The Victorian Fear of Degeneration in Literature - Essay Example

The Victorian Fear of Degeneration in Literature The Victorian era was a time of drastic change in Britain, as the development of new technologies demanded a revolution of politics, society and culture. As Matthew Sweet notes in his introduction to Inventing the Victorians, the sheer volume of advertisements in contemporary newspapers shows that Victorian society was intoxicated on the sense of its own modernity (Sweet, 2002, p.xi). People were overwhelmed with the new. But this seemingly-unstoppable drive was hindered by an underlying terror that this modern world would explode into something unmanageable. Victorian culture was defined “by a divide between its respectable surface and its dark underworld” (Sweet, 2002, p.ix). Literature such as Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) encapsulate this fear of decadence spilling over into degeneracy, of an excess of good turning into something rotten. Scientific theories also helped to diminish the hold of religion, meaning that a society which had previously seen morality as a bastion of religion began to worry that without faith, there would be no impetus to be good. This essay will look at Stevensons most famous novel, with reference to other important pieces of literature of the late nineteenth century, to examine how gender played into this idea, and to show that the tipping point which turned indulgence to savagery was a primary concern for Victorian society. But in order to truly understand how the twin concepts of progression and regression developed, it is necessary to return to the Enlightenment – most notably to the idea of the state of nature, which evolved through Hobbes and Rousseau writings on politics. Although some authors, such as Locke, idealized the state of nature as a state of innate human reason, others saw it as a threat to the very fabric of society, believing that without laws, people would automatically revert to violent behaviour towards others. This thought remained in the back of the Victorian mind as society and science forged ahead. It was left to the artists of the time to reflect on this very real fear. Robert Louis Stevenson, as a sickly person, was more familiar than most other writers with contemporary medical advances. Drawing on the concept of medicine gone wrong initiated by Mary Shelley over sixty years before, the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) records second-hand the experience of a doctor who manages to split the contradictory halves of his personality into two distinct beings so that his professional personality would be “no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil” (Stevenson, 1886, p.84). Narrated in the third person from the perspective of lawyer Gabriel Utterson, Stevenson employs a morally neutral tone throughout, shaping the readers own attitude towards Jekylls transformation. Utterson is tolerant and “eminently human” (Stevenson, 1886, p.1), and as such the reader is induced to recognize the humanity of Jekylls predicament, rather than dismissing him – and the story – as monstrous, and therefore irrelevant to human experience. The temptation to read the story as entertainment rather than as a deep examination of universal human impulses is dashed by Uttersons serious tone. But Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde a deep examination of universal human impulses, or does it just discuss the experience of men? It is notable that in the list of characters, scarcely a woman appears – a maid and a female houseservant exist within the realm of the novella. Film adaptations of the novel generally introduce a potential fiancée or girlfriend for both of the main characters, as Stevensons story on its own is not simply devoid of women, but contains characters who actively push women away. Jekyll notes that Hyde “smote [a woman] in the face” (Stevenson, 1886, p.104) after she did nothing more than interrupt him to offer him a match. This is reflective of a larger rejection of womanhood, and hence of a wholesale acceptance of the many different aspects of masculinity. It has been suggested that Stevensons original novella was instead a sly exploration of ambiguous sexuality. Dryden notes that Stevensons own sexual identity remains unclear (2003, p.98), and the story could be interpreted as a reaction to the infamous 1885 Labouchère Amendment, which criminalized all forms of contact (whether sexual or not) between homosexual men (McKenna, 2004, p.110). Stevenson uses words such as “queer” (Stevenson, 1886, p.60) to describe Hyde – it must, however, be remembered that this word was not associated with homosexuality until 1922 (Etymonline), even though some scholars have argued that Stevensons