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Appendix C

Thesis Report

HIGH VICTORIAN MONSTER FICTION

AND ITS SUBVERSIONS OF TAXONOMIES OF

DEFORMITY, DISEASE, AND CRIME

by

Ashley Elizabeth Adele Szanter

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

of

MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH

WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY

Ogden, Utah

______________________________

April 24th 2015

Approved

______________________________

(Dr. Scott Rogers)

______________________________

(Dr. Samantha Seal)

______________________________

(Dr. Sally Shigley)

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Scholarly examinations of Victorian literature do not neglect the commanding presence

of monsters. Nineteenth­century texts often categorize “monstrousness” as inextricable with

being alive–be it human or otherwise. But the nature of monstrosity is often culturally

determined. Victorians are expressing their understanding of monstrosity by attending to outward

appearances and actions of an individual. The rise of fictions about monsters suggests an anxiety

that those around them could hide aspects of their person from public view. Victorian texts

placed heavy stock in anything that could act as an outward indicator of personal character, such

as behavior or dress. This dependence on appearances nurtured a dislike for anything not

immediately recognizable. This discomfort inspires the idea that morality and the body were

intertwined.

In Monster Theory (1996), Jeffrey Jerome Cohen discusses the fundamental role of

monsters as an element of human creation and experience. His introductory chapter, “Monster

Culture (Seven Theses)” argues that are seven themes present in cross­cultural monster stories:

“The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body”; “The Monster Always Escapes”; “The Monster is the

Harbinger of Category Crisis”; “The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference”; “The Monster

Polices the Borders of the Possible”; “Fear of the Monster is Really a Kind of Desire”; and “The

Monster Stands at the Threshold . . . of Becoming.” Cohen’s chapter examines patterns in

monster fictions, and what they represent about human nature. The monster is the mythological

placeholder of human fear, anxiety, desire, and experience. It is how humans categorize what

they do not or choose not to understand. Falling under these organizing theses, Cohen covers

everything from natural disasters to disease, foreign invasion, deviant sexualities, the duality of

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man, and the reigning principle of monstrosity: otherness. His chapter examines how monsters

are dealt with, created, and conquered.

Succeeding Cohen’s work is Richard Kearney’s Strangers, Gods and Monsters:

Interpreting Otherness (2003). While not as comprehensive as Cohen’s analyses, Kearney takes

Cohen’s assertion that, “The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference,” and expands upon it by

examining how monstrousness—whether divine or foreign—always boils down to humans’ fear

of the “Other.” Kearney interprets “Others” as “deep down, tokens of fracture within the human

psyche. They speak to us of how we are split between conscious and unconscious, familiar and

unfamiliar, same and other” (5). Tapping into the duality of man pattern, Kearney’s “Others”

always represent that which is unrecognizable and, therefore, feared. If otherness equals fear,

monsters must embody some sense of otherness because we fear them. However, Kearney does

not only assert that monsters fit into their category but strangers and gods as well. In a sense, his

analysis expands to include other fundamentals of the human experience such as fear of the

foreigner and faith systems. For Kearney, fear is a central tenet of religion, so gods are the

monsters of religion because their divine otherness marks them as something different and

fearful. But he more closely attaches himself to Cohen’s arguments by including the stranger as a

monster. His otherness lies in difference—just as the foreignness of the monster lies in

difference. Rudolf Wittkower relies on this association of foreignness in “Marvels of the East: A

Study in the History of Monsters” (1942). Taking a distinctly non­Western approach to the study

of monsters, Wittkower asserts that the Greeks (the forefathers of Western monster culture)

invented monsters based on geography rather than psychological fear. As the Greeks pushed to

the East, they invented monsters to represent geographic phenomena, cultural differences, and

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religions they did not understand. The end result was a proliferation of mythological “monster

races and animals which they imagined to live at a great distance in the East” (1). Travelers and

warriors took these stories back to their homeland and used them to describe those things that

were too foreign to fully accept. The use of monsters as a placeholder for otherness is much more

culturally embedded than modern people might realize

Using fear of foreignness and otherness, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy’s Rabid: A

Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus (2012) provides an historical overview of

monstrosity as a result of disease and contagion. Using the rabies virus as a foundation, Wasik

and Murphy trace the development of monster mythologies from Ancient Greece and Rome

through the Early Modern period and into the present day. They show that many monster legends

seem to have a uniting feature: symptoms of the rabies virus. Whether they are analyzing

vampires or werewolves, all monsters exhibit certain behaviors that can be traced to humans

infected with rabies. The tendency towards biting humans, exhibiting animalistic behaviors,

increasingly dehumanized physicality, and wildness are all common symptoms of the rabies

sufferer. For cultures before the development of modern medicine, these behaviors were

distinctly monstrous and were assimilated into existing monsters such as vampires, werewolves,

and demons. Their chapter, “King Louis,” deals entirely with nineteenth­century conceptions of

rabies and monstrosity naming Louis Pasteur as the man who “remade mankind’s understanding

of rabies” through his landmark rabies vaccine (151). They analyze the 19th­century

sensationalizing of rabies as a contagion infecting the population and transforming them into

animals. The fear of becoming “Other” manifested itself in horror fiction, penny dreadfuls, and

folk tales of the time.

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This cultural obsession with death and macabre is Judith Flanders’s central concern in

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created

Modern Crime (2011). An historical and cultural overview, Flanders exposes the Victorian age

as a culture who espoused cleanliness and virtue but held a strong fascination for blood and

death. Flanders aims to expose “how this desire was transformed over the nineteenth century” as

well as how it “transformed that century” (19). Flanders claims that the Victorians viewed

murder and bloody spectacle as “aesthetic,” “art,” and “theatre” (18). This fascination with

violent crime can also be seen in late Victorian monster fiction. In her chapter, “Modernity,” she

references Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and The Picture of Dorian

Gray as capitalizing on the mainstream popularity of fiction that showcases violence and

criminality. While not referencing the monsters’ “otherness” specifically, she draws preliminary

connections between their criminal activity and concurrent popularized criminals, such as Jack

the Ripper.

Flanders’s analyses of Victorian culture as hidden and repressed are influenced by Michel

Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction (1978). In his opening chapter,

he draws clear connections between American culture and Victorian Britain. One of the most

profound connections is his aim “to examine the case of a society which has been loudly

castigating itself for its hypocrisy for more than a century, which speak verbosely of its own

silence, takes great pains to relate in detail the things it does not say, denounces the powers it

exercises, and promises to liberate itself from the very laws that have made it function” (8). Of

particular interest to this discipline is his assertion that these two cultures “speak verbosely of

[their] own silence” implying that they discussed topics deemed taboo for polite conversation in

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other, less obvious, ways. These subliminal discussions expose what people are not willing to

address outright and thereby exposes a fear, or anxiety, that deserves attention.

These gaps are where I intend to place my analysis. All of these texts examine why

people create, fear, and seek to conquer monsters. Additionally, many of these also address why

the Victorians developed a culture that fed off of monster fiction and how it appealed to them by

drawing from cultural experiences. As a result of scientific advancements, the Victorians

developed taxonomic systems that aided them in classifying monsters. These systems reveal

fears about monsters, otherness, and victimization. We see the Victorians exploring these fears in

myriad ways. Texts like Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and The Picture

of Dorian Gray address fears, and complications, about the effectiveness of taxonomies for

monsters and monstrosity. But, as is often the case, those fears are of a joined biological and

sociological nature. The fear of “otherness” manifested in the infamous behaviors of Victorian

audiences who abhorred foreigners and immigrants but held endless fascination for freaks and

monsters. I will argue that high Victorian monster fiction created unrecognizable others who

subverted existing taxonomies for deformity, disease, and criminality.

Victorian society marked the high point for pseudosciences that aimed to explain human

monstrosity. My second chapter, “Monstrosity and Deformity,” will examine phrenology and

physiognomy. These were “scientific” means of approaching the culture of violence and blood

that marked the nineteenth century. This culture, awash in the belief that virtue and morality

were human centers, desperately wanted those who presented a threat to them to be recognizable

and, subsequently, explainable. These “scientific” approaches assuaged fears about the unseen

and allowed people to believe that morality was a physical, as well as spiritual, marker. If a

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person was physically unattractive, they were immoral; if a person was beautiful then their

physical form reflected their upstanding morality. This is where Victorian definitions of the

monstrous live. Lacking in credibility, these pseudo­sciences declined in popularity by the early

twentieth century but failed to take with them a cultural and medical interest in blood. Advances

in medical technology allowed scientists to understand blood at the molecular level; this further

illuminated the function of blood, and its undeniable importance in understanding humanity.

The third chapter, “Monstrosity and Disease,” will look at monstrous representations of

disease and the diseased body. Regardless of socio cultural background, blood often qualifies as

the ultimate human life force. With the Victorian era’s advances in scientific technology came

discoveries about the nature of blood. In particular, how blood can affect the individual when it

is not “pure” or “clean.” Victorian monsters were all victims of one common enemy: their own

blood. It was because of this threat of unrecognizable contagion that blood diseases preoccupied

the Victorian consciousness; tainted blood meant tainted humanity. It is in this understanding of

blood that we find Victorian monstrosity most clearly defined; a person with tainted blood

experienced a social devolution. Their status devolves from human to sub­human and, with this

demotion, comes a taxonomic system about the kinds of life they are assumed to lead.

My fourth chapter, “Monstrosity and Criminality,” will examine the how monstrosity and

criminality work together in Victorian monster fiction. Criminality in Victorian society was

understood as a defect – the person was tainted from the very beginning of their his/her and so

they are predisposed to acts of violence because his/her morality can hold him/her to no other

standard. Blood, more specifically tainted blood, was the result of some divine punishment for

the immoral actions, thoughts, or predispositions of a particular individual or their bloodline.

