Month: October 2023 (Page 1 of 2)

SOURCE IDEAS:

“England is bad enough, I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness of purity. You have filled them with a madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you and Harry are inseparable” (183)

“Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood— his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had once called it. He knew he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption, and given horror to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that, of the lives that had crossed his own, it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him? (248).

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

These two passages, nearing the end of the novel, bring up themes of English society, corruption/influence, mirroring/doubling within Dorian and Harry, as well as this final hope/question of redemption and a correction of one’s past. The first quote I found interesting as it brings in a lot of commentary and critique of their society and the feelings at the turn of the century — also remembering ideas in the past chapters about corruption from books, which side of town was desirable or seedy and how people based their judgments off of one’s appearance and social actions. I liked the contrast to the first quote we see in this second excerpt, where Basil told all this to Dorian right before he saw the portrait, and only after Dorian murders does he begin to feel remorse and wish to atone. The questioning we see from Dorian and his rationale as he moves from the influences of Harry to Basil is intriguing. 

QUESTION: 

In terms of monsters, this shifting moment toward acknowledging his monstrous behaviors and deeds is something to think about further when we look for people to blame. I wonder what we, and readers at the time, could look to and grapple with regarding this idea of corruption and pleasures. Does Dorian perhaps represent this middle ground, swayed by both Basil and Harry…but which proved stronger and why? Dorian is his own person, unlike what we saw with Jekyll and Hyde; is Wilde’s choice to portray Dorian more as a blank slate, maybe reminiscent of critiques made way back in Frankenstein?

• From the Novel:

“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirros. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows tha the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics diagree, the artist is in accord with himelf. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensly. All art is quite useless”(Wilde 42)

Wilde, Oscar. “The Preface.” The Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Norman Page, Broadview Press, 2005, pp. 41–42.

“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions…He becomes an echo of someone elses music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him”(Wilde 58).

“To Realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for”(Wilde 58).

“Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves” (Wilde 97)”

Wilde, Oscar.” The Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Norman Page, Broadview Press, 2005.

• Critical Commentary:

“…Caron then painted Dorian as a classic example of a young person ruined by corrupting influences, observing that the novel described “that boy’s life” from the time when “corruption [is] implanted in his mind from his conversation with Lord Henry Wanton” up to the point where Dorian has indulged in “all the vices that can be imagined.” Carson seems to have regarded this opening tableau as merely an instance of what we might call “The obsenity effect,” depicted within the story and capable of corrupting the reader in precisely the same way that Lord Henry corrupts Dorian”(763).

Stern, simon.”Wilde’s obscenity effect: influence and immorality in “the picture of dorian gray.” The review of english studies, vol. 68, no 286. 2017. pp. 756-772.

• Historical Context:

“The luxuriously elaborate details of his “artistic hedonism” are too suggestive of South Kensington Museum and aesthetic Encyclopedias. A truer art would have avoided both the glittering conceits, which bedeck the body of the story, and the unavowing suggestiveness which lurks in its spirit. Poisonous! Yes.”

Punch Magazine, “our booking office” July 19, 1890. https://archive.org/details/punchvol98a99lemouoft/punchvol98a99lemouoft/page/340/mode/2up?q=wilde

• Visual

“Iconography of Oscar Wilde.” Clark Library, 7 Apr. 2016, clarklibrary.ucla.edu/collections/oscar-wilde/iconography/.

SOURCE IDEAS:

“To paint with very broad brush strokes, this stand of literature diversified in the nineteenth Century into a variety of forms such as the ‘Newgate Novel,’ the ‘novel of sensation,” and horror stories, ghost stories and science fiction. Like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at the start of the nineteenth Century, Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde at its end is therefore concerned not only with the modern theme of interior subjectivity and psychological responsibility, or with medically or socially determinist accounts of criminality such as those dominant Dickens’ later work, but also with an older theme of ‘hellish’ evil, or ‘the slime of the pit’ appearing on earth”(115).

