Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson - 1886

Stevenson's 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" is an under-appreciated masterpiece. It's a breathlessly fast paced story where the protagonist, Dr Jekyll, is dead (sorry, spoilers) halfway through the very short novel, and yet Stevenson manages to sustain the excitement until the big 'reveal' at the end. We now know of course that Dr Jekyll is Mr Hyde, but it is still possible to imagine the excitement readers must have experienced on first finding this out, perhaps having worked it out for themselves a few pages earlier.

The novel uses a traditional framing device and a combination of diaries and other documents to provide some distance from the main action. Gabriel Utterson, a lawyer, is told by his cousin about an encounter some months ago, when he witnesses a sinister figure named Edward Hyde and a young girl accidentally bump into one another. Hyde trampled on the girl causing her some undefined harm. In a form of mob justice, Hyde was forced to pay £100 to avoid any scandal. He paid this on the spot fine with a cheque drawn on the account of Dr. Henry Jekyll, an old friend of Utterson. This tale reinforces Utterson's fear that Jekyll is being blackmailed by Hyde - he has recently drawn his will to make Hyde the sole beneficiary in case of his death or disappearance. Jekyll assures Utterson that there is nothing to worry about. Is there a suggestion that the reason Jekyl tolerates and funds Hyde is due to an 'unnatural' sexual relationship between the pair? This would explain the need to pay off witnesses to avoid a scandal, and also fits with the unspecified sins or vices that Jekyll admits to later in the novel when explaining his experiments.

Later, Hyde is implicated when a servant sees him beat a man to death with a heavy cane. Police find half of the cane, which is revealed to be one which Utterson himself gave to Jekyll. There is no trace of Hyde, and for a while Jekyll reverts to his former friendly manner. This cannot last, and soon Jekyll starts refusing to see any visitors. Then a mutual acquaintance of Jekyll and Utterson, Dr Lanyon, dies suddenly of shock. Before his death, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he should only open it after Jekyll's death or his disappearance. It soon seems as if that time has come, because in the next chapter Jekyll's butler, Poole, visits Utterson and explains that Jekyll has locked himself away in his laboratory for several weeks. They break into the laboratory to find the body of Hyde wearing Jekyll's clothes and apparently dead from suicide.

They also find a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain the entire mystery. The suicide note and accompanying documents reveal that Lanyon's death resulted from the shock of seeing Hyde drinking a serum and, as a result of doing so, turning into Dr. Jekyll. The second letter explains that Jekyll, having previously indulged unstated vices found a way to transform himself and thereby indulge his vices without fear of detection. Unable to control the transformations he resolved to cease becoming Hyde, but it is too late - he is ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increase in frequency and necessitate ever larger doses of the draught to reverse them. Eventually, one of the chemicals from which he had prepared the draught ran low. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll slowly vanished in consequence. He finally realises that he will soon become Hyde permanently.

I class Jekyll and Hyde, along with Dracula and Frankenstein, as the one of the three great horror novels of the 19th century. I appreciate that places me in the mainstream of critical reaction, but for some reason while the latter two works have been recognised as great works of fiction in their own rights, divorced from the industry of 'inspired by' films, television adaptation and novels they have generated, Jekyll and Hyde remains largely unread. Which is a pity, because it is genuinely scary. Hyde is a monster largely because he is so un-monstrous. The potion which Dr Jekyll discovers allows him to physically separate the good and evil parts of himself, but the Mr Hyde which emerges feels at first to be something quite positive. Outwardly he appears to be a normal man, although anyone seeing him is struck by his profoundly evil character:

“The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but innocent freedom of the soul."

But this younger, lighter, happier personailty comes with a catch:

"I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.” 

What I find fascinating about this novel is the way Stevenson brings together in one short story many of the prevailing big themes of the day: that science can unlock dangerous secrets, that people have dual or multiple personalities, and that some of our instincts are animalistic:

Jekyll experiments with splitting himself because he wants to find a way to indulge his appetite for vice with impunity. He releases a beast he cannot control:

"I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.” 

