MASARYK UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Supernatural elements in selected stories of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood
Bachelor Thesis
Brno 2013
Supervisor: Author: Ing. Mgr. Věra Eliášová, Ph.D. Michal Břenek
1 Annotation
This bachelor thesis focuses on the analysis of supernatural elements in the stories The White People and The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen and The Willows by Algernon Blackwood used by authors to achieve psychological impacts on readers and closely examining the origin of these elements taking into consideration authors' background and attitudes. In the first part I briefly introduce the authors as well as their opinions and background that influenced their writing while the second part is dedicated to explanations of plots and analyses of the elements in detail.
Anotace
Tato bakalářská práce se zaměřuje na rozbor nadpřirozených prvků v povídkách Bílí lidé a Velký Bůh Pan Arthura Machena a v povídce Vrby Algernona Blackwooda, které autoři použili pro dosažení psychologického dopadu na čtenáře a také na původ těchto prvků s ohledem na postoje a minulost obou autorů. . V první části krátce představuji jednotlivé autory, jejich názory a minulost, které ovlivnily jejich literární styl a v druhé části se věnuji vysvětlení zápletek a podrobnému rozboru prvků.
2 Bibliographical description
BŘENEK, Michal. Supernatural elements in selected stories of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood : bachelor thesis. Brno : Masaryk University, Faculty of Education, Department of English Language and Literature, 2013. 49p. Supervisor Ing. Mgr. Věra Eliášová, Ph.D.
Klíčová slova
Gotický horor, viktoriánské období, porušení přírodních zákonů, strach z neznáma, dědičný hřích, nadpřirozené prvky, vtělené zlo, nadpřirozené síly, naprosté odloučení od civilizace, extáze, degenerace, okultismus, starodávné rituály, narušená sexualita, psychický kolaps
Keywords
Supernatural elements = nadpřirozené prvky, Victorian Era = viktoriánské období, hereditary sin = dědičný hřích, fear of the unknown = strach z neznáma, weird fiction, Gothic horror = gotický horor, occultism = okultismus, sorcery and sanctity, ecstasy and sin = extáze a hřích, violation of natural laws = porušení přírodních zákonů, supernatural forces = nadpřirozené síly, total isolation from the civilization = naprosté odloučení od civilizace, incarnated evil = vtělené zlo, forbidden dimensions, ancient rites = starodávné rituály, literature of cosmic fear, disturbed sexuality = narušená sexualita, psychical collapse = psychický kolaps
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Declaration
“I hereby declare that I have worked on this bachelor thesis independently, using only the sources listed in the bibliography”
Michal Břenek Brno 10 December 2013 ......
4
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude and thanks to the supervisor of my bachelor thesis, Ing. Mgr. Věra Eliášová, PhD, for her guidance, invaluable advice and great support during the whole writing process.
5 Weird Tale ...... 8 1. Characterization of authors...... 9 1.1 Arthur Machen ...... 9 1.1.1 Biography ...... 9 1.1.2 Philosophy and background ...... 11 1.2 Algernon Blackwood ...... 12 1.2.1 Biography ...... 12 1.2.2 Philosophy and background ...... 14 2. Analyses of selected stories ...... 15 2.1 The White People ...... 15 2.1.1 Introduction ...... 15 2.1.2 Concerning Sin ...... 16 2.1.3 Power of tradition ...... 19 2.1.4 Breaking the spell ...... 21 2.1.5 Conclusion ...... 22 2.2 The Great God Pan ...... 23 2.2.1 The experiment ...... 23 2.2.2 The great god Pan ...... 24 2.2.3 The hereditary sin of Helen ...... 26 2.2.4 Victims of the Devil ...... 29 2.2.5 The suicides ...... 32 2.2.6 Evolution of Helen's power and her sexuality ...... 33 2.2.7 Helen's death and degeneration ...... 34 2.3 The Willows ...... 36 2.3.1 Admiring nature ...... 36 2.3.2 From awe to terror ...... 38 2.3.3 Rationalizing the supernatural ...... 40 2.3.4 The victim ...... 43 2.3.5 Conclusion ...... 46 Conclusion ...... 48
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Introduction
Literature has been written for various purposes - from preservation of events, knowledge or tradition to expression of author's thoughts and fantasies. Many authors have also intended to evoke certain emotions in readers and one of the strongest emotion which can be transmitted through a piece of writing is fear. In my thesis I would like to focus on two authors whose work convey a very specific kind of fear – the fear of unknown. Both of them lived in the same period, they even knew each other and yet their writing styles are vastly different. And it is exactly this difference that I am going to examine by choosing best work of each, as a matter of fact, one by Blackwood but two by Machen, for The White People and The Great God Pan are closely linked by a common theme and I consider including both of them to be vital for the analyses, as one contains key information for explanation or understanding the other. In the first part I am briefly introducing the authors via biographies while examining their attitudes, experience and philosophies by means of available autobiographies and critical essays, which should lead to better understanding of the settings, plots, characters and moods of the stories. The second chapter, the analyses themselves, are divided into sub-chapters in a chronological order in accordance with narration of the stories. The analyses consist of a detailed plot review and examination of principal supernatural elements which I am trying to put into the context and prove my findings by using examples from the text and secondary sources. In The White People analysis I am trying to show and illustrate the author's ability to vividly depict an ecstasy caused by supernatural forces in connection with sin and its definition within the context of the story while applying this definition to characters of The Great God Pan and developing further associations with sexuality, fear of the unknown, biology and violation of natural laws and its possible impacts on (Victorian) readers. In The Willows I am trying to explain behaviour of the supernatural forces in
7 connection with a human intrusion as a possible act of self-defence. Also I am showing the author's ability to change polarities of emotions from awe to terror in order to keep the tension and slowly escalate the plot by illustrating helplessness of reason and rationality against the supernatural.
Weird Tale
In this extra introduction, I would like to introduce and examine in detail a specific 'sub-genre' of Gothic fiction, the 'weird tale' or 'weird fiction', for both authors, together with H. P. Lovecraft1, could be regarded as its prominent representatives. The weird tale is an unofficial term invented and used by H. P. Lovecraft in order to distinguish “a literature of cosmic fear” which is based on the fear of unknown where “uncertainty and danger are always closely allied; thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities” from “whimsical or humorous ghost story where formalism or the author's knowing wink remove the true sense of the morbidly unnatural” (Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” 14). Thus according to Lovecraft, both these types contain supernatural elements but they differ from each other in psychological impacts on the reader. While the “humorous ghost story” serves to entertain, for the reader is well aware of the lack of serious note and profundity, and so the fear he perceives could be described as 'shallow', the weird tale presents the world where effects of the supernatural corrupt our reality in spite of natural laws and reason in full its seriousness and urgency, provoking the fear of the things we cannot explain, understand, resist or fight. In Lovecraft's words: The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain – a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space. (ibid) This general description could be regarded as a definition of the weird tale,
1 American writer who introduced cosmic horror into literature. He is best known for a story The Call of Cthulhu. 8 though, as Joshi claims, “any definition of it may be impossible”, for “no definition of the weird tale embraces all types of works that can plausibly be assumed to enter into the scope of the term” (Joshi, “The Weird Tale” 2) meaning that the boundary between 'the weird' and 'non-weird' cannot be easily defined. This is caused also by general “confusion of terms such as horror, terror, the supernatural, fantasy”, etc (ibid). Taking into consideration the chaotic situation concerning usage of the term, I am going to use the expression for the purposes of the thesis in accordance with Lovecraft's definition. There is one important fact to mention before examining the authors and their work. In the period of their active career the weird tale was not considered to be a genre but “the consequence of a world view”, since Machen and Blackwood did not regard themselves as different from their colleagues (ibid, 1).
