration 184 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 37, Number 2  June 2014 could manifest even within the most well-born. Breeders’ Association formed to promote wide- By broadening his definition to encompass any scale selective breeding and eliminate such degen- “contempt for traditional values of custom and erate traits as feeblemindedness, promiscuity, morality,” Nordau includes the example of “a criminality, insanity, and poverty. In 1904, Galton king who sells his sovereign rights for a big che- founded the School of Eugenics at University que” (6). Bloodlines could be insulated, but the College in London, and the Carnegie Institute well born themselves might be the source of the funded the creation of the Station for Experimen- crisis. “Any new set of conditions occurring to an tal Evolution and the Eugenics Record Office in which render its food and safety very eas- Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. ily attained,” writes Lankester, “seem to lead as a George Bernard Shaw and Baroness Emma Or- rule to Degeneration” (33). He likens the phe- czy wrote at this critical moment when the varied nomenon to how “an active healthy man some- field of eugenics was transitioning from theory to times degenerates when he becomes suddenly application. Man and Superman was published in possessed of a fortune” or how “Rome degener- 1903, the year premiered at ated when possessed of the riches of the ancient Nottingham’s Theatre Royal. Two years later, world” (33). The problem is wealth and the “habit Man and Superman premiered at the Royal Court of parasitism” it produces: “Let the parasitic life Theatre in London as the newly published novel once be secured, and away go , jaws, and eyes; The Scarlet Pimpernel reached bookstands. Tam- the active highly gifted crab, insect, or annelid sen Wolff in Mendel’s Theatre identifies Shaw as may become a mere sac, absorbing nourishment “an ardent eugenicist” who “had attended Gal- and laying eggs” (33). Degeneration therefore ton’s series of lectures” and “was in direct contact threatened the well born on two fronts: infection with” Karl Pearson, “the leading disciple of Gal- from below and decay from within. Eugenics’ ton,” “during the months he was writing Man and Superman defended against both. Superman” (41–2). “Shaw,” writes Keum-Hee Advocates such as Shaw applauded the botani- Jang, “accepted Galton’s eugenic religion as a sup- cally engineered “changes from the crab apple to plement to conventional religion,” arguing that the pippin” and called for an application to human “Shaw’s view of social change cannot be explained reproduction (182). Gregor Mendel’s seminal in isolation from his thought on evolution and study in hybridization, while independent eugenic debate in the Victorian context” (232).1 of Darwinism, supplied eugenicists a scientific While his ideas are distinct from Galton’s and foundation. Originally published in 1865, six Pearson’s and his belief in a life force is opposed years after On the Origin of Species, Mendel’s to Darwin’s natural selection, Shaw brought “Experiments on Plant Hybridization” was first eugenic theories of heredity into the literary translated into English in 1901. Though eugeni- mainstream. cists did not all agree on the application of Men- Less biographical information is available on del’s ideas, his essay become one of the Orczy, but she did experience personally the fears international movement’s most influential texts. eugenics embodied, that the well born would lose Applying his “transformation experiments” to the their birthright to expanding lower classes. The study of metabolic disease the following year, Baroness was an aristocrat in the Austrian–Hun- British physician Archibald Garrod revealed the garian Empire who lost her family estate and possibility that a range of human traits could be inheritance in a peasant revolt. Her family was hereditary and therefore manipulated; like Men- forced to flee, eventually living in where del, eugenicists sought “the transformation of one she began her writing career with a hero who species into another by artificial” means (39, 36). assumes an alias to rescue fellow aristocrats from Projects expanded simultaneously on both sides French revolutionaries. Her first novel is one of of the Atlantic, disseminating Mendel’s ideas to the most influential texts for the later superhero the broader cultures. In 1903, the American genre, and she is often cited as the originator of The Well-Born Superhero  Chris Gavaler 185 the dual-identity hero. Gary Hoppenstand traces tional mates. Her Sir Percy is robust: “Tall, above Orczy’s influence to “Johnston McCulley’s Zorro average, even for an Englishmen, broad-shoul- to D.C. Comics’ Superman and Batman” (xviii). dered and massively built” (42); and cheerful with Danny Fingeroth agrees: in “the realm of heroic a “perpetual inane laugh” and “good-humoured” and superheroic disguises, we should probably air (46, 82). His “plebeian” wife, Marguerite, is begin with ’s Scarlet Pimpernel considered “the cleverest woman in ” (34). mythology” (48). Although it is impossible to Tanner acknowledges that such reproductive pair- prove a direct causal influence between Mendelian ings in which “two complementary persons may eugenics and her dual-identity adventure tale, Or- supply one another’s deficiencies” do not make czy imagined similar solutions to similar fears at “congenial marriages” and therefore “good results the same cultural moment. may be obtained from parents who would be Where Orczy looks backwards to a historical extremely unsuitable companions” (186–87). Or- revolution to express contemporary social anxi- czy demonstrates the same assertion with Percy ety, Shaw applies the rhetoric of revolution and Marguerite’s estranged marriage: “she took directly to Edwardian England. John Tanner, the no pains to disguise that good-natured contempt protagonist of Man and Superman, pens “The which she evidently felt for him” and he in turn Revolutionist’s Handbook and Pocket Com- “has the most complete contempt for his wife” panion,” which Shaw included in the play’s (45, 55). publication. Although well-born, Tanner voices Despite marital incompatibility, Tanner argues only mild sympathy for France’s vic- that such combinations—”a countess to a navvy tims, “those unlucky ladies and gentlemen, useless or of a duke to a charwoman” (186)—will eventu- and mischievous as many of them were,” and lik- ally produce a hybrid class of Supermen. Tanner ens them to America’s own useless millionaire cannot, however, define the new species except as class (205). His agenda is a eugenic revolution. some “sort of goodlooking philosopher-athlete, Both The Scarlet Pimpernel and “The Revolution- with a handsome healthy woman for a mate,” ist’s Handbook” figure hybridization as the tool which he declares “a great advance on the popular for improving and so ultimately protecting the demand for a perfect gentleman and a perfect aristocracy by the controlled crossbreeding of lady” (182). The ruling class, replaced by democ- nobility with common stock. The two works’ and racy, serves no societal function. Tanner identities Mendelian eugenics’ shared aim is not interbred himself as a “Member of the Idle Rich Class,” and equality through the merging of classes but an its flaw is at best “Uselessness,” at worst parasit- extension of pre-existing social divides by pro- ism, Lankester’s term for the cause of biological ducing a hardier species of noble. degeneration reapplied to social order (177, 241). Orczy and