These vices are not specified, but sexually transmitted diseases, and their debilitating effect on men's health, were a particular dread of the time. More specifically, the novel lends itself very conveniently to an allegorical reading of the need for homosexual men to live double lives. The Guardian noted in a review of a stage production a few years ago that:

"Even though Stevenson may not have intended leaving them, there are suggestive markers throughout the text: the suspected blackmail of Jekyll by his "young man", his "favourite"; the "very pretty manner of politeness of Sir Danvers Carew" when approached in the street - terms that may have denoted forbidden liaisons to a Victorian readership. The hidden door by which he enters Jekyll's house is the "back way", even "the back passage". It happens that the year of composition, 1885, was the year in which an amendment to an act of parliament made homosexual acts between men a criminal offence."

Victorian society was still coming to terms with Darwin's revolutionary idea that men had evolved from animals, and that it was from these origins that some of our animalist instincts could be traced. At the same time ideas around the subconscious were becoming more current, although yet to be formulated clearly by Freud in the twentieth century. Stevenson's formulation of these ideas in 'Dr Jekyll' is arguably one of the earliest description of the divided consciousness:
 

"It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise 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; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil."

This is a fascinating, chilling and hugely influential book, horror for grown-ups, Stevenson's best writing for adults.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain - 1884/5

Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' follows chronologically the earlier 'Tom Sawyer', but has a much darker, more adult tone. Huck is the novel's first person narrator, and has a primitive, naive view of the world which contrasts with that of the reader, and provides much of the humour and insight of the novel. Huck is dirt poor, uneducated, and more than a little feral. His mother is long dead, and his father is an abusive alcoholic who treats Huck like a slave. To escape his father's abuse he runs away - he fakes his own death, steals a boat, and sails off down the Mississippi, looking for somewhere to hide. The parallels between Huck and Jim, the escaped slave he meets and befriends, are done with a light touch - Huck has almost no self pity, and doesn't equate his position with that of Jim. It is not so much that he believes himself superior to Jim, but that his awareness of Jim's role as a slave, as property, with no rights whatsoever, is rarely challenged.

Jim and Huck sail down river, having various adventures. They meet a family engaged in a bitter feud with some neighbours (to be precise Huck meets the family, Jim remains hidden through these chapters) just at the point where the feud erupts into deadly violence. They meet two con-artists and become embroiled in some of their scams. Eventually Jim is captured and imprisoned, and in some of the final chapters of the novel which even its most ardent supporters recognise are misconceived, Tom Sawyer is reintroduced and the children's book, Just-William style of the earlier novel is reimposed, before a resolution in which Jim is freed.

'Huck Finn' is lauded as a masterpiece of American primitive literature. Twain certainly captures the scenes of living on the river vividly. But the whole impact of the otherwise complex and subtle novel was spoiled for me by the constant and repetitive use of the n-word. The word is used casually and in most cases without vicious intent, and no doubt was historically accurate. Although the novel was published in the UK in 1884, and the US the following year, the setting of the novel is some 20 or so years earlier, when slavery in the South (having been abolished across Northern states as early as 1804) was still in force. Abolition and the free state are mentioned as background, but the attempt to take Jim to freedom is abandoned easily. Huck's presentation of slavery is very matter of fact - he reports Jim's distress that his wife and children have been sold to another owner - but there is little or no empathy, nor indeed recognition of their shared misfortune. All the black people in the novel are portrayed as caricatures - they speak an exaggerated form of English, rendered phonetically thus:

"But it's awluz jis' so; people dat's sot, stays sot; dey won't look into noth'n'en fine it out f'r deyselves, en when you fine it out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you.”

They are all also hugely superstitious, frightened of ghosts and witches, and are extremely easy to tease or fool, with a child-like innocence or naivety. Huck and Tom have no hesitation in exploiting this gullibility for their own amusement.