1. Characterization of authors
1.1 Arthur Machen
1.1.1 Biography
Arthur Machen was born as Arthur Llewellyn Jones in Caerleon on Usk, Gwent, South Wales on March 3 1863 to an Anglican priest, living in The Rectory of Llanddewi Fach where little Arthur spent his childhood. The surname Machen comes from his mother – it was her maiden name. As the only child and without any other children around, Arthur Machen used to wander in the surroundings of his home – in the woods and valleys abundant in Roman remains. Deep woods and ancient remains attracted him especially, provoking his imagination and substituting his friends. Due to poverty of his family, Machen was to take advantage from the scholarship of the Royal College of Surgeons, however, he did not pass the examinations concentrating on the writing instead. After printing of a hundred copies of his poem Eleusinia (1881) – interestingly enough, he gradually destroyed the majority of them, leaving just two copies – he left Wales and moved to London. His first years in the city were spent in utter poverty; Machen tried variety of 9 jobs from the work in bookshops and translations to journalism. Upon the death of his father, Machen inherited a considerable amount of money which allowed him to live in relative comfort for more than ten years and consecrate his time solely to writing. He translated Casanova's Memoirs but also published a classic called The Chronicle of Clemendy (1888) which was reviewed by only one critic who, however, did not hesitate to order “Rabelais and Boccaccio to "shove over" on the immortal seats and make room by their side for the author” (Starrett); the work was later criticized for its archaism, though. In this decade, the author wrote his best stories including The Great God Pan (1890), The Inmost Light (1892), The Shining Pyramid (1895) or The White People (1899) which brought him fame and appreciation from such authorities as T. S. Elliot or Bernard Shaw. Within the following years, Machen's financial situation worsened, forcing him to find an employment and commencing his journalistic era. In 1914 he drew attention of the public again when publishing a fictional story The Bowmen about a miraculous help of bowmen from Agincourt in the Battle of Mons2 whereupon his introduction to American readers via collections The Shining Pyramid (1923) and The Glorious Mystery (1924) made him very popular in the 1920's. Nevertheless, Arthur Machen spent the last years of his life in poverty, although a help of his friends (Eliot, Shaw, Blackwood, etc.) ensured him a minimal pension. He died on March 30, 1947.3 It is surprising and sad at the same time that Arthur Machen remains unknown to the vast majority of readers, even though his writing inspired and influenced authors as H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury or Stephen King who considers Machen's The Great God Pan to be “one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language.”4
2 MacGregor, Steve. "Smoke without Fire: A Re-examination of the Angel of Mons."Military History Online. Military History Online, 26 Aug. 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.
1.1.2 Philosophy and background
The biggest influence on the author's attitudes as well as writing had his solitude and woody landscape of south Wales abundant in ancient Roman remains during his childhood spent in the rectory. Being the only child of an Anglican priest, religion also played an important role in his life, although his spiritual curiosity led him later also to the interest in occultism and mysticism – his friend A. E. Waite introduced him into an occult organisation called The Order of the Golden Dawn.5 On the basis of these facts, the origin of settings and emotions in his work can be traced into his childhood. Nature of Wales meant a mystery to him, which is evident especially in a story The White People where very vivid and detailed description of valleys, stones, woods and hills creates solid background for a plot. His autobiography offers an intriguing insight into his perception of nature and at the same time uncovers his thinking process while writing The Great God Pan where the horror originates in nature and Roman monuments of his home. Machen not only regarded nature as something mysterious but he admired it; as he admits “Here, of course, was my real failure; I translated awe, at worst awfulness, into evil”, which means that his feeling of “the awe and solemnity and mystery of the valley of the Usk” he turn in the story into its opposite (Machen, “Far Off Things”). On the other hand, Machen also loved London, the Strand especially, in his own words: “ […] for the first time I saw the Strand, and it instantly went to my head and to my heart, and I have never loved another street in quite the same way ” (Machen, “Far Off Things”). It is in London where the whole plot of a story The Inmost Light takes place; in a sinister atmosphere of dark shadowy alleys while The Great God Pan is set partly in Wales and partly in London, combining the best of both. However, while the author loved the London of his youth (1880's), he strongly
5 Blackmore, Leigh. "Hemetic Horrors: Weird Fiction Writers and the Order of the Golden Dawn."docshut.com. Scribd, 24 Nov 2011. Web. 10 Dec 2013.
1.2 Algernon Blackwood
1.2.1 Biography
Algernon Blackwood was born in Shooter‟s Hill in Kent on March 14 1869 as the second son of Sir Arthur Blackwood, who worked as a permanent secretary to the Post Office, and Harriet Sydney Montagu. Since his parents were ardent evangelists, in his childhood Blackwood used to escape from his strict upbringing to the nature and dreams and he would often go out in the middle of night and spend time imagining supernatural beings around. Unfortunately, his school attendance was affected by severe, almost brutal discipline. Blackwood attended five schools; at one of them in the Black Forest, Germany in 1881 he sustained trauma (a false accusation of stealing a poetry book) that chased him for years but since the school was placed in the middle of the nature quite far from civilisation, “haunted by elves and dwarfs and peopled by charming legends” (Blackwood, Episodes, 25), the admiration and worship of nature got even stronger and, consequently, influenced his later writing. During his life he studied and got interested in many spiritual movements. Reading of the Hindu holy book Bhagavad Gita in 1886 introduced young Blackwood to Eastern philosophies as well as study of Mme Blavatsky‟s theosophy broadened his horizons concerning a spiritual realm existing beyond human sensory capabilities. The realm he aimed on later in his stories. Allegedly, he was also, similarly to Machen, a
12 member of The Order of the Golden Dawn.6 As a result of his visit of Canada in 1887 that he did together with his father, Algernon Blackwood was supposed to start studying agriculture at the University of Edinburgh in order to launch a career as a farmer, however, pathology lectures seemed to him much more appealing. Subsequently, he went to Toronto where he did a short career in Methodist Magazine then he failed in being a dairy farmer as well as a pub proprietor. In both jobs he experienced deception of people he worked with. Finally, disappointed and literally “robbed” of almost all his money, moving to New York looked as a good opportunity to start life anew. After a lot of misfortune and life in utter poverty he finally found a job as a reporter for the Evening Sun where he encountered “vice, crime, horror, terror, and every kind of human degradation” (Blackwood, Episodes, 92) since the work often required visits in prison, court or at police stations. Also, Blackwood worked for The Times for a while and as a personal secretary before his return to England. In that time he did not consider himself being a writer, even though he used to invent weird stories of his own to entertain his friends and gradually, it became his form of relaxation and he wrote several dozens weird stories, though they were not intended for publishing. However, some of them were secretly sent to a publisher by his friend Agnus Hamilton (his partner in the Dried Milk Company they founded in 1899) who was thrilled by his partner‟s writing and to Blackwood‟s surprise, soon there was a request for permission to publish the stories. In 1906 the first collection of ghost stories called Empty House and other Ghost Stories was published, followed by the second one, The Listener, in 1907. His reputation rose with the release of series of John Silence stories (1908) where his knowledge of psychology and spirituality blended as the main character is a psychic detective who solves cases with spiritual flavour. The highest acclaim, however, he received for a story The Willows (1907) based on his voyage from the source of Danube in the Black Forest to Budapest in 1900. Also of notice is a short story The Wendigo (1910) or a novel The Centaur (1911). Besides his written work, he also used to appear
6 Blackmore, Leigh. "Hemetic Horrors: Weird Fiction Writers and the Order of the Golden Dawn."docshut.com. Scribd, 24 Nov 2011. Web. 10 Dec 2013.
1.2.2 Philosophy and background
Algernon Blackwood was strongly influenced by his education, parents and childhood. In his autobiography “Episodes Before Thirty” the author relates his upbringing in a religious Evangelical family as well as troubles during studies to his “overseas” experience in America in his twenties. Also, he describes the influence of the situations, people he met and emotions from that time on his later work as a writer. From his early childhood he felt deeply connected to the nature which was a source of the only real “comfort, companionship, inspiration, joy” he ever had, for that “no human intercourse could possibly provide.” (Blackwood, “Episodes before Thirty” 5)8 For him “everything was alive, a dim sense that some kind of consciousness struggled through every form, even that a sort of inarticulate communication with this “other life” was possible” – this particular attitude can be noticed in his story The Willows. (5) Nature meant to him even more than love because, in his own words, “the human appeal would fade in me, or, at least, its transitory character become pitifully revealed.” Nevertheless, he said: “Nature drew me, perhaps, away from life, while at the same time there glowed in my heart strange unrealisable desires to help life, to assist at her Utopian development, to work myself to the bone for the improvement of humanity.“ (25) This statement clearly demonstrates that although he felt more at home in nature, he never gave up his faith in people. Despite the fact that he was disappointed many times and once it nearly cost him his life. As the worst experience he describes his stay in New York where not much of green space could be found, not mentioning noise, dust and hasty atmosphere. Upon his return to the city after long holidays spent with his friend in wilderness near the Great Lakes, he recognized a huge contrast between “tolerant and kindly” nature and “intolerant and aggressive” city life. “Nature welcomed, while human nature resented,
7 This biography is based on: George Malcolm Johnson, „Blackwood, Algernon Henry (1869– 1951)‟, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31913, accessed 12 June 2013] 8 This book is without pagination. Number of the chapter is mentioned instead. 14 the intrusion of two new atoms.” (11) In The Willows he used this human tendency to intrude everywhere and explore everything to show our disrespect to privacy and space of other living forms which require being left alone. Young Blackwood had a very considerable disadvantage in comparison to other people of his age. Having parents teetotallers and deeply religious people who raised him very strictly by the Bible, his Evangelical upbringing sent him to the competitive, harsh world with no proper preparation - no real experience with treachery or deceit. He was literally naïve. Consequently, his stay in America meant the end of illusions about goodness and trustworthiness of people when one of his closest friends turned out to be a con man: “If a friend, so close to me by ties of affection and gratitude, could act like this, how would others, less intimately related, behave? My trust in people was killed.” (18) Another aspect that isolated him from others were his spiritual attitudes as well as his interest in existential questions common people hardly ever thought about at the end of 19th century, since it was considered to be boring and odd while for Blackwood “it was the only real knowledge, the only thing worth knowing.” (10) Also, combining several spiritual systems as mentioned in the biography, Blackwood was way ahead of his time.
