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Chemistry and Its Occult History in Victorian Speculative Fiction

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Chemistry and Its Occult History in Victorian Speculative Fiction Wilfrid Laurier University Scholars Commons @ Laurier Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) 2016 Strange Compositions: Chemistry and its Occult History in Victorian Speculative Fiction Susan Hroncek [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Hroncek, Susan, "Strange Compositions: Chemistry and its Occult History in Victorian Speculative Fiction" (2016). Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 1854. https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/1854 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Strange Compositions: Chemistry and its Occult History in Victorian Speculative Fiction by Susan Hroncek B. A. (Hons.) Brock University 2008 M. A. Brock University 2009 DISSERTATION Submitted to the Department of English and Film Studies Faculty of Arts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Doctor of Philosophy in English and Film Studies Wilfrid Laurier University 2016 Susan Hroncek © 2016 Hroncek i Abstract This dissertation examines how depictions of chemistry in Victorian literature are influenced by concerns regarding the history of chemistry and its relationship to the occult. Among these depictions, I consider non-fiction writings of the period, such as histories of science and articles from periodicals, but I focus on novels that prominently feature chemistry, including Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s A Strange Story (1862), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), George Griffith’s Olga Romanoff (1894), T. Mullet Ellis’s Zalma (1895), and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897). These texts link chemistry with its origins in alchemy, the occult, and the East in order to question chemistry’s legitimacy as a professional, materialist science and to critique the rapid progress of chemistry by foregrounding the threat that experimental substances posed to society. The frequency of negative depictions of chemistry during the Victorian period indicates how, despite discoveries that revolutionised industry and medicine, the British public regarded the science and its practitioners with suspicion. During a period as fascinated with origins as with progress, these texts expand upon the uncertainties of a society struggling with the tumultuous relationship between chemistry’s past, present, and future. Popular fiction responded to societal concerns about the origins of chemistry with speculative narratives that depict a collision between chemical innovations and elements of chemistry’s occult or Eastern past. In A Strange Story and Jekyll and Hyde, this clash results in nineteenth-century reinterpretations of the traditional alchemical quest for the Elixir of Life and prompts re-evaluations of the nineteenth-century vitalist debates and discourses on the existence of the soul. Meanwhile, Olga Romanoff, Zalma, and The Hroncek ii Beetle depict the monstrous return of chemistry’s marginalised histories—namely, of female and Eastern practitioners—to reclaim authority over chemical knowledge and new technologies, including chemical weapons and mind-altering potions. These five novels explore how the “nightmare” of chemistry’s origins—as early science historian Thomas Thomson dubbed them—not only influence contemporaneous chemical practice, but also impact future progress. Ultimately, these texts do not critique chemistry itself, but rather how scientists and governing bodies employed chemistry prior to both the popularisation of science fiction and the first recorded instance of atomic transmutation—when chemistry’s future, not its past, became the new nightmare. Hroncek iii Acknowledgements One may read and write about mad scientists and their creations without thankfully becoming one of them. Unlike Frankenstein and Jekyll, I was happy to share the process of creating my dissertation with others, and I am grateful for their assistance throughout the stages of planning, researching, writing, and revising this project. I would first like to acknowledge the contributions of Dr. Lynn Shakinovsky, who bravely stepped in to fill the role of my supervisor and promptly whipped my sprawling arguments into shape. Many thanks also to my committee members Dr. Maria DiCenzo, who first recommended the article on female mad scientists that led me to Olga Romanoff and Zalma, and to Dr. Markus Poetzsch, who kindly filled the role of third reader on a project well-underway. Thank you all for your feedback, guidance, and challenging questions that (I hope) have made me into a better, more thoughtful scholar. Thank you also to the various members of the English and Film Studies Reading Group who have, over the years, read and reviewed portions of this dissertation, from the first wild theories to the final revisions. Particular thanks must go to Maggie Clark, Anders Bergstrom, and Murrielle Michaud for their unfailing encouragement through the best and strangest of times. There are other spectres that haunt these pages, but I will end with thanks to my parents for their patient support of the lone writer in the family. The six long years of expectation may be over, but the odd hours and eccentric topics of conversation have only just begun. Hroncek iv Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii Introduction: Chemistry in the Victorian Literary Imagination ..................................1 2. Indefinite Compositions: Victorian Chemistry and Literature .......................................6 3. Isolating the Elements ...................................................................................................14 Chapter 1: On the Origins of Chemistry in Victorian Histories of Science ...............30 2. On Historiography ........................................................................................................34 3. Alchemy and Chemistry: 1830-1850 ............................................................................39 4. Later-Nineteenth Century Characterisations of Alchemy.............................................46 5. Chemistry’s Eastern Origins: Egypt and the Middle East ............................................55 Chapter 2: The “Border-land Between Natural Science and Imaginative Speculation”: Bulwer-Lytton’s A Strange Story ............................................................72 2. Bulwer-Lytton’s A Strange Story: Contexts and Criticism ...........................................77 3. The Secrets of Life and Death: Nineteenth-Century Vitalism ......................................84 4. At the “True Border-Land” and Beyond .......................................................................99 Chapter 3: Studies in the “Mystic and Transcendental”: Phosphorus and Spiritual Alchemy in Stevenson’s Strange Case ..........................................................................113 2. The Divided Science of Jekyll and Hyde ....................................................................116 3. Phosphorous and the “Particular Salt” ........................................................................129 4. Studies in “the Mystic and Transcendental”: Jekyll’s Spiritual Alchemy ..................141 Chapter 4: “They Would Take Me for a Witch or a Poisoner”: Female (Al)Chemists in Olga Romanoff and Zalma ........................................................................................151 2. Olga Romanoff and Zalma as Victorian Science Fiction ...........................................154 3. The Fin de Siècle Woman Scientist ............................................................................160 4. Chemistry, Witchcraft, and Transgression ..................................................................171 5. Poisons, Power, and the Spectre of Lucrezia Borgia ..................................................183 Chapter 5: “I Will Pit My Magic Against Yours”: Egyptian Science and Victorian Magic in Richard Marsh’s The Beetle ..........................................................................209 2. Western Science and the Eastern Occult in The Beetle ..............................................213 3. Alchemy, Monstrosity, and Gender in the Fin de Siècle Imperial Gothic ..................227 4. Invading the “Wizard’s Cave”: Chemistry as Magic ..................................................232 Coda: Transcending Magic: Alchemy and Chemistry Beyond the Fin de Siècle ............256 Works Cited .....................................................................................................................263 Hroncek v History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. — James Joyce, Ulysses Hroncek 1 Introduction: Chemistry in the Victorian Literary Imagination Chemistry especially has always had irresistible attractions for me from the enormous, the illimitable power which the knowledge of it confers. Chemists—I assert it emphatically—might sway, if they pleased, the destinies of humanity. – Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White One of the first histories of chemistry to appear in the nineteenth century, Thomas Thomson’s History of Chemistry
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