Anxiety of Motherhood in Vathek Abigail J

Anxiety of Motherhood in Vathek Abigail J. Biles Agnes Scott College

In William Beckford’s Vathek, we encounter one of the only living and active mothers in the Gothic genre. Carathis, the mother of the titular character and caliph, exercises her maternal control in pursuit of the survival as well as fame of her offspring, but is led terribly astray, securing for herself and her child an eternity of damnation. Revealing eighteenth-century concerns about the role of mothers, and eerily anticipating Freud, Vathek reveals cultural anxieties about the power of the mother over the child, especially when the mother has her own desires and ambitions. In her hellish end, Carathis illustrates the fate of women who seek more than society is willing to allow them. In conclusion, it appears that whether she lives or she dies, whether she is present or absent, whether she is selfish or selfless, the Gothic mother will bear the weight of the father, and the patriarchy, and his ruthless desire to have sons and money, and if she dare, as Carathis dared, to have her own ambition and her own son, she will fail and she will only have her mother to blame.

n a footnote on “On The concerns about the mother consuming the Reproduction of Mothering: A child, like a reverse birth, when the child I Methodological Debate,” the editors fails to separate from its mother in the early pose a thought provoking idea: stages of development. In Carathis, the “Motherhood whether as experience or as ambition of the mother is unfolded to its subject for research, is now as controversial fullest extent, and her downfall illustrates as it once was bland” (482). Nowhere is this the punishment for any woman’s desire for more evident than in the post-Freudian field control. of psychoanalysis and in the Gothic novel. Psychoanalysis has spent a great deal of In one, scholars wrestle with the energy examining the development of the development of children and the place of the child, especially in relation to its parents. mother in that development, and in the Claire Kahane, in her article “Gothic other, authors illustrate manifestations of Mirrors and Feminine Identity,” defines the those same anxieties centuries before society psychoanalyst’s notion of the “pre-oedipal had the words to describe them. In William period of our early infancy” as the period in Beckford’s Vathek, we encounter one of the which “mother and infant are locked into a only living and active mothers in the Gothic ‘symbiotic relation,’ an experience of genre, with the rest either resigned to the oneness, characterized by a blurring of sidelines or the grave (frequently both). boundaries between infant and mother—a Carathis, the mother of the titular character dual unity before the emergence of a and caliph, exercises her maternal control in separate self” (48). In such a relationship, pursuit of the survival of her offspring, but “separation and individualization, for both is led terribly astray and secures for herself boys and girls, then, means breaking or and her child an eternity of damnation loosening the primal attachment to the instead of infernal control of the universe. mother” (48). Nancy Chodorow, a leading Rife with critical concerns about the psychoanalyst, remarks that for proper eighteenth-century woman, Vathek reveals development and survival, “all children must cultural anxieties about the power of the free themselves from their mother’s mother over the child and expresses omnipotence and gain a sense of

The Onyx Review, 2017, 2(2) A. J. Biles/ ANXIETY OF MOTHERHOOD IN VATHEK 2 completeness” (147). Though the (for readers, the characters, and the author) eighteenth-century Gothic authors did not in the texts, and furthermore, is fertile have the terms or theory to define the ground for examining societal conventions. mother-child relationship as such, they did Vathek, by William Beckford (1786), in fact have a rich cultural heritage that centers on the passage of the titular allowed them to recognize concerns with character from the land of the living to the mother-child relationships based on an realm of the undead and damned in the inherited and deep-seated sexism and anti- ruthless pursuit of power and fortune. feminism that was threatened not only by Vathek, a caliph of a kingdom in the vague the female body but by her natural control landscape of the Orient, is introduced as a over the next generation of male citizens of creature of insatiable desire, “addicted to the British Empire. women and the pleasures of the table” and Eighteenth-century English culture was “devoted […] to the sole gratification of his still largely at war with itself about what a senses,” and unrestrained emotions, woman was, biologically, legally, and especially anger (85, 107). Despite being a theologically, and what she was capable of grown man, Vathek frequently displays doing, and all of these concerns rested on childish behaviors like demands for food the inability of the patriarchy to understand from his mother and fits of rage or wrath the woman in the most basic biological when he doesn’t get his way. Spoiled by his sense. As Ruth Bienstock Anolik suggests in position and his adoring mother, Vathek is her essay “The Missing Mother,” the female unable to provide for himself, even in the body itself was disruptive to “cultural most basic sense. Carathis, his mother, categories, particularly at childbirth,” scolds him, “You but ill deserve the because her body “is fragmented, one provision I have brought you,” to which becomes two; what was internal and Vathek exclaims, “Give it to me instantly! invisible becomes external and visible” (30). […] I am perishing for hunger!” (103). Like Anolik also states that the mother was a child, he desires instant gratification, and unable to be categorized in the long-standing like a child, he is heavily reliant on his “virgin” or “whore” dichotomy, especially mother. Though the novel is titled after the in literature, and as such, she presented a son, the novel appears instead to be focused considerable obstacle for writers of the day, on the mother, Carathis1. and thus, Anolik suggests, had to be written Carathis has immense power over the out (29). Noting that the Gothic world was a adult Vathek because even in adulthood, he dangerous place for any woman, Anolik still requires the same things from her that remarks that “no woman is at greater peril in he needed as an infant, displaying the the world of the Gothic than is the mother. inability of Vathek to individualize and the The typical Gothic mother is absent: dead, power of the mother to suspend the child in imprisoned or somehow abjected” (25). a perpetual state of need, thus retain her However, I suggest that because the power over the person. When Vathek falls ill mother’s position was so perilous, because or into a fit of passion, it is only Carathis she was already outside of the binary imposed by the culture, the mother is a 1 Carathis bares close resemblance to another figure that Gothic authors were very independent mother – Medea. Both sorceresses and interested in and concerned about. Whether foreigners in the land of their husbands and sons, they resort to wickedness and evil to secure better she was absent or present, the mother lives for their children. For more on Medea, see presents herself as a figure of great anxiety Nancy Datan’s “After Oedipus: Lauis, Medea, and Other Parental Myths.”

