The "Other" in the Self: Victorian Atavism and Degeneration (Apr 22, 2022)

        While the late-Victorian phenomena of atavism and degeneration were used to explain and dramatize the “innate” inferiority of marginalized groups, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau use these familiar concepts to defamiliarize the self. In explaining what inspired him to start his experiment, Jekyll remarks that he “learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both” (Stevenson 43). This statement speaks to the true horror of Victorian atavism and degeneration; that while 19th century literature exaggerates the fear of the “Other” through depictions of regressive devolution, the full height of existential crisis is reached with the conscious realization that the “Other” undeniably exists within the self and that proclaimed differences are ambiguous if not downright arbitrary. Through their varying portrayals of atavism, Stevenson and Wells reveal the disturbing horror lies within the uncanny of the monster – not solely in its difference but how it reflects the innate, animalistic side of humanity and the self’s immediate proximity to degeneration.

            It is tempting to simplify the fear generated by Stevenson and Wells’ works to their dramatization of atavism and how they use the “Other” to create their monsters, thinking singularly of the difference and divergence they present. Atavism, as Kelly Hurley explains in her chapter “Chaotic bodies,” originated from Victorian theories that perpetuated the belief that criminals and other social undesirables possessed “innate criminality [that] bespoke itself in certain physical stigmata” (Hurley 93). Those who failed to live up to the expectations of what a civilized European should be were not only considered bestial in nature but bestial in appearance – that with this degeneration came the easily distinguishable physical manifestations of “lower races” (Hurley 93). This theory was weaponized to push the agendas of the European male, subjecting any marginalized communities to villainization and using it as cause for subjugation. Atavism became associated with sexual and cultural deviancy – perceived or actual. With anything beyond the idealized European male being labelled as “Other” and therefore wrong, it is no real surprise that the monsters of Stevenson and Wells conform to these ideas, though they choose different methods in their representations of atavism. In his variation of atavism, Stevenson demonstrates the separation of the self from the degenerate in a failed attempt to cheat regression and reputational damage. Hyde is characterized as “hardly human…something troglodytic” (Stevenson 10) and reminiscent of the primitive while Jekyll is comparatively described as possessing “every mark of capacity and kindness” (Stevenson 12), showcasing Jekyll’s gentlemanly nature as more sophisticated and proper. Hyde is Jekyll’s lower lifeform and Jekyll’s desire to separate from Hyde can be interpreted as the larger scale Victorian anxiety to separate the self from the animalistic nature deemed deficient and demeaning.

            While Wells chooses to express atavism using anthropomorphic animals degenerating back to their primitive nature, the idea of the Other is no less impressed. Moreau’s creatures are overt caricatures of European attitudes towards other races, displaying how animalistic and odd indigenous, black, and brown communities are purported to be when judged by the European standard: “There were three other men besides, strange brutish-looking fellows…They seemed to me then to be brown men…They wore turbans, too…with protruding lower jaws…they were an amazingly ugly gang…” (Wells 16-17). The animal deformity of their apelike jaws and strange, incongruent bodies are clear representations of atavism as outward manifestations of inner moral deformity and evolutionary inferiority. Wells also skillfully places subtle signs of their “Otherness,” with even the layout of the island representing a geographical sense of atavism: “The coast fell away from me to the east, and westward it was hidden by the shoulder of the cape. Then I recalled the fact that Moreau’s beach lay to the west” (Wells 32). Every mention of the beast people and their habitat lays eastward, conveying the danger and the devolution of the east. In these ways, Stevenson and Wells both follow the rules outlined by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” when he asserts that “the monster is difference made flesh…in its function as dialectical Other or third-term supplement, the monster is an incorporation of the Outside, the Beyond” (Cohen 7). Hyde and Moreau’s beasts are, at least in part, terrifying for the radical differences they present to the accepted norm of behavior and appearance. But to say that the power of their monsters is so limited as to shock value and differential disgust fails to look at the deeper meanings of the authors’ works. Victorian anxieties surrounding atavism lie not just within these differences but within the self’s own susceptibility to these differences, recognizing the human in the “Other” and the monster in the self.