As Huck gets to know Jim, his admirable qualities emerge. He is kind, faithful, and patient. He sacrifices his freedom for Tom's welfare, and suffers uncomplainingly the many injustices placed upon him. Twain's portrait is generally sympathetic, despite his use of many of the 'Uncle Tom' cliches of the time. But this emphatically isn't an anti-slavery novel - that battle had been won years earlier after the Civil War. Equally it doesn't present the case for civil rights for emancipated slaves or opposition to racism - its setting means that is simply not an issue. So at best the presentation of the issue of slavery in 'Huck Finn' is ambiguous.

Ultimately it is the use of the n-word that defaced this book for me. Finn is a charming and thoughful narrator, and his insights into his world are at times witty and interesting. But imagine (say) 'Pride and Prejudice' with a foul swear word used casually by the characters every other page or so. The values of the novel would remain, its wit and intelligence, the clever characterisation, and so on, but it would be really hard to prevent the use of the distressing language from spoiling one's appreciation of these aspects of the novel, wouldn't it? I am not suggesting bowdlerising this novel, although such things have been done, but I doubt it would prevent readers from enjoying it if alternative language was used.

George Gissing – New Grub Street – 1891

Gissing isn’t really read very much today. His novels – or at least some of them – are still in print, but I doubt if he makes his way onto many syllabuses or reading lists. Certainly I would not be reading him now if ‘New Grub Street’ hadn’t appeared on the Guardian’s best 100 list. Does that really matter? There is a relentless Darwinism at work in determining what books are read and which are forgotten, and if Gissing is steadily dropping out of sight it is probably for a good reason.

‘New Grub Street’ tells at considerable length the story of a small group of lower middle class but educated people trying to make a living from professional writing. Some write novels, others articles for publication, reviews, and short stories. All are utterly obsessed with their financial situation.

“Poverty is the root of all social ills; its existence accounts even for ills that arise from wealth. The poor man is a man labouring in fetters. I declare there is no word in our language which sounds so hideous to me as “Poverty”” (page 33)

George Orwell, in an article about Gissing which ironically was probably written simply to keep the writer’s income flowing, claimed that we had “very few better novelists”, although he does go on to say that “His prose, indeed, is often disgusting”. Disgusting is a bit strong, but clumsy, undoubtedly. Take this sentence for example:

“Fixed in his antipathy to the young man, he would not allow himself to admit any but a base motive on Milvain’s side, if, indeed, Marian and Jasper were more to each other than slight acquaintances; and he persuaded himself that anxiety for the girl’s welfare was at least as strong a motive with him as mere prejudice against the ally of Fadge, and, it might be, the reviewer of ‘English prose’.”

But it’s not all stodge – some of the descriptive writing, of which there is admittedly little, is very well put, as in here when he describes one of his younger female characters:

“So exquisitely fresh in her twenty years that seemed to bid defiance to all the years to come”. (70)

There is a relentless focus in ‘New Grub Street’ on money – who has how much, what interest can be expected from savings, how much an article of novel might bring in, and so on, at extraordinary length. Rarely a chapter goes by when money, and its absence, is not the focus of the narrative. Even when ostensibly the story moves on to a discussion about relationships, these are determined solely in respect of the relative wealth of the participants. Creative endeavour can only be measured by the income it generates. Despite the grinding poverty that most of the characters suffer, the distinction between this group of people, who earn their living, such as it is, by writing, and the social group immediately below them who work for a living, is preserved at all cost. One character, Edwin Reardon, is actually left by his wife because he proposed to take a clerical post, rather than continuing to try to earn a living by writing novels.

New Grub Street is a depressing place to be. One writer dies of a consumptive-like illness which is not specified by is clearly derived from years of poverty; another commits suicide when the failure of his magnum opus becomes apparent, a third marries purely for money and social advancement, abandoning a young woman as soon as her inheritance falls through. It’s not just the world of writing that Gissing is condemning, but the society in general - Reardon, the one person who throws it all in and gets a proper job suffers just as badly as the rest.