Shaw’s Tanner, like so many eugen- While he conceives of the Superman as superior in icists, conflate biology and culture and so indis- multiple characteristics, Tanner’s primary breed- criminately apply Mendel’s principles to the ing goal is the elimination of his class’ central production of any trait. “If two which dif- flaw. “No elaboration of physical or moral fer constantly in one or several characters be accomplishment,” he insists, “can atone for the crossed,” Mendel explains, “each pair of differen- sin of parasitism” (237). tiating characters... unite in the hybrid to form a Orczy’s Sir Percy is an embodiment of the par- new character” (4). “Thus,” declares Shaw’s John asitically useless gentleman. A “descendant of a Tanner, “the son of a robust, cheerful, eupeptic long line of English gentlemen,” Percy “has more British country , with the tastes and ranges money than any half-dozen men put together, he of his class, and of a clever, imaginative, intellec- is hand and glove with royalty” (56, 80). He has tual, highly civilized Jewess, might be very supe- also inherited more than wealth: “all the Blake- rior to both his parents” (187). Orczy selects the neys for generations had been notoriously dull, same differentiating characteristics for her fic- and...his mother had died an imbecile” (45). She 186 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 37, Number 2  June 2014 was, in fact, “hopelessly insane,” suffering a “ter- pernel, a hybrid who is both “the best and bravest rible malady which in those days was looked man in all the world” and yet also a “humble Eng- upon as hopelessly incurable and nothing short of lish wayside flower” (31). Percy the “inane ” a curse of God upon the entire family” (44). This (60)—a kind of hot house plant—is crossed with noble but tainted bloodline resulted in a “hope- hardy weeds, resulting in a new species uniquely lessly stupid” son, a “nonentity” with no “spiri- capable of “the noble task he has set himself to tual attainments” and “the air of a lazy, bored do” (31). As a master-of-disguise, the Scarlet Pim- aristocrat indifferent to matters of honor and jus- pernel is a metaphorical cross between Percy and tice” (45, 82, 45). He is the degenerated well born commoners so poisonous enemies fear approach- prophesized by Lankester two decades earlier. ing them. To a French border guard, he assumes Despite aristocratic uselessness, however, both the appearance of a “horrible hag” carrying “the The Scarlet Pimpernel and Man and Superman small-pox” (7). Where Tanner theorizes crossing a present democracy as a failed solution, expressing noble with a Jewess, Percy merges identities with a greater fear of lower class degenerates destroy- “an elderly Jew”; Chauvelin, “who had all the ing civilization. Handing “the country over to Frenchman’s prejudice against the despised race, riff-raff,” asserts Tanner, “is national suicide, motioned to the fellow to keep at a respectful dis- since riff-raff can neither govern nor will let any- tance” before “turning away with disgust from one else govern except the highest bidder of bread the loathsome specimen of humanity” (213, 214). and circuses.” Orczy declares a crowd of French Orczy’s noble-common hybridization, how- revolutionists “savage creatures,” “human only in ever, does not produce a species that dilutes or name” (1). Her villain, who “despised all social equalizes its inherited qualities. Mendel proposes inequalities,” is “blindly enthusiastic for the revo- that “hybrids, as a rule, are not exactly intermedi- lutionary cause” (93). Tanner acknowledges Eng- ate between the parental species” (7), but some- land’s similarly egalitarian ideals, but concludes thing new. Similarly, Orczy’s hybridized that nostalgia for the former order remains: character traits are literally super-human and “every Englishman loves and desires a pedigree” manifest only after the resolution of the mystery (223). Tanner answers that desire by reasserting plot collapses Percy and the Pimpernel into a sin- the lost social structure in a new guise: “The over- gle character. When speaking about his estranged throw of the aristocrat has created the necessity marriage, Percy’s formerly “slow, affected” voice for the Superman” (223). Orczy depicts the same “shook with an intensity of passion, which he was overthrow—the guillotine claims “all that France making superhuman efforts to keep in check” had boasted...of ancient names, and pure blood,” (198, 35). As the Pimpernel, he has “superhuman “descendants of the great men who... had made cunning” and “almost of the glory of France” (1)—in order to establish the will,” and “the man’s muscles seemed made of necessity of her well-born, aristocracy-saving steel, and his energy was almost supernatural” hero. (199, 206, 264). Where Shaw’s Tanner describes the eventual Orczy’s adventure fantasy achieves through “weeding out of the human race” (186), Orczy non-biological means Tanner’s call for the biolog- extends the plant metaphor to her contemporane- ically bred Superman. As the Pimpernel, Percy ously transformed hero. Through dual identity, has absorbed his wife’s differentiating characteris- Orczy achieves the goal Tanner and other eugeni- tics—cleverness, imagination, intellect—while cists project onto a distant future. Rather than remaining robust and cheerful. Orczy has also spending generations to produce a biological metaphorically bred out her hero’s lesser traits. superman through hereditary means, her narrative Mendel explains that “those characters which are transforms its well-born instantaneously. Wed- transmitted entire... in the hybridization... are ding Marguerite to the degenerated Percy, Orczy termed the dominant, and those which become produces a figurative offspring, the Scarlet Pim- latent in the process recessive” because they The Well-Born Superhero  Chris Gavaler 187

“disappear in the hybrids” (7). The Scarlet Pimper- London society with her beauty, her wit and her nel treats aristocratic uselessness as a recessive extravagances, presented a very pathetic picture of trait. Thus, any “imbecile” qualities that Percy tired-out, suffering womanhood” (249). She is a inherited from his “half-crazy mother” disappear husk of her former character, passive and compar- in the hybrid Pimpernel, purging him of his “fop- atively dimwitted. Her intelligence—once her dif- pish manners” (45, 127, 46). In the process, the ferentiating characteristic—is transferred entirely character subverts “the curse of God” and assumes to her husband. Orczy’s adventure plot first a godly role himself, what Tanner demands of all establishes an ideal eugenic paring and then skips eugenicists: “Man must take in hand all the work a literal portrayal of the multigenerational breed- that he used to shirk with an idle prayer” (181). ing process to dramatize eugenics’ ultimate goal: Both The Scarlet Pimpernel and “The Revolu- the strengthening and eventual transformation of tionist’s Handbook” figure such god-like, evolu- the upper class through the weakening and even- tionary work as actions designed to benefit a tual elimination of the lower classes. larger society. Orczy frames the estranged mar- Orczy also applies the transformation beyond riage as an admonitory tale—“Thus human beings the microcosm of the Blackeney marriage. The judge of one another, with but little reason, and Pimpernel’s “Secret Orchard” includes other no charity” (128)—so the reconciliation may “good-looking, well-born and well-bred English- become a model against destructive prejudices. men” (52, 28). Tanner questions the usefulness of Tanner frames his handbook as the solution to a the “Idle Rich Class,” and Orczy answers: “The national threat, and his socialist disdain of prop- idle, rich man wanted some aim in life—he and erty suggests an egalitarian agenda. Both works, the few young bucks he enrolled” (156). A mem- however, reinforce class divides. Despite his ber of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel insists cross-class breeding treatise, Tanner ends Man that their motives are stereotypically shallow, and Superman by marrying a fellow member of declaring England “a nation of sportsmen, and his Idle Rich. While the Scarlet Pimpernel is just now it is the fashion to pull the hare from the praised by the working class staff of The Fisher- teeth of the hound... Tally-ho!