The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption Gothic Literature from 1794—present Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. Foreword by Marie Mulvey-Roberts The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption; Gothic Literature from 1794 - present Copyright (c) 2012 by Tyler R. Tichelaar. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tichelaar, Tyler R. The Gothic wanderer : from transgression to redemption : Gothic literature from 1794 - present / Tyler R. Tichelaar. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61599-138-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-61599- 139-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-61599-140-2 (ebook) 1. English fiction--19th century--History and criticism. 2. Vampires in literature. 3. Gothic revival (Literature)--Great Britain. 4. Horror tales, English--History and criticism. 5. Horror tales, American--History and criticism. I. Title. PR868.T3T53 2012 823'.0872909--dc23 2011047323 No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Inquiries should be addressed to: Modern History Press, an imprint of Loving Healing Press 5145 Pontiac Trail Ann Arbor, MI 48105 www.ModernHistoryPress.com [email protected] Tollfree (USA/CAN): 888-761-6268 London, England: 44-20-331-81304 Distributed by Ingram Book Group (USA/CAN), Bertram's Books (UK), Hachette Livre (FR), Agapea (SP). eBook editions available for Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, Kobo reader and other platforms. To all those in this modern age who wander, feeling lost: My fellow wanderers, May you find your reward and your rest. Also by Tyler R. Tichelaar The Marquette Trilogy Iron Pioneers The Queen City Superior Heritage More Historical Fiction Narrow Lives The Only Thing That Lasts Nonfiction My Marquette: Explore the Queen City of the North Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers with Victor R. Volkman and Irene Watson Contents Acknowledgments v Foreword by Marie Mulvey-Roberts vii Introduction ix Our Long Love Affair with the Gothic ix PART I - Creating the Gothic Wanderer 1 Chapter I – The Gothic Wanderer’s Origins in the French Revolution 1 The Optimism of Romantic Poets 1 Family as a Metaphor for Political Order 3 Conspiracy Theories in Gothic Literature 8 Rise of the Gothic Wanderer 10 Chapter II – Paradise Lost and the Legitimacy of Transgression 13 Primogeniture and Transgressions Against the Family 17 Feminine Gothic Revisions of Paradise Lost 21 The Mysteries of Udolpho: Eve’s Vindication 23 Masculine Gothic Revisions of Paradise Lost 29 The Monk: Condemning the Transgressor 34 Melmoth the Wanderer: A Sympathetic Transgressor 37 Conclusion 40 Chapter III – The Wandering Jew 43 The Monk: Creation of the Gothic Wandering Jew 46 “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”: Adapting the Wandering Jew 48 St. Leon: A Wandering Jew with Rosicrucian Secrets 50 Melmoth the Wanderer and Anti-Semitism 53 Chapter IV – The Rosicrucian Gothic Wanderer 59 The Rosicrucians’ Origins 59 St. Leon: Rosicrucianism and the Evolution of Reason 63 St. Irvyne: Rosicrucianism and the Rejection of Atheism 75 Melmoth the Wanderer: The Sympathetic Rosicrucian 77 Conclusion 79 ii Tyler R. Tichelaar Chapter V – Gambling as Gothic Transgression 81 The Mysteries of Udolpho: Gambling as a Threat to Love 85 St. Leon: Gambling Destroys the Family 88 The Vampyre: Money Circulating Like Blood 92 Ernestus Berchtold: Gambling and Incest 94 Conclusion 97 PART II - Subversive Gothic Wanderers 99 Chapter VI – “A Wandering Jewess”: Fanny Burney’s The Wanderer as Gothic Novel 101 The Wanderer as a Revision of Evelina 102 Juliet as Female Gothic Wanderer 105 Female Identity 108 Women’s Employment as Gothic Horror 112 Juliet’s Metamorphoses and Immortality 113 Gothic Forest Scenes and Anti-Romanticism 116 Stonehenge: Symbol of the Immortal Soul 123 Chapter VII – The Existential Gothic Wanderer: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Last Man 129 Frankenstein: Critical History and Position in the Gothic Wanderer Tradition 129 Rosicrucian Elements in Frankenstein 131 Frankenstein as Existential Revision of Paradise Lost 134 The French Revolution, Illegitimacy, and the Family in Frankenstein 144 Frankenstein’s Existential Ending 147 The Last Man: The Rejection of Romanticism 149 The Sibyl: Immortality and Prophecy 150 Lionel Verney as Gothic Wanderer 151 The Existential Plague 153 The Gamble with Death 156 The End of Human History: Deconstructing Lionel’s Manuscript and Shelley’s Novel 158 Conclusion 162 PART III - From Transgression to Redemption 163 Chapter VIII – Teufelsdrockh as Gothic Wanderer and Everyman: Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus 165 Teufelsdrockh’s Christian Origins 166 Carlyle’s Theory of Symbols 168 Teufelsdrockh as Gothic Wanderer 169 Teufelsdrockh’s Despair 172 The Metamorphosis from Wandering Jew to Everyman 174 Natural Supernaturalism: Reinventing the Gothic 176 Gothic Structure