History, Power and Monstrosity from Shakespeare to the Fin De Siecle
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_________________________________________________________________________Swansea University E-Theses History, power and monstrosity from Shakespeare to the fin de siecle. Roberts, Evan David How to cite: _________________________________________________________________________ Roberts, Evan David (2007) History, power and monstrosity from Shakespeare to the fin de siecle.. thesis, Swansea University. http://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa43132 Use policy: _________________________________________________________________________ This item is brought to you by Swansea University. Any person downloading material is agreeing to abide by the terms of the repository licence: copies of full text items may be used or reproduced in any format or medium, without prior permission for personal research or study, educational or non-commercial purposes only. The copyright for any work remains with the original author unless otherwise specified. The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holder. Permission for multiple reproductions should be obtained from the original author. Authors are personally responsible for adhering to copyright and publisher restrictions when uploading content to the repository. Please link to the metadata record in the Swansea University repository, Cronfa (link given in the citation reference above.) http://www.swansea.ac.uk/library/researchsupport/ris-support/ History, Power and Monstrosity from Shakespeare toFin the de Siecle. Candidate Name: Evan David Roberts. Student Number: 155235. Submitted to the University of Wales in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English University of Wales Swansea 2006/2007. ProQuest Number: 10821524 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10821524 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 SUMMARY. This thesis examines the historical significance of literary representations of monsters and monstrosity over several centuries, in the belief that literary monstrosity is symptomatic of wider anxieties concerning contemporary fears of historical change during periods of potentially revolutionary social upheaval. This leads to the conclusion that history itself thus becomes monstrous, through symbolising a disruptive, chaotic, and above all uncanny return of such repressed fears from the monstrous past of the British bourgeoisie. My first chapter examines how Renaissance authors such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and John Milton use monstrosity to depict a nascent bourgeoisie’s fears of increasing royal and aristocratic tyranny. Following this, my second chapter investigates how the Monster becomes an overdetermined cultural sign of revolutionary historical change in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is discussed in my third chapter, with fears of monstrous foreign invaders showing the fin-de-siecle bourgeoisie as haunted, both by their horrific past, and by a future loss of power to radical historical forces represented above all by the monstrous New Woman. In my fourth chapter, H. G. Wells’s scientific romances embody the fin- de-siecle bourgeoisie’s unease at their increasing dependence upon monstrous science to maintain their power, especially since its military applications would soon bleed their empire dry in the First World War. My fifth chapter, meanwhile, explains how monstrous criminals in texts by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Oscar Wilde show the irruption of uncanny history into the ideological self-image of the fin-de-siecle social order. I shall then conclude by reaffirming the contribution that all this makes to advancing the study of monstrosity, and in particular to exploring connections between history and the monstrous. DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signed (candidate) Date ................ STATEMENT 1 This thesis is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. Where correction services have been used, the extent and nature of the correction is clearly marked in a footnote(s). Other sources are acknowledged by footnotes giving explicit references. A bibliography is appended. Signed (candidate) D ate I .................... STATEMENT 2 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed (candidate) Date..... CONTENTS. Acknowledgements............................................................................................Page 6. Abbreviations Page 7. Introduction Page 8. Notes to Introduction Page 41. Chapter One: ‘I have’t, it is engendered! Hell and night / Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light...’: Monstrous Historical Change and the Tyrannical Renaissance Texts of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Milton Page 42. Notes to Chapter One Page 91. Chapter Two: ‘I myself have been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed’: Revolutionary History and the PowerFrankenstein’s of Monstrous ‘New Man’ Page 92. Notes to Chapter Two.................................................................................... Page 135. Chapter Three: ‘It is nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, Powers of their own which mere ‘‘modernity’’ cannot kill...’: Undead History and Monstrous InvasionsDracula in Page 136. Notes to Chapter Three.................................................................................Page 193. Chapter Four: ‘With infinite complacency men went...about their little affairs, serene in...their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment...’: Science, Power, and H. G. Wells’s Monstrous Futures...........................................................................Page 194. Notes to Chapter Four...................................................................................Page 239. Chapter Five: ‘Culture and corruption...I have known something of both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found together...’: Uncanny History and Unstable Criminality in the Monstrous Cases of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde Page 240. Notes to Chapter Five.................................................................................... Page 283. Conclusion Page 284. Notes to Conclusion Page 293. Bibliography................................................................................................... Page 294. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. This thesis is dedicated both to my supervisors, Dr. Steve Vine and Professor Ann Heilmann, who have been wise and informative throughout, and to my long-suffering parents, who have been unbelievably patient and supportive throughout. Free at last! ABBREVIATIONS. IDM= The Island of Doctor Moreau (Wells, H. G.). IM= The Invisible Man (Wells, H. G.). JP = Journalism and Prophecy, 1893-1946 (Wells, H. G.). TM= The Time Machine (Wells, H. G.). WW= War of the Worlds (Wells, H. G.). (See Bibliography for full details). INTRODUCTION. Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionising themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed language... (Marx, in McLellan, 63). Anyone who fights with monsters should take care that he does not himself become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes back into you... (Nietzsche,Beyond Good and Evil, 68). The British Empire has always encountered difficulty in distinguishing between its heroes and its monsters... (Moore and O’Neill et al., League of Extraordinary Gentlemen , 6). One has no wish to be devoured by alien monstrosities - even in the cause of political progress... (Doctor Who: Carnival of Monsters. Dir. Barry Letts. BBC Worldwide Ltd. 1973). As can be gauged from the above extracts, to become involved with monsters, whether you are simply trying to overcome them, or, more insidiously, to control and manipulate their fearsome power for your own purposes, is to risk suffering a far more pernicious, self-destructive fate than mere physical annihilation. Indeed, facing a monster usually involves dealing with your own potential contamination by