—and away we man’s Rest, he saves only fellow aristocrats, yet he go!” (32). Sport in the service of fashion echoes does so “for the sake of humanity” (68), echoing a the “inanities” of the foppish Sir Percy (128), but central conceit of eugenics. Marguerite recognizes a superior motive in their Both works, in fact, further expand social mission: “the sheer love of the fellow-men” (67). divides. Tanner’s example of selective breeding The Scarlet Pimpernel transforms shallow sports- pairs a squire father and a Jewish mother and so men into noble adventurers, and as the first dual- the offspring would take its father’s name. The identity Superman, Orczy’s hero establishes the commoner mother provides traits for the aristoc- prototype for the league of well-born hybrids to racy, while her class receives nothing. Not only follow in the emergent genre. does the plebian Marguerite marry gentility with no benefit to her former proletariat class, her own character ultimately suffers as a result of the Experiments in Hero eugenic pairing. Though the primary agent in the Hybridization, 1893–1928 first half of the novel, she “could do nothing but follow” in the second half (233). Orczy applies the phrase “the cleverest woman in Europe” to “‘Hybridity,’” writes Annie E. Coombes and her eight times before the revelation of her hus- Avtar Brah in Hybridity and its Discontents, “has band’s secret, but only once afterward in order to become a concept in cultural criticism, post- contrast her transformation: “the elegant and colonial studies, in debates about cultural contes- fashionable Lady Blakeney, who had dazzled tation and appropriation, and in relation to the 188 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 37, Number 2  June 2014 concept of the border and the ideal of the cosmo- tion increased. Frederick Jackson Turner, who politan.” The term as applied to human beings considered American history “the history of the echoes nineteenth-century scientific racism and colonization of the Great West” (1), declared the “signals the threat of ‘contamination’ to those frontier closed in 1893. In 1896, former Bureau of who espouse an essentialist notion of pure and the Census Director Frances Amasa Walker cited authentic origins,” which also “lends the term a “the complete exhaustion of the free public lands potentially transgressive power” (1). As a postco- of the United States” in his warnings against the lonial concept, hybridity resists imperialism by immigration of “foul and loathsome” eastern promoting the agency and creative adaptability of Europeans: “They have none of the inherited the colonized. At the turn of the twentieth cen- instincts and tendencies which made it compara- tury, however, the rhetoric of hybridity rein- tively easy to deal with the immigration of the forced colonial hierarchies. People of mixed race olden time. They are beaten men from beaten were seen as evidence that the combining of lower races; representing the worst failures in the strug- and higher subjects produces subhuman offspring. gle for existence.” Fear of the previously distant Where late Victorian gothic tales reflect this colo- Other moved to the metropole, transforming the nial assumption, early twentieth-century genre Other into the degenerate. Where scientific racism authors refigure hybridity as superhumanly pow- justified imperialism abroad by constructing a erful. Postcolonial narratives would later employ hierarchy of races, eugenics expanded the hierar- that power against oppressors, but chy to ethnicity and class at home. adventure writers hybridized their heroes in the To defeat the animal-like degenerate, the service of the ruling class. hybrid hero must combine himself with it. Reich- The rise of Mendelian eugenics in the first dec- stein observes the frontiersman’s border-trans- ade of the twentieth century parallels the birth of gressing qualities in the later dual-identity hero multiple hybrid heroes in popular culture. Owen Batman, who blurs “the line between man and Wister formulated the western in The beast... He is Bat-Man, a mixture of man and Virginian, published in 1902. In addition to beast, of good and evil” (346). Richard Reynolds assuming the godlike role of moral arbiter, the applies hybridization to the overall superhero frontiersman, like the superhuman Percy-Pimper- character type who “is both the exotic and the nel, combines himself with the forces he combats. agent of order which brings the exotic to book” Richard Slotkin defines the western genre as a (83). The duality originates in nineteenth-century narrative of hybridization that requires borders to British novels, which, Robert Young argues, “are be crossed by a hero concerned with meeting and incorporating the

whose character is so mixed that he... can operate culture of the other” and so “often fantasize cross- effectively on both sides of the line. Through this ing into it, though rarely so completely as when transgression of the borders, through combat with the dark elements on the other side, the heroes reveal the Dr Jekyll transforms himself into Mr Hyde” (3). meaning of the frontier line (that is, the distinctions of Reichstein identifies the use of “an animal as a value it symbolizes) even as they break it down. In the means of showing the dual side of man’s nature” process they evoke the elements in themselves (or in their society) that correspond to the “dark”; and by as “a prominent motif in the ‘decadent Gothic’ destroying the dark elements and colonizing the bor- novels” of the late Victorian period, including H. der, they purge darkness from themselves and the world. (351–52) G. Well’s The Island of Dr. Moreau and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll The western formula both fears and romanticizes and Mr. Hyde (346). Though a later advocate, border-crossing, expressing the same colonial Wells began his career skeptical of eugenics, and anxiety that fueled eugenics. Moreau’s half-men are laboratory-produced The pseudo-scientific defense against inferior degenerates, organisms that fall below their bloodlines rose as Europe’s and the US’s colonial human ancestors in the biological hierarchy. expansions ended and opportunities for immigra- Jekyll and Hyde are a similarly failed hybrid The Well-Born Superhero  Chris Gavaler 189 unable to blend into a single, Jekyll-dominated A Millionaire in Search of Joy, and he begins his entity. Hyde—a violent, lustful, physically self-motivated quest the year millionaire Andrew stunted, animal-like, urban-dwelling criminal—is Carnegie began funding eugenics research with Victorian literature’s ultimate degenerate. The the goal of creating real-life Supermen. Mendeliam models of heroism that emerge after Despite the successful grafting of criminality