A novel about writing is bound to break the narrative fourth wall from time to time. It is obvious at points that Gissing is writing from personal experience about trying to earn his living. The scenes where Reardon suffers horribly from writer’s block also have a poignancy suggesting Gissing had probably suffered similarly, as well as having felt the pain of having to write for payment by the page. But overall it is hard to feel too much sympathy for most of his cast of characters, and I feel no compulsion to seek out any of Gissing’s other novels for now. Just to end with one of my favourite quotes from an Amazon reviewer of ‘New Grub Street’. Missing the point with uncommon accuracy – “It's not funny at all”

 

 

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838)

One of my reasons for exploring the Guardian's 'best 100 novels written in English' list is to try and find some hidden gems - books that I have not come across before that are really worth reading. Poe's only novel, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket' meets only one of these criteria - I had not heard of it before - and now I know why.

The novel is an adventure story, following Pym as he stows away in a ship, running away to sea against his father's wishes. He is aided by a friend, one of the crew members, and plans to reveal his presence when the ship is past the point of no return. However, a mutiny spoils this plan, and he has to remain hidden, without help from his friend, for a long time. His privations are detailed in the first person narrative in considerable, not to say tedious, detail. Finally he emerges from his hiding place, and helps in a counter-mutiny. Having secured control of the ship Pym and friends are immediately struck by a storm, which rages for days, leaving them with very little food or drink, and their ship a wreck. Again Poe details the long days of surviving on the wreck - this is actually a very short novel, but it certainly didn't feel it while reading - until they finally resort to cannibalism, choosing one of their number to eat by lots.

Finally rescued, Pym joins another ship voyaging to the southern seas. Previous voyages of exploration are recounted in yet more detail. The purpose of all this detail is presumably to give the narrative a sense of realism, although I found the various adventures completely unconvincing. While stowed away on his first ship, for example, Pym is joined for several days by his pet dog, who his crew-member friend just happened to take along with him. Despite the ship having been taken over by the mutineers the dog at no point barks or otherwise makes his presence know. As soon as the storm arrives the dog stops being mentioned, presumably thrown overboard.

The voyage ends in the discovery of a mysterious island group deep in the Antarctic, when the rest of the group apart from Pym and a friend are massacred by duplicitous natives. Escaping from the island by canoe, Pym travels south towards the pole, when the novel ends abruptly with the appearance of a mysterious figure.

I've read incomplete novels where the author died mid-composition that end with more coherence and naturalism than this. It just stops, and it is obvious that the author, having reached a word count (or equivalent) thought "that will do" and moved on. The "editor's" postscript (which incidentally is not included in the kindle version of the novel I initially read, which is really irritating) is a fig leaf that does nothing to compound the absurdity of the ending.

I look for at least one of the following in any novel: characterisation, a decent story, some interesting use of language, or some ideas. Poe provides none of the above. Pym himself hardly emerges from his narrative at all - we really have no idea what he is like, other than extraordinarily lucky in surviving his various in extremis situations, which of course we know he does from the novel's ludicrous subtitle. (Comprising the Details of Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery on Board the American Brig Grampus, on Her Way to the South Seas, in the Month of June, 1827. With an Account of the Recapture of the Vessel by the Survivors; Their Shipwreck and Subsequent Horrible Sufferings from Famine; Their Deliverance by Means of the British Schooner Jane Guy; the Brief Cruise of this Latter Vessel in the Atlantic Ocean; Her Capture, and the Massacre of Her Crew Among a Group of Islands in the Eighty-Fourth Parallel of Southern Latitude; Together with the Incredible Adventures and Discoveries Still Farther South to Which That Distressing Calamity Gave Rise.) The story is extremely episodic and predictable, a loosely connected series of incidents. The language is inoffensive, at best, and the only idea worthy of the name is the suggestion that the south polar regions might lead to undiscovered continents, peoples, and species. I am a little more sympathetic to this final point - the world was still being explored in the 1830's, and new species being found, so this wasn't as ludicrous as it sounds.