2. Analyses of selected stories
2.1 The White People
2.1.1 Introduction
Before I proceed to the analysis itself, I would like to outline the reasons which lead me to analysing this short story in the first place. As already mentioned in the introduction, the main story I am focusing on in the thesis is The Great God Pan written by the same author, Arthur Machen, which deals with a concept of entering forbidden realities or more precisely with its consequences. The short story The White People defines such an act and its manifestations, including an example in the middle part and possible consequences in the last part. Thus the analysis of the story could offer valuable and key information for examination and understanding of the following one. 15 At first, it is important to mention that the story is divided into three parts – Prologue, The Green Book and Epilogue. Prologue and Epilogue are a dialogue of two men, the middle part – The Green Book – is connected to the main theme of their discussion and it is a kind of diary of a little girl, written in a form of monologue and its stylistics is completely different from the other two chapters. While the dialogue contains a lot of paragraph indents – paragraphs are short, often one line is skipped before writing continues – the monologue is formed in very thick and rather long paragraphs in which the story flows in a very dense way. Apostrophe “I” is used many times in every phrase. In my opinion, the author intended to describe overwhelming feelings and impressions of the little girl as well as a dense flow of events which practically carried the girl through.
2.1.2 Concerning Sin
In Prologue, there are two men talking about unusual topics, such as sorcery and sanctity. One of them, Ambrose, tries to persuade the other one, Cotgrave, that a true sin is very rare and most people do not even know what it means. For him, sanctity and sorcery are the only realities and other people live in mediocrity without realization of something deeper and profound. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures; we muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and, consequently, our wickedness and our goodness are alike second-rate, unimportant. (Machen, “The White People”) Ambrose claims that actually, people do not live the life to its full potential, they just “muddle through”. He refers to conformity, social conventions and shallowness of those who do not venture to answer the calling from inside – to obey desire to discover, experiment and express themselves. Instead, people are afraid of crossing the boundaries of social appropriateness and their zone of comfort. The murderer murders not from positive qualities, but from negative ones; he lacks something which non-murderers possess. Evil, of course, is wholly positive--only it is on the wrong side. You may believe me that sin in its proper sense is very rare; it is probable that there have been far fewer sinners than saints. It is very disagreeable to
16 have one's pocket picked, and we pronounce the thief to be a very great sinner. In truth, he is merely an undeveloped man. (ibid) The true sin turns our reality upside down - inanimate things become alive, animals start to speak and laws of nature are corrupted, which evokes a real horror in people, a profounder kind of fear than the one of being a victim of crime; the fear of unknown processes that are out of our control. These were indeed impacts on the readers in the Victorian era but are they still valid a century later? E. F. Bleiler in his biographical essay about Machen's life states about the extract above: “ […] how fanciful, artificial, and trivial this seems beside the evil that men can do and have done to one another. Thus, today, we are more likely to respond to Machen's powerful literary techniques and to the self-projections in his work than to his ideas.”9 I concur with Bleiler in the fact that from the modern point of view, it is rather difficult to appreciate the horror in the extract above, however, that does not mean that his concept of sin cannot be put into a more appropriate context for the contemporary reader, for example a surgery and its consequences presented in The Great God Pan which I am going to analyse in the next chapter. According to Ambrose, a real sinner is one who attempts 'to penetrate into another and higher sphere in a forbidden manner': Holiness requires as great, or almost as great, an effort; but holiness works on lines that were natural once; it is an effort to recover the ecstasy that was before the Fall. Sin is an effort to gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels and in making this effort man becomes a demon. I told you that the mere murderer is not therefore a sinner; that is true, but the sinner is sometimes a murderer. (ibid) While a holy person tries to reach the spheres which were natural before Expulsion From Paradise (I assume that is what “the Fall” means, since Ambrose is a member of Anglican Church and therefore he believes in God and Bible), a sinner yearns for entering the dimensions where only angels dwell and therefore those realities are forbidden and out of reach for human beings when using a proper and natural way. In Ambroses' words: “The saint endeavours to recover a gift which he has lost;
9 Bleiler, E. F. "Arthur Llewellyn Jones." Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror. Ed. Everett Franklin Bleiler. Vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985. Scribner Writers Series. Web. 23 Nov. 2013. 17 the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall”10 (ibid). A sinner can become a murderer but he does not murder to get money or to revenge but to cross boundaries of this reality, there is a different motivation for the crime. However, the real sin is often overlooked and not perceived properly “because our higher senses are so blunted, we are so drenched with materialism, that we should probably fail to recognize real wickedness if we encountered it”. Even the horror of the sin is not felt as clearly as it should be: “We should if we were natural: children and women feel this horror you speak of, even animals experience it. But with most of us convention and civilization and education have blinded and deafened and obscured the natural reason” (ibid). Vincent Starrett in his essay A Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin suggests that the character of Ambrose could be the author himself. Assuming this information to be valid, A. Machen criticized the Victorian society for their materialistic tendencies, spiritual deterioration and therefore unnatural way of life. As Ambrose further suggests, sinners do not have to be unpleasant and horrifying people; quite the opposite, their company could be welcome. The reason could be either the inner essence of evil, which is not visible on the surface, hence nearly non-existent or the fact that ordinary people do not perceive evil so intensely, since they are not natural as mentioned above: If you met a very evil man, and recognized his evil; he would, no doubt, fill you with horror and awe; but there is no reason why you should 'dislike' him. On the contrary, it is quite possible that if you could succeed in putting the sin out of your mind you might find the sinner capital company, and in a little while you might have to reason yourself back into horror. (Machen, “The White People”, ) During their discussion, there is also a third man - the one who brought Cotgrave to see Ambrose (a lunatic as he calls him). This man sits in silence and listens to them, smiling. After some time, he goes home because he is not interested in this subject any more - in other words, he refuses to believe and discuss all of it in the first place. In my opinion, the man represents just that "indifferent, mixed-up creature” Ambrose described at the beginning.
10 A reference to the First Sin – eating from the Tree of Knowledge.
18 For Cotgrave is not completely satisfied with the explanations, Ambrose decides to show him an example of the sin and lends him a manuscript called The Green Book. At this point, the story The White People truly begins.
