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“Am Ia Man and a Brother?”: Codifying Post-Evolution Theory Ape Figures

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“Am Ia Man and a Brother?”: Codifying Post-Evolution Theory Ape Figures “AM IA MAN AND A BROTHER?”: CODIFYING POST-EVOLUTION THEORY APE FIGURES Thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of A5 the requirements for the Degree EAGL Master of Arts •H 3 £ In English: Literature by Tauva MiLyse Hellie San Francisco, California January 2018 Copyright by Tauva MiLyse Hellie 2018 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read “Am I a Man and a Brother?”: Codifying Post-Evolution Theory Ape Figures by Tauva MiLyse Hellie, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in English: Literature at San Francisco State University. Gitanjali Shahani, Ph.D. Associate Professor “AM IA MAN AND A BROTHER?”: CODIFYING POST-EVOLUTION THEORY APE FIGURES Tauva MiLyse Hellie San Francisco, California 2018 Within the overlapping realms of popular and scientific Western discourses in the mid­ nineteenth century, the textual construction of the post-evolution theory ape figure contributed to a developing crisis of human identity that has been termed by Virginia Richter as “anthropological anxiety.” This thesis looks at the historically specific ways Punch’s satirical cartoon “Monkeyana” (1861), P.T. Bamum’s pithecanthropic spectacle advertisement What Is It? (c. 1860), Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), and the book and film King Kong (1932-1933) simultaneously affirm and problematize anthropological anxiety. Ultimately, the construction of these texts’ ape figures within the cultural milieu of evolution theory, antislavery, and colonial discourses opens up more complex webs of meaning making that challenge the Anglocentric, hierarchical construction of a human/animal binary. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my colleagues at Pacific Union College for their encouragement and support during this project—especially my mentor, Cynthia Westerbeck, to whom I will be forever grateful for the accountability she gave me as a writing partner during the summer of 2016.1 would also like to thank my advisor at San Francisco State University, Gitanjali Shahani, for her participation on my thesis committee. This work would not have been possible without the invaluable guidance of my thesis committee chair, Sara Hackenberg. Thank you for your thorough feedback and for helping me articulate my ideas with tea and conversation. I dedicate this thesis to my family. To my brother, Mychal, for his warm encouragement and interest in my topic. To my sister, Janae, for helping me persevere through the rough times and keep the end-goal in sight. Most of all, I dedicate this work to my parents, Mike and Lisa. Your multi-faceted support and abundant love made the journey to completing my degree possible. Thank you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures................................................................................................................... vii List of Appendices........................................................................................................... viii “Am I a Man and a Brother?”: An Introduction................................................................1 1. “What Is It?”: The Codification of Bamum’s “Marvellous” Ape Figure......................16 2. Codifying the Specter of the “Monstrous” Ape Figures’ Hands in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and King Kong............................................................................................33 Works Cited...................................................................................................................... 60 Appendices........................................................................................................................ 66 LIST OF FIGURES Figures Page 1. “Monkeyana” ..................................................................................................... 2 2. A ntislavery Medallion....................................................................................... 12 3. What Is It?—Gallery o f Wonders no. 12............................................................17 4. Considering “Lower Races of Mankind” as “Connecting Links in the Animal Kingdom”............................................................................................. 24 5. “Like Poe’s Famous Murders in the Rue Morgue”........................................... 39 6. King Kong, Facsimile Dust Jacket....................................................................41 LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix Page 1. “Monkeyana”: Full Page in Punch....................................................................... 66 2. “Like Poe’s Famous Mystery in the Rue Morgue”: A Transcript of the Main Article’s Text ............................................................................................ 67 1 “AM IA MAN AND A BROTHER?”: AN INTRODUCTION In the early 1860s, the British popular press operated as a vehicle for public commentary about Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), especially its theoretical implications for human origins. In this realm, discourse on organic development—the general concept behind what would become known as evolution theory—is frequently boiled down to an issue of monkeys and men.1 On the heels of the controversies stirred up by the Owen-Huxley “hippocampus debate” and the popular reception of Paul du Chaillu’s gorilla-hunting exploits in 1861, the London-based periodical Punch published a provocative image.2 “Monkeyana” (Figure 1) describes a 1 As Stephen J. Gould notes, neither Darwin, Lamarck, nor Haeckel used “the word evolution in the original editions of their great works. Darwin spoke o f ‘descent with modification,’ Lamarck of ‘transformisme.’ Haeckel preferred ‘Transmutations-Theorie’ or ‘Descendenz-Theorie.’” Because the term “evolution already had a technical meaning in...embryology,” Darwin, in particular, was loath to apply it to his theory of natural selection by means of modification. Expropriating the term from vernacular usage, “[e]volution entered the English language as a synonym for ‘descent with modification’ through the propaganda of Herbert Spencer. ... Evolution, to Spencer, was the overarching law of all development.” In this sense, and, indeed, in the vernacular usage, the term “was firmly tied to a concept of progress” (34-36). 2 The passionately-charged “great hippocampus debate” between Sir Richard Owen and Thomas Henry Huxley was widely publicized in the early 1860s, especially March and April, 1861, when the two anatomists countered one another in a series of articles (Blinderman and Joyce). As Gould synthesizes, Owen sought to distinguish Homo sapiens from anthropomorphic apes (and, by extension, all other animals) by arguing that only the human brain possessed “a small convolution” called the “hippocampus minor.” Huxley, drawing evidence from his own primate anatomy dissections in preparation for his forthcoming work, Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature, passionately disagreed. His work demonstrates “that all apes had a hippocampus, and that any discontinuity in the structure of primate brains lay between prosimians (lemurs and tarsiers) and all other primates (including humans), not between man and the great apes” (49). While Huxley asserted, based on these anatomical similarities, that the human and the anthropoid apes should share the same taxonomical status in the primate order, Owen proposed that the human species should be assigned to a new subclass of mammalia, which he called Archencephalia, to distinguish the human on the basis of the species’ unique mental capacity. Simultaneously, the adventurer- explorer Paul du Chaillu’s gorilla-hunting exploits and importations catapulted Britain into “gorilla-mania” in the early 1860s (Petzgold 60). Preceding the May-release of his popular book, Explorations & Adventures in Equatorial Africa, in February, 1861, “du Chaillu came to London on the invitation of the Royal Geographic Society, bringing along a large collection of gorilla bones and skins” and presenting a paper at the society’s annual meeting, all of which were covered by The London Review (59). Within the first two years of Explorations & Adventures publication, “more than 10,000 copies were sold, at the substantial price of one guinea (60). 2 Figure 1. “Monkeyana.” 3 placard-wearing gorilla that satirizes the taxonomic aspect of the so-called species question by parodying the well-known abolitionist slogan, “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” While the image prefaces a 13-stanza poem summarizing the scientific—and pseudoscientific—discourse concerning organic development that underscores the image’s visual ties with evolution theory, considered alone, “this image might be read as racist commentary just as easily as evolutionary commentary about species difference” (Fielder 509).3 Within the system of the image, the codes of science (evolution theory discourse) and race (antislavery discourse) seek to reaffirm, but ultimately problematize, the separate identity of the human from the animal that is constructed on both spatial and temporal axes. The image attempts to reaffirm the boundary between human and animal by poking fun at the absurdity of seeing a gorilla as “a Man and a Brother.” However, its inability to preference either an affirmative or negative answer to the gorilla’s question opens up the possibility for the dismantling of hierarchical order in nature that manages the status of living beings based on both species and, for humans, race. In this way, both
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