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This stigma developed a clear criminal class. Those in the criminal class were of tainted stock

and could only be expected to behave as criminals. While knowledge on the function and causes

of blood disease were still developing from a medical standpoint, clear decisions were made by

the populous: tainted blood was the direct result of immorality and therefore a punishment and a

monstrosity. This thesis aims to expose how these texts subverted the effectiveness of monstrous

taxonomies and how these subversions aided monster fiction’s rise to popularity.

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Chapter 2: Monstrosity and Deformity

Any discussion of Western conceptions of monstrosity must examine the cultural

phenomenon of the “freak show,” since, as Lisa Kochanek explains in “Reframing the Freak:

From Sideshow to Science,” there is the idea “that the freak show has very little to do with the

person whose deformity is exhibited. Rather, the person’s physical abnormality is the starting

point for a construction of freakishness” (231). The voyeurism that defines the freak show

originates in the public’s desire to connect “monstrosity,” “otherness,” and deformity. For the

Victorian public, a clear link existed between physicality and that which was mentally (or

spiritually) impure. For them, the freak show was both a place to seek entertainment and to

amaze and warn viewers about the consequences of an impure life. Kochanek quotes Robert

Bogden, who explains that freaks can be defined “not by the possession of any particular quality,

but by a set of practices, a way of thinking about and presenting people with major, minor, and

fabricated physical, mental, and behavioral differences” (qtd. in Kochanek 231). Under this

definition, the freak’s nature was not the presence of physical deformity. Instead, the physical

deformity was an outward manifestation of deviant thoughts, beliefs, or actions. This perception

led Victorians to a new understanding: a person’s outward appearance was the greatest indicator

of an individual’s moral character; all necessary information could be taken from the person’s

dress, behavior, and appearance.

Current scholarship examining the Victorian attachments to the inner and outer selves

tends to focus on physiognomy and phrenology. Although texts that reference physicality as a

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suitable template for moral character date back to Ancient Greece and Rome, the development 1

of scientific disciplines dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries. One such discipline was 2

phrenology, which was founded by Franz Joseph Gall, who published phrenological studies and

manuscripts in his native Germany. He asserts the idea that an individual’s behaviors, tendencies,

and personality are dictated by protuberances on the skull. Specific protuberances correlate to

parts of the brain that Gall associated with behavioral patterns such as caution, sublimity,

secretiveness, and self­esteem. The sizes and shapes of bumps represented parts of the brain that

were more or less developed and would manifest in the personality accordingly. This system

categorized individuals into certain classes, one of which was criminal. Like phrenology,

physiognomy endeavors to connect an individual’s physical appearance to their character, often

with an emphasis on facial features.

The popularity of physiognomy and phrenology peaks in the late 18th­century and

continues throughout the nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries. In About Faces:

Physiognomy in Nineteenth­Century Britain, Sharrona Pearl attributes the popularity of these

pseudosciences to the Victorian desire for the recognizable “Other.” She argues that widespread

belief in the physical manifestation of morality and virtue led to a belief in a class of criminals

that all conformed to a specific appearance. Both physiognomy and phrenology provided

Victorians with taxonomic systems that corroborated these beliefs. Exploring these beliefs on

Harvard’s library collections blog, The Shelf, Bachmann sees a pattern in all physiognomic and

phrenological texts: they all include illustrations. Bachmann argues it was not enough to describe

1 Lavater and Lombroso spearheaded the development of “modern” physiognomy which originally derives from the works of Aristotle, Polemo of Laodicea, and Adamantius the Sophist. 2 Schapin and Schaffer’s The Leviathan and the Air Pump provides thorough examinations of 17th­ and 18th­century scientific practices and experimentation theory.

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the appearance of a criminal individual because the variations in “criminal” faces were highly

nuanced. Each major pseudoscientific text came with a set of illustrations that allowed readers to

immediately notice a stranger’s potential for violent or criminal behavior. Widely referred to as a

“pocket Lavater,” the Swiss scientist’s Physiognomic Fragments for Furthering the Knowledge

and Love of Man was published in a travel size copy so someone could carry around the

illustrations with them wherever they went. This seeming dependence upon examples of criminal

faces exposes a desire to connect one’s character and virtue with appearance. Bridget Marshall

argues that it was this desire to correlate physicality with morality that influenced Victorian

monster literature. Marshall’s “The Face of Evil: Physiognomy, Phrenology, and the Gothic

Villain” examines how Victorian authors used physiognomy and phrenology to design monsters

who both adhered to and challenged these pseudoscientific classifications.

While these analyses consistently discuss how and why phrenology and physiognomy

were popular science, they fail to address how deeply Victorian people relied on these. The

deformed freak, however physically deformed, was not a victim of nature or God. Rather, the

individual’s physical appearance was a direct reflection of their thoughts and intentions. If these 3

intentions were cruel or evil, their appearance would change to reflect these intentions. If their

intentions were pure, their appearance changed to account for their good intentions. As such, all

useful information could be taken from the person’s physicality. My analysis will fill this gap in

3 While I will not necessarily be doing this, many scholars might approach these sections with an eye towards disability studies. Deformity and disability often go hand in hand, and the disability theorist may come to similar conclusions. Because normative appearance factors into both disability studies and nineteenth­century pseudoscience, there is a link that can be made between the two. However, in this chapter, I will not be incorporating a distinct disability studies perspective. Readers interested in the link between disability studies and Victorian monstrosity through physical appearance should consult Lillian Craton’s study, The Victorian Freak Show: The Significance of Disability and Physical Appearance in 19th Century Fiction, which examines the social stigmatization of those physically different or disabled and how these attitudes manifest in Victorian fiction.

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order to more fully understand the Victorian attachment to pseudoscientific taxonomies. My

analysis will explain why the attachment to these classifications broke down when they were

unable to be uniformly applied to all individuals—thus allowing a degree of uncertainty in the

face of some evils.

Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

We can see a belief in the connection between physical appearance and moral character

in a number of Victorian texts. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde, the differences in physical appearance between the two eponymous characters are clear.

Whereas “good shone upon the countenance” of Doctor Jekyll, we learn that “evil was written

broadly and plainly on the face of the other” (Stevenson 51). Stevenson’s novella serves as a

useful measure of Victorian explorations of monstrosity.

Jekyll is an educated gentleman, and it is unbelievable that he could be committing

Hyde’s violent acts. However, even before Sir Danvers Carew’s murder, Mr. Hyde menaces

those he encounters. Belief in his menacing character boils down to his physical appearance. His

ugliness is indicative of his dangerous and impure character. At one point, Mr. Utterson states,

“the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic . . . or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul

that thus transpires through and transfigures, its clay continent . . . if ever I read Satan’s signature

upon a face, it is on that of [Jekyll’s] new friend” (Stevenson 17). At this point in the text, Mr.

Hyde has harmed no one; his “hardly human” appearance renders him “something troglodytic”

and possessing “Satan’s signature upon [his] face.” Hyde is “something” rather than someone;

he is “troglodytic” rather than human. Descriptions like these separate humans from the Other.

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Even more, being “hardly human” means he must be something other, and in this case, not

human. By equating his ugliness to “Satan’s signature,” Stevenson transforms Hyde into demon.

His appearance is so damning that he can only be seen in association with Satan. His demonic

ugliness indicates a “foul soul” must dwell within him.

Hyde’s personal appearance is crucial to the text because descriptions of Mr. Hyde are

always peripheral and based on emotion, or perception—very little is actually said about what he

looks like physically. Hyde is significantly shorter than Jekyll; Jekyll’s clothes “were

enormously too large for him in every measurement” (Stevenson 45). Stevenson provides no

details about Hyde’s eyes, hair color, skin color, or weight (45). Because it is his outfit that

receives the most detailed description, we are meant to judge him based entirely on his clothing

and not his physical appearance. Stevenson does not give a description of what evil is supposed

to look like—other than that it is short and dwarfish. This approach problematizes our

understanding of Hyde’s character because, without a clear description, he could be anyone. In

“The Face of Evil: Physiognomy, Phrenology, and the Gothic Villain,” Bridget Marshall

explains that the people of the nineteenth century believed “the markings of evil were not merely

fictional devices, but were based on the contemporary sciences of phrenology and physiognomy”

(161). It was not uncommon to see scientific data accompanied by drawings of physical

differences between a good and evil person in physiognomic and phrenological texts such as

those in Johann Caspar Lavater’s Physiognomic Fragments for Furthering the Knowledge and

Love of Man (1775­78) or Cesare Lombroso’s “Illustrative Studies in Criminal Anthropology”

(1890). These details were critical to understanding which people were acceptable acquaintances

and which should be kept at arm’s length. Stevenson abandons details of physical appearance

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while simultaneously bolstering the idea that physicality functions as a precursor to violent

criminal activity. Without giving evil a face, Stevenson explains that “there was something

abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced [Jekyll]—something

seizing, surprising and revolting” (45). This is an emotional response to the “abnormal and

misbegotten” that informs our imaginative constructions of Hyde’s appearance. While referring

to Hyde as a “creature” suggests deformity, there is no indication of how he is creature­like. He

is “seizing, surprising and revolting” but our understanding of this revulsion is stunted by

Stevenson’s absent description. The ambiguity of Hyde’s appearance supports the idea that Hyde

could be anyone.

Dracula

Capitalizing on the everyman’s fear of deformed evil, Bram Stoker crafts Count

Dracula’s physical appearance to be unmistakably monstrous. While it is true that both Hyde and

Dracula share the monstrosity of “otherness,” Stoker’s use of descriptive language differs from

Stevenson’s because his paints a clear portrait of Dracula’s monstrous appearance. According to

Marshall, “Throughout Stoker’s Dracula, various characters exhibit both common and extensive

knowledge of phrenology and physiognomy” (165). This phrenological and physiognomic

influence suggests that Stoker characters are aware of what it means to appear monstrous and

uses this to their advantage. In the novel, Jonathan Harker gives a detailed account of Dracula’s

face:

His face was a strong—a very strong—aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose

and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing

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scantily around the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very

massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with busy hair that seemed to curl in

its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache,

was fixed and rather cruel­looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these

protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality

in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely

pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks first though thin. The

general effect was one of extraordinary pallor. (Stoker 22­23)

The “strong” and “aquiline” vampiric body is criminal by phrenological and physiognomic

standards (Marshall 167). Stoker’s description of his “sharp white teeth,” “cruel­looking” mouth,

and “extremely pointed” ears give the reader a foundation on which to construct a monster.