Poe introduces some classic elements of gothic horror into the narrative - cannibalism, pirates, a ghost-ship, entombment, and so on, but ultimately the novel is as spooky as a Halloween costume in June.

I'm not alone in finding this all quite ridiculous. In an introduction to the novel, Jeremy Meyers wrote that Poe’s choice of the incomplete journal form “allows Poe to disguise and excuse his own inability to control the plot and complete the novel.” Poe himself called it a “very silly book.” Indeed. I don't know whether the unhappy experience of writing this novel led Poe to concentrate on poetry and short stories, but it is probably a good thing if it did.

Nightmare Abbey - Thomas Love Peacock - 1818

'Nightmare Abbey' is probably as heavy-handed a piece of satire as you will find in the whole of literature. Neither nightmarish - there are none of the traditional characteristic features of gothic fiction - nor set in an abbey, this short novel is partly a thinly disguised portrait of some of the romantic poets of the time, and partly a pastiche of their works.

It is tedious in the extreme. Some of this is deliberate - in parodying cloying philosophical nonsense it is hard to avoid writing philosophical nonsense. The trick is I suspect in providing just the right amount. There's little or no characterisation here - all the characters are cyphers - Mr Lackwit, Mr Toobad, or the Reverend Mr Larynx. There's also little or no narrative. The characters assemble in the abbey, which is really a moated country home on the remote Lincolnshire coast, where Scythrop Glowry, (admittedly, a pretty magnificent name) falls in and out of love as eligible females are paraded before him. Even Robert McCrum in choosing this novel for his list of 100 best novels in English for the Guardian in 2013 describes the plot as "cardboard-thin". This is because the novel is simply a vehicle for Peacock's friendly commentary on the lives and love affairs of the romantic poets. It may have had them rolling in the aisles in the early nineteenth century, but surely quickly lost its humour in a decade or two, and today provides many tumbleweed moments. Only one comment hit a chord; when, for the umpteenth time Mr Flosky, a friend of Mr Glowry senior is pontificating on his obscure theories, the narrator notes that he "suddenly stopped: he found himself unintentionally trespassing within the limits of common sense".

The narrative voice is deeply cynical. Romantic relationships are purely commercial - "marriage is a lottery, and the less choice and selection a man bestows upon his ticket the better" - and married life is a burden - "Mr Glowry used to say that his house was no better than a spacious kennel, for every one in it led the life of a dog". Jane Austen wrote about relationships and courtships with a similar scepticism, but her characters are far more three dimensional and believable, and if you want a light-hearted commentary on the gothic novels of the period 'Northanger Abbey' is an infinitely better choice. That this novel squeezed out 'Lord of the Rings', the Gormenghast books, and others from the Guardian's top 100 novels makes its inclusion all the harder to understand.

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde - 1891

I know I don’t normally write about the publication history of the books I review, but the background to this one is more complex than usual, and quite relevant. It was published in full in Lippincott's Monthly magazine in 1890 (in a significantly shorter version than the final novel). Wilde predicted "I think it will make a sensation" - which was a bit of an understatement. Prior to publication he made several edits to remove some of the more explicitly homo-erotic content, but he may as well not have bothered, because critics almost unanimously put two and two together, identified Wilde with his two main characters, and realised that some of the sins which they explore included gay sex. For the avoidance of any doubts Wilde drops clunking hints such as when he says "there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex...they are forced to have more than one life" (61) What can he mean? Later he refers to “such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself” (96). This was extraordinarily daring of Wilde – and his publishers - and he was of course to pay the price.