            If Stevenson and Wells subscribe to Cohen’s thesis on difference, they also excel at subscribing to Cohen’s emphatic assertion that “difference is arbitrary…the monster threatens to destroy not just individual members of a society, but the very cultural apparatus through which individuality is constituted and allowed” (Cohen 12). The monsters represented in these works not only define difference; they simultaneously destroy difference and its boundaries by reminding their characters and readers alike of the similarities between them. In doing so, their monsters also threaten the hierarchy created by the European standard, one which dictated its immunity to base animal instinct and relation. Wells compels his readers to consider the ambiguity between distinctions of animal and man and how the recognition of one’s own proximity to degeneration evokes feelings of the uncanny and the terrified. Prendick is filled with pervading and unnerving uncanniness as he tries to make sense of both the animal and the human within the beast people: “It may seem a strange contradiction in me – I cannot explain the fact – but now, seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal attitude…and its perfectly inhuman face distorted with terror, I realized again the fact of its humanity” (Wells 73). Prendick is continually asked to reconcile the two extremes of primitive and proper, once again demonstrating Cohen’s assertion that the monster “breaks apart bifurcating, ‘either/or’ syllogistic logic” (Cohen 7) to consider the ambiguous answer in between.

As Hurley keenly notes, the beast people are not accepted by either binary system, with “the animal world itself [rising] up and [identifying] M’Ling, the beast man, as an abomination” (Hurley 104) in the same capacity as the humans of the story do. But nevertheless, M’Ling and Moreau’s other beasts vaguely belong to both worlds. Prendick is confronted with the reality that Moreau’s makeshift human creations pose, in suggesting that humanity is not overwhelmingly distinct from the animal world nor are animals entirely incapable of evolving to the human level: “They may once have been animals. But I never before saw an animal trying to think” (Wells 51). It is not just the beast people’s animalism that is haunting – it is their concurrent albeit strained relationship to humanity, attempting to validate themselves as human beings by adhering to “the Law” (Wells 42) and mimicking what they believe to be a functioning society. Similarly, Hurley contends that “all human beings within the novel are capable of ‘animalistic’ behaviors” (Hurley 105). It is observable that humans are also instinctual, vicious, dangerous, and – like Moreau in his experiments or Prendick in his dealings with the beast people – unempathetic despite claims of empathy cementing human beings as superior to animals. Prendick’s proximity to degeneration even proceeds his proximity to the beast people when he almost succumbs to cannibalism for survival (Wells 2). His experiences show there is a cognitive dissonance within human society to believe they rank so highly above the animals they so often revert to. So, in witnessing the beasts’ disturbing and incalculable duality, Prendick must admit his own; and any similarity to what he describes as the “grotesque travesties of men” (Wells 60) is sure to incite existential despair.

When it comes to Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Stephen D. Arata explains that part of the terror Hyde provokes is in his subversion of the atavistic portrayal. Hyde’s obvious yet undiscernible villainy and his proximity to the gentleman threaten the narrative of European elitism: “Yet this is in fact a prime source of horror in the tale: not that the professional man is transformed into an atavist criminal, but that the atavist criminal learns to pass as a gentleman” (Arata 240). In fact, the quote presented in the introduction by Jekyll and his inevitable death as Hyde emphasize that the duality of man cannot be separated, and the gentleman cannot exist without his repressed degenerate. Jekyll and Hyde are almost interchangeable between one another by the end of the story (Arata 240), which is not so surprising considering how much one contained the other: “The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have said, undignified” (Stevenson 46). It seems ironic that Jekyll does not fully comprehend the flaw of his theory, in overlooking how his desire to sin in secrecy makes him no better than Hyde who he feels is all his evil incarnate. The gentleman, it can then be understood, is a complexity simply described as an animal trained into propriety until the animal is suppressed and barely recognizable. And in a way, this is observable in Hyde himself. While Hyde is irrefutably vile and monstrous in nature, and a prime example of atavism, this monstrosity is not necessarily easily discernable to the eye: “[Hyde] gave an impression of deformity without any namable malformation…[nothing] could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing, and fear which Ur. Utterson regarded him” (Stevenson 10). Stevenson therefore challenges the dissociation of atavism from the white bourgeois (Arata 235) and contends no human is exempt from their animal ancestry reappearing.