Dracula’s face is characterized by extremes of color uncommon in normal humans. Stoker’s

vampire possesses a color palate too extreme to be “normal.” He is a contrast of his “white

teeth,” the “remarkable ruddiness” of his lips, and the overall “pallor.” Marshall cites the work of

Lombroso and Lavater and explains that Harker’s lengthy description marks the Count as “an

unevolved, hence criminal, man,” “indicat[ing] weakness and pusillanimity,” and possessing

qualities similar to “the anatomies of lemurs and rodents” (Marshall 167). This description

further dehumanizes an already suspicious looking Dracula by aligning his features with rodents

and distinctly low­class animals. The features discussed here are then used to interpret his

qualities as an individual; because of his rodent­like face, he must not possess the strength of

character expected of a “real man” ending in his classification as weak and pusillanimous.

Marshall’s examination of the connections between Stoker’s description and Late Victorian

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scientific reasoning reveals a method behind Dracula’s monstrous appearance. Stoker relies on

Dracula’s physical deformities in order to indicate the Count’s evil intentions and ward off

potential victims. The popularity of Lavater and Lombroso’s texts reveals a Victorian anxiety

about physical devolution. The descriptions in Dracula emphasize the core Victorian anxiety of

deformity as a physical marker for social persecution.

The Count’s deformed figure features predominantly throughout the novel. For

instance, Mina describes “his red eyes” (Stoker 110). Jonathan Harker describes the “evil face,

the ridge of the nose, the red eyes, the red lips, the awful pallor” of Dracula (269). Dr. Seward

notes “the waxen face; the high aquiline nose, on which the light fell in a thin white line; the

parted red lips, with the sharp white teeth showing between; and the red eyes” (Stoker 305).

Dracula’s facial features consistently mark him as subhuman—a monster or an animal. His “red

eyes” indicate his otherness. If eyes are the windows to the soul, the red discoloration of his

indicates that he is not human; humans’ eyes do not glow red at night. Instead, he is again

aligned with rodents whose eyes glow red at night. His animality devolves him into something

less than human.

His “parted red lips, with the sharp white teeth showing between” paint an inhuman

portrait. Similarly, the massive canines emphasize his animalistic physicality. Dracula is not

human. Stoker directly associates monstrosity with physical deformity. Dracula embraces the

idea that the physical form is directly representative internal character. His deformed facial

features mimic the deformed insides. In contrast, Jekyll and Hyde imagines what deformities

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could elicit such revulsion. The textual uses of inner and outer selves seen here corroborates 4

with Victorian readers’ desire for “clear connections between the physical body and moral

character” (Bachmann). These taxonomies fed into the Victorians’ desire for a “means of

maintaining order through identifying group differences . . . by allowing participants to know

quickly something about another person's essential but hidden characteristics” (Collins). The

emphasis placed on physical appearance by Victorian culture suggests an anxiety about the

potential danger of these and thus the undetectability of “hidden characteristics.”

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Drawing from these pre­existing anxieties, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray

explores an even darker Victorian fear: the unrecognizable monster. Like Stoker’s Dracula,

descriptions of young Dorian are frequent. In the opening scenes of the novel, Basil Hallward is

in his studio studying, and then working on, a portrait of Dorian Gray. Lord Henry Wotton

begins the praise of Dorian’s beautiful appearance. Wotton observes that Dorian’s skin “looks as

if [it] was made out of ivory and rose leaves” (Wilde 7) Like Narcissus, he is a “brainless

beautiful creature” meant to replace natural beauty “in winter when we have no flowers to look

at” (Wilde 7). Descriptions of Dorian’s beauty do not stop at comparisons to flawless Greek

idols; later, Hallward –already invested in Dorian’s person—says “his beauty is such that Art

cannot express it” (Wilde 13). At this point, Wilde’s use of character description is similar to

that in Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Wilde uses emotional reaction to paint a

picture of the character’s appearance. Both Wilde and Stevenson are unwilling to give their evil

4 See, for instance, Sami Schalk and Kerry Powell’s “What Makes Mr. Hyde So Scary?: Disability as a Result of Evil and Cause of Fear.”

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characters a distinctive face or body. Granted, Wilde’s readers do not need to wait as long for a

detailed description of Dorian’s beauty as they do for Stevenson’s Hyde.

Wotton explains, “he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely­curved

scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair” (Wilde 17). Dorian possesses the traits of the

typical courtly beauty: blonde hair, blue eyes, red lips, and, as described above, the skin of a

marble Adonis. With such a description, Wilde does not encourage us to view Dorian as a

monster. I have already established that Victorian audiences would attribute this beauty to

internal morality but we know this is not the case. Dorian transforms into a monster and acts on

desire alone. Dorian’s unrealistic beauty does not denote an unrealistically good soul. Instead,

Dorian’s monstrosity is undetectable by the existing Victorian taxonomies for detecting a person

with evil intentions. This inversion of expectations makes it possible for even the most beautiful

individuals to become monstrous; even the handsome have the potential to succumb to Dorian’s

fate and then corrupt those around him. The problem is that all others must engage this new

monstrosity without physical warning and without protection.

The physical deformities that mark Dracula and Hyde are uniformly absent from

Dorian . Whereas Hyde and Dracula have a physical appearance that repels potential victims, 5

Dorian’s physical appearance allows his victims to be completely seduced. His outward beauty

should act as a reflection of his inward goodness, his moral purity. They “trust him at once”

because there is no physical indication that they must do otherwise (Wilde 17). While believing

the ability to see evil and protects potential victims from it, Wilde’s story forces Victorian

5 A good analysis on the mind/body separation here can be found in Rachel Herzl­Betz’s “A Paratactic ‘Missing Link’: Dorian Gray and the Performance of Embedded Modernity.” Herzl­Betz discusses how Dorian’s lack of physical deformity speak to a divided identity that marks him as non­normative, or monstrous.

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readers to accept that their existing categories of good and evil might not work in the real world.

Marshall, also examining Dorian’s beautiful appearance, observes that his physicality “utterly

confuses Dorian’s friends and acquaintances, who truly believe that a villain must have a

villainous appearance” (Marshall 168). Dorian confounds those who follow his descent by

remaining beautiful. Hallward, upon meeting up with Dorian to discuss his ever­descending

reputation in society, explains to Dorian that “sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face”

therefore “Dorian, with [his] pure, bright, innocent face, and [his] marvelous untroubled youth”

could be guilty of no such impurities (126). By exonerating Dorian from his social crimes via his

unscathed person, Hallward represents the Victorian social belief “that a man who looks so good

could not be so bad” (Marshall 168). His friends believe that Dorian cannot be responsible for

his crimes because he has none of the physical markings of a criminal.

The characterizations in these texts articulate a central fear about appearances, especially

those that are deceptive or monstrous. The repetition of this anxiety reveals a preoccupation with

the relationship between the outer and inner self. If character can only be articulated through

physicality, grappling with the invisible becomes a serious problem. It threatens to upend the

scientific structures that allowed people to make sense of the world around them. The existence

of physiognomy and phrenology provided Victorian people with a manual that allowed a sense

of safety from potential threats. These texts challenge the effectiveness of these existing

classifications but complicate them further by providing no suitable replacement. For a culture

that valued the appearance of goodness and purity, the absence of physical markers for evil

allowed anyone—attractive or otherwise—to engage in deceit, which then allowed unsuspecting

people to fall victim to it.

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Chapter 3: Monstrosity and Disease

While physical abnormality preoccupied many Victorian minds, high Victorian monster

fiction reveals overwhelming and “almost obsessive concern with documentation and they all

exhibit a sinister mistrust of the not­said, the unspoken, the hidden, and the silent” (Halberstam

130). Mimicking medical practices, the need to document the unobservable is prevalent within

these late nineteenth­century texts. In The History of Sexuality, vol 1, for instance, Foucault

explains that the Victorian era “speaks verbosely of its own silence, [and] takes great pains to

relate in detail the things it does not say” (8). Here, Foucault implies, while Victorians may have

stopped talking about these topics directly, they moved these discussions into new venues, such

as literature. By looking at what texts subliminally represent, particularly in regards to fear, we

can see what was deemed too problematic to address openly and thereby understand cultural

anxieties. High Victorian monsters explain some of these by being “meaning machines” that

almost always represent some form of physical corruption or deformity (Halberstam 131). In this

chapter, I argue that these texts reveal deep­seated social anxieties about the appearance of the

sick by not adhering to Victorian taxonomies of disease and the diseased body.

Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Psychoanalytic analyses of Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde are abundant, and many

explore the possibility of Dr. Jekyll as an undiagnosed schizophrenic. In his review of Neel

Burton’s The Meaning of Madness, Andrew Papanikitas points out that, “In his (sadly

incinerated) first draft, Stevenson allegedly did not envisage a physical change in his hero but a

disguise that allowed Jekyll to get away with things his position did not allow” (1). The absence

of a separate physical form for both Jekyll and Hyde suggests that the personality shift would

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occur inside the person’s mind and not physically. However, modern analysis disassociates

Jekyll and Hyde from schizophrenia because, as Burton describes,“multiple personality [is] rare

and not a core feature of schizophrenia” (1). Burton suggests this particular transformation

combines two changes: the Jekyll/Hyde character functions as a literary manifestation of

manic­depressive disorder; and second, that the character also exhibits a clear physical

transformation. It is Stevenson’s inclusion of that physical transformation that problematizes his

monstrosity.

In Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors,

David Gilmore explains that monsters are “always depicted looming over small, weak, and

overshadowed humans” (174). Gilmore interprets “looming” both literally and figuratively. The

monster, according to Gilmore, casts a literal“shadow” over the unsuspecting victims. Hyde is

significantly smaller in size and stature than the docile Jekyll. But, as the narrative concludes, we

realize that Mr. Hyde is successfully consuming Jekyll. In the section entitled “Henry Jekyll’s

Full Statement of the Case,” Jekyll admits that “man is not truly one, but truly two” (Stevenson

48). In admitting that there are “truly two” sides to every being, this must also admit that both

sides cannot be not simultaneously visible. Making both sides simultaneously visible would

detract from the dichotomy Stevenson presents in Jekyll and Hyde, where an individual’s dual

natures exist inside one unchanging body. Drawing from this, fear of disease manifests because 6

of its potential to be unrecognizable. While Hyde’s countenance strikes fear into those who look

upon him, he is the literary illustration of a diseased being. Because Hyde is outwardly repellent,

readers are more comfortable with his wickedness because they can avoid him. Jekyll causes

6 To clarify, I do not use the term “unchanging” to imply that the body remains in a stagnated state. Rather, I use unchanging show that bodies do not naturally change from one form to another as Jekyll changes into Hyde.

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anxiety for readers because he is the unrecognizably diseased. There is no explicit indication that

Jekyll and Hyde are the same. Rather, the narrative simply reveals Hyde as his alter ego at the

very end.

Fear of both psychological disease and how to deal with the afflicted weighed on the

Victorian mind. Mental institutions that practiced their primitive forms of therapy were

well­known and rightly­feared. These primitive forms of therapy often originated from a

misunderstanding of how the mind works–especially when it is not functioning normally. In,

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A New Theory of the Manic­Depressive Disorder,” Benjamin B.

Wolman lists paramutuals—a psychological term to express those areas of the psyche that

interpret the reactions of others—as the catalyst to Jekyll’s willing and unwilling transformations

into Mr. Hyde: “paramutuals are overconcerned with the attitudes of others toward themselves

and are exceedingly sensitive even to a slight sign of rejection or disrespect” (Wolman 1024). As

such, it is the fate of Jekyll that his “polar twins” must “continuously struggl[e]” against one

another (Stevenson 49). Dr. Jekyll initiated his own transformation by ingesting chemicals. This

contamination of the healthy body serves as a warning.

“Dr. Lanyon’s Narrative” finds the eponymous speaker examining some chemicals:

The powders that were neatly enough made up, but not with the nicety of the

dispensing chemist; so that it was plain they were of Jekyll’s private

manufacture . . . I found what seemed to be a simple crystalline salt of a white

colours. The phial . . . might have been about half­full of a blood­red liquor,

which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to contain

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phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the other ingredients, I could make no

guess. (Stevenson 44)

Dr. Lanyon’s status as a physician lends authority to his analysis of the chemicals. By

establishing his experience and education, Stevenson increases reader anxiety because Lanyon,

the trained doctor, cannot identify all the chemicals Jekyll uses. The implication of unidentifiable

substances points to a nineteenth­century concern about the unknown. Failure to heed this 7

unspoken warning could result in succumbing to the same fate as Jekyll. This text reveals

anxieties about the consequences of the unknown and works through those anxieties by

providing scenarios in which they are inescapable—namely, as long as one avoids ingesting an

amalgamation of foreign substances, one could avoid falling prey to the diseases of their own

mind. This narrative uses mental illness to subvert Victorian taxonomies of disease by focusing

on the mind rather than the body. While physical illness often produces physical symptoms,

mental diseases does not always come with physical markers. This focus on the psyche over the

body makes Jekyll and Hyde’s disease problematic because, though one can take precautions to

avoid the hideous Hyde, one will not feel the need to avoid Jekyll.

Dracula

Unlike Jekyll and Hyde, with its emphasis on the diseased psyche, Bram Stoker’s

Dracula discusses the diseased and distorted body. The vampiric body displays obvious features

of bodily corruption, such as glowing eyes, deformed facial features, and devolved physicality.

As a part of this, I argue that Stoker’s vampires embody one of the major preoccupations of late

7 George Levine’s Dying to Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England provides an in­depth look into scientific practices and epistemology. He examines the link between scientific discovery and self­abnegation, even to the point of death.

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nineteenth­century blood medicine: porphyria. In “Retracing the Shambling Steps of the Undead:

The Blended Folkloric Elements of Vampirism in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Alexis Milmine

argues that Stoker’s vampirism “transcends time and the ethnic boundaries of folklore, drawing

on a multitude of legends about this supernatural being as well as twisting the traditional folklore

of Eastern Europe to create the misguided belief in Count Dracula as a typical Transylvanian or

Romanian vampire” (Milmine 33). Although modern texts often use Stoker’s mythology as a

template for traditional vampirism, Stoker actually reinvented the vampire for the modern age by

deviating from older vampire mythologies. In this section, I argue that Stoker’s vampires are

distinctly porphyric.

In 1889, Beran Stokvis—a multi­Ph.D. and medically­trained Dutch physician

occasionally considered an inspiration for Abraham Van Helsing—published “Over Twee

Zeldzame Kleurstoffen in Urine Van Zieken,” which described a “decomposition product of 8

blood pigment, whose identity with haemato­porphyrin . . . is in the highest degree probable” 9

(Stokvis). The first recognizable side effect of the disease was a blood by­product excreted in the

urine of patients. The “bright red urine, resembling blood” was accompanied by other physical

symptoms such as an “accumulation of photosensitive pigments in the skin, leading to

photosensitivity, and phosphorescent pigments in the mucus membranes around the mouth and

eye, causing them to be red in daylight but to glow at night” (Keith 65). Exploring other

similarities between these symptoms and traditional vampire mythology, Keith explains, “The

photophobia and neurological and psychological sequelae seen in the advanced stages of

8 In English, “About Two Unusual Dyes in the Urine of Patients” (PubMed). 9 An iron­free heme molecule, a decomposition product of hemoglobin found in the urine of certain conditions (Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary [2009]).

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porphyria are also consistent with mythical characteristics of werewolves and vampires” (such as

erratic behaviors, a penchant for coming out at night, and physical abnormalities) (64).

Paired with these symptoms, the “speculated relationship between porphyria and

vampirism . . . received a great deal of media attention” and inspired vivid visualizations about

vampires who walked among the people (Keith 63). These symptoms are clearly similar to those

associated with vampirism. Based on its rarity, some folklore scholars have since discredited the

disease as a possible origin for worldwide vampire mythologies for two reasons. One reason is

that porphyria is a fairly uncommon disease. And the second reason is that humans are drawn to

“spectacle vampirism,” such as noticeable physical symptoms and similarities to human

decomposition. However, the late Victorian society that reveled in blood did not necessarily

want to detach the two from one another. As a result, vampire mania resurfaced as fear and myth

enmeshed.

The brand of vampirism displayed by Stoker’s vampires seems porphyric. In melding

traditional vampire folklores with porphyria, Stoker invented what modern audiences consider to

be the “real” vampire. Stoker draws on a multitude of legends and explanations for vampirism to

create a new hybrid mythology drawn from Eastern European, Mediterranean, and Celtic

sources. Stoker’s vampires embrace different symptoms of vampirism that, when combined,

suggest an anxiety about porphyria, and the novel is filled with examples that emphasize this

connection.

In “Biomedical Origins of Vampirism,” Edward O. Keith explores how older, medically

uneducated societies associated certain diseases with vampirism; porphyria is one such disease.

First, Keith presents the porphyric symptom of “pigments in the mucus membranes around the

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mouth and eye, causing them to be red” (65). In Dracula, the red eye motif is often present and

always associated with the presence or perceived vision of a vampire or vampiric creature. Lucy

Westenra, shortly after turning into a vampire, “murmured as if to herself:—‘His red eyes again!

They are just the same’” (106). Mina Murray, the female protagonist of Dracula,—who has yet

to encounter a vampire—also has “a vague memory of something long and dark with red eyes”

(110). Two individuals—Lucy and Mina—observe the same eye related coloration independent of

one another. Seward, a member of Abraham Van Helsing’s cohort, reinforces this consistency

during his encounter with Renfield. Renfield, one of Count Dracula’s minions, experiences a

need for blood and its “life force” that causes him to experience symptomatic similarities to his

Master—even though Renfield is not a biological vampire. Dr. Seward exclaimed that the

corrupted human “sneered at [him], and his white face looked out of the mist with his red eyes

gleaming” (298). Ascribing this feature to his vampires, Stoker uses the red eye symptom present

in those experiencing acute porphyria. But red eyes are not the only deformity on the porphyric’s

face.

The red eye phenomenon in porphyria stems from high levels of pigmentation within and

around the mucus membranes, and infected individuals’ mouths exhibit a similar redness. The

Count, after drinking from a victim, looked “as if his youth had been half renewed . . . the mouth

was redder than ever” (58). His red mouth can harken back to symptoms of porphyria. Later on

in the text, Renfield exhibits the same symptom when he is seen “laughing with his red mouth”

(297). Considering Stoker’s vampirism deviates from more traditional mythologies, it makes

sense that Renfield would adhere to the same types of symptoms as his pseudo­sire. The

indication of redness in the mouth suggests some kind of contagion; their bodies are both

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suffering from similar symptoms. This internal corruption has altered their body’s chemistry and

changed their physical appearances.

Vampires, famously, must avoid sunlight. While the some explanations ascribe this

inability to their role as demons and creatures of the night, porphyria attacks its victims with

photosensitivity as a result of an “accumulation of photosensitive pigments in the skin” (Keith

65). These pigments pool in the top layers of the skin that, when exposed to sunlight, cause both

burning sensations and boils on the skin of the infected. Those with the disease confine

themselves to dark spaces with little or no artificial light; they often avoid the painful

consequences of sun exposure. This extreme photosensitivity usually occurs in those with the

rarest form of the disease—Acute Intermittent Porphyria (AIP). Most sufferers of less common

porphyria variants can still go outside; they simply experience mild discomfort and visual

sensitivity in sunlight.