use “propelled them towards that destination” (Dryden, 2003, p.99). In a story of “repression” (Dryden, 2003, p.99) Hyde represents the deviant sexuality of late Victorian England, a member of and a threat to its active homosexual subculture. Oscar Wilde “stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of [his] age” (Wilde, 1897, p.1017), but Stevenson quietly examined it. Interestingly, the outward manifestation of degeneration was the breakdown of male-female relationships. Another story of personal degeneracy through homosexuality is Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). However, the undercurrent of men loving men, or Uranianism as this phenomenon was generally known at the time, is only available to those readers who wish to read it as such – exactly as in Stevensons work. “What Dorian Grays sins are, no one knows” (Dryden, 2003, p.3). It is up to the reader to decide whether the “yellow book” (Wilde, 1890, p.85) is really Joris-Karl Huysmans A Rebours, the strange novel which, it is said, catalysed Wildes realization of his sexual preferences during his honeymoon (McKenna, 2004, p.79). The only prominent example of homosexuality in a novel littered with oblique references thereto is the relationship between the artist Basil Hallward and Dorian himself. Basil confesses that he finds Dorian “so fascinating that, if [he] allowed it to do so, [Dorian] would absorb [Basils] whole nature, [Basils] whole soul, [Basils] very art itself” (Wilde, 1890, p.6). Although to compare homosexual with heterosexual relationships is by nature fallacious, conjecture on whether Basil or Dorian would have been contemporaneously interpreted as the woman is interesting. This idea will be returned to later in the essay. Like Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dorian Gray plays on the horror of our own selves – a horror which was magnified a few years later by Wildes own eventual downfall. Both Dorian and his author personify the manifestation of this fear: their lack of morality swells into a grotesque climax from which they never fully recovered. The moral is clear: excess indulgence leads one straight to death. However, is the moral really that clear? The ending of The Picture of Dorian Gray has been described as half-hearted at best. After all, a lifetime of thrift and frugality leads one straight to death anyway. Dorians suffering lasts only momentarily. A few moments of anguish and suicidal pain cannot be given equal weight as his extended lifetime of consequence-free luxury – the length of Dorians life is never explicitly stated in the text, but the most recent film adaptation seems to have him retain his youthful image for at least forty years (Dorian Gray, 2009). Wildes own hedonism comes through strongly despite the moralistic ending, beginning with the preface which lays out his philosophy: an oft-repeated and extremely famous phrase is that “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all” (Wilde, 1890, p.1). It seems unlikely that one of the greatest decadents of the fin-de-siècle was preaching the evils of his own way of life by killing Dorian, and so in this tract of hedonism we are subtly induced to disregard religion, and other external institutions which provide instructions on how to live life, and instead to make ones own morality. The brevity of Dorians suicide is not specifically an endorsement for his particular way of life, but rather an advertisement for choosing ones own path. Bottings fear of self-corruption does not factor in this story; instead Wilde promotes decadence without inevitable degeneration. Both of these literature focus on the male experience of hedonism and self-destruction. Although women play a role in The Picture of Dorian Gray, they are mainly ornamental – as were, sadly, the women in Wildes life. As mentioned above, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde conversely is devoid of any women, ornamental or not. That said, it would not be entirely fair to say that womanhood is absent from Jekyll and Hyde. The very signal which reveals Jekylls transformation has undertones of femininity: Jekyll notices that his “large, firm, white and comely” hand becomes “lean, corded, knuckly, of a dusky pallor, and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair” (my italics) (Stevenson, 1886, p.93). Over a century later, this suggests a more macho masculinity, provided by an excess of testosterone; at the time, it was a “chilling evocation of buried female energy” (Doane & Hodges), and plays into an entire web of narrative descriptions of Hyde in womanly terms. Jekylls transformation into Hyde is referred to as “hysteria” (Stevenson, 78), a word which originally referred to a “neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus” (Etymonline). Stevensons