2.1.3 Power of tradition
The story is written in first person as a kind of diary of a little girl who were growing up surrounded by rituals and witchcraft and who could see beings from other spheres from her early childhood. She likes writing about her thoughts, knowledge of rituals, sacred languages, practices she masters but just in hints “for peculiar reasons”. She claims to have already written a lot of books which are hidden on a safe place: I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the chief songs. All these are most secret secrets, and I am glad when I remember what they are, and how many wonderful languages I know, but there are some things that I call the secrets of the secrets of the secrets that I dare not think of unless I am quite alone. (ibid ) It seems she is so frightened by the power of some of the practices that she doesn't even dare to write. All these rituals and formulas look like a game to her; it is “described with juvenile naivete” (Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” 91). The author hints at complexity of the culture of 'white people' revealing that they have their own scripture, language, games and music, which makes them real and even civilized. This discovery could evoke fear that we are not alone on Earth; that this strange culture could pose a threat to us (Joshi, “The Weird Tale” 24). She could speak some of the languages even as a baby when 'white faces' kept on visiting her and talking to her. One day, she is carried by her nurse to a pond where two white figures appears, dancing and singing around: So they left me there, and I sat quite still and watched, and out of the water and out of the wood came two wonderful white people, and they began to play and dance and sing. They were a kind of creamy white like the old ivory figure in the drawing-room; one was a beautiful lady with kind dark eyes, and a grave 19 face, and long black hair, and she smiled such a strange sad smile at the other, who laughed and came to her. They played together, and danced round and round the pool, and they sang a song till I fell asleep. (Machen, “The White People”) As she mentions later, the nurse looked like one of the figures and is extremely frightened by the fact that the girl saw her practising witchcraft, which is, apparently, forbidden these times. The nurse even threatens her with death if she tells anyone (ibid). As a teenager, the girl experiences a very strange accident. She wanders into the depth of woods: And there were other rocks that were like animals, creeping, horrible animals, putting out their tongues, and others were like words that I could not say, and others like dead people lying on the grass. I went on among them, though they frightened me, and my heart was full of wicked songs that they put into it; and I wanted to make faces and twist myself about in the way they did, and I went on and on a long way till at last I liked the rocks, and they didn't frighten me any more. I sang the songs I thought of; songs full of words that must not be spoken or written down. (Machen, “The White People”) At first, the girl feels horrified by the atmosphere of that place as well as by her imagination. Then an inner desire and calling of her witchcraft heritage take control of her – unconsciously, she penetrates into spheres forbidden to people. Then she comes across an ancient ritual place: […] still I saw nothing but circles, and small circles inside big ones, and pyramids, and domes, and spires, and they seemed all to go round and round the place where I was sitting, and the more I looked, the more I saw great big rings of rocks, getting bigger and bigger […] I danced as I went in the peculiar way the rocks had danced when I got giddy, and I was so glad I could do it quite well, and I danced and danced along, and sang extraordinary songs that came into my head. (ibid) This extract shows exactly what Machen tried to express – the weirdness and frightening things coming from inside, taking control and blurring reality, perhaps even deforming it. Moreover, the tradition of witchcraft adds a feeling of antiquity, of something that has been here for ages beyond memory, which deepens the fright since there is no escape, it is bigger than us. Also, the lack of paragraphs and overuse of 20 apostrophe 'I' creates “a stream of innocent childish prattle” (Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” 91) which together with repetitions “bigger and bigger” or “round and round” have literally hypnotic impact leading to mental vertigos as the reader's mind and imagination are flooded with impressions and drawn into the story. Lovecraft describes it very appositely: “The details of this journey are given with marvellous vividness, and form to the keen critic a masterpiece of fantastic writing, with almost unlimited power in the intimation of potent hideousness and cosmic aberration” (ibid). Joshi considers it to be “a stupendous anticipation of stream-of-consciousness” - a method which was yet to be discovered (Joshi, “The Weird Tale” 22). The story continues with her wandering through the woods, dancing, singing and fantasizing urged by her inner feeling to go still further but suddenly, upon entering a “hollow pit” she recalls a story told her by the nurse about a girl who entered a similar pit in spite of warnings not to do so. The girl became spellbound by that place; she looked like a princess to other people, for the spell caused red stones and grass in her hair to look like emeralds and earrings to them. Her beauty charmed the Court as well as the king's son who wanted to marry her and he did so. On the wedding night “he saw a tall, black man, with a dreadful face” who warned him not to enter her bedroom after which the prince got a fit, completely paralysed. The man took the girl who was “shrieking and crying” and vanished. When they entered the room, they found only the red stones and flowers – the spell ceased to have effect (Machen, “The White People”). This part of the story bears a certain resemblance of principles to Helen's wedding night in The Great God Pan where she reveals to her husband her true 'self', commencing his life in horror as well as to the 'spell' or rather ability that Helen possesses to lure men into her proximity. Although the girl's diary contains much more descriptions, I am not going to analyse it, since it mostly repeats what already has been told, and so no new pieces of information would be found. For these reasons, I am going to skip to Epilogue.
2.1.4 Breaking the spell
Upon Cotgrave's embarrassed reaction about credibility of the story, expressing doubts that it all could have been just a dream or hallucination, Ambrose explains that in his
21 case it is not about “belief, but rather knowledge” for he experienced cases where hallucinations were out of question. Finally, Ambrose concludes the whole story by claiming that the girl poisoned herself a year after the diary entry because she found “a whitely luminous statue of Roman workmanship” which allegedly was the god Pan, whereupon the statue was destroyed by Ambrose and his friends, for it was a dangerous remnant of witchcraft that followers used to gather for Sabbath (ibid). H. P. Lovecraft comments on The White People with superlatives, appreciating its “atmosphere and general artistic value” (Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” 90) even more than Machen's most famous story The Great God Pan, and I have to agree with his assessment.
2.1.5 Conclusion
The author describes the concept of sin from a very unusual point of view, hinting that theft or even murder cannot be regarded as sins, for this title is reserved for 'crimes' of an utterly different degree of importance. As he claims, the sinner attempts to gain more knowledge than he is allowed to; to leave his humanity behind and penetrates into the dimensions he is not prepared for. While there are the saints who can reach a certain level of spiritual growth – an ecstasy possessed by people before Expulsion from Paradise, the sinners on their part want to acquire more – they intend to break the limitations no matter what the consequences will be and reach beyond them. The consequences of this act could lead to chaos where natural laws cease to exist. By introducing the possibility of breaking the limits – the laws of Nature – Machen introduces the reader to the world where the reason and logic do not work, supporting it with a story of a little girl who unconsciously crosses the line between our reality and the forbidden one. I would like to emphasize the word 'unconsciously', for it provides the final impact on the reader (on the Victorian reader even more so) with an additional force; not only that our reality could be corrupted and twisted by a sinner but the sinner does not have to be aware of his sin, for he could become one by coincidence or by accident, which is in fact what happened to the girl who then was not able to resist it, on the contrary, she enjoyed it. Why could not it happen also to the reader?
22 Nevertheless, the power of the story is hidden in the girl's diary, specifically in the combination of the thick flood-like style of narration, hypnotic repetitions and suggestions of another civilization existing beside ours and known only to people practising witchcraft, which allows them to surmount barriers of our dimension.
2.2 The Great God Pan
2.2.1 The experiment
In this story, the author describes consequences of a terrible experiment conducted by Doctor Raymond who wants to prove conclusions of his study of “transcendental medicine” to be right. He claims to have discovered that the reality we can perceive by our senses is nothing but an illusion; “the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes”. We all live in a false reality, hence the doctor will do a good deed of uncovering the truth – his motivation for conducting the experiment is positive (Machen, “The Great God Pan” 2). However, Dr. Raymond is convinced to be able to enter such a world by a means of brain surgery that he performs on a girl called Mary who is manipulated to volunteer for this matter; he enables her to look “beyond the veil” (ibid). Doctor does not care about her much, since he rescued her from poverty and starvation; in his own words: “I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit.” This motivation is rather negative; it shows doctor's merciless ambition that will sacrifice everything, even a human life, in order to achieve the goal – confirmation of his theory (ibid, 4). Moreover, despite repetitive questions about safety of the procedure posed by his companion Mr. Clarke, who is invited to witness the process, Dr. Raymond remains unwavering in this matter. “It may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.” The doctor refers to “the ancients”, which could mean ancestors, if he did not confess, just a few lines before, that he actually does not know “whether any human being has ever lifted that veil.” Provided that the creatures or beings who formerly possessed the knowledge were not humans, the procedure of “lifting the veil” would not be meant for the mankind to use (ibid, 2). Nevertheless, Dr. Raymond admits that he devoted himself to transcendental medicine for the last twenty years, and so he achieved to discover alternative ways how 23 to cross the boundary, at least in theory (ibid, 1). Since these ways require a dangerous surgical intervention that nobody performed before, he apparently tries to brake into the realm no human being is supposed to enter. The operation goes well until the moment Mary wakes up and it is evident that the experiment was not as successful as they both had hoped it would be. Mary loses her mind, experiencing horror from that time on, however, doctor Raymond does not mind – in his eyes her illness is just a price for seeing the god Pan.
2.2.2 The great god Pan
As the theme of 'entering another realm' appeared also in the story The White People, it is evident that the author implemented it into his work more than once. However, as it will be demonstrated further, there is a significant difference between its usage in the story mentioned above and The Great God Pan. In the former, one of the characters, Ambrose, considers this 'trespassing' to be a true sin because this “ecstasy and knowledge pertain alone to angels and in making this effort man becomes a demon” (Machen, “The White People” ). When applied to Dr. Raymond, considering his positive and negative motivation, he indeed became a demon but more from a moral point of view – he “sacrificed” an innocent young girl for the sake of his own experiment ignoring its obvious dangerousness, yet no physical or spiritual change happened to him. For, paradoxically, it was the girl who was transformed into a true demon no matter how unintentionally for her part. As the doctor confesses to Mr. Clarke with a deep regret at the very end of the story: It was an ill work I did that night when you were present; I broke open the door of the house of life, without knowing or caring what might pass forth or enter it […] ...when the house of life is thus thrown open, there may enter in that for which we have no name, and human flesh may become the veil of a horror one dare not express. (Machen, “The Great God Pan” 50) Nevertheless, this extract refers mainly to another, more serious consequence than Mary being “feeble-minded”. Nine months after the incident Mary delivers a baby and dies not long afterwards. The baby, “daughter of Mary and the god Pan”11 called
11 Owens, Jill Tedford. "Arthur Machen's Supernaturalism: The Decadent Variety." The University of 24 Helen, is a result of merging of our reality with the forbidden one and, as the story gradually explains, also an incarnated evil turning lives of people upside down (Machen, “The Great God Pan” 50). The doctor took care of the little girl but after several years he sent her away, since she used to play with a companion (“a strange naked man” (ibid, 11)), which was “a constant, an incarnate horror” for him (ibid, 50). For understanding of following parts of the story, it is necessary to explain a concept of the god Pan more in detail, for Helen, being his offspring, is endowed with the same power. Quarantelli writes in his essay about a connection between the god Pan and panic: The oldest view, coming out of everyday speech, primarily equates panic with extreme and groundless fear. This is clearly related to the linguistic origins of the word which is derived from the Greek god Pan who supposedly was able to generate sudden and overwhelming fear in the absence of any actual threat.12 In my opinion, in the moments when Helen is playing with her strange companion, she expresses her heritage from the father's side – the weird reality of the god Pan – merging into ours and causing exaggerated reactions of people around for no apparent reason. This interpretation explains the doctor's horror upon seeing the girl playing probably with some god Pan-like creature, even though there was no immediate danger or threat to him. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the god Pan as a “vigorous and lustful figure having the horns, legs, and ears of a goat”13, meaning that he has also sexual desire, which answers the question why Mary got pregnant during the experiment. It is important to mention this fact, since in the story there are several hints about sexual activities in connection with the god Pan. Following chapters tracks Helen's life in a form of memories of different people and little by little, the jigsaw is assembled and uncovers her evil nature that leads to a series of homicides and mentally disturbed men.