In examining Lucy after she becomes a vampire, Van Helsing notes that the sun’s “light

showed the ravages in poor Lucy’s strength. She was hardly able to turn her head” (166). Van

Helsing prophetically tells Seward that he “see[s] no light in life over her horizon” (161).

Seeming to indicate the fate that Lucy has in store for her, Van Helsing reveals that her ability to

physically see light or feel the sun’s warmth is, literally, gone. Such photosensitivity is

characteristic of those infected with AIP. Lucy’s symptoms could exacerbate her vulnerable

transition stage. The Count presents an interesting case in this analysis. Dracula is centuries old

and has the ability to walk in broad daylight. He does not exhibit pain when exposed to direct

sunlight. He merely loses the ability to perform his more advanced skills, such as shape shifting.

He easily fends off pursuers, indicating that he maintains his supernatural strength. These

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variations in Stoker’s vampirism mimic the porphyria spectrum. While both are “vampires,”

Lucy and Dracula exhibit different effects of their shared disease. These variations reveal

anxieties about symptomatic disease because this disease’s symptoms manifest unpredictably.

In addition to the above symptoms, other side effects are the “neurological and

psychological sequelae” (Keith 65). The diseased individual into a trance­like, hallucinatory

state. The idea of a trance directly links to the vampires within the novel. When examining

Lucy’s undead body, Van Helsing points out, “She was bitten by the vampire when she was in a

trance, sleep­walking . . . and in trance could he best come to take more blood. In trance she

died, and in trance she is Un­Dead” (Stoker 216). Regardless of Lucy’s trances when she was not

yet a vampire, the trance is a product of their infection. The idea of trances is relatively rare in

vampire mythology, but was wildly popular in sensationalized nineteenth­century occultism.

Dracula creates an undeniable bond between a trance­state and vampirism: a trance allows

victims to be “bitten by the vampire,” a trance­death creates a new vampire, and “in trance she is

Un­Dead” because being a vampire necessitates being a perpetual trance­existence. In this text,

trances are inextricably tied to vampirism. Later in the novel, Van Helsing and Dr. Seward

manipulate Mina—who is transforming—into entering a necessary trance. Van Helsing states, “It

be that she can, by our hypnotic trance, tell what the Count see and hear” (Stoker 343). In this

intriguing way, Mina is used as a transitional vampiric conduit where a trance can be induced in

order to communicate with the Count. This is problematic because it means that an individual 10

10 While not a central concern of this paper, the trances prove an interesting element of Stoker’s novel as they introduce a discussion on depictions of gender and vampirism. The female vampires in the text all engage in sexual acts as the result of trances. Lucy’s first sexual encounter with Dracula occurs while she is entranced. And similarly, the female vampires attempt to entrance Jonathan Harker for sexual reasons. Lucy’s seduction plays into her role as a feminine woman—she is sexually conquered by the masculine Count. However, the female vampires exhibit masculine qualities by acting as the seducers rather than the seduced, illustrating them as sexually aggressive and, therefore, less feminine than human women.

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can be victimized without being fully infected. The contagion of vampirism has not fully

contaminated Mina, but she has fallen prey to its symptoms nonetheless.

Porphyric symptoms throughout the text indicate deep anxieties in the Victorian mind

about how disease transforms “normal” people into the Other. The significance of Stoker’s

narrative is that it provides readers with a medical methodology. The hunting party does not

pursue their prey blindly; there is a period of research and medical inquiry that precedes their

attacks on the vampires. Van Helsing diagnoses those infected individuals and attempts to “cure”

them using his medical knowledge and experience. Van Helsing begins his curative process by

transfusing Lucy with new, clean blood. The idea that tainted blood houses the disease is critical

to understanding this brand of vampirism. The disease lives in the blood, is transferred to new 11

victims via blood contamination, and should theoretically be expelled by replacing the tainted

blood with untainted blood. Compounding this, vampires in Dracula must consume the blood of

humans (i.e. those with clean blood) to survive. Using Van Helsing as a source of medical

knowledge, Stoker provides readers with information about this disease, its effects, and how to

avoid contracting it. His vivid portraits of diseased individuals amount to a list of physical

markers that should be avoided at all costs. The anxieties present in Dracula stem from a cultural

fear of being diseased, and that is the “othering” of an otherwise normal individual through

11 The tainted blood problem applies to Lucy particularly because she is a woman. Anxieties about tainted blood go far back but have strong Victorian roots in the proliferation of STDs and blood corruption, especially in regards to prostitution. A female dominated career, prostitutes suffer from social stigmatization for many reasons, one being their heightened exposure to STDs and contraction of diseases that tainted their physical body from the inside. Lucy, though not a prostitute, engages in sexual acts with the Count and contracts his vampiric disease that taints her blood and transforms her into the diseased Other. For more information on the intersection of tainted blood and prostitution, readers should consult Amanda Anderson’s Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture.

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biological corruption—similar to, but still not as outwardly terrifying as the physical deformity I

discussed earlier.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

While psychological fears explored in Jekyll and Hyde or Dracula legitimize collective

anxieties of Victorian audiences, they do not tap into the psyche as definitively as those

expressed by The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde’s protagonist, Dorian Gray, embodies deviance

and hedonism while presenting it to the public as unmarred morality. The identifiable monster is

a theme that Wilde’s novel abandons altogether Rather, Victorian readers encountered something

far more sinister: the idea that “our monsters are our inner­most selves” (Gilmore 194). And, by

being “inner­most” are invisible to those around us. Wilde’s narrative sits in psychology more so

than Dracula or Jekyll and Hyde.

Although disease in texts like Jekyll and Hyde or Dracula manifests physically, disease

in Dorian Gray is displaced, or removed, altogether. In the text, Dorian wishes “it were I who

was to be always young” while the “picture was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give

everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for

that!” (Wilde 25). The text suggests that men and women both experience the desire to remain

“always young” and that, though not always explicitly, something else could “grow old” in their

stead; Wotton vocalizes this when he exclaims, “youth is the one thing worth having” (Wilde

22). But his words carry with them something besides shallow desire for youth. Making a

Faustian bargain, Dorian “would give [his] soul,” making a spiritual trade that transfers his soul

out of his physical person and into the portrait. For the duration of the novel, all deviant acts

transform the portrait­Dorian’s appearance rather than real­Dorian’s physical appearance. This

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removal of the soul from the body presents a new monstrosity because it is not merely a physical

manifestation of internal corruption as presented in Stevenson’s and Stoker’s characters. Instead,

this new monstrosity never mars the “corrupt” individual.

The plot of Dorian Gray provides a narrative for what would happen if external

corruption, which typically manifests itself internally, could be manifested somewhere outside

the individual. This idea implies that all people, no matter how good or pure, have the potential

to displace their soul and their sin. Part of Dorian’s flair for hedonism and sexual deviance stems

from the reassurance that comes with the portrait. Dorian succumbs to the disease of

self­obsession and uses the portrait as a mirror, reflecting the part of himself that was removed.

He adopts the medical practice of analysis to regard the painting as a physician would analyze a

patient. Dorian “would examine with minute care, and sometimes monstrous and terrible delight,

the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth”

(Wilde 106). He “mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs” (Wilde 106). Giving Dorian

agency to “examine” himself allows readers to entertain the idea that Dorian is suffering from a

very real disease of sin. While not a medical ailment, it becomes clear throughout the course of

the novel that the physical symptoms seen on the portrait are the direct result of an internal

contamination. Though not a diagnosable disease, it is sin transformed which behaves as disease

would. Dorian’s is not a physical disease of the body but a spiritual disease of the soul.

The idea of Dorian as an outlier in the field of medicine appears in Bridget Marshall’s

article “The Face of Evil: Phrenology, Physiognomy, and the Gothic Villain.” Marshall explains

that Dorian’s “portrait becomes an experiment where he alone can observe the effects of his

wanton lifestyle” (170). His experimentation becomes more obvious as the narrative concludes,

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and Dorian believes “he had spared one innocent thing” and “perhaps if his life became pure, he

would be able to expel every sign of evil passion from the face” (Wilde 182). Where earlier in

the text Dorian engages in cause and effect experimentation to see the progressing symptoms of

sin­disease on the portrait, he hypothesizes that doing good deeds will cure his portrait of the

disease’s physical effects. In this way, “Wilde’s story focuses throughout on the effects of sin on

the appearance, not on the actual sins themselves” (Marshall 171). Sin functions as a disease;

disease is ailment that can be cured, or treated. However, Dorian “could see no chance” for his

treatment’s success because “in the eyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth the

curved wrinkle of the hypocrite” (Wilde 182). A good deed, although interpreted by Dorian as

the medicine to his sickness, cannot cure him as it was “through vanity he had spared [Hetty

Merton]” (Wilde 183). Interpreting sin as a spiritual disease, the cure cannot come from a place

of vice, only virtue. Therefore, a genuine good deed would be the cure for a diseased Dorian, but

his ability to act from a place of goodness has all but disappeared.

Dorian’s interpretations of sin as disease are not uncommon for the nineteenth­century. In

The Preacher, a collection of nineteenth­century Christian sermons, a sermon entitled “Moral

Diseases and Their Remedy” claims, “Moral evil is . . . described as a disease, and the mercy of

God as the only remedy” (262). Wilde’s appropriation of scientific nomenclature to illustrate

Dorian’s condition is in line with Victorian beliefs of sin as a spiritual disease. By prescribing a

remedy, this sermon understands sin the same way. Reinforcing this belief, the sermon says,

“Bodily disease consists in disorder, or some derangement in the system. And what is the disease

of the soul, but something analogous to this? . . . All disease has a tendency to death; so has this

moral disease. ‘Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death’” (Preacher 262). Dorian’s story

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follows this trajectory. He recognizes that his disease is not physical but moral. And that it is, in

fact, a disease. However, the inverted nature of sin as disease means that its treatment is not

chemical but spiritual; he can only be saved through repentance and the grace of God. Through

his experimentations with mercy, Dorian diagnoses himself with sin.