“Like defendants relying on states of absence of mind, double consciousness or possession by the devil, Jeckyll seeks to displace not only his desire but his responsibility onto Hyde, whom he himself then diagnoses as suffering from ‘moral insanity’. But the story also makes swingering moral evaluation…Jekyll describes Hyde as ‘wicked’ and ‘evil,’ as ‘the slime of the pit…that insurgent horror…Hyde resides within Jekyll — and hence represents the ultimate crisis of judgment: the unitary subject split asunder, negating a straightforward attribution of ‘factual’ responsibility; that split also undermines the older discourse of evaluation of character by representing character, too, as ambivalent and as split”(126)

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

I think these two passages are really interesting, considering some of our lingering questions at the end of the novel and what we should do about the facts of ‘the case’ and make a judgment. I was interested in the first excerpt as it provides some grounding to the novel in general and spoke to some of my thinking around the discourses of the end of the century and looking back on the novels we have read from Shelleys at the beginning of the era to now Stevenson and soon to be Wilde at the end. I thought back to ENG 229, and we looked at what the novel was supposed to achieve, whether it be a moral, didactic model for public consumption or this idea of a sensational, enthralling entertainment where the reader decides what to take from it. We see this shift in the Gothic novel to the interiority of people and a reflection of the advancements of the times, whether scientifically or medically; it starts to complicate this question of what makes a monster or someone ‘hellish.’To continue in the article and look at the idea of criminal responsibility embedded within this Gothic novel, it feels representative of all the confusion surrounding the end of the century and what to make of the ‘progress’ within society when applied to complexities of older judgments of character. We also talked in class about the splitting of responsibility Jekyll makes between himself and Hyde and how difficult it would be for Victorian readers to recognize this criminal responsibility.

QUESTION:

What do we think some of the connections are in our other novels in terms of criminal responsibility or the ability for society to distinguish criminality that perhaps feels more straightforward than in Stevenson’s case, where we see complexities with science, psychology, etc. that people at the time were not sure what to make of. Thinking of our own judgments of criminal behavior or ‘characters’ in past novels like Frankenstein or Jane Eyre, would we have the same uncertainties of judgment that we do here?

Novel III. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

• From the Novel:

“My two natures had memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and sharede in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde…To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper”(Stevenson 86).

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Edited by Martin A. Danahay, Broadview Editions, 2015.

• Critical Commentary:

“These characters fear being exposed both for the secret vices they indulge and for their decision to avoid any public scandal by conducting a double life hidden from the inquisitioners of the contemporary public and condemnation of the laws”.

Sanna, Antonio. “Silent homosexuality in oscar wilde’s “telemy” & “The picture of dorian gray” and robert louis stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. hyde”. Law and literature, 24. 21-29. 2013

• Historical Context:

“This web of habits and appetites, of lusts and feats, is not, perhaps, the ultimate manifestation of what in truth we are. It is the cloak which our rude forefathers have worn themselves against the cosmic storm; but we are already learning to shift and refashion it as our gentler weather needs, and if perchance it slip from us in the sunshine then something more ancient and more glorious is for a moment guessed within”(203).

Meyers, F.H. “Multiplex personality, “The Nineteenth century, november 1886.

• Visual:

“The Transformation: Great God! Can it be!” https://www.loc.gov/resource/ds.04518/

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Digital File from Original – Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/resource/ds.04518/. Accessed 6 Dec. 2023.

SOURCE IDEAS:

“Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyers with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him”(41-2)

“Rather, as there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced me — something seizing, surprising and revolting — this fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that to my interest in the man’s nature and character, there was added a curiosity as to his origins, his life, his fortune and status in the world”(74-5).

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

Both of these excerpts come from the novel, and the first is from the first instance where Mr. Utterson sees Hyde — I thought that this quote really picks up on the themes we are discussing and could bring back to orient us with Cohen’s theories of the monster as a mixture and uncategorizable. For instance, we see Hyde described with conflicting descriptors such as “timid” and “bold” — but also this idea of a hidden deformity, an unsettling feeling that something is missing. I think we got the monster’s external/physical characteristics in Frankenstein, then shifted to a more inward representation in Jane Eyre. Still, here, it seems to take on the outward physicality again.Yet, I find it interesting that the one example in Cohen of a monster is its enormity, which is reversed here where Hyde is continuously described as small and even, sometimes animal-like, with a quickness. Continuing with the second passage later in the novel, the story’s unfolding has brought even more suspicion to Hyde, and these keywords reminded me of Frankenstein’s

creature when he described the reaction people had to him that he couldn’t understand why. Here, it is almost from the townspeople’s point of view, represented by Mr. Utterson as he observes how he reacts to Hyde’s “essence,” which he finds revolting and surprising. We could discuss the elements here of mystery and these conflictual representations of Hyde in terms of Cohen’s monster theory but also take what we learned from Jane Eyre and maybe connect these descriptions with a less literal notion of what Hyde represents and think about his actions more than just the emphasis on his physical characteristics.

QUESTION:

Keeping in mind what we just explored with Bertha and Jane in Jane Eyre as this mirroring effect and looking into how they are linked — how might we look at the relationship between Mr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde? It seems like there could be a similarity here between the two character’s contrasts and this idea of the inwardness of one and the showcasing outwardly in the other.