Mississippi Studies in English 8 (1990): 117-126. Rpt. in Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2013. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Feb. 2013. 12Quarantelli, E. L. Sociology Of Panic. University of Delaware. Disaster Research Center, 14 Feb. 2005. Web. 23 Nov.2013.
2.2.3 The hereditary sin of Helen
The story continues with description of Mr. Clarke who is irresistibly attracted to esoteric and mysterious issues in spite of his reason and caution, which led him to witness the surgery in the first place. Shaken by the result of the experiment, he decides not to engage in any esoteric affairs ever after and for several years he keeps this promise until, step by step, his resistance weakens as he browses more and more often through his collection of writings about occultism, evil and spiritualism called “Memoirs to Prove the Existence of the Devil” (ibid, 9). One evening he commenced reading his notes of a story related to him by his friend, Dr. Phillips, who claimed every detail in it to be true. The story narrates a history of a series of strange accidents happening around a girl Helen V. who, living only with her “distant relative”, Dr. Raymond as a matter of fact, who adopted her, was sent by him to “a well-to-do farmer”, Mr. R. from a remote Welsh village, Caermaen14, in order to “have playmates of her own age” (ibid, 9-10). Her appearance and habits were as unusual as a letter from her relative containing requirements and conditions the farmer had to meet in order to accommodate the girl; for instance, to have a room for her own. Also, the farmer was required to let her spend her time as she pleases, for, as stated in the letter, “she was already sufficiently educated for the position in life which she would occupy” (ibid, 10). She differed significantly from the local people, since “her skin was a pale, clear olive, and her features were strongly marked, and of a somewhat foreign character” (ibid, 10). She would spend the whole day in the forest and “not return till after dusk” (ibid) while in winter she stayed in her bedroom. It was in summer when the first accident took place. A little boy ,Trevor, bringing a dinner to his father who was working in the forest, happened to encounter Helen “playing on the grass with a “strange naked man” whom he seemed unable to describe more fully” (ibid, 11). The boy sustained a terrible shock with lasting after-
14 A town not far from Machen's home. 26 effects in the form of nightmares and persistent fear. Helen absolutely denied her involvement in this matter, calling it “the child's story” (ibid, 11). At this point, I would like to make another connection to Ambrose from The White People who, in the debate with Cotgrave about overlooking of the real sin, stated that “children and women feel this horror you speak of, even animals experience it “ but men usually cannot perceive it, since their “higher senses are so blunted” and they are “so drenched with materialism” that they would “fail to recognize real wickedness” (Machen, “The White People”). It is the “wickedness” of Helene Ambrose is talking about and, in my opinion, Dr. Raymond was able to recognize it only because he was interested in the supernatural and his inclination to materialism was not so strong while Trevor, being a little child, felt it because of his innocence unspoiled, in Ambrose's words, by “convention and civilization and education” that “blinded and deafened and obscured the natural reason” (Machen, “The White People”). After several weeks Trevor's condition seemed to get better, and so he was able to accompany his father to a neighbour. While the father discussed a business matter in the study room, Trevor was waiting in the hall. Within a few minutes the father heard “a piercing shriek and a sound of a fall” whereupon he hurried to see what had happened only to find “the child lying senseless on the floor, his face contorted with terror” (Machen, The Great God Pan 11). A doctor was called and he ascertained that the boy suffered from a seizure as a result of shock but as soon as Trevor regained consciousness, he passed into “violent hysteria” (ibid, 11-12). The moment he calmed himself after a dose of drug administered by the doctor and walked into the hall, his previous condition returned with even stronger manifestations of violence. The boy cried: “The man in the wood!” referring to the accident with Helen and at the same time he was pointing at a stone head which the owner of the house found in the Roman remains near the village (ibid, 12). It was supposed to be the head “of a faun or satyr”, which Dr. Phillips describes as “a vivid presentment of intense evil” (ibid, 12). Since the faun or satyr are depicted as “half man, half goat”15, there is a clear reference to the god Pan. Consequently, upon seeing this head in the hall, Trevor's feelings from the previous incident returned and intensified causing him a permanent
15 "Faunus". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Nov. 2013
28 the Virgin Mary: AND WAS MADE MAN”16. This sentence describes the incarnation of God into flesh – Jesus Christ. Accordingly, the English translation of the statement could be 'The devil became incarnate. And was made man', referring, in my opinion, to Helen being an incarnation of devil, which is quite an accurate term considering the god Pan's goat-like appearance and his ability to invoke the most profound kind of fear in every man.
2.2.4 Victims of the Devil
Another memory belongs to Charles Herbert, an unfortunate first husband of Helen, who accidentally begs of his old friend Villiers of Wadham. Villiers, who hunts for “mysterious incidents and persons” and “obscure mazes and byways of London life”, is completely staggered by seeing his college comrade and once quite a wealthy man in rugged clothes begging on the street. Feeling “together with compassion all the relish of the amateur in mysteries”, he invites Charles to his place in order to listen to his story of misfortune as well as to offer help (Machen, “The Great God Pan” 15). Subsequently, Charles describes the first meeting with Helen, “a girl of the most wonderful and most strange beauty” possessing “a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart”, who charmed his friends as well as him and he was thus introduced. The marriage took place three months later but his happiness did not last long; in fact, it ended already on the wedding night when she commenced speaking to him about her weird reality. Charles is not able even to hint about the content of her words and of what she showed him afterwards: “You can have no conception of what I know, not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams can you have imaged forth the faintest shadow of what I have heard – and seen. Yes, seen”, for his horror was so ineffable that, in his words, “I myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street, and ask whether it is possible for a man to behold such things and live” and at the same time he adds: “In a year, Villiers, I was a ruined man, in body and soul – in body and soul” (ibid, 16). On the basis of Charles' narration, it is evident that Helen could not have been considered to be 'queer' or 'evil' at the first sight; just the opposite – her extraordinary
16 Boyle, Brian, Andrew Byler, and Paul Halsall, eds. "Internet History Sourcebooks Project." Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies. Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies, 04 Nov 2011. Web. 26 Nov 2013.
2.2.5 The suicides
Not long afterwards, a series of suicides of noblemen strikes London. The first victim was Lord Argentine who was found by his valet one morning strangled in the bed. As the valet corroborates, he noted no cause for such an extreme action in Lord's behaviour the preceding evening when he dined at Mrs. Beaumont's. Within following three weeks three other noblemen committed suicide – one hanged himself and the other two chose the same way as Lord Argentine. All of them were found dead in the morning; the police had no clues. One of these days Villiers and Austin meet so as to exchange news about their progress concerning Mrs. Herbert. After a while the talk moves to Mrs. Beaumont again when Austin mentions to have met her by accident, noticing a strange expression on her face which was familiar to him in some way (ibid, 35). I suppose that this familiarity results from Helen's portrait which he has seen in the book from the painter. Before they can finish their discussion, it is announced in the street that yet another nobleman is dead. When they learn a name of the man, Villiers confesses to have seen him early in the morning coming from Mrs. Beaumont's house in a terrible condition: I could never have supposed that such an infernal medley of passions could have glared out of any human eyes; I almost fainted as I looked. […] the man's outward form remained, but all hell was within it. […] Furious lust, and hate […] and the loss of all hope and the utter blackness of despair […] he saw nothing that you or I can see, but he saw what I hope we never shall. […] it was a devil's face I looked upon. (ibid, 38) From this description it is evident that the nobleman saw the god Pan's twisted reality, which corrupted his mind and damaged his soul to the extent that he killed himself. Based on this evidence, it can be deduced that all the suicides were committed
32 for the same reasons, having in common also the same culprit – Helen Vaughan alias Helen Herbert alias Mrs. Beaumont.