Dorian’s self­diagnosis provides an interesting slant to Wilde’s narrative. Using spiritual

terms, Dorian’s journey shifts into a medical discourse and yields scientific conclusions.

Towards the end of the story, Dorian realizes that the cure for his illness is “to confess, to suffer

public shame, and to make public atonement,” but he is not prepared to embrace any of these as

his cure (Wilde 183). Instead, he embraces death as more attractive than “public shame” or the

revelation of this portrait­face. However, in the end, not even Dorian’s “deal with the Devil” can

exempt him from suffering the physical damage associated with sin and immorality. He “stabbed

the picture” and was discovered “lying on the floor . . . withered wrinkled, and loathsome of

visage” (Wilde 183­84). In the end, all who succumb to moral corruption must bear the marks of

their sin. As Marshall writes, “Despite Dorian’s deceptive beauty, his story, like that of Count

Dracula, still supports the notion that bodies do reflect the state of the souls within them” (171).

Analyzing Wilde’s text through the language of medicine, he illuminates a concern about more

than simple immorality. Presenting sin as disease, Wilde redefines sin as something that can be

cured through goodness and repentance—echoing the ideas present in “Moral Diseases and Their

Remedy.” Dorian’s assumed position as a morality­physician situates him at the center of a

conversation that takes the spiritual and reimagines it as something concrete. While not as

obviously scientific as ailments in Jekyll and Hyde or Dracula, Dorian’s disease is, arguably, the

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most physically devastating of the three. The soul and the body cannot be eternally separated; the

diseased sinners must always own up to their physical corruption.

Regardless of their inherent differences, one particular anxiety lurks behind all three

texts: the behaviors of all three “physicians.” Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde has two central

characters who are formally trained doctors: Dr. Lanyon and Dr. Jekyll. Jekyll’s Victorian

audiences would have understood and supported Jekyll’s self­experimentations as falling in line

with nineteenth­century scientific methodology. Aligning with traditional practices of

nineteenth­century medicine, his reward is an increasingly permanent transformation into a

monstrous “other” in the search for knowledge. Exhibiting similar acts of self­experimentation,

Dorian Gray experiments on his portrait in order to observe the effects of immoral and hedonistic

behavior.

But Stoker’s text takes advantage of this gray area, increasing the ambiguity. Vampires

present Dr. Van Helsing with quasi­unethical, though certainly immoral, circumstances. With

poor Lucy spiraling towards unnatural existence as a literal monster, his decision to cease

treatment and pursue her murder presents no ideal outcomes. However, from a purely medical

vantage point, his actions are in direct conflict with the Hippocratic oath required of all

physicians; to pursue Lucy’s, and also Dracula’s, death, he abandons his responsibility to her as a

patient, or a diseased person. Audiences may be quicker to forgive Van Helsing considering his

difficult narrative situation. However, his actions can be interpreted as problematic given the

similar moral issues of doctors Jekyll and Dorian.

These texts express an anxiety about disease in the High Victorian period that delicately

walks the line between the plausible and implausible. The fear of unrecognizable disease

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manifests in the bodies of monsters who can be safely rejected by mainstream society. This idea

can be seen in Homi Bhaba’s post­colonial writings, particularly “Of Mimicry and Man: The

Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse” where he discusses the “authorized versions of otherness”

agreed upon by society at­large (129). These monsters elicit fear from their place in the

unknown, or unauthorized. Certain forms of “other” are acceptable so long as they adhere to

social categories of otherness. When they deviate from these categories by behaving in deviant

ways (e.g. Hyde exists inside a non­criminal Jekyll), they are no longer adherent to existing

taxonomies of diseased bodies. However, these authors also present situations in which those

who most desire to avoid the diseased (e.g. middle and upper classes) fall prey to their

misleading physical symptoms. While Mr. Hyde repels those around him, Dr. Jekyll belongs to

the upper class of educated individuals who trust him. Dracula, though being a clear monster in

his vampiric state, possesses powers capable of overcoming even the most virtuous of people

(e.g. Mina Murray). Dorian Gray embodies the pinnacle of immoral behavior in his adoption of a

hedonistic and unethical lifestyle. Yet, it is the portrait’s preservation of his unmarred beauty that

calms those around him and prevents them from protecting themselves, and their reputations,

from his immoral self­indulgence. All in all, these texts reveal deep­seated anxieties about the

appearance of moral undesirables by not adhering to Victorian taxonomies of disease and the

diseased body.

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Chapter 4: Monstrosity and Criminality

Existing literature on Victorian crime takes myriad points of view on how to understand

the social reaction to sensationalized crime. In her The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians

Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime (2011), Judith Flanders analyzes

how Victorian print culture revolutionized cultural understandings of the criminal. Using

newspapers, broadsides, pamphlets, novels, and essays, she argues that modern conceptions of

the criminal as celebrity, the media’s tendency to dramatize violence and gore, and contemporary

methods for police detection all originate in the Victorian era. Flanders asserts that, prior to the

nineteenth­century, the public’s interest in crime and violence was regional, but the development

of widely­distributed print media made crime a nationwide topic of interest. The depth of this

interest impacted police officers and detectives who felt the pressure of public scrutiny. Looking

for ways to bring these sensationalized criminals to justice, they employed a tool used by the

public to profile criminals: “Criminal Anthropology.” Criminal Anthropology is an

amalgamation of physiognomic and phrenological principles that allow detectives to profile a

suspect’s face for features that denoted criminal proclivities.

In “A ‘Criminal Type’ in all but Name: British Prison Medical Officers and the

‘Anthropological’ Approach to the Study of Crime (c. 1865­1895),” Neil Davie explores

extensive use of criminal anthropology by nineteenth­century police departments. Davie argues

that, while some policemen were against this practice for its inconsistency, the widespread

popularity of physiognomic principles outweighed its dubious effectiveness. His analysis reveals

that police dependence on criminal anthropology stemmed from a desire to catch criminals

quickly and thereby alleviate the public’s pressure on them to produce results. Secondarily,

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because of popular understandings of criminal anthropology, police officers often used their

biases against “criminal types” subconsciously, even if they publicly spoke out against this

pseudoscience.

In The Victorian Criminal (2008), Storey attributes the national panic to the complicated

backgrounds of infamous killers. While some adhered to standards of criminal appearance and

socioeconomic class, white­collar crime makes apprehending and punishing criminals

problematic. Differentiating between a rural criminal and an urban criminal, Story examines how

police profiling became a necessary, if somewhat ineffective, tool for the Victorian police.

Taking a slightly different view, Ellen L. O’Brien’s Crime in Verse: The Poetics of Murder in

the Victorian Era emphasizes the Victorian tendency to strip violent crime of its brutality.

Instead of secluding themselves from society for fear of victimization, O’Brien explains that they

transferred their anxieties into poetry, books, and songs in order to reclaim the fear and manifest

it into something less frightening. Though varying in their particular approaches to the topic,

these authors indicate that Victorian society has a particular fascination with all types of crime

and criminals. They suggest this fascination stems from social anxieties about a lack of precision

in police detection coupled with sensationalized media that portrayed violent crime as a common

occurrence that affects all social classes.

Sensationalized violent crime in late Victorian and fin de siècle England significantly

affected the population. With the popularity of wide­distribution printing, pamphlets, penny

dreadfuls, broadsides, books, and especially newspapers were able to keep abreast of public

intrigue in violence and violent crime. As Neil R. Storey explains in The Victorian Criminal,

“the nineteenth century was punctuated by some of the most dramatic and horrible crimes of

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modern times, reported in lurid detail even in the respectable national and provincial

newspapers” (5). The criminal classes did not simply consist of the poor; because of this shift

from poverty­based criminality to widespread criminality, the public popularized the

pseudosciences of physiognomy and phrenology. Because the category of poor was no longer an

effective way to categorize criminal, the public required a new set of classifications in order to

identify those who posed a potential threat. Widely disregarded by modern science,

physiognomy and phrenology gave the nineteenth­century a new set of taxonomies that can

accommodate and explain social anxieties over violent crime.

Expanding on this obsession with violent crime, Flanders also describes how “what might

be termed ‘murder sightseeing’ was a popular pastime, and many went ‘from curiosity to

examine the premises,’ where they entered ‘and saw dead bodies’” (Flanders 3). Murder

sightseeing also allowed the public to view the dead bodies of murder victims for a small fee

and, in the end, demonstrate the Victorian fascination with excessive violence. Exacerbating this

fascination was none other than Jack the Ripper. While the 1888 Whitechapel murders struck

fear into the hearts of Londoners, they attempted to understand this murderer’s mind in various

ways, like crime museums or crime literature. Megha Anwer’s “Murder in Black and White:

Victorian Crime Scenes and the Ripper Photographs” examines how frantically Victorian people

reacted to the Ripper crimes. She asserts that the British public hungered for photographs that

revealed the types of individuals the Ripper was targeting. Her analysis examines the kinds of

messages being relayed to the public through the gender politics of these photos, but contends

that the photographs were staged in a way that comments on the “broader Victorian art

aesthetic.” Her analysis takes into account the Victorian need to identify types of victims as a

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first step towards identifying the type of person committing these murders. Although her

arguments identify the need for a type, she does not address how the public coped with signs that

these “type” classifications were insufficient as far as protection from being victimized.

It is no surprise, then, that the Victorians clamored for a way to recognize evil.

Pseudosciences such as physiognomy and phrenology gave them an ability to do just that.

Advanced by individuals such as Cesare Lombroso and Alphonse Bertillion, these

pseudoscientific theories became instrumental to both British and American police forces and

prison systems because they enabled them to profile the “criminal type” (Storey 6). The inability

to see passed the pseudoscientific explanations created a dependency on these explanations that

could have blinded the people from identifying real patterns of criminal behavior. As described

by Carrie A. Rentschler in “The Physiognomic Turn,” these systems for identifying deviance

were so impactful on nineteenth­century conceptions of criminality that these methods became

an “ideological and highly technologized treatment of the human face and form” (231). In

effect, these taxonomies became scientific proof for criminal behavior and intent.