the turn of the century correct these tragic fanta- onto a dominant aristocrat, gentleman-thief sies into anxiety-assuaging triumphs by enlisting hybridization falls short of the Superman. Aes- Well’s Coming Beast in the service of the ruling thetic diversions maintain but do not raise the class. To stifle Hyde’s threat, adventure narratives well born. In Shaw’s analysis, the character type bond degenerate criminality to an aristocratic remains literally in hell because “Hell, in short, is master. a place where you have nothing to do but amuse The gentleman-thief, another dual-identity yourself” (97), whereas the heaven of Man and character type influential to the later comic book Superman is for those striving to progress. The superhero, also emerges at this moment of eugen- gentleman-thief escapes his ennui, but the hybrid ics’ rise and further reflects its anxieties. Like the Superman of the Scarlet Pimpernel—a species of frontiersman, however, the gentleman-thief falls gentleman-thief stealing nobility from democratic short of the Superman’s generative hybridity. E. degenerates—devotes his League to a new sport W. Hornung introduced the figure in 1898 with and then transforms that sport into a noble enter- A. J. Raffles, a cricket playing society man by day prise, saving himself by saving others. The fron- and amateur cracksman by night. He premiered tiersman safeguards the perimeter, the gentleman- on American stages as the Scarlet Pimpernel was thief prevents internal degeneration, but only the first performed in England. Jacob Smith analyzes Superman has evolved into something new. how Raffles opposes the more threatening figure As early twentieth-century adventure literature of the “working-class criminal type,” quoting produced these postgothic experiments in hero- 1903 reviewers who described Raffles as an “art- ism, eugenics continued its own expansion. In ist” and “epicure” in contrast to a “mere thief” or 1906, millionaire John Harvey Kellogg founded “low-browed malefactor.” “The rhetoric of art- the Race Betterment Foundation to sponsor con- istry, with crimes committed as an amateur aes- ferences at its Michigan sanitarium. With the sup- thetic diversion,” explains Smith, “defused the port of future President Woodrow Wilson, fact that the protagonist was a criminal” (39). Indiana passed the first eugenics sterilization law Moreover, Raffles is not idly rich and so avoids the following year. In 1911, the American Bree- Lankester’s biological “habit of parasitism.” By der’s Association published its first “Preliminary helping himself, Raffles helps society against both Report,” advocating prevention of unfit breeding the degenerate from below and degeneration from through immigration restrictions, racial segrega- above. tion, anti-interracial marriage laws, sterilization, Imitators replaced Raffles’ anti-hero purity and so-called euthanasia through the use of gas with Hood do-goodery, but still tempered chambers. The First International Eugenics Con- their gentleman-thieves with aristocratic self- gress discussed similar legislation at the Univer- interest. R. Austin Freeman and John Jones Pit- sity of London the following year; future Prime cairn’s 1902 Romney Pringle robs only from Minister Winston Churchill later served as the criminals; O. Henry’s 1903 Jimmy Valentine Congress’s vice-president. employs safe-cracking skills to rescue a child The year 1912 also marks the movement of the from a bank vault; and Arnold Bennett’s 1904 Superman into pulp fiction, evidence of eugenics’ Cecil Thorold commits crimes to punish worse expanding cultural base. — criminals. Thorold, already wealthy, is not moti- following the success of his first pulp hero, John vated by money or philanthropy; he desires Carter, a “gentleman of the highest type” (v)— entertainment. He is, as Bennett’s subtitle asserts, introduced his second serial novel, Tarzan of the 190 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 37, Number 2  June 2014

Apes, two months after the Eugenics Congress the transformed Greystoke is an improved species convened. Sharon DeGraw observes in Burroughs of gentleman, one who, like Sir Percy, has earned many “biases associated with the eugenics move- the right to be paired with a eugenically appropri- ment in the United States” (11), and biographer ate commoner, the intelligent daughter of an John Taliaferro describes him as “obsessed with American professor (165). That union occurs after his own genealogy” and “extremely proud of his the gothic fear of Moreau’s degenerate animal- nearly pure Anglo-Saxon lineage,” while endors- men, that Tarzan is “a cross between an ape and a ing the eugenic “extermination of all ‘moral imbe- man,” is erased and his aristocratic lineage proven ciles’ and their relatives” (19). Burroughs, like (254). Orczy, employs adventure literature to portray an Burroughs also inadvertently showcases the accelerated version of that process. flawed understanding of genetics that defined While eugenicists could only promote the labo- eugenics. In the chapter “Heredity,” the young rious, multigenerational system of selective breed- Lord Greystoke is not only “endowed by inheri- ing in the hopes of biologically transforming the tance with more than ordinary reasoning power” well born into Supermen in some far-off future, but he knows how to bow in a courtly manner, Burroughs’ literary path to the Superman enno- “the hall-mark of his aristocratic birth, the natural bles noble blood within a single specimen. Tarzan outcropping of many generations of fine breeding, —”White-Skin” in ape language (39)—is a varia- an hereditary instinct of graciousness which a life- tion on Orczy’s triumphant, rather than Steven- time of uncouth and savage training and environ- son’s failed, dual-identity model; he is both “the ment could not eradicate” (58, 191). Like so many aristocratic scion of an old English house” and eugenicists, Burroughs cannot differentiate “King of the Apes” (228). His duality accom- between hereditary and environmental influences. plishes the same transformative purpose as Though less scientific than scientific breeding, his Percy’s; because he has been raised to “physical use of Tarzan’s environment as a method of bio- perfection” in the laboratory of the jungle, he is logical transformation is equally absurd. The jun- “unmarred by dissipation, or brutal or degrading gle is a fantastically transformative narrative passions,” and is free of the habits of parasitism element, possible only within genre fiction, which displayed by his London cousin who dips “his condenses the long-term breeding process to finger-ends into a silver bowl of scented water” achieve instantly the biological goal eugenics (80, 79). The degenerating attributes of the aris- advocates could otherwise only forecast. tocracy are purged, allowing his full genetic Months after Tarzan of the Apes completed its potential to flourish. serial run in All-Story magazine, the US govern- The result is a new breed who “not only sur- ment, motivated by the fear of miscegenation that passes the average white man in strength and agil- Burroughs and the earlier gothic authors express, ity but far transcends our trained athletes and segregated black and white employees. Kellogg’s ‘strong men’ as they surpass a day old babe” Race Betterment Foundation hosted its First (228). A French captain declares him a literal National Conference the following year. By 1914, “superman,” Shaw’s term now in wide use (226). Galton’s eugenics curricula spread to forty-four The hybrid “Monsieur Tarzan,” a French-speak- universities, including Harvard, Columbia, Cor- ing “polished gentleman,” manipulates dinner- nell, and Brown. George William Hunter’s high ware “exquisitely” before going “naked into the school biology textbook, A Civic Biology Pre- jungle, armed only with a jack knife, to kill” a lion sented in Problems, describes families of degener- (247, 248). When the smitten Jane Porter declares ates as social parasites, concluding that if “such Tarzan a “gentleman,” Burroughs redefines the people were lower , we would probably term in the way that Galton translates “well born” kill them off to prevent them from spreading” into “eugenics.” Although Jane had frowned on (263). Eugenic theories had become conventional “American girls who married titled foreigners,” knowledge. The Well-Born Superhero  Chris Gavaler 191