2.2.6 Evolution of Helen's power and her sexuality
At this point the story starts to culminate and I would like to demonstrate an important connection between evolution of Helen's power and its impacts on the victims. Helen's power was increasing as she was reaching the maturity: As an infant, she would horrify Dr. Raymond but no harm could have been done; at the age of twelve Dr. Raymond sent her to Caermaen, since it became unbearable for him to fight the horror – her power evolved and Helen became strong enough to permanently damage a mind of little Trevor; as Mrs. Herbert, being around nineteen years old, she destroyed her husband's mind to the degree that he sold his properties and became a beggar, for his life lost its meaning. In her twenties, she is able to strike so deeply into the men's mind that her victims commit suicide shortly after. Also, there is a pattern perceptible in victims stories; they all refer to the loss of happiness, of the will to live; their positive feelings are replaced by permanent horror and fright of such intensity that sooner or later they cease to exist because their existence is no more supportable. Nevertheless, all the victims were, apparently, men. The only incident with a woman concerned Rachel who was forced perhaps to copulate in some way with the Pan but finally she vanished from the world. It is possible that a woman with the gift of fertility and breeding could be used for bringing another Pan's offspring to this reality, yet Rachel did not do so. What appears to be more probable is the fact that either a woman cannot give a birth to such a baby, since Helen would have done so as soon as she were capable of it and her own conception was caused by very specific conditions during the surgery, or there is no need of that, for Helen is an aberration, creation against natural laws which uses sexuality as a form entertainment and self-fulfilment. For a further analysis of these assumptions, it is necessary to return to the last chapters of the story which can shed light on this issue, as the jigsaw of Helen's life is finally assembled.
33 Villiers stalks Mrs. Beaumont on her walks through various parts of London. Owing to his good observing and listening skills, he becomes acquainted with a missing part of Helen's life – the period when she left the country and came to London as Helen Raymond. According to rumours Villiers heard, Helen was associated with “nameless infamies”, which was told him by a man who cannot be considered to be “great Puritan” (ibid, 41). These 'infamies' were evidently sexual activities probably of the weirdest kind, as Villiers proves by reference to the painter and his drawings, claiming that “those designs were not drawn from his imagination” (ibid, 41). Villiers is even furnished with a manuscript containing a list of 'entertainments' that Helen provided for her guests (ibid, 42). As Glennis Byron writes in A New Companion to the Gothic: “While the specific nature of these nameless infamies is never actually described, it is clear that Helen prompts the suicides by revealing something so unnatural, co unspeakable, that he thought of it cannot even be entertained without the risk of a descent into madness” (Blackwell 190). Upon adding these new facts to the assumptions above, a conclusion could be made that Helen is led by her unearthly lust. Therefore, it must have been the sexual desire that attracted all the men to Helen, which eventually led to their doom. Although her sexual activity must have been quite intense, I suppose her nature is so different, so twisted, that it makes her incapable of becoming pregnant. Thus Helen can create nothing except of horror, dread and panic, which matches exactly the description of her 'father's' nature.
2.2.7 Helen's death and degeneration
The story ends as Villiers and Clarke pays a visit to Mrs. Beaumont and on the basis of the evidence they gathered against her, she is offered a noose and left in the room for a couple of minutes in order to decide whether she ends her life herself or surrenders to the police. She chooses the suicide; a doctor is called and the three men witness a transformation which her body posthumously undergoes: I saw the form waver from sex to sex, dividing itself to itself, and then again reunited. Then I saw the body descend to the beasts whence it ascended, and that which was on the heights go down to the depths, even to the abyss of all being. The principle
34 of life, which makes organism, always reminded, while the outward from changed. (Machen, “The Great God Pan” 46) This degenerating principle is aptly described by Eckersley who associated it with biology: What we see is a flickering backward-run down the evolutionary tree towards protoplasm; but this is no neutral account. The imagery of height and depth, realised through a vocabulary and periodic rhythm that flirts with the biblical, takes on gradual moral overtones which reach a climax in “the abyss of all being,” a kind of hell that has been fully reconciled with biology.17 The last piece of the jigsaw fits in as Mr. Clarke travels to Caermaen and sees Helen's house which is built near remains of a Roman temple. As he notices a an inscription in stone informing that these temple was consecrated “To the great god Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or Abyss) […] on the account of marriage” (Machen, “The Great God Pan” 49). Assuming that the god Nodens is another identity of the god Pan, the place might have been intended to his worship. And that Rachel was probably a sacrifice of such worship.
17 Eckersley, Adrian. "A Theme in the Early Work of Arthur Machen: 'Degeneration,'." English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 35.3 (1992): 277-287. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Drew Kalasky. Vol. 20. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995. Literature Resource Center. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. 35
2.3 The Willows
2.3.1 Admiring nature
The story starts in a very poetic and lyric way that does not even hint that this is actually a horror tale. The author describes the setting of the plot – wilderness of Danube between Vienna and Budapest – a region he visited himself on one of his trips. This inhospitable area, densely overgrown with a great number of willows, is absolutely deserted, with no human settlement whatsoever. The whole story is narrated in the first person; the main characters are two campers – the narrator and his companion called the Swede. Despite the advice from a Hungarian officer in Pressburg18, who tries to persuade them not to continue considering extremely windy weather, upcoming floods, total isolation from the civilization and their ignorance of the area, two campers travelling in a canoe frivolously enter this land and joke about its magic and spell. They do not yet know what awaits them in this “kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them”. These “unwritten warnings” refer to a natural barrier of swamps. Swamps are uninhabited, which brings “the sense of remoteness from the world of humankind, the utter isolation” as well as “the fascination of this singular world of willows, winds, and waters.” The campers are literally enchanted by the wilderness and possibly even by a challenge to face it (Blackwood, “The Willows” 1).19 However, on their journey from the source of Danube, the river earned their
18 Pressburg is a German name for Bratislava.
19 This novel is without pagination. A number of chapter is mentioned instead.
36 respect as it changed its shape from “bubbling entry into the world among the pinewood gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play the great river- game of losing itself among the deserted swamps unobserved, unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the grown of some living creature”. They also “come inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage”. According to all these statements, it seems that the campers unconsciously accepted the nature as being alive and treat it accordingly. They have no intention to defeat it but rather to experience and admire it (1). The awe of nature that pervades the whole tale is most noticeable right in these moments when the campers encounter the swampland for the first time, since the description of the landscape, animals and weather greatly prevail over actions of the characters showing how tiny and unimportant these two men really are in comparison with the wilderness. Moreover, extreme vividness of description in certain passages expresses fullness and compactness of the wild life with no place for anybody else: Cormorants lined the banks in lonely places in rows like short black palings; grey crows crowded the shingle-beds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water that opened up between the islands, and hawks, swans, and marsh birds of all sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant cries. (1) After several minor struggles the campers find a small island where they could stay overnight. While exploring this little piece of land, the narrator is flooded by sudden uneasiness as he notices an interaction between water and willows, comparing them to “a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures crowding down to drink”. In that moment he becomes aware of the great power of elements around him which neither he nor his companion as human beings can withstand or resist, being at the mercy of the forces of nature and with no possible help nearby. The willow bushes in particular, their great number and their movements; stir his emotions and imagination, as if he could feel their collective consciousness: “With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror.” Consequently, it leads him to the feeling of being unwelcome; that “we had trespassed here upon the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a 37 world where we were not wanted or invited to remain”(1) . Suddenly, the sense of awe that the campers felt from the beginning changed – instead of positive feelings of admiration and joy, there come danger and alertness. Nevertheless, there is a difference between the narrator‟s and the Swede‟s attitude. According to the Swede‟s behaviour, the narrator assumes that the Swede does not notice any change since he is too a rational and practical man to become so easily disturbed (1); however, as it emerges later in the story, the Swede is the one who realizes the truth first and who possesses the knowledge necessary for their survival. From this point on, the description of the surrounding nature step aside in favour of description of the psychical state of the characters, their actions and dialogues, giving the story higher pace. The campers spot an otter in the river, confusing it with a dead man‟s body. Afterwards, a man in a canoe paddling on the opposite side of the river, waving and shouting at them and crossing himself, is apparently trying to warn them against something. However, they regard him as a superstitious native who perhaps considers them to be ghosts, since nobody lives in this region. Subsequently, the Swede recalls a woman they met in Pressburg: “These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you remember the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed here because it belonged to some sort of beings outside man's world!“ On the basis of a strange behaviour of the native and the warning of the shopwoman, it is evident that local people avoid going to the swampland because something lives in there which they are afraid of. Despite all these facts, the campers laugh loudly in order to conceal their restlessness from each other – even the Swede seems to be a little insecure: “The Swede‟s tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked something that was usually there” (1).