These pseudosciences allowed individuals to examine the face of the accused and

determine whether or not this person was a criminal. Phrenology, which studied protuberances

and curvatures of the skull, asserted that certain types of curvatures or bumps indicated a

tendency towards evil or villainy while others invoked trust (Marshall 162). The popularity of

these pseudosciences meant that novels such as Dracula, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde, and The Picture of Dorian Gray provided descriptive references to their fictional

characters that establish their (im)morality. Desires for recognizable criminality come as no

surprise in a culture where violent crime was not only normal, but common entertainment.

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Current scholarship on physiognomy and criminality fails to address how Victorians reacted

when these taxonomic systems failed to identify violent criminal and thus prevent violent crime.

Much of the existing scholarship on Victorian pseudoscience and criminality omits discussions

about how these pseudosciences were problematic because they prevented the population from

recognizing that these systems were faulty at best. In this chapter, I argue that these texts reveal a

desire to make plain the idea that unexpected individuals could be capable of brutality when

taxonomies designed to prevent violent crime prove useless in the real world.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Published in 1886, two years before the Ripper’s murder of Annie Chapman, Strange

Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explored the possibility that a good man has an internal,

dormant evil. This notion outraged Victorians desperate to reject “the premise that every human

being has a demon imprisoned within them that the right concoctions or chemicals could release

on society” (Storey 58). Discomfort with this duality was only increased by the novella’s

implication that an upstanding gentleman such as Dr. Jekyll could commit crimes of this caliber.

While the trampling of a small child early in the novella’s text lacks murderous intensity, Sir

Danvers Carew’s murder mimics the types of violence common in popularized Victorian

murders. Similarities can be drawn between this type of violence and those seen in the Ripper’s

murders. Both Carew and victims like Annie Chapman were killed on the streets, and their

bodies mutilated in gruesome ways. While Carew’s bludgeoned body differs from the surgical

cuts found on Chapman’s, both were left out in the open as the kind of spectacle preferred by

murder­sightseers.

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The descriptions of Hyde’s encounter with Carew exhibit “insensate cruelty” (Stevenson

22). Encountering each other on a dimly lit street, the maid was shocked by the “great flame of

anger” that arose from Hyde towards Danvers, described by the maid as an “aged and beautiful

gentleman with white hair” (21). This explosion of anger caused Carew to “step back” from

Hyde, who “broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth” (22). Not satisfied with his

attack, the maid explains his “ape like fury” as he was “trampling his victim under foot, and

hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body

jumped upon the roadway” (22). This description of public, violent crime represented reality and

not just fiction; though predating the Ripper murders, this novella comes roughly a decade after

Henry Wainwright’s murder of Harriet Lane. Sensationalized by papers such as Illustrated

Police, Lane’s body was found wrapped in cloth on the side of a London’s Borough High Street

(Storey). While not a common occurrence, dead bodies left on the street, as Carew’s was,

connect fiction to reality and aid in the suspension of disbelief.

Underpinning the savagery associated with Carew’s murder, the language describing

Hyde’s physicality is distinctly inhuman. While Carew’s description includes terms like

“beautiful gentleman,” Stevenson categorizes Hyde’s anger as a “flame” and “ape like.” Hyde

does not kill Carew as a human kills a human. Instead, Hyde “clubbed” his victim while also

“trampling him underfoot”—all these descriptions classify Hyde as an animal, or a caveman.

These descriptions of cavemen­like physicality sit firmly inside physiognomic taxonomies.

Physiognomy categorized the cavemanish broad, long forehead and bulbous nose as criminal

and, therefore, morally degenerate. Hyde’s animalism and unrefined violence marks him as

criminal. Those characteristics of Hyde’s violent acts are in keeping with his “unrefined”

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physiognomy. This brand of unrefined violence, and the close proximity between Stevenson’s

publication and the Ripper’s first murder, prompted claims that Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and

Mr. Hyde inspired the Ripper murders.

Stevenson’s novella did inspire plays and musicals. For instance, an 1888 stage

adaptation of the story was so convincing that “some even suspected Mansfield himself of being

the Ripper” (Storey 58­59). Mansfield’s Grand Guignol portrayal of Hyde’s murder shocked

audiences, who blamed Mansfield’s believable “transformation” from Jekyll to Hyde for

legitimizing the claim that the Ripper was of the gentlemanly class. Audiences were so 12

repulsed by Mansfield that “the run of the play was cut short and terminated in its tenth week”

(Storey 58). The Ripper’s unknown identity sparked rumors and gossip that slowly moved the

Ripper from the human to the subhuman. The dehumanization of the Ripper gave the public a

sense of security in their humanity. While Stevenson “created one of the archetypes of

doubling,” readers distanced the human Jekyll from the subhuman Hyde and looked to his

monstrosity for clarification. Attempting to understand monstrosity, newspapers and broadsides

transformed the Ripper into a monstrous caricature of a man. Newspaper titles assert that London

had fallen “under the spell of a great terror . . . a nameless reprobate—half beast, half man . . . a

ghoul­like creature who stalks through the streets of London . . . simply drunk with blood”

(Flanders 427). The frequency at which newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides published and

distributed crime­centric material “implies a readership interested in historical crimes and

executions and steeped in the knowledge of violent death” (O’Brien 52). Coupled with this

12 The Lyceum theatre staged Mansfield’s production of Jekyll and Hyde. The gore of this production aligns more closely with those staged at the Grand Guignol in Paris—a theatre famous for its naturalistic horror spectacles. However, the Grand Guignol did not stage an early version of Jekyll and Hyde as the theatre did not open until 1897.

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knowledge, blurred “divisions between the dangerous masses and the respectable classes”

manifested themselves in the resurrection of monsters; these monsters, like Hyde, could provide

the public with answers to unknowns they believed threatened their safety (O’Brien 46).

The dehumanization of violent criminals increased until only the other, the monstrous,

remained. By imagining criminals like Jack the Ripper as “bloodthirsty fiend[s],” Victorian

readers facilitated the rise of monster literature in the 1890s as man and monster could not be one

in the same—at least, not without the presence of the supernatural. A man, however criminal or

physically repulsive, is still a man and can be a threat to one’s safety; monsters exist only in

books and fairy­tales. Monsters can never truly harm you as they do not exist. The late Victorian

spike in monster literature is preceded by an historical tendency to transmogrify human killers

into “cold­blooded monster[s]” (O’Brien 62). This transition between human and inhuman marks

the same transition between real threat and unreal threat. With particular types of monsters such

as the vampire, what was once human is no longer possessed of a soul or human conscience.

Therefore, he or she can no longer be held to the same moral or ethical standards. Physicality

problematizes the distance between human and monster. Though no longer truly human, a

vampire maintains many physical similarities with the humans he or she hunts. These texts

grapple with the idea that a being, however normal looking, could be capable of committing

violent crime. Victorian taxonomies lacked the ability to address monsters who did not appear

monstrous, something that Bram Stoker’s Dracula examines in more detail.

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Dracula

Stoker’s Dracula presents audiences with monsters that can look like humans because

they used to be humans. Flanders explores in detail similarities between the Ripper murders and

the plot of Dracula. In her final chapter, she points out, “while Dracula is about much more than

Ripper­type murderer, the 1888 crimes, and the sensations that surround them, are woven

throughout the novel” (Flanders 454). The parallels between Dracula and the Whitechapel

murders would have been recognizable to Victorian readers who, as O’Brien claims, were

“interested in historical crimes” (52). These similarities aided Jack the Ripper’s removal from the

human category. It is easier to imagine that a monster is capable of cold blooded murder than to

imagine someone with a soul could be capable of it.

Stoker describes Dracula and his crimes through “eyewitness” accounts—not from him or

any of his vampiric children. The air of normalcy used by the novel’s narrators gave readers a

chance to encounter violent, monstrous crime through those that would have understood the

everyman’s horror. As a villain, Dracula makes logical sense; the novel introduces him as the

central antagonist. Far more problematic is the transformation of Lucy Westenra from

upstanding Victorian woman to monster. In a scene narrated by Dr. Seward, the Crew of Light

finds Lucy attacking a small child. Having ripped open the young child’s throat and consumed

his blood, Lucy “flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched

strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone” (Stoker 226). Stoker’s

use of words like “callous,” “devil,” and “growl” accentuate her missing humanity by associating

her physical being and behavior to animals and demons, not humans. Lucy’s animalistic, devilish

behavior reflects her dehumanization. Lucy is now a “devil,” a demon, that must be stopped

Szanter 45

before she claims more victims. Her attack on this child illustrates a monstrous mother

construction that directly challenges any vestiges of Victorian “womanness” and further

dehumanizes her. Dr. Seward emphasizes the “cold­bloodedness in the act” and describes her

face as “crimson with fresh blood” that “stained the purity of her lawn death­robe,” or burial

gown (Stoker 227, 226). Her death robe, a relic of her formerly pure human state, has been

stained by her victim’s blood. This staining marks her transition from human to animal and

completes the dehumanization process. Lucy is no longer Lucy; she is a creature “that bore her

shape” but is no longer reflective of her formerly human, feminine state (Stoker 226). The text

chronicles Lucy’s transformation in a way that makes logical sense. Her human person was

corrupted by something foreign and other. In this corruption, she can no longer maintain the

moral, ethical behaviors expected of a human. Thus, Stoker suggests that a murderer of this

cruelty could just linger inside a remnant of humanity

Lucy’s transformation is the product of Count Dracula’s violent and criminal nature.