The teens also mark an expansion point for mie to aid others, thereby mixing “pure deviltry” Superman hybridization in popular literature. with altruism and raising the Gray Seal to a “Phil- Frank L. Packard’s The Adventures of Jimmie anthropic Crook” (5, 21). Moreover, Jimmie gains Dale applies Orczy’s model to the contemporary an awareness of his own superiority through urban setting of the gentleman-thief. In his first adventuring: “there came a mighty sense of king- 1914 story, Packard introduces a commoner strain ship upon him, as though all the world were at his to American nobility, the aristocratic St. James feet, and virility, and great glad strength above all Club, “an acknowledged leader” of “New York’s other men’s” (294). The blackmailer selects wor- fashionable and ultra-exclusive clubs”; while thy working-class characters for his aid, but ulti- membership “guaranteed a man to be innately a mately the Gray Seal benefits himself and another gentleman... there were many members who member of his own class, the blackmailer, a were not wealthy... men of every walk of life” French aristocrat deprived of her inheritance. (4). The “cosmopolitan” club echoes the surface Like Jimmie, she leads a life of crime-fighting dis- egalitarianism of Marguerite’s “exclusive” Paris guise, but once he restores her name and fortune, salon, but Harvard graduate Jimmie Dale, with both abandon their mission. Their working-class “the grace and ease of power in his poise,” identities, having served to ennoble another exam- received his membership by bloodline via his ple of Shaw’s “perfect gentleman and a perfect wealthy father (9). The “innate gentlemen” that is lady,” are discarded (182). Packard’s first novella “the ‘hall mark’ of the St. James” remains a tradi- ends in their romantic union, providing a trans- tional well born, now fortified by commoner formed “goodlooking philosopher-athlete, with a strains of “authors” and “artists” (4). handsome healthy woman for a mate” and so As the “Prince of Crooks,” Jimmie also bonds optimum conditions for future offspring (182). nobility to criminality as the masked Gray Seal, While Packard was publishing his short stories, suppressing criminality by dominating its field: eugenics deepened its cultural hold. The Second “he was the king-pin of them all” (23). He adven- National Conference on Race Betterment met in tures in a “business section of rather inferior class, 1915, and Madison Grant’s The Passing of the catering to the poor, foreign element” and, as Great Race reached the best-seller list the follow- another master-of-disguise, combines himself ing year. Grant’s call for the sterilization of defec- with the degenerate Larry the Bat, an opium- tives, weaklings, and ultimately worthless race addicted “denizen of the underworld” (28). Jim- types was praised by former President Theodore mie also assumes a version of Percy’s foppish dis- Roosevelt, and Adolf Hitler would later refer to guise by speaking “languidly” and claiming the book as his Bible. Also in 1916, Stanford Uni- motives of “Pure selfishness” (20, 35). The idle versity psychologist Lewis M. Terman introduced rich continue to appear useless, but the initiated I.Q. testing to identify and segregate defectives reader knows their secretly noble attributes. Like from the gene pool. Margaret Sanger published Raffles, “the art of the thing was in his blood” the first issue of Birth Control Review in 1917, which, like the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, the year Packard collected his first dozen Gray he pursues to satisfy his “adventurous spirit” (6, Seal stories; Sanger declared Superman the aim of 11). birth control through the prevention of reproduc- In the process of nullifying both elements of tion by the unfit. degeneration, Packard’s hybridization transforms Germany’s Socialist German Workers’ Party another well born into the Superman. Though the formed in 1920, the year the well-born, dual-iden- hero’s “crookedness” begins with Raffles-eque tity hero reached a new cultural height with self-amusement, it gains “a leading string to guide ’ The Mark of Zorro, evidence it into channels worthy of his genius” (11). Just as of eugenics’ influence on both sides of the Atlan- Marguerite refigures the League’s sport into tic. The film adapted Johnston McCulley’s The humanitarianism, a female blackmailer forces Jim- Curse of Capistrano serialized in All-Story Weekly 192 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 37, Number 2  June 2014 a year earlier. The film’s opening subtitles liken bloods” and “make some use of your !” (167, Zorro to “a Cromwell,” one of Shaw’s examples 168). After enlisting “the young men of all the of a spontaneous Superman. McCulley also repro- noble families” into a “new league” with “adven- duces Orczy’s hero formula: Don Diego, “a fair ture a plenty,” Zorro “fears it was a lark with youth of excellent blood” but also a “dandy” with them,” but the caballeros learn “their strength and a “languid grasp,” combines identities with a power” and overthrow the corrupt government “common fellow,” a “highwayman,” and so rede- (257, 129, 168, 252, 258). “Thus,” writes Nadia fines himself and “caballero” as the animal-man Lie, “McCulley’s Zorro revives the old idea of “Senor Zorro,” literally Mister (7, 194, 37, 4, nobility,” ideals that have suffered from Lankest- 18, 3). er’s degeneration (491). Reflecting Galton’s defi- Although Zorro is a self-proclaimed “friend of nition of eugenics, Zorro improves the pre- the oppressed,” McCulley likens the lowly Indi- existing “inborn qualities of a race” and develops ans his hero saves to “rats,” and Don Diego “them to the utmost advantage.” Despite his sta- addresses them as “scum!” (247, 136). His plot ted oppression-fighting mission, Zorro is a revo- centers instead on securing a wife of “the best lutionary only in Shaw’s sense, a well born blood” to produce an “offspring to inherit and fighting for well borns. He is a noble bandit, a preserve [his father’s] illustrious name” or hero type who, Eric Hobsbawm explains, “seeks disinheritance (16, 161, 53, 176). Like the Scarlet to establish or to re-establish justice or ‘the old Pimpernel, Tarzan, and the Gray Seal, Zorro is ways,’ that is to say, fair dealing in a society of the means for Don Diego to transform from a par- oppression...He does not seek to establish a soci- asitic aristocrat into a Superman worthy of repro- ety of freedom and equality” (55). Having duction. His dual identity is not simply a strategy strengthened his class, Don Diego unmasks and of disguise; his costume triggers a fantastical bio- marries, fulfilling his obligation to maintain his logical change: now fully noble bloodline.

