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Machen, Lovecraft, and Evolutionary Theory

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Machen, Lovecraft, and Evolutionary Theory i DEADLY LIGHT: MACHEN, LOVECRAFT, AND EVOLUTIONARY THEORY Jessica George A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy School of English, Communication and Philosophy Cardiff University March 2014 ii Abstract This thesis explores the relationship between evolutionary theory and the weird tale in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through readings of works by two of the writers most closely associated with the form, Arthur Machen (1863-1947) and H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), it argues that the weird tale engages consciously, even obsessively, with evolutionary theory and with its implications for the nature and status of the “human”. The introduction first explores the designation “weird tale”, arguing that it is perhaps less useful as a genre classification than as a moment in the reception of an idea, one in which the possible necessity of recalibrating our concept of the real is raised. In the aftermath of evolutionary theory, such a moment gave rise to anxieties around the nature and future of the “human” that took their life from its distant past. It goes on to discuss some of the studies which have considered these anxieties in relation to the Victorian novel and the late-nineteenth-century Gothic, and to argue that a similar full-length study of the weird work of Machen and Lovecraft is overdue. The first chapter considers the figure of the pre-human survival in Machen’s tales of lost races and pre-Christian religions, arguing that the figure of the fairy as pre-Celtic survival served as a focal point both for the anxieties surrounding humanity’s animal origins and for an unacknowledged attraction to the primitive Other. The second chapter discusses the pervasiveness of degeneration theory at the fin de siècle, and the ways in which works by both Machen and Lovecraft make use of it to depict the backsliding of both the individual human subject and of wider society, raising the suggestion that the degenerate is always already present within the contemporary human. In the third chapter, portrayals by both authors of hybridity come under consideration. The chapter places these tales in their historical context, with reference to the cultural anxieties surrounding the decline of empire, the rise of anti-immigration sentiment in the United States, and the emergence of the eugenics movement, and argues that these fears become tied to notions about the fitness or otherwise to survive of a “human” associated with Anglo-Saxon whiteness. The fourth and final chapter discusses Lovecraft’s portrayals of highly-advanced extraterrestrial civilisations, arguing that these stories partake of a Utopian impulse that nonetheless expresses itself via contemporary racist discourses, and that they both maintain the notion of a horrific primitive Other within the human and attempt to open up the possibility of a transhuman or posthuman future. The thesis concludes by considering these works in relation to the cyborg theory of Donna Haraway, suggesting that their portrayal of the necessity of inhabiting flux offers a new and less straightforwardly horrific way of thinking about human identity. iii Acknowledgements Completing this thesis has been a long process, undertaken at a difficult time, and I would never have been able to do so without those who have offered guidance, support, and unending patience along the way. I am grateful to my supervisors, Neil Badmington and Anthony Mandal, whose advice, support, and recommendations have been invaluable. I am also indebted to the encouragement of Katie Gramich. Thanks are due to the School of English, Communication and Philosophy for enabling me to carry out this project, and to present my work at conferences. Particularly valuable have been those organised by Hannah Priest at Hic Dragones—I have been glad of the opportunities to discuss the weird (in all senses of the term) with the like-minded. I would also like to thank Suzie Hathaway and all at ASSL, for their support and understanding as colleagues, as well as for their help with an endless stream of inter-library loans. Thanks also to the staff at Newport Central Library, for allowing me to spend afternoons rooting through the Machen archive. Last, but by no means least, thanks go to Mum, Becky and Gez, for their love and patience—and to Dad, for showing me stars. iv In memory of Brian George 1951-2012 v Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Introduction: Weird Notions 1 Chapter One: Survivals 19 Turanians, Troglodytes, and the Tylwyth Têg: The Little People Stories 35 Location and Liminality 39 The Good People? 