Dracula’s othering begins with his Eastern European nationality and segues into his proclivity

for violence. Dracula ends the human lives of five women and desperately tries and fails to end

Mina Murray’s human life. Towards the end of the story, Dracula “stepped out of the mist” into

Mina and Jonathan’s bedroom. She recognizes him immediately based on the myriad

descriptions of his “aquiline nose” and “waxen face” (Stoker 305). In his endeavor to have Mina,

Dracula’s threat to, “dash [Jonathan’s] brains out before your very eyes” precedes his drinking of

Mina’s blood and starts Mina’s transformation into a vampire (Stoker 305). In relaying this

experience to Dr. Seward, Mina vocalizes a deep­seated fear: “What have I done to deserve such

a fate, I who have tried to walk in meekness and righteousness all my days? God pity me! Look

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down on a poor soul in worse than mortal peril” (Stoker 306). Mina recognizes the first step of

the descent into monstrosity, a fate she describes as “worse than mortal peril.” She has, literally,

tasted monstrosity and understands, because of Lucy, what will follow. Victorian readers who

“dol[ed] out sympathy to both victims and witnesses,” would have compassion for Mina who

represented the path of “meekness and righteousness” that, at this point in the text, has

succumbed to the monster (O’Brien 70).

Dracula’s attempt to explain monstrosity as a subhuman condition can mirror the desire

to create more monsters that were capable of heightened levels of brutality. Vampires act as a

metaphor for criminals and their acts of violence result from their base, animalistic drive for

blood and survival. Just as Victorians viewed criminals as subhuman, vampires are subhuman

because they are corrupt and deformed. Their criminal acts reflect their absence of moral or

ethical standards. They kill because their moral compass is absent and has no power to make

them act humanely. The comfort in this idea stems from the outward and apparent monstrosity of

vampires. While shaped like humans, their facial features, nails, and behavior are all designed to

alert potential victims. As was the case with Jack the Ripper and other Victorian murderers, there

was little to protect victims from an educated gentleman. Even Jekyll and Hyde with its

implications of internal duality allowed for Jekyll to be a kind upstanding citizen who physically

changes his appearance when transforming into threatening Mr. Hyde. Victorian systems of

criminal identification were unable to fully classify Hyde because he could transform into Jekyll.

These classification systems could not address monsters who could hide their monstrosity in a

human form. Wilde’s Dorian Gray plays to this complication by crafting a monster that is, by all

appearances, fully human.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray

Examples of violent behavior in The Picture of Dorian Gray are not nearly as abundant

or central as those in Dracula or Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dorian’s actions

result in negative effects for those that encounter or facilitate his hedonistic behavior. However,

most of those results are not violent; rather than brutality, Dorian destroys the reputations of

upper class people but does not murder them in cold blood. While the Victorians might have

seen his destruction of those individuals’ reputations as a “criminal” act, there is no physical

violence against them. The glaring exception to this example is Dorian’s murder of Basil

Hallward.

Dorian’s beautiful appearance gives him an unfair advantage when luring in potential

victims. Unmarred because of the portrait’s absorption of his deformities, Dorian embodies

“these years of uncertainty and fear, the sense that no one was what he seemed, that everyone

might have a secret life” (Flanders 455). Wilde crafted a narrative that tapped into this wealth of

fear. The nature of Dorian’s criminality is most obviously marked by his violent murder and

disposal of Basil Hallward—the man who facilitated Dorian’s transition from harmless young

man to murderer. Upon revealing his grotesque soul­portrait to Hallward, Dorian experiences

“the mad passions of a hunted animal” and made him loathe Hallward “more than in his whole

life he had ever loathed anything” (Wilde 132). Upon locating a knife, Dorian pierces Hallward’s

throat in “the great vein behind the ear, crushing [Hallward’s] head down on the table, and

stabbing again and again” (Wilde 132). Compounding the violent and personal nature of this

murder is Dorian’s behavior after it is committed. After Hallward’s body stops moving, Dorian

notices, “the thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with a bowed head, and

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humped back, and long fantastic arms” (Wilde 133). While the text illustrates that Hallward’s

humanity, his soul, has left the body, Dorian’s reference to the corpse as “the thing” works as a

slap in the reader’s face. Rather than being a dead human being, Dorian’s words demotes

Hallward to an object. While the corpse is devoid of a soul, the dead body is not corrupt.

Compared to the corrupted state of Lucy Westenra in Dracula, her dead body is never corrupted.

Instead, the body is buried reverently wearing the “death­robe” as a symbol of her former human

purity. Hallward body, though no longer possessed of a soul, still represents his former

humanity. Dorian’s objectification of his corpse insults the remaining humanness of his still

uncorrupted body. Adding insult to injury, as Hallward lies lifeless and Dorian examines the

scene with an air of disinterest, a “policeman strolled over and said something” to a woman on

the nearby crosswalk completely unaware of Dorian’s crime (Wilde 133). Dorian’s walks away

from this murder with relative ease; he lies to Francis telling him that Hallward “stayed till

eleven, and then he went away to catch his train” to Paris (Wilde 134). Removing Hallward from

the country enables Dorian to walk away unsuspected. All he needed to do to get away was tell a

lie and hide Hallward’s coat and bag. Dorian was able to cleanse himself of his crime with

simple word of mouth and never faced punishment for Hallward’s gruesome murder.

The most pivotal connection between Dorian and Jack the Ripper is that neither was

brought to justice for their crimes. While “chapbooks, lurid exhibitions and the gutter press

caused a wider clamour [sic] for an insight into the crimes,” Jack the Ripper was never caught or

made to answer for his murders (Storey 57). Similarly, Dorian Gray is never caught for the

murder of Basil Hallward. In the closing pages of the text, Dorian debates whether or not he

should “give himself up and be put to death” (Wilde 182). During this internal debate, Dorian

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laughs because “everything belonging to [Hallward] had been destroyed. [Dorian] himself had

burned what had been below­stairs” and this lack of evidence would only prove Dorian was

“mad” for believing he had committed such a violent crime (Wilde 182­83). This moment of

acceptance is undercut because Dorian cannot understand that his crime was sinful. He thinks

about the crime and realizes “nothing that he could do would cleanse him till he had told his own

sin” but that “the death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him” (Wilde 183). In a moment

where Dorian could redeem himself, he regresses into the same disinterest he displayed toward

Hallward immediately after the murder. The only significant thought he has about the murder is

whether or not it was “to dog him all his life” (Wilde 183). Ultimately deciding to destroy the

portrait, and thereby himself, Dorian dies “with a knife in his heart” but left no evidence of his

crime against Hallward. Though there is justice in Dorian’s metaphorical suicide, those who

discover him find no evidence of Hallward’s murder. As was the case with Jekyll and Hyde and

Dracula, Dorian Gray presents a monster that is deeply evil but possess qualities that are

discernibly human. These texts and their monsters assert the idea that people need to come to

terms with the fact that the taxonomies in place to identify criminality were largely useless.

Depictions of criminality in high Victorian monster literature explored the motives and

psyche of the violent criminal. Whereas museums and “murder sightseeing” put the general

public on the front lines of criminal violence, monsters provided a comfortable distance from the

potential reality for human monstrosity. Creatures like Mr. Hyde and Dracula suggest that only

those who are inwardly and outwardly corrupted are capable of violent crime. Pseudosciences

like physiognomy and phrenology legitimized these views by illustrating a criminal appearance

that potential victims could use to avoid those who looked criminal. Complicating these desires,

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characters like Dr. Jekyll and Dorian Gray presented an unrecognizable threat that cracked the

foundations of Victorian beliefs regarding appearance and morality. When taxonomies designed

to prevent violent crime prove useless in the real world, these texts grappled with the idea that

anyone could be capable of brutality.

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Chapter 5: Conclusion

Anxiety about physical normalcy weaves together the relationship between the inner and

outer selves. Examining anxieties about appearance in the Victorian era, reveals the degree to

which they were attached to taxonomies that corroborated their personal beliefs about

appearance and moral character. These taxonomies allowed the public to believe they had control

over their safety from threats of moral corruption, disease, and crime.

Intensifying these anxieties is an ever­changing landscape of scientific and medical

inquiry that brought much needed answers to questions of deformity and disease. Advancements

in medical technology allowed scientists and the public the opportunity to look at the smallest

elements of humanity and scrutinize them. Understanding disease at a molecular level challenged

existing taxonomies of the diseased as morally and physically inferior. Instead of blaming

porphyria or manic­depression on moral deficiency, scientists revealed that complications of

biology prevented a human from living a normal life. These challenges to physical stereotypes

blurred the lines between preconceived notions of how goodness or badness manifested in

human beings.

It was faith in these physical stereotypes that allowed Victorian culture to deal with crime

and victimization. It is because of Dracula’s monstrous appearance that his victims can recognize

him through mist, darkness, and disorientation. In contrast, Dorian’s beauty allows him the

leeway to strike victims without their knowing. These examples of appearance and criminality

reveal the spectrum of anxiety associated with Victorian crime. While much of this anxiety

stemmed from sensationalized killers like Jack the Ripper, murder and other violent crime

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became a mainstay of Victorian culture and led to a rise in questions about what it meant to be a

criminal. Transforming criminality into monstrousness, these texts explore how certain people

are predisposed to criminality based on their physical or moral inferiority. But, again,

taxonomies designed to identify these dangerous criminals failed and undermined the validity of

classifications in regards to those who appeared criminal.

While all of these texts represent clear subversions of existing taxonomies, all texts also

include a conquest over the evil, subversive monster. In all texts, the monster figure dies either

by their own or another’s hand. It is important to note that, regardless of how deviant their

monstrosities are, they are ultimately conquered. This conquest is important to understand why it

was acceptable that these monsters subverted their traditional taxonomic categories. This

conquest allows for a hopeful narrative because it means that humans can overcome the failure

of their categories, recognize evil, and still find ways to defeat it. Or, at the very least, develop

better, more useful categories. For the monsters that dispatched themselves, the texts make it so

their monstrosity cannot exist in the narrative any longer. The Crew of Light kills both Dracula

and Lucy, Jekyll overcomes Hyde, and Dorian overcomes himself. Even though these three

monsters appear in varying and unexpected ways, their monstrosities are not sustainable because

they all exist outside established categorizing systems.

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