The Onyx Review, 2017, 2(2) A. J. Biles/ ANXIETY OF MOTHERHOOD IN VATHEK 3 that is able to assuage or comfort him. She their impious temerity, and prompted them treats him as a child, tucking him into bed to utter a profusion of blasphemies. They and sitting with him until he was composed gave loose to their wit […]. In sprightly enough to rest: “Nor would these transports humor, they descended the fifteen hundred have ceased, had not the eloquence of stairs, diverting themselves as they went” Carathis repressed them,” and “Nor could (Beckford 105, emphasis mine). Once anyone have attempted it with better Carathis and Vathek are set down the road to success” (93, 89). Carathis supplies the hell, they become a single figure again, as in stability for Vathek that, because he is the pre-birth stage, and ultimately must meet immature, he could not supply on his own as the same fate. a fully developed man could. Carathis’ care Though her maternal affection for is not fabricated, but entirely based in her Vathek is clear, Carathis obviously has love for her son at first. When he is ill she designs of her own, like Medea, in actively devotes herself entirely to finding some perpetuating Vathek’s immaturity. When restorative cure for him, and grieves when presented with Vathek’s situation with the he is in pain. She protects him from the wicked Giaour, Carathis delights in the turn angry mob that seeks to destroy Vathek for of events: “The recital of the Caliph murdering civilian sons and keeps an eye on therefore occasioned neither terror nor the stars to watch for danger coming his surprise to his mother: She felt no emotion way. but from the promises of Giaour” (101). In Further establishing the deep connection fact, she had been preparing for such an between the two is the subterranean tunnels opportunity for quite some time by gathering that only they know about and use. In a stockpile of magical items “from a connecting the dark, cavernous underground presentiment that she might one day, enjoy space to a mother’s womb, as Leslie Fielder some intercourse with infernal powers: to does by connecting an underground dungeon whom she had ever been passionately to the womb and “maternal blackness” attached, and to whose taste she was no “beneath the crumbling shell of paternal stranger” (102). Thus, Vathek provides authority,” a direct link between Vathek’s Carathis the means of reaching her goal of childishness and his mother’s power over obtaining power, infernal or otherwise, him becomes evident (qtd. Kahane 47). which has been denied to her because she Vathek, by Carathis’s desire and design, was a woman. In her efforts, she never remains under her maternal power and so abandons Vathek for her own gains, but does the entire kingdom. Vathek and constantly prods him to carry on his mission Carathis literally become a single entity for from the Giaour under her command so that a moment after the sacrifice to the Giaour2 he might reign over dominions in the Palace and burning of the soldiers and servants in of Fire. To do this, however, she must exert the tower, as they celebrate together and complete control over Vathek. their two identities are fused into one Carathis, being a foreign woman in the pronoun: “This infernal liquor completed caliphate, has no control but what Vathek allows her with his position, and it is power which Carathis desires above all else. 2 In the novel, the Giaour, an evil spirit, is the one Carathis has immense and total control over who makes Vathek the offer of becoming a king of Vathek, because she did not “create the underworld. It is upon his commands that Vathek sacrifices 50 young boys. Carathis, unable to go to boundaries in relation to” Vathek when he the Giaour directly, does many wicked deeds to gain was a child, nor did she “treat [him] as a his favor for her son.