43 The Human Thing 49 The Abhuman Within 53 Religion and Forbidden Knowledge: ‘The Turanians’, ‘The Ceremony’, and ‘The White 56 People’ Late Machen: The Green Round 68 Chapter Two: Degeneration 85 The ‘Novel of the White Powder’: Sex, Drugs, and Degeneration 102 ‘The Great God Pan’: Internal Forces? 107 ‘The Disordered Earth’: The Hereditary Threat in Lovecraft’s ‘The Lurking Fear’ 112 ‘An Accursed House’: Heredity and Environment in ‘The Rats in the Walls’ 126 ‘The Mound’ and the Decline of Civilisations 137 Chapter Three: Hybridities 160 Heredity, Deterioration, and Improvement: The Eugenics Movement 161 The Historical Moment in Britain and the United States 168 Evil Hybridities: ‘The Great God Pan’ and ‘The Dunwich Horror’ 176 The Self as Other: ‘Arthur Jermyn’ and ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ 204 Chapter Four: Futures 233 Utopian Impulses and Utopian Texts 239 Horrific Transhumanism: ‘The Whisperer in Darkness’ 250 Uncanny Utopias: ‘The Shadow Out of Time’ and ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ 266 Conclusion: Survivals (Redux), or, Apocalypse Never 309 Bibliography 316 1 Introduction: Weird Notions We may likewise infer that fear was expressed from an extremely remote period, in almost the same manner as it now is by man; namely, by trembling, the erection of the hair, cold perspiration, pallor, widely opened eyes, the relaxation of most of the muscles, and by the whole body cowering downwards or held motionless.1 Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form. Against it are discharged all the shafts of a materialistic sophistication which clings to frequently felt emotions and external events, and of a naively insipid idealism which deprecates the aesthetic motive and calls for a didactic literature to uplift the reader toward a suitable degree of smirking optimism. But in spite of all this opposition the weird tale has survived, developed, and attained remarkable heights of perfection; founded as it is on a profound and elementary principle whose appeal, if not always universal, must necessarily be poignant and permanent to minds of the requisite sensitiveness.2 H. P. Lovecraft, ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’ Fear is, in the Victorian anthropological sense, a ‘survival’. Like certain primitive tribes, this primitive emotion survives into the modern world unchanged. Like them, it represents the primal conditions of man and allows us to observe those conditions still at work. Moreover, it occupies the same place in the metaphor of development as do ‘primitive’ peoples: fear is an emotion to be controlled, suppressed, outgrown. Reason is cast as an adult emotion, just as western European man is an ‘adult’ on the scale of development. So, like primitive peoples, fear is to be kept under control. Yet like them, it is still there, not fully left behind, nor entirely dominated. In the arc of development, fear is perceived, disturbingly, as at the base. It retains its insurgent power and is liable—like mutiny—to break out.3 Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots 1 Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872; London: Fontana, 1999), p. 356. 2 H. P. Lovecraft, ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’, in Collected Essays Volume 2: Literary Criticism, ed. by S. T. Joshi (1927, revised 1933-34; New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004), pp. 82-135 (pp. 82-83). 3 Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 236. 2 In his ‘Notes on Writing Weird Fiction’, first published after his death in 1937, but circulated to his correspondents in 1933 in handwritten form, H. P. Lovecraft describes the aim of his stories as being ‘to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which for ever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis’.4 The horror tale, he asserts, in an echo of his earlier ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’ (1927, revised 1933-1934), is his chosen medium because fear ‘is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of nature-defying illusions’.5 Lovecraft’s choice of phrase here is interesting. Does the phrase ‘nature-defying illusions’ refer merely to fictional representations of the supernatural? Tales like ‘The Outsider’ (1926), ‘The Hound’ (1924), and the various “dream- cycle” stories derived from the work of Lord Dunsany would certainly appear to fit into this category. The emphasis Lovecraft places upon the unknown, both here and in ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’, suggests, however, a slightly different reading. The ‘picture of shattered natural law’ he seeks to create will allow us to see ‘beyond the radius of our sight and analysis’;6 it will effect a ‘defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space’.7 The true weird tale is not ‘one in which the horrors are finally explained away by natural means’,8 but nor is it simply a representation of an impossible event; rather, it requires a recalibration of our concept of the possible.
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