The plot is very familiar. Gorgeous, young, well-to-do and well-connected Dorian Gray has his portrait painted by a society painter, Basil Hallward. Dorian unknowingly makes a Mephistophilian pact to preserve his beauty, and for his portrait to bear the signs of aging and sin. He is taken in hand, and led astray, by Hallward’s friend, the dangerous Lord Henry Wotton. His treatment of a young actress, Sibyl Vane, who falls in love with him and who he brutally rejects, leading to her suicide, is the first time he notices a change in the painting. Gray is psychopathically narcissistic – everything is judged by its impact on him. He goes to the opera after hearing Sibyl has died, and when chastised for this says “Don’t talk about horrid subjects. If one doesn’t talk about a thing, it has never happened” (87) Accepting his fate, he hides the painting, eventually killing Hallward to avoid exposure, and dives into a life of excess, sin, and hedonism. Wilde goes as far as he can to describe this life, dropping hints about many of the elements, including some more conventional, heterosexual affairs, which frankly is fooling no-one.

There’s a unavoidable biographical element to this novel. Wilde’s own life followed the same self-destructive arc as Gray’s, although what is more remarkable is that the novel came first – Wilde was well aware where his recklessness would lead, but embraced his fate in any event. He foresees it all – the social ostracism (“when he used to reappear again in society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with a sneer, or look at him with cold, searching eyes, as though they were determined to discover his secret” (113) – the damage caused to friends and relatives – “Women who had wildly (note the choice of adjective) adored him, and for his sake had braved all social censure and set convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or horror if Dorian Gray entered the room” (113), the damage to his health and (he believed) his soul, and yet could not steer a different course.

There are four great 19^th century English horror novels (that is, novels written in English)  that explore identify and sexuality – ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Dracula’, ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, and ‘The Portrait of Dorian Gray.’ (In many ways ‘Dr Jekyll’ is probably the least flawed of this quartet, and I will aim to review it shortly to complete the set). All are in their different ways about the horror of the divided self. ‘Gray’ has many flaws – the sections where Wilde expanded the text for publication as a novel show strong signs of padding, for example, and the aphorisms, which individually are witty and clever, when they appear in such intensity have an artificial, false note. But despite these, this is a stunning novel, tragic in the light of what we now know about Wilde’s own fate, but also complex and brave. Superficially it is a parable about the price of sin, but in making Gray and Wotton such charismatic characters Wilde makes it clear where his sympathies and interests lie.

Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson - 1886

Read in a Penguin Classic edition

It’s about time I explained why I am reading what is essentially a children’s book, albeit a Victorian ‘classic’. A few months ago the Guardian completed a two year exercise to publish a list of the top 100 novels written in English. I’ve written previously about how irritating these lists can be, and this was no exception – it contains some strange choices (‘Emma’ over ‘Pride and Prejudice’?) and some books that stretch the definition of ‘novel’ to breaking point (‘Alice in Wonderland’?) I’ve been working my way around the list in recent months, not because of any completest tendencies, undeniable though they are, but simply as a guide for some interesting novels that I probably should have read. There have been some really interesting discoveries (for me) thus far (‘Money’, ‘Disgrace’), a few re-reads (‘The True History of the Kelly Gang’), and some stinkers. Sadly, this falls in the latter category.

The novel is set in the highlands of Scotland, shortly after the second Jacobite rebellion in 1745. The politics of this revolt are central to the novel, but knowledge of the issues is largely assumed, and not given any context. The principal character and narrator is 17-year-old David Balfour. His parents having recently died, he visits his evil uncle, Ebenezer, who arranges for him to be kidnapped and sold into slavery. The kidnappers are incompetent sailors, because after several days of journeying their boat is still off the islands of Scotland, where it collides with a row boat carrying Alan Breck, a leading Jacobite wanted by the British. Breck is a confused figure – pompous, short-tempered, and murderous, yet perceived by Davy as something of a glamorous, slightly heroic character. Alan is a Jacobite who supports the claim of the House of Stewart to Scotland's throne; David is loyal to King George III, and the tension between them arises from these loyalties. Stevenson uses the Jacobite rebellion as a setting for this novel, but is clearly not that interested in the politics of the situation.  The relationship – a bromance if you like – between Breck and Balfour is at the heart of the novel – they argue, fall out, make up, and repeat, like an old married couple. If you don’t believe in the authenticity of this father/son-like relationship, then the rest of the novel holds few attractions.