The Onyx Review, 2017, 2(2) A. J. Biles/ ANXIETY OF MOTHERHOOD IN VATHEK 4 differentiated other,” and because Vathek beggar of a child who fears his mother’s himself did not have to “give up his mother wrath, which Chodorow notes as typical of in order to avoid punishment,” likely children who “maintain a fearsome because his father was dead and no alternate unconscious maternal image, as result of masculine role model is noted: all of which projecting upon it the hostility derived from are ideas that Nancy Chodorow suggests are their own feelings of impotence” (147). essential to the separation of mother and Vathek knows well that he could not child (146, 138). Thus, because Carathis did complete his task without Carathis’s wisdom not actively seek to break ties with her son, and command, nor could he have come so and instead enabled his needy behaviors, she far without her. In recognition of his own was able to maintain control over the caliph impotence, he resigns himself to her and over his caliphate—a situation which commands. Carathis is also acutely aware of she surely would have been denied should her responsibility in the mission, upbraiding Vathek have formed as an independent man. Vathek as she reminds him, “Glutton that Because she has control over the king, she thou art! […] Were it not for me, thou has control over the kingdom and exerts that wouldst soon find thyself the mere power in several ways, exemplified in commander of savory pies!” (141). Carathis Carathis’s proclivity for subjecting her is also aware of Vathek’s immaturity, as the inferiors to scorpion stings and snake bites scold harkens to his earlier singular desire to “amuse herself in curing their wounds” for food. which likewise keeps her from being It is not fated, however, for Carathis’s “indolent” (107). control to last. Arriving in hell before her, It is her power over Vathek, however, Vathek becomes instantly aware of the trap that proves crucial. She gives him direct he’s been led into and blames his mother for orders, performs magic to aid his tasks, and his situation: “The principles by which grows irritable when he strays from her Carathis perverted my youth, have been the clearly devised plan. Until she enters into sole cause of my perdition!” (151). Vathek hell, Carathis is entirely bent on the is suddenly aware of the power his mother promotion of her son, as she exclaims: has exerted over him and how her power “Either I will perish or Vathek shall enter rendered him submissive and impotent, but the palace of fire. Let me expire in flames, he does not seem to recognize his own hand provided he may reign on the throne of in his damnation and his willful obedience Soliman!” (136). When he is distracted from to her orders. When Carathis arrives, he what she sees as their mutual goal, she upbraids her for her schemes and her poor immediately intervenes to set him back on parenting: “Execrable woman! […] Cursed the right path, as mothers are wont to do be the day thou gavest me birth! Go, follow when their toddlers stray too far from their this afrit; let him conduct thee to the hall of watchful eye. Vathek, until the final scene, the Prophet Soliman: there thou will learn to is not interested in disobeying his mother, what these palaces are destined, and how and when she demands that he drown his much I ought to abhor the impious new wife Nouronihar and continue his knowledge thou hast taught me!” (152). mission immediately, he agrees, “Dread thy Vathek blames her entirely for his lady, you shall be obeyed” though he does damnation, and cites her as the sole reason beg his mother that his wife be allowed to that he has been so led astray by specifically live and aid their mission (138). This is not cursing her womb, which carried and an outright denial, but rather the hopeful nourished him before he was born. It is also