The moment I donned the cloak and mask, the Don In the decade that Fairbanks presented Zorro Diego part of me fell away. My body straightened, and the figure of the well-born Superman to an new blood seemed to course through my veins, my voice grew strong and firm, fire came to me! and the international audience, eugenics also reached its moment I removed the cloak and mask I was the lan- high mark. The Second International Congress, guid Don Diego again. (264) featuring Alexander Graham Bell and future Pres- ident Herbert Hoover, met in New York in 1921. The mask is another variant on Dr. Moreau’s President Coolidge signed the Johnson-Reed vivisection and Dr. Jekyll’s serum, but one that Immigration Act into law, drastically reducing allows the aristocrat to maintain his class superi- immigration of non-Anglo Saxons. Coolidge ority. The novel concludes with his “endeavor to argued: “America must be kept American. Biolog- establish a golden mean,” replacing degenerate ical laws show...that Nordics deteriorate when criminality and degenerative uselessness with mixed with other races” (qtd in Kevles 97). In hybrid virility; in order to suit his future wife, the 1924, Virginia joined twenty-eight states in bar- new Don Diego “shall drop the old languid ways ring marriage between whites and non-whites and and change gradually into the man you would broke new legislative ground with the Virginia have me” (265). Once again, an adventure author Sterilization Act. Hitler published Mein Kampf collapses the extensive process of selective breed- the following year, reiterating gothic fears of ing into a single character, allowing a well born to degeneration through the mixing of low and high become a superman by fathering himself. blood. The US Supreme Court agreed in 1927, Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro also trans- ruling eight to one in favor of Virginia’s steriliza- forms his fellow well borns into true nobles. “Be tion law; Oliver Wendell Holmes declared the men, not drunken fashion plates!” he orders; majority opinion: “It is better for all the world “Live up to your noble names and your blue [that]... society can prevent those who are The Well-Born Superhero  Chris Gavaler 193 manifestly unfit from continuing their kind” (qtd from eugenics. The Rockefeller Foundation with- in White 406). The Rockefeller Foundation drew funding in favor of better scientifically funded the construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm grounded projects that would develop into the Institute of Anthropology, Human Genetics, and field of molecular biology. Kaempffert lauds Lan- Eugenics in Berlin the same year. Eugenics curric- celot Hogben’s 1932 Genetic Principles in Medi- ula had spread to 376 universities. cine and Social Science and its rejection of The final growth of eugenics parallels the selective breeding on scientific grounds: “The expansion of the well-born, dual-identity hero in eugenicists, who usually know nothing of genet- popular culture. Over a dozen variations appear ics, would do well to peruse Dr. Hogben’s book.” during the second and third decades of the twenti- The Nazi Party, however, claimed a majority in eth century, including Johnston McCulley’s Germany’s government in 1932, and the Third Thunderbolt (1920), the Man in Purple (1921), International Congress of Eugenics recommended and the Crimson Clown (1926); Herman Lan- the sterilization of fourteen million Americans don’s Gray (1917) and the Picaroon with low IQ scores. The following year Hitler’s (1921); Russell Thorndike’s Doctor Syn (1915); cabinet enacted the Law for the Prevention of Charles W. Tyler’s Blue Jean Billy Race (1918); Offspring with Hereditary Diseases in Future Edgar Wallace’s Four Square Jane (1919); Eustace Generations, requiring physicians to report to H. Ball’s Scarlet Fox (1923); Erle Stanley Gard- Heredity Health Courts individuals meeting stan- ner’s Phantom Crook (1925); Graham Montague dards for sterilization. In 1935, South Carolina Jeffries’ Blackshirt (1925); Paul Ellsworth Triem’s became the thirty-first and last state to pass a ster- John Doe (1928); and Leslie Charteris’ The Saint ilization law. Though well entrenched, American (1928) (Nevins). The character type expanded into eugenics was in decline; a Carnegie Institute film with Edward Jose and George B. Seitz’ The review panel concluded that the Eugenics Record Iron Claw (1916), Grace Cunard and Francis Office lacked scientific merit and recommended Ford’s The Purple Mask (1916), and Louis Feuil- halting all eugenics funding. lade’s Judex (1917); and into light opera with Sig- The allure of the Superman, however, remained. mund Romberg, Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto As selective breeding grew unpopular, the New Harbach’s The Desert Song (1926). The Super- York Times and the Washington Post reported a man’s popular culture incarnations reached fru- range of alternate means for attaining a goal no ition as the eugenic movements that inspired and longer limited to the well born. Rather than “pick defined them achieved social and political domi- out a few superior children and make supermen of nance. them alone,” explained Rockefeller Institute researcher Dr. Alexis Carrel, “we would improve all of mankind” (“Everybody Has Telepathic Acts of Sterilization, 1929– Power”). New, egalitarian possibilities included 1939 hormones (1929), glandular stimulation (1931), chemistry (1934), vaccines (1934), nutrition (1935), diet (1936), and the transplantation of ape “After Mendel discovered his famous princi- glands into children (1936), literalizing Moreau’s ples of heredity,” writes Waldemare Kaempffert gothic animal-men. In contrast to “the Hitler pro- in 1932, “we seemed to be in a fair way of achiev- gram of race purification,” Carrel refigured mixed ing the superman”; however, when “the heredi- breeding as a new ideal: “It may be that crossing tary characteristics called genes were discovered civilizations as we do in America produces the much of this cocksureness was shaken.” Begin- best minds.” ning with Frederick Griffith’s 1928 breakthrough Popular culture incarnations of the Superman experiments, the study of heredity shifted away mirrored the shift in social attitude. Where Orczy, 194 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 37, Number 2  June 2014