This lack of exemption from “Otherness” is further exhibited by other “proper” gentlemen within Stevenson’s story. When Hyde tramples the little girl at the beginning of the tale, Mr. Enfield describes the thinly veiled animal instinct that Hyde’s viciousness evokes within the witnesses: “Well, sir, he was like the rest of us…Sawbones turned sick and white with the desire to kill [Hyde]. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing him being out of the question, we did the next best” (Stevenson 3). The gentlemen, like Jekyll, are not entirely above base instincts and cruelty; they are just conditioned to hide it in a way Hyde refuses to. Arata also notes that “Enfield derives vicarious pleasure from watching Hyde maul the girl…[by] neglecting to intervene [and prevent their collision]” (Arata 239). Though Enfield may consider himself above the outright evil of Hyde, and though he may not stoop down to all of Hyde’s horrid acts, he himself houses an animal and displays a desire to diverge from the propriety that rules society. Even Utterson, who “sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds” (Stevenson 1), provides evidence of humanity’s capacity and willingness to commit evil. Hyde is not startling simply because he is evil – it is because he is the unfamiliar evil in the familiar body.

Though it is being argued that the “Othering” taking place in atavism and degeneration is not the singular cause of fear in the literature of Stevenson and Wells, its significance cannot be understated. This mistake of understating “Othering” is most felt in Tim Young’s argument that Wells’ work in The Island of Dr. Moreau “[loses] sight of the possibilities for a subversive reading of colonialism” (Young 122), in which Young assumes Moreau’s macro focus on humanity undermines any of the social implications of atavism (Young 122). But claiming so does the text a severe disservice. Wells compels readers to consider the obscurity between races, both those overtly between man and beast and those subtly between the races of mankind. This is easily recognizable when Prendick finally asks Montgomery about the peculiarity of the island’s inhabitants: “Your men on the beach…what race are they?” (Wells 25). Wells reveals the indoctrinated bias that Europeans hold of their own superiority to other races and cultures, showing how easy it is to fashion a monster out of those who do not comply with the standard. How marginalized groups are “Othered” to become degenerates - and subsequently monsters – is key to the frightening level that uncanniness is felt, in realizing a fundamental flaw in the crafted hierarchy white people have built their superiority on. It is through the collapse of the European standard, and therefore the recognition of the “Other” in the self, that most terrifies and traumatizes the white characters within these stories.

The stories of Stevenson and Wells exceed Cohen’s seventh thesis that claims “monsters are our children…they ask us why we have created them” (Cohen 20); they reveal to readers that monsters are not merely our children but our worst fears for the self. That while atavism dramatizes the Victorian fear of the “Other” and the different, it is primarily through the use of the uncanny that these fears reflect an understanding of one’s own capacity to degenerate and take the place of the “Other.” At the end of Wells’ novel, Prendick is haunted by the pervading sense that one can never truly tell who is the “Other” playing a part or who is the man becoming the “Other.” He is conscious of how degeneration has altered both his experience of the self and how the self is interpreted by others: “I was almost as queer to men as I had been to the Beast People” (Wells 102). In turn men have also become inherently degenerated to him, stating unequivocally that “I could not persuade myself that the men and women I met were not also another, still passably human, Beast People, animals half-wrought into the outward image of human souls” (Wells 102). Though Stevenson and Wells capitalize on the difference presented in atavism, it is primarily through the destruction of these distinctions and proving the universal experiences of humanity that horror is most felt. This threatens to change the way humans view the world and each other. These stories also pose an important reminder that the monsters inside the man only begin the degeneration when he believes he is beyond regression.

 

Works Cited

Arata, Stephen D. “The Sedulous Ape: Atavism, Professionalism, and Stevenson’s ‘Jekyll and Hyde.’” Criticism, vol. 37, no. 2, 1995, pp. 233–59, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23116549. Accessed 25 Apr. 2022.

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Monster Theory: Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, NED-New edition, University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp. 3–25, https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctttsq4d.4. Accessed 25 Apr. 2022.

Hurley, Kelly. “Chaotic bodies.” The Gothic Body: Sexuality, materialism, and degeneration at the fin de siècle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.01897.0001.001.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dover Publications, 1991.

Wells, H. G. The Island of Dr. Moreau. Dover Publications, 1996.

Youngs, Tim. “Morlocks, Martians, and Beast-People.” Beastly Journeys: Travel and Transformation at the Fin de Siècle, Liverpool University Press, 2013, pp. 107–39, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5vjbg0.7. Accessed 25 Apr. 2022.