The poor sailing continues, and after a short fight and siege over some money Breck is carrying, the ship capsizes. Breck and David are separated. David is stranded on a deserted ‘island’, which he eventually finds out is not an island but a spit of land joined to the mainland at low tide. He sets off to find Breck, but runs into the Red Fox, a real historical figure, who no sooner meets David but is killed by a hidden sniper. David is suspected of involvement in the murder, not unreasonably, and flees, by chance reuniting with Alan as he does so, lurking suspiciously in the woodland. The improbabilities involved here are skirted over.

We arrive at this point fairly briskly, but now the novel descends from here into an extraordinarily extended trudge across the Scottish Highlands. It rains, they walk, it is sunny, they walk, and so it goes on for chapter after chapter, with only the occasionally comically Scottish highlander to break the monotony. John Buchan clearly spent far too long reading this before writing ‘The 39 Steps’ as it contains similar scenes of prolonged walking in the rain – sadly ‘The Deathly Hallows’ has more than a touch of this affliction as well. Eventually they make their way back to the starting point and David’s uncle, who is confronted, confesses, and comes to financial settlement with David.

The parallels between this novel, written in 1886, (and published, like much Victorian fiction, in serial form in a magazine) and the earlier ‘Treasure Island’ (1881) are unavoidable. An impoverished, inexperienced, but self-respecting teenage hero goes to sea. Here he faces a crew of thugs. Supported by a strong role-model, he valiantly wins the day, following a siege scene very reminiscent of that at the island fort. A long voyage of wandering & discovery follows. Stevenson clearly knew a trustworthy model for a boy’s adventure story when he found one.

The novel is written with a large amount of colloquial scots. I am not sure whether the language is authentic, but it descends often into what reads like parody:
“Ye have a fine, hang-dog, rat-and-tatter, clappermaclaw kind of look to ye, as if ye had stolen the coat from a potato-bogle” (190)

Stevenson is a more interesting writer than this – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a fascinating portrait of the schizophrenic nature of Victorian society – but ultimately this is a tired children’s story no longer read by children.

The SIgn of the Four - Conan Doyle - 1890

Or, if you prefer, ‘The Sign of Four’, which is I think the better known version of this novel’s title. There is quite a significant difference between the former – meaning a sign which collectively represents four people – and the latter, which means simply 4. But as the sign itself plays no real part in the plot, other than contributing to the overall effect of mystery, the point is moot.

A quick plot summary might be a good place to start. This is an early Holmes story, where many of the familiar tropes of the sequence are just being established. Here we see the first incarnation of Holmes’ famous, if nonsensical, epithet “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. (140) We see Holmes, bored, and taking cocaine – a 7% solution – which he also offers to Watson. The method whereby Holmes is able to make fantastically accurate deductions about people from minor aspects of their appearance and behaviour is used at the opening of the novel, serving little purpose other than entertainment to relieve the boredom, and is disregarded once the crime is under investigation. And of course there are the Baker Street irregulars, the blundering police, and the mastery of disguise. All the elements are here, early on in his career.

The crime itself is, as usual with Holmes and Watson, obscure, yet easily solved. Indian treasure, pillaged from Agra during the First War of Independence, is hidden in a house in the London suburbs. One of the gang cheated out of his share of the prize returns to steal it, and in the course of the burglary someone is murdered. The villains hide on a boat on the Thames, but are chased down and captured. During the chase the treasure is thrown overboard and lost. In a lightly done parallel plot Watson falls in love with, woos, