“I Feel The Dark”
Revision Draft
What is considered to be more terrifying or monstrous? Seeing a monster that is visibly identifiable or meeting an individual who you become acquainted with and one day you realize that they are a monster because of their actions or lack thereof? What scares us more in our modern times? We must establish what makes something monstrous; Jaws was considered a monster only after the shark began to kill humans. Mr. Hyde is viewed as an odd individual admittedly, having an unnamed ugliness about his visage, but upon his brutal murder of Sir Danvers Carew he is deemed a monster in the public eye because murder goes against the law but also proper human nature in Victorian England; Six & Thompson cite that the definition of monster during the time this text and others were made was that “monster” implied anything that was outside of normative European behavior (pg. 251). Imagine if Mr. Hyde looked the exact same way he is described in Stevenson’s text but instead of being an unruly individual he is a kind and proper man who is well liked. What if Dr. Jekyll’s potion only changed his appearance but not his demeanor? It is likely that Mr. Hyde would be welcomed into London society the same way any kind and proper gentleman would. Imagine if Frankenstein’s monster woke up and was immediately eloquent and proper, he still had the appearance of being put together from numerous corpses yet was able to hold engaging conversations with the best of Victorian Era intellectuals. It is not physical monstrosity that we as a society began to fear but moral monstrosity that is exhibited during Victorian Times.
Today we see less horror in what is externally visible and more monstrosity in what lies beneath the discernable surface. The unseen ugliness that manifests these described individuals in the above paragraph that makes them monstrous is based on their actions and what they lack as normative humans that puts them under the category of “monster”. Why did this change come about? Psychologically we found that hidden monstrosity is more frightening to us because of the simple question of “who, why, and how?” In Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886) and Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/1891) we begin to see the fascination with monstrosity that is psychologically present (Six & Thompson, pg. 251). Consider how Mr. Hyde would be viewed as a monster if he looked normal on the outside, Stevenson uses Hyde’s external features to demonstrate that he is undeveloped and is such by his actions as well as his physical appearance. The descriptions of Hyde cite how he is short, hairy, ape-like, and a throwback to an organism from the dawn of time (pg. 252). Six & Thompson out this comparison as “…Henry Jekyll experiments with the creation of human life and the being which he creates will also end in an antagonistic relationship with him…explicitly the giving of bodily form to inner monstrosity…” (pg. 251). Any person we come across could have something dark and sinister that they hide from public eye, such as we see in The Picture of Dorian Gray where Dorian Gray is a beautiful man in the flesh yet his hedonistic actions make up his ugliness. It is the mystery of the monstrous; seeing a figure that is grotesque and terrifying, that terrorizes people in the streets leaves the observer no question that this is a monster. Seeing Dorian Gray on the street and knowing nothing about him leaves an observer’s mind to wander as to who he is behind closed doors and lets the mind manifest that he is as beautiful on the inside and in his actions as he is on the outside. To find the truth, that he is a being with a conscience that still commits terrible acts contradicts his physical appearance. How can someone look the way he does yet be so monstrous?
The contradiction of physical appearance versus internal identity is a way modern times has been able to create new monsters rather than trying to reimage the same accepted monsters in new environments and characters. A monster is viewed in these texts relative to their surroundings, the beautiful appearance of Dorian Gray means that the character must have a setting that interacts with their appearance; monsters are not just their appearance but also their actions and where these actions are committed. If we look at Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo’s physical appearance is juxtaposed to the beauty and grandeur that is one of the most iconic and beautiful structures in the modern world (Lee & Thompson, pg 244). In the case of Dorian Gray, we look at his handsome visage versus his ugly social actions that make him a monstrous individual. This comparison is evident where Dorian murders his friend and creator of the portrait Basil Hallward; Dorian sits and ruminates on this act the next morning in his stately, elegant manner after breakfast by reading French poetry and drawing but eventually visits an opium den by the docks in London. We have the terrible act of murdering a friend followed by a cultured passing of time with poetry reading and drawing in Gray’s lavish home, framed with visitation to a seedy part of London. Monstrosity transitions from appearance to moral quality. Mary Shelley touches upon this idea in her novel Frankenstein, where Victor Frankenstein, a respectable and moral man of science becomes in his own right a monster as his blind desire leads him to destroy his creation. Shelley demonstrates that putting aside your morality for the purpose of achieving one’s desire can result in the creation of something hideous; Shelley creates Victor’s ugliness as an actual, physical monster that is his own monstrousness made flesh (Six & Thompson, pg, 240).
Monstrosity as a description of morality becomes the tool of Victorian Era authors who wish to demonstrate the human condition with societal norms. The theme of morality is more evidently manipulated and demonstrated by Shelley, Stevenson, and Wilde who create some physical manifestation of the monstrous for comparison; Shelley’s Creature, Stevenson’s Mr. Hyde, and Wilde’s Portrait. Stevenson manipulates morality by displaying how not being morally developed can interact upon the modern world, inversely Wilde manipulates morality with the effects and influences of the modern world upon morality. Shelley hints at this with Victor’s pursuit of scientific exploration that influences his eventual decline into the monstrous by putting aside his morality (Six & Thompson, pg. 251). The progression of Dorian Gray’s morality is stressed in the opening chapters of the text where he is described by Basil Hallward as having a “simple and a beautiful nature…” (Wilde). Throughout the text Dorian’s innocent nature is paired with the word “white”, implying purity and being unscathed. Most of the references to Dorian’s “whiteness” is brought about by Basil who acts as Dorian’s externalized conscience. When Basil sees his portrait in Dorian’s study, he evokes the Bible “Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them white as snow” (Wilde). By killing Basil, Dorian takes a large step away from conventional morality and enters the realm of a complete, full on hedonistic lifestyle.
Some themes that reinforce the separation of the external form and the internal form in Wilde’s work are the emphasis of beauty and youth and the vanity of society. When Lord Henry first meets Dorian, he showers the boy will compliments on how handsome and youthful he is and how well these physical attributes will serve him in the public eye. Lord Henry’s ramblings go along with the long established idea that life is easier if you look good, to put things in layman’s terms. The example of a pretty woman being offered somewhere to sit on a public bench versus an aged older woman not being treated as well. Wilde stresses how societies concerns and values are immoral which is why he makes Dorian Gray the most handsome and youthful character in the text who is also the most immoral. Wilde attempts to hold a mirror to the face of Victorian London with his title character, as if to indicate that as long as an individual does not show their ugly immorality, they will be accepted loved by their peers. Wilde used the relatively new field of psychology alongside his manipulations of aesthetics to explain the how and why aesthetics are valued by Dorian and Lord Henry. At the time the field of science was the only way to measure and quantify aspects of life, all except aesthetics. Aesthetics emphasize the sensation of experiences which science cannot explain in a subjective matter; subjective experiences of sensations were what Lord Henry instructed Dorian to seek out with his beauty (Seagroatt, 1998). Dorian’s physical appearance and moral standing establish him as the monster that one would envy; Cohen’s Thesis (VI) of “Fear of the Monster is Really a Kind of Desire”. Cohen would say that we as readers want to dislike Dorian for his immoral actions yet we envy how he has this freedom to have a foot in both worlds, in a manner of speaking (Cohen, 17). Dorian’s character makes us wonder how he can still have a conscience that is present, even after the death of Basil, and he is still able to commit immoral acts while remaining a noted public figure. The reader wishes for Dorian to be the ugly monster that is the picture in his attic yet he remains the opposite and this fascinates the reader because it goes against our basic definition of monster. This link briefly breaks down Oscar Wilde and the creation of Dorian Gray as well as examples of cultural adaptations of the text.
Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil!” Dorian said this to his soon to be dead friend as an attempt to downplay that Dorian’s transformation from snow white youth to Gothic individual is not strange, this transformation could have occurred to anyone else if they were in his position. Dorian does not take responsibility for his actions, claiming he is a victim of his surroundings and that is what changes his morals. The physical monster appearance is no longer that of the ten foot creature, built from numerous corpses, gone is the creature from the Black Lagoon; we now fear the neighbor with two kids and a dog, who always has the door to his study locked. We fear those who go against societal norms that we take solace in. The true monster has no distinguished face but their moral code is black as night, hidden beneath their skin.
References:
Cohen, Jeffrey. “Monster Theory.” Reading Culture 1–25. Print
Six, Abigail Lee & Thompson, Hannah. “From Hideous to Hedonist: The Changing Face of the Nineteenth-Century Monster.” The Ashgate Research Company 237–255. Print
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2000. Print
Stevenson, R. L., The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2000. Print
Wilde, Oscar. Picture of Dorian Gray, Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2000. Print
Seagroatt, Heather. “Hard Science, Soft Pscyhology, and Amorphous Art in The Picture of Dorian Gray”. 1998. Print. Studies of English Literature, 1500–1900, Volume 38, No. 4. Nineteenth Century, Rice University
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