Burroughs, Packard, and McCulley end their her- destructive species. When the two males war for oes’ narratives with marriage plot closure, begin- Pandorina, her adoptive father lures them onto an ning in the late 1920s, authors deny that closure artillery range where all three are destroyed. and the subsequent reproduction it implies. New Although Pandorina’s death is conveniently acci- superhuman protagonists face death, isolation, dental—”I had quite forgotten her. God knows and celibacy, all forms of narrative sterilization to that I meant her no harm! But then it was too late” subvert the threat of a singular Superman expand- (25)—the God-evoking father eliminates not only ing into a race. Reversing the evolutionary anxiety the threat of alien purebloods displacing human- that created eugenics and its heroes, the Superman ity, but also the possibility of future hybrids. No became Well’s Coming Beat, the species that Superman, whether a Martian “ultramundane could battle against humanity for survival. man” or a crossed offspring, survives. When Jack Williamson and Miles J. Breuer Like Williamson and Breuer, apply Burroughs’ Tarzan pseudo-environmental offers a version of failed superhuman reproduc- hybridization model to science fiction in their tion in his 1930 Gladiator. Wylie reveals both the 1929 “The Girl from Mars,” they imagine the off- shift away from selective breeding and the contin- spring of a superior race of aliens raised by the ued interest in the figure of the Superman through comparative savages of the US After Mars “was means unrelated to social class. A “professor of destroyed by atomic energy released by intelligent biology” who “lectured vaguely” on “the law dis- entities,” embryonic capsules sent “to perpetuate covered by Mendel” believes instead that “chem- their race on another world” land in New Jersey, istry controls human destiny” and “vaccinate[s]” and the widower narrator incubates his adoptive his pregnant wife to “produce a super-child,” daughter, Pandorina (7, 10). Like Lord Grey- what he imagines will be “the first of a new and stoke, the well-born Pandorina is set apart by her glorious race” (3, 5,18, 26). Instead, his son, Hugo, “white skin” and “astonishing aptitude that must becomes a lone Superman, alienated from society have been her inheritance from a higher civiliza- and unable to aid it or himself. He is not well born tion” (6, 11). The authors provide her with a in either a eugenic or class sense, and where a dual eugenically appropriate mate—her “tall and slen- identity-hero ennobles through humanitarian der, blond, and cleanly made” adoptive brother adventure, Hugo exhausts a list of heroic pursuits, (12)—but when the wedding approaches, Wil- all of which fail. liamson and Breuer prevent consummation with Hugo’s single friend, Shayne, is a reiteration of the arrival of a “haughty and aggressive” Martian Shaw’s idle gentleman; he has “too much money,” male who woos Pandorina himself (15). Though considers his family “useless,” and is “bored with also raised by humans, “the striking and powerful the routine of his existence” and “weary of the figure with his mighty, muscular limbs” is set world to which he had been privileged” (170, 171, “apart from ordinary men” by a “strange, malign 168, 173). His degeneration is infectious, making spirit,” and he recognizes Pandorina by her “pal- the ecstasy that Hugo felt after enlisting show lor of skin, color of hair, and luster of eye,” all “signs of decline” after a night of debauchery physical racial attributes unaffected by upbringing (173).Where dual-identity heroism would save (15). The mating rivalry intensifies with a second such a well born, Shayne enters the war with Martian suitor who has mastered “the science of Hugo and quickly dies in combat. Hugo attempts warfare,” further evidence of the well borns’ to ennoble him posthumously by “invent[ing] social threat (20). When Pandorina’s human fiance brave stories for his friend” and “tripl[ing] his wins her back, he is met with “fiendish, inhuman accomplishments” (207). Like Zorro’s father, rage” from the “ultrahumundane man” who mur- Shayne’s parents, who had “disinherited” him, ders him (21). These supermen, rather than aiding “feel that at last” their son had come “into the humanity through noble adventure or genetic Shayne blood and heritage,” fulfilling his well- mingling, seek only to perpetuate their own born potential (206). That fulfillment, however, is The Well-Born Superhero  Chris Gavaler 195 a lie, and Wylie further taints the family with no secondary identity. Although a well-born unrepentant war profiteering, reversing the pri- “superman” like Tarzan, Savage receives no finan- mary doctrine of eugenics by rejecting upper class cial inheritance upon his father’s death and refuses superiority. to perpetuate the family bloodline: “There won’t Wylie also thwarts his Superman’s search for a be any women in Doc’s life” (35, 67). Norvell eugenic mate. Hugo develops relationships with a Page, while not dooming his well-born hero to half dozen women, but, like his heroic pursuits, celibacy, locks the Spider and his fiance in perpet- each pairing fails. Where the figure of the Super- ual courtship: “It was part of the compact man previously attracted mates, he now repels between them, the oath they had sworn when [he] them. At the sight of his strength, Hugo’s last had lost his fight against their love and told her lover “screamed and drew back,” shouting “Don’t the truth of his harried existence, and the fact that touch me!” (276). Percy, Tarzan, Don Diego, and they could never marry while work remained for Dale secure wives by displaying their superhuman the Spider!” (39). Even Lars Anderson’s overtly qualities, but Hugo loses his because he “isn’t sexualized Domino Lady receives no romantic human” (276). Since Hugo suspects he is “sterile,” closure: “Devoting her life to a campaign of repri- Wylie further prevents hybrid offspring, leaving sal against the ruthless killers of her father, the Hugo to consider reproduction by other means amorous little adventurous had denied herself the (62). A scientist suggests that he use his father’s love she craved with all her heart” (76). Despite its serum and create “a thousand of you,” the “new original mate-transforming function, the dual- Titans!” (327). To decide who should be selected identity mission now explicitly excludes marriage. for transformation, Wylie evokes for the first time To be a post-eugenic Superman is to be isolated Galton’s theories: “Eugenic offspring... the chil- and therefore unproductive. dren of the best parents” (327). As a result, God in Jerry Siegel corresponded with Jack William- the