and Narrative Strategy 177 The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption iii Chapter IX – The Gothic Wanderer Redeemed: Edward Bulwer- Lytton’s Zanoni and Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities 183 Zanoni: Redemption of the Rosicrucian 184 Dickens’ Carlylean Gothic 192 A Tale of Two Cities: Rosicrucian Immortality and Christian Redemption 195 Chapter X – The Gothic Wanderer at Rest: Dracula and the Vampiric Tradition 209 Origins and Early Literary Uses of the Vampire Legend 210 Glenarvon and the Byronic Vampire 213 The Vampyre: Establishing Fictional Vampire Elements 220 Varney the (Sympathetic) Vampyre 223 Dracula’s Historical Origins 227 Dracula: The New Wandering Jew and Anti-Semitism 229 Dracula as Antichrist: The Gothic Redemption of Catholicism 234 The Redemption of Dracula 238 Chapter XI - Modern Interpretations: from Wanderer to Superhero 245 The End of Fear: The Gothic Wanderer’s Evolution to Superhero 245 Evolution and the Gothic 245 The Imperial Gothic 247 Tarzan: The Gothic Wanderer Turned Superhero 249 Tarzan’s Superhero Literary Descendants 252 The Modern Heroic Vampire 254 Conclusion 258 Bibliography 261 Primary Works 261 Films 266 Secondary Works 266 Index 281 About the Author 290 Acknowledgments This book began as my dissertation at Western Michigan University, so first I would like to thank my dissertation committee, Scott Dykstra, Jil Larson, and Dale Porter, for all the hours spent reading and commenting upon this work. Next, I thank my publisher Victor Volkman of Modern History Press for suggesting the expansion of this study to the modern day treatments of the Gothic. Thank you to Susan Siferd for all her moral support during the writing of the dissertation, and for the memories of a wonderful trip to England to present at the Edward Bulwer-Lytton conference and to lay flowers on Fanny Burney’s grave. I thank Irene Watson for helping me to reconsider this book as more than an academic, scholarly work, but one which can resonate with why the Gothic matters to us today. Thank you to Diana Deluca for her many suggestions to make the argument more attractive to readers. Thank you to Larry Alexander for suggestions of modern “Gothic” novels I might otherwise not have considered. To my parents and brother, who did not understand but permitted my early desire to have a dusty bedroom so it would feel like a haunted house, my wearing plastic vampire teeth, or my constantly quoting lines from my record A Story of Dracula, The Wolfman, and Frankenstein. Finally, to my literary ancestors, the great writers of the Gothic, especially: Mrs. Radcliffe, Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Bram Stoker My early and best teachers of what makes good writing. Foreword The classic Gothic novel is stocked with villains, swooning heroines, rescuing heroes and banditti, but there is no character quite as compelling as that of the eternal wanderer. The idea of an individual outliving genera- tions and witnessing important events throughout history has always been intriguing. Ranging even further than Woody Allen’s Zelig, who keeps popping up at key historical moments during the twentieth century, he can boast with the best and the worst of them: “I was there.” Just like the wanderer, this book takes a chronological path to span centuries, step by step, chapter by chapter. Having entered Gothic literature in the form of the Wandering Jew in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, this figure, as Tyler R. Tichelaar shows, continues to wander into other novels in various guises from the Rosicrucian sage, through the Female Everywoman, to those of Bram Stoker and Stephenie Meyers’ vampires. As a not-so-distant relative of Dr. Faustus, these Gothic characters invariably choose to become monsters by consenting to the gift of bodily eternal life, though some have immortality thrust upon them. The Romantics cast their wanderers as relatively benign figures, but here we see the way in which they wander out of the trammels of Romantic convention into Gothic spaces. In common with the captain of the ghost ship, The Flying Dutchman, another famous wanderer whose voyages circumnavigate the globe, the entire earth becomes the terrain of such wanderings, as well as the stage for an eternity of suffering, a microcosm of the human condition. The Gothic wanderer occupies a perplexing domain in space and time. As a being outside nature whose protracted existence is an aberration, his timelessness seems to cut him off from history, in the sense that he remains always outside it. Marked out in some way, he has become the ultimate embodiment of the other, whose destiny is to walk alone. His very monstrosity is a symptom of his rejection. This state of exile means that the wanderer is always on the edge and at the edge, a monster of the in- between and as such, the supreme outsider. Indeed, he reflects back to the Gothic, its own fascination with borders and transgression.