The Onyx Review, 2017, 2(2) A. J. Biles/ ANXIETY OF MOTHERHOOD IN VATHEK 5 the metaphorical womb that has contributed mother for her fiery fate: to his situation, the protective and isolated In delirium, forgetting all her ambitious world that Carathis cultivated for him as projects, and her thirst for that prince, and which she used to nourish him knowledge which should ever be hidden and her own desires for power. He blames from mortals, she overturned the her knowledge and her curiosity, not his offerings of genii; and, having execrated own, in securing him a place among the the hour she was begotten and the womb damned, and damns her body and not his that had born her, glanced off in a rapid own for securing him an eternal hell. whirl that rendered her invisible, and Despite that Vathek was never separated continued to revolve without from his mother in childhood and adulthood, intermission. (153) he is suddenly able to separate himself now Carathis blames her own mother, who had that it is inopportune for him to be so closely no place in the narrative until this moment, linked with his mother. for her downfall. Thus, Beckford is Vathek’s situation is manifest of the revealing anxieties about a circular narrative anxieties that the patriarchy had concerning in the lives of people who have been led an “unnatural mother” which Felicity astray by their parents. Ending in a vicious Nussbaum describes in her article “Savage cycle that could only be broken by the Mothers:” “The ‘unnatural mother’ refuses destruction of a lineage, Beckford finishes [prescribed] duties and is instead capable of with a subtle but clear concern about the sins heinous acts that threaten lineage and even of the ancestors coming down upon the head civilization itself” (127). Carathis has denied of the present generation, but with a caveat. Vathek, and thus Vathek’s ancestors, a It is the woman who has sinned, and it is continued heritage by sending him to hell through the woman that the sin was allowed before he could reproduce and continue his to wreak havoc on the male heir, just as the family line, and even saw to the destruction Biblical Original Sin revisits humanity on of his ancestral palace and caliphate. account of Eve’s transgression. Nussbaum continues: “This perverse mother Of course, as Anolik emphasizes in her is a center of energy and violence, rather article, a plethora of anxieties about than all-nurturing, her excesses made akin to motherhood are apparent in the Gothic the ‘barbaric’ or ‘savage’ of both sexes” genre. Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, (127). It was Carathis’s energy alone that displaying a similar relationship between propelled the story arc, as Vathek was mother and child and similarly motivated frequently able to be directed off the path by mother, shows the opposite side of distractions, and she was the driving force Carathis’s coin: one where the mother was behind nearly all the physical violence in the perceived as positive protective force in her novel. However, I argue that it was not mere daughter’s life, but one that nonetheless was evil alone, but a desire to see her son unwilling to allow her child to individualize, instated among the magic kings of her which led to the child’s eventual ruin. J. S. dreams, which, though misguided, was a LeFanu’s Uncle Silas and Mary Shelley’s motherly act, and her past actions of caring Frankenstein display anxieties about the for and comforting Vathek likewise display absence of a mother’s protection for either a a nurturing element to her character. male or female child, and the danger to a In a final assault on motherhood, and in child denied a mother’s love and attachment. realizing yet another anxiety about Vathek, then, stands as a negative example motherhood, Carathis damns her own of a mother’s control and manifests as the

The Onyx Review, 2017, 2(2) A. J. Biles/ ANXIETY OF MOTHERHOOD IN VATHEK 6 anxieties that the patriarchal society had Journal of Mind and Behavior 3.1 concerning the power of women, even in the (1982): 17-26. Print. house, as they had “power to shape the Gill, R. B. “The Author in the Novel: public realm, particularly the nation, through Creating Beckford in Vathek.” procreation and education” (Nussbaum 126). Eighteenth-Century Fiction In any Gothic novel, the position of 15.2 (2003): 241-254. Print. mother is fragile one. While fathers are often Kahane, Claire. “Gothic Mirrors and the ones driven by the desire to secure a Feminine Identity.” The Centennial family line and fortune, it is the mothers Review 24.1 (1980): 43-64. Print. who must suffer for their ambition. Because Lavender, Catherine. “Notes on the Cult they are the literal carrier of the next Domesticity and True Motherhood.” generation, because the child heir receives Women in the City. The College of life and nourishment from their bodies, and Staten Island. 1998. Lecture notes. because the child comes forth into the world Lorber, Judith, Rose Laub Coser, Alice S. from their bodies, the patriarchy can blame Rossi, Nancy Chodorow. “On The any disfigurement in the child, literal or Reproduction of Mothering: A behavioral, on the body that created it. The Methodological Debate.” Signs 6.3 patriarchy can pin any blame on the woman (1981): 482-514. Print. if the line is not able to be secured—much in Nussbaum, Felicity. “’Savage’ Mothers: the vein of Henry VIII and his inability to Narratives of Maternity in the Mid- procure a male heir for the English throne. Eighteenth Century.” Cultural Critique Whether she lives or she dies, whether she is 20 (1991-1992): 123-151. Print. present or absent, whether she is selfish or Roberts, Clayton, David Roberts, Douglas selfless, the Gothic mother will bear the R. Bisson. “Marriage, Courtship, and the weight of the father, and the patriarchy, and Family.” A History of England. New his ruthless desire to have sons and money. Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002. 429-435. If she dares, as Carathis dared, to have her Print. own ambition and her own son, she will fail and she will only have her mother to blame. Submitted February 22, 2017 Accepted with revisions April 10, 2017 Accepted April 23, 2017 Works Consulted Anolik, Ruth Bienstock. “The Missing Mother: The Meaning of Maternal Absence in the Gothic Mode.” Modern Language Studies 33.1/2 (2003): 24-43. Print. Beckford, William. Vathek. 1786. Four Gothic Novels. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Print. Chodorow, Nancy. “Mothering, Object- Relations, and the Female Oedipal Configuration.” Feminist Studies 4.1 (1978): 137-158. Print. Datan, Nancy. “After Oedipus: Lauis, Medea, and Other Parental Myths.” The

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