2.3.2 From awe to terror
As the night approaches, they make a fire and collect firewood. Sitting beside the fire, the Swede‟s insecurity gradually deepens. Instead of his usual rationality and lack of imagination, which comforted the narrator or even protected him partially against all the vivid impressions from the place, the Swede seems to be influenced by them as well: “For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that
38 night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory” (1). The narrator‟s sensation of being a trespasser becomes even more profound as he is collecting sticks alone in the dark. Finally, both of them decide to go sleep in order to continue their journey early the following day. Suddenly, the narrator wakes up in the middle of the night disturbed by an unexpected burst of anxiety. As soon as he crawls out of the tent, he spots strange apparitions floating in the air near willows. However, he decides not to the Swede up: “My first instinct was to waken up my companion, that he too might see them, but something made me hesitate - the sudden realization, probably, that I should not welcome corroboration”(2). Although being awake and conscious, he is afraid of believing the obvious: that those beings could be real and that the Swede could confirm it. Yet after a few moments of observation, his attitude changes completely: Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had stirred the powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the cause of this disturbance. (2) At the sight of the beings he feels no fear anymore, just a pure sense of immense awe accompanied by realization that it is them, the campers, who cause all the agitation around and provoke reactions of local creatures by their undesirable presence. Gradually, the narrator becomes convinced that this experience is real and his awe escalates into worship – power of the creatures floods his senses and enthrals him. These things, I knew, were real, and proved that my senses were acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great spiral of grace and strength that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and worship – absolutely worship. (2) The next moment, a blast of wind hits him and the spell is broken. He begins to doubt his experience, thinking all of that was merely his imagination as well as subjective perception. Afterwards, the column of figures ascends into the sky, disappearing out of sight. As soon as they are gone, narrator‟s feelings dramatically change again – awe is replaced by terror coming from realization that he is helpless and powerless against the forces dwelling in this region. He goes back to the tent and after a while falls asleep just to be awoken again 39 shivering all over his body, terrified by “a sound of multitudinous little patterings” coming from outside. Moreover, “something surely was pressing steadily against the sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above”. Again, he gets out of the tent finding out there is nothing that could cause such a noise. Searching the island, he decides to visit the place where he saw the figures when he suddenly finds himself overtaken by a sense of vast terror – from the shadows a large figure just passed him by (2).
Owing to another blast of wind he can collect himself and move. The feeling of terror diminished. However, he becomes aware of the fact that the fear he experiences is of such an immense kind that it raises awe and wonder in him and so the worst effects of the fear are perceptibly reduced. Meanwhile, time of dawn approaches; spotting crimson sky the narrator becomes enchanted by its beauty, sensing wild yearning inside and feeling like crying up into the throat (2). Still being enchanted, he discovers that the willows are situated closer to the tent than the previous day and he assumes that they must have moved during the night, referring to those 'patterings'. The narrator‟s psychical states changes very quickly from fright to laughter as his senses and feelings fight with the reason and rationality, because the idea of marching willows is completely bizarre and absurd, yet it seems to be real. In addition to this, he feels very vulnerable, since his mind is “so receptive to such dangerous imaginings” and “that it was through our minds and not through our psychical bodies that the attack would come, was coming” (2). He could withstand a physical attack but he cannot protect himself from impacts on his mind and feelings. Finally, he returns to the camp but before going sleep, he measures distances between the willows and the tent so as to have a proof if they move once more. He falls asleep determined to deny the night experience as “a subjective hallucination, a fantasy of the night, a projection of the excited imagination” (2).
2.3.3 Rationalizing the supernatural
In the late morning, the Swede wakes him up, informing him about islands that disappeared and that their own island has grown smaller as well but there is a plenty of
40 time to abandon it. As the narrator bathes, the night terror falls into oblivion. During the breakfast, the narrator notices that from the previous evening the Swede‟s behaviour has changed – he has become frightened. Shortly after that the Swede admits to believing in supernatural powers living in there, spreads out a map beside him and insists on leaving the island as soon as possible if the entities let them: “The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world” (2). In this statement the Swede calls the powers gods, which means he feels absolutely defenceless and hopeless, since a god is an ultimate power that nobody can resist or defeat. He accepts it as a fact in contrast to the narrator who does not cease hiding his true thoughts and feelings, even though they are almost identical to those of the Swede : “‟The elements are always the true immortals, ‟I replied, laughing as naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected my true feelings” (2). Although the Swede admitted his persuasion about existence of the supernatural elements and their perilousness, the narrator declines to avow what he has experienced and witnessed from the very beginning of their sojourn in the swampland; the feelings ranging from dread to worship as well as the night accident with floating creatures. Hence, his laugh conceals panic and helplessness from the fear that they will not be able to flee from the island alive and unscathed. Unfortunately, a series of accidents happened when they slept. A steering paddle disappeared and there is a tear in the bottom of their canoe. Apparently, after all the warnings at the beginning which the campers ignored, the entities decided not to let them leave their realm. The narrator keeps on disregarding even the very obvious evidence and tries to explain those accidents in a rational way but it sounds absurd and finally, he fails to persuade the Swede as well as himself. Afterwards, the narrator verifies the measurements about the distance between the tent and the willow bushes he did at night but nothing changed. Nevertheless, as he spots deep hollows in sand, he is at the end of his wits but still he needs to find a logical explanation: “An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some working explanation of the universe is necessary – however absurd – to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face problems of life” (2). Becoming more and more frustrated, he stubbornly refuses to accept the truth when suddenly, while arguing with the Swede who doubts whether the otter they spotted previous night was really an otter, he loses his temper and starts yelling with rage in 41 order to end the Swede‟s contemplation about a threat of the supernatural which he mocks. At this point, a very important twist happens – the Swede tells him to be quiet, because the narrator just attracts attention to himself by his desperate shouts and useless attempts to persuade himself that nothing unusual happened: “That‟s just the way all victims talk. As if you didn‟t understand just as well as I do!” (3) The Swede knows that the narrator has been well aware of all the incidents that have occurred on that place but the narrator is surprised that the Swede has been taking it into consideration as well and he feels irked:” Up to a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think I felt annoyed to be out of it, to be proved less psychic, less sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings…” (3). Also, the Swede seems to have figured out a way how to resist the psychical attacks: “The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try to hold your mind as firm as possible” (3). While at the beginning the narrator considered the Swede to be a man without imagination and full of rationalism, now the roles turned vice versa – the Swede proves to be more sensitive and the narrator is the one who struggles with reason. In my opinion, the narrator's stubbornness about the supernatural originates in his purely rational approach which cannot deal with anything inexplicable by reason. Thus, when his mind confronts the entities, the encounter corrupts his thinking and brakes him. The same effect could have, for instance, an extraterrestrial visit to our planet – people would probably lose their mind. On the other hand, the Swede, being acquainted with spiritual knowledge, does not collapse, for his mind is more flexible and willing to finally embrace the existence of supernatural forces and their interaction with him and his friend. Nevertheless, the narrator missed an essential part of the Swede‟s advice – a victim. In the narrator‟s words, there is ”a necessity of there being a victim, and that we ourselves were destined to satisfy the want” (3). Later in the story the Swede mentions that victims will be sacrificed – their purpose will be to calm the disturbed „gods‟ and distract them so that the campers will have a chance to escape. Gradually, the weather starts to change – the wind has relented and the sky is getting dark. The Sun – the only source of cheerfulness for the two friends – disappeared. The campers repaired the canoe and the narrator prepares dinner when the Swede alerts him to a strange sound he has been hearing all day. However, the Swede cannot localize it: “Sometimes it was overhead. And sometimes it seemed under the 42 water. Once or twice, too, I could have sworn it was not outside at all but within myself – you know – the way a sound in the fourth dimension is supposed to come” (3).The narrator tries to rationalize once again but unsuccessfully – then he realizes that it is true what the Swede says; that “it comes from everywhere at once” – from the willows (3). They could not hear it before because of the wind. Ready to have dinner they find out that bread is missing and their food supplies dwindled. The pressure of negative emotions they have experienced since the first day on this island has gotten so strong that they cannot bear it any more and their reaction to the missing food is laughter of resignation. The Swede keeps on alleging that the sound comes from the fourth dimension because he doesn‟t perceive it by ears but it seems to be within him – he claims it to be a “non-human sound” (3). Permeated by dread and terror of such intensity and strength he has never experienced before the narrator finally fully admits existence of the supernatural.