argument is a monster of various misogynistic thoughts, which boils down to crazed men being comparable to normal women. In texts authored by women, the fear of degeneracy is often not manifested in female characters. This fits in with the idea that corrupted men are brought down to the level of uncorrupted women. Brontës Jane Eyre (1847), despite being widely hailed as one of the first feminist texts (Peters, 2002, p.77), is one such book: the damaged and angry Mr Rochester is seen as the perfect match for upright Jane. To return to the earlier example of The Picture of Dorian Gray, both Dorian and Jane create their own morality without guidance from religious convention. However, Jane uses this freedom to act in a morally and ethically responsible manner, even lamenting her own “moral degradation” (Brontë, 1847, Ch.XXVIII). Brontë demonstrates that women are innately more sturdy-minded than men, but contributes to the overarching theme that women are of lesser mental capacity to begin with. The obvious counter-example of this is Christina Rossettis 1862 Goblin Market, in which one of the title characters indulges in a sexualized fruit-eating orgy. The motif of a fallen woman is one which recurs throughout all historical literature, not to mention history itself – George Eliot once begged a colleague to keep her identity a secret after he identified her as the author of a particular article, the effect of which “would be a little counteracted if the author were known to be a woman – and a fallen woman at that” (Maddox, 2009, p.86). But in Goblin Market, Laura receives no punishment for her downfall. Instead she becomes a wife “with children of [her] own” (x), fulfilling a “girls primary task” (Maddox, 2009, p.1) despite being sullied by her earlier indiscretions. The final lines of the poem express a moral to do with sisterly love. Rossetti has a clear opportunity to condemn the sensuality of Lauras youthful desires, and pointedly refuses to do so, celebrating instead Lizzies sacrifice. The story of Dr Jekyll spawned a myth of the mad doctor which even now “registers profound cultural anxiety about the medical and scientific professions” (Newitz, 2006, p.54). Although the duality of human nature had long been accepted as part of Christian theology, Stevensons novella was less a condemnation of the phenomenon than an examination thereof. Similarly, Wilde suggested that a dichotomous personality could be enjoyed, and Brontë and Rossetti showed that this could be done without destroying oneself. However, this conclusion is far too simple to be accurate. The Victorian fear of degradation must be shown completely, with all of its facets discussed. It is not that everyone was afraid of corrupting oneself with excessive luxury; it was that men saw themselves turning into women by succumbing to the new joys of life created by advanced technologies. The overwhelming sense of personal degeneration into immorality seems to be a typically misogynistic one: men who lose their minds turn into women, whereas women who lose their minds are indistinguishable from women who do not. Works Cited Brontë, J. 1847. Jane Eyre [web]. Project Gutenberg. Available at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1260 [21 April 2011]. Doane, J. and D. Hodges. Year. Book. Quoted in lecture. Dorian Gray, 2009. [Film] Directed by Oliver Parker. UK: Momentum Pictures. Douglas Peters, J. 2002. Feminist Metafiction and the Evolution of the British Novel. Gainesville: University Press Florida. Dryden, L. 2003. The Modern Gothic and Literary Doubles: Stevenson, Wilde and Wells. London: Macmillan. Maddox, B. 2009. George Eliot: Novelist, Lover, Wife. London: HarperPress. McKenna, N. 2004. The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. London: Basic Books. Newitz, A. 2006. Pretend Were Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture. California: Duke University Press. Online Etymology Dictionary [web]. Etymonline. Available at http://www.etymonline.com [21 April 2011] Rossetti, C. 1862. “Goblin Market.” Available at http://plexipages.com/reflections/goblin.html [21 April 2011]. Stevenson, R.L. 1886. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde [web]. Project Gutenberg. Available at http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42/pg42.html [21 April 2011]. Sweet, Matthew. 2002. Inventing the Victorians. London: Faber & Faber. Wilde, O. 1890. The Picture of Dorian Gray [web]. Project Gutenberg. Available at http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=2034430&pageno=1 [21 April 2011]. Wilde, O. 1897. De Profundis. In: T. Brown, O.D. Edwards, M. Holland, V. Holland, D. Kiberd, eds. 2003. Collected Works of Oscar Wilde. London: Collins Classics. Read More