form of “a bolt of lightning” from a cloud son, reviewed Orczy’s and Wylie’s novels in his “like a huge hand” destroys Hugo and the for- high school newspaper, read Tarzan comic strips mula, reasserting the role of Providence that man- in his daily newspaper, and watched the film kind usurped in the quest for the Superman (331, adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel (Jones 35, 65, 330). Like the trustees of the Carnegie and Rocke- 78, 116). There is no evidence that the twenty- feller Foundations, popular authors had rejected year-old Siegel was aware of and directly eugenics. responding to the history of eugenics, but when The well-born, dual-identity hero, however, he conceived the most famous popular culture does not fade with the failed pseudo-science that Superman, his new hybrid hero reflected those inspired it. Beginning with Magazine influences. Like his predecessors who found fan- in 1931, the character type expands further into tastical means to condense selective breeding into pulp literature. Writers continue to reject eugenics an instantaneous product, Siegel brings Superman by undermining marriage plots and eliminating to Earth not from an alien planet but from Earth’s the prospect of reproduction. Where Orczy intro- literal eugenic future. In Siegel’s earliest 1934 duces dual identity as a device for romantic clo- scripts, Superman is “a child whose physical sure, Walter Gibson disrupts the trope by structure was millions of years advanced from” eliminating half of his hero’s character. When humans because he was a child of Earth “in its last “Tall, well-bred” Lamont Cranston appears for days”; as “Giant cataclysms were shaking the reel- several issues to be the man behind the Shadow’s ing planet, destroying mankind,” “the last man on cloak, Gibson reveals that the millionaire is only earth” “placed his infant babe within a small time- another of a potentially endless array of disguises, machine... launching it” to “the primitive year, allowing no Marguerite to solve the mystery and 1935, A. D.” (qtd in Trexler). Siegel later changed unify both character and marriage (Tinsley 73). planets but retained eugenics through “Krypton, a Similarly, Lester Dent’s 1933 assumes distant planet so far advanced in evolution that it 196 The Journal of American Culture  Volume 37, Number 2  June 2014 bears a civilization of Supermen—beings which Society acknowledged in 1946 that “eugenics had represent the human race at its ultimate peak of a racial and social class bias... not based on any human perfection” (13). In both, Siegel irrevoca- scientific foundation” (qtd in Black 418), bioethi- bly divides his well-born hero from his genetically cist Allen Buchanan questions whether contem- superior roots, and, because no superhuman mates porary genetic enhancements reproduce the same survive, there is no threat of a Superman race goal: “Will the Rich Get Biologically Richer?” overwhelming humanity. Siegel also prevents (102). The allure of the Superman continues into hybrid offspring by reversing Orczy’s dual-iden- twenty-first century science, shadowed by its tity trope. His is no Marguerite-like equally resilient incarnation in popular entertain- sleuth, and the hero’s opposing identities thwart ment. Shaw’s goodlooking philosopher-athlete— rather than aid romantic closure. Clark hopelessly whether in blue tights or genetically engineered pursues Lois who “can barely bear looking at DNA—lives on. him, after having been in the arms of a REAL HE MAN” like Superman, but the aloof Superman puts her off: “But when will I see you again!” she Note asks; “Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow—perhaps never!” (68, 27). The love triangle grew so ingrained that when Siegel tried to break it in 1. Tamsen Wolff and Keum-Hee Jang are two of the only schol- 1940, his DC editors rejected his script (Jones ars who analyze Shaw in a eugenic context. The 1987 collection of 183). The Superman must remain solitary. Man and Superman essays edited by Harold Bloom, includes no ref- erence to eugenics; Bloom declares Shaw no “Darwinian,” conclud- One of the comic book Superman’s first imita- ing that he “doubtless intended [the title] to mean: the Superman of tions, Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s Batman—intro- Nietzsche” (2, 5), although the play dismisses “that German Polish madman” and his “Superman” as merely “the latest fashion among duced the year Germany invaded Poland—is the Life Force fanatics” (136); “The cry for the Superman,” declares ironically atavistic. The dual-identity hero is a literary Tanner, “did not begin with Nietzsche, nor will it end with his vogue” (182). Carl H. Mills in “Shaw’s Superman: A Re-examina- throwback, a pulp degenerate regressing to an earlier tion” disagrees with Bloom, asserting that “the supermen of Shaw formula: a well-born millionaire bonds himself with and Nietzsche are not nearly as similar as critics have made them,” but instead of Galton or Mendel, Mills looks to Carlyle, Ibsen, Wag- an animal to battle criminal degenerates preying on ner, and Schopenhauser for influences (135). The Cambridge Com- his fellow millionaires. Finger and Kane also repro- panion to George Bernard Shaw (1998) indexes no references to eugenics and its leading authors, with only one aside to Darwin duce the performance of idleness that had once signi- (Berst 59), and Bloom’s 2011 edition of Shaw essays repeats the omis- fied the now forgotten threat of degeneration: sions. Keum-Hee Jang, however, analyzes Shaw’s Fabian socialism in relation to eugenics, noting that the Fabian Society was “very “young socialite” Bruce Wayne “must lead a boring enthusiastic about Galton’s views” and, like Shaw, actively promoted life” and “seems disinterested in everything” (4, 9). them (231). Together Superman and Batman defined the comic book genre, extending the tropes of eugen- ics decades past the movement’s end. Similarly, Works Cited eugenics historian Edwin Black notes that “Although the [Eugenics Record Office] stopped functioning in 1939, America’s eugenic laws did Anderson, Lars. Domino Lady: The Complete Collection. Somerset, not” (398). Black calculates that in the 1940s and NJ: Vanguard, 2004. Print. Black, Edwin. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Cam- 1950s 25,000 Americans were sterilized, with the paign to Create a . New York: Four Wall Eight Win- federal government continuing the practice in dows, 2003. Print. 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