2.3.4 The victim
Sitting by the fire, both of them contemplate their adventure, not knowing what to expect and what to next. The Swede proposes to “keep perfectly still” because their insignificance could save them from being killed (3). He guesses that the gods have not found them yet, they can just feel their minds – that if why controlling their thoughts is a key to staying alive (3). As the story continues, the character of the Swede exposes its depth. He reveals to have been thinking about the supernatural all his life and he appears to have certain knowledge of these affairs. In his opinion, being sacrificed to these powers means not to die but to undergo “a radical alteration, a complete change, a horrible loss of oneself by substitution – far worse than death, and not even annihilation” (3). The sacrifice will not die but loses its identity; its character will be changed. Also, he modifies his attitude to the entities – they seem to lack relations with mankind; they are completely separated from men, in contrast to gods who are worshipped. This relates to the fact that the entities cannot locate them precisely, even though they can sense them; it means they
43 have never sensed a human being before and the perception is something unusual and brand new to them (3). The Swede estimates that if they survive the night, they could escape in the daylight. They have to not just watch their thoughts but also their words: “Do not mention them more than you can help. Do not refer to them by name. To name is to reveal” (4). He already mentioned before that “what one thinks finds expression in words, and what one says, happens” (3). The next moment the Swede clarifies one of the incidents of the previous night - the pressure upon the tent was actually altered atmospheric pressure that should have killed them. The narrator is surprised by his friend‟s calm and tranquil psychical state in this dangerous and extraordinary situation, admires his self-control and wonders how he could have ever considered him being unimaginative and phlegmatic (4). Finally, the Swede decides that they should pretend as if nothing happened and try to ignore everything unusual. However, the narrator, accidentally looking at his shoes, recalls the moment when he bought them followed by reminiscences of the civilized world which allow him to change his point of view for a while back to normal – to his scepticism and rationality. The effect of this change is catastrophic, since his fear disappeared and suddenly the whole situation seems ridiculous and stupid. He starts laughing at completely staggered the Swede: “‟You damned old pagan! You imaginative idiot! You superstitious idolater!„” (4). Then the previous state of terror comes back to him again but this accident has terrible consequences. There is “a strange cry overhead in the darkness – and that sudden drop in the air” as though something came nearer (4). The Swede is totally shattered, unable to resist the terror any longer – he wants to abandon the island immediately. From this point, it is the narrator who must take charge of their group – he succeeds in reasoning with the Swede, persuading him that there is no point in trying to escape in the middle of the night. Moreover, they will have to travel through all the region of willows, since their island is located right at the edge of it. The narrator decides that they will stick to the former plan – to stay over night and leave at sunrise. But suddenly, the entities attack them directly. Holding tightly each other, nearly collapsing with terror, the campers witness a creature walking towards them. The narrator describes it as “neither a human figure nor an animal being as large as several animals grouped together, like horses, two or three, moving slowly” (4). Afterwards, the 44 campers fall together backwards into willow branches and through them right on the sand below. Then the narrator feels he is going to die, experiencing expansion of his consciousness, “extending into space” followed by a feeling of “losing it altogether” (4). At the last moment, the Swede brings him back, using pain as a means for keeping the consciousness in the body. He was saved by pain (caused by the fall) which as he says forced him “to forget them and think of something else at the very instant when they were about to find me” (4). Then, he lost consciousness and the entities could not seize him. Also, the sound of the willows stopped as the powers ceased to pursue them. The friends decide to go straight to the tent and try to sleep. Nevertheless, the narrator wakes up in the middle of the night, breathing with difficulty. He can hear humming again, this time much stronger than before. Then he finds out his companion left the tent and he goes after him, having a bad premonition of his friend being in serious trouble. The sound makes the atmosphere thicker; it is hard to breath and the humming seems to come from everywhere – the entities are angry. The narrator tries calling his friend but all the efforts are drowned in the noise. All of a sudden, he spots his companion walking into the river, completely taken over by the strange spell and making the same noise as the willows. The Swede‟s will is broken and he refuses help of his friend, struggling furiously. At last, the narrator succeeds in dragging him into the tent. After a while, the humming outside stops and at the same time the Swede comes to himself, thanking the narrator for saving his life and telling him that “it is all over now. They‟ve found a victim in our place!” (4) Then he falls asleep, utterly exhausted. The following day, the Swede wakes up, not remembering anything about the accident. The narrator considers it to be wise not to tell him anything; however, as they notice the humming stopped, the Swede knows it is so because of the victim. The sun shines, the willows motionless; everything looks as if nothing strange happened. The Swede is determined to find the victim and he does so – at the bank there is a corpse of a drowned man under willow roots. He wants to bury it properly but at the moment they touch the body “there rose from its surface the loud sound of humming” and then slowly “disappeared upwards into the sky” (4). They could see how “the skin and flesh were indented with a small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found all over the island” (4). Apparently, the entities were “consuming” or “digesting” the body when the campers disturbed them. Luckily 45 for them, the man was dead (sacrificed) and so the powers of that place were finally satisfied. As they try to get the body out of the roots, current takes it away. The hollows seem to represent the presence of the powers; their manifestation in matter. The humming, as the Swede already mentioned, indicates blending of their world into the one of the man; the louder humming, the greater part of their world prevails over the human‟s.
2.3.5 Conclusion
The author created this horror story on a principle of graduating emotions and quick changes of their polarities. At first, the two campers admire the nature and all their aspects from animals and willow trees to the river Danube, respecting it but disturbing harmony of that untouched region by their presence. This could symbolize a human need to explore every place; to go everywhere regardless the privacy of the other living creatures. Since there is no creature more powerful than the man, there is nothing that could keep him from going wherever he intends. The campers represent this side of humankind and for all the admiration of nature, they fail to see or hear warnings about staying in the land of willows – there is nothing they should be afraid of. When they ignore them, the former inhabitants of the region – the entities – start to act. Also, then there is a surprising development of characters – the narrator who is presented as the one with more vivid imagination and open mind contrary to his companion the Swede who does not talk much and appears to be the serious and rational one. Step by step, this image turns a bit vice versa – the narrator is trapped in his rational approach, unable to even consider another point of view whereas the Swede impersonates the proverb, “Words are made of silver, but silence is made of gold”, and although he has known the narrator for a long time, he has never spoken about his knowledge and interest in the supernatural before. However, as soon as it is a matter of survival, he shares what he knows, which leads to the final rescue. Concerning the entities, at the beginning they seem to ignore the campers; maybe not perceiving them at day because the entities are active mainly at night. First night, the narrator disturbs them on a place which may be sacred for them. From that
46 point, the entities are trying to get rid of them but humans are something unknown to them and it takes time to figure out how to enchant them. Finally, they nearly succeed when they take control of the Swede. The concept of victim could be either a way they can channel their anger or simply neutralization of the threat by absorbing it. Finally, emotions of the two friends are turned upside down several times and gradually, the intensity of those emotions increases to the edge of insanity. The author skilfully describes differences in extreme emotions from a sudden burst of terror and uncontrollable shaking and movements to “tears of terror” and psychical collapse. Also, moments when the narrator‟s feelings jump from worshipping awe to hopelessness and dread are depicted in a very vivid and detailed way. The impact of this story on the Victorian readers must have been immense. As E. Wagenknecht wrote about The Willows in his critical essay: “The threat embodied in a malignant departed spirit confined to a particular room or house is one thing, but when the world itself haunts its helpless victim, what is he to do?” 20 If we relate this statement to treatment of the world (or nature) by people in the Victorian era, it is for sure that nature had every right to be angry or even yearn for vengeance, for the Industrial Revolution initiated not only a new age of technological progress but at the same time it gave an impulse for ongoing exploitation of natural resources leading to increasingly serious devastation of the environment.
20 Wagenknecht, Edward. "Algernon Blackwood." Seven Masters of Supernatural Fiction. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991. 71-94. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Vol. 107. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 Apr. 2013.
47
Conclusion
In the introduction, I stated as one of my goals to examine significant supernatural elements in connection with impact on the reader
During the analysis of The White People I realized that repeated associations to trespassing into another - forbidden – dimension causing violation of natural laws must have had strong impacts on the Victorian minds but modern reader would not be scared at all. However, the possibility of losing control of our mind and reality is still a very strong argument, especially when it happens unconsciously.
The story The Great God Pan shows a complex scheme of topics which works together. Unchained sexuality of Helen must have shocked the Victorian readers, however, from today's point of view, there are just hints which would not offend anybody. The concept of sin from the previous story is applied in a slightly different way because Mary is a victim; she 'sinned' unintentionally and her daughter Helen is a mere aberration, which does not belong to our reality but corrupts it. The power of the story, similarly as in Blackwood's The Willows, dwells in limited description of the supernatural forces themselves, leaving reader's imagination and fantasy to create their own image – it is a hint that the other reality is beyond our grasp, it is beyond understanding; even the horror or awe caused by these forces is inexpressible.
The Willows analysis showed Blackwood's incredible ability to escalate the plot on the whole extent of the story, attacking reason of people by forces which cannot be defeated by rationality. Also, there are possible hints that the nature could be angry with people of the Victorian era because of the Industrial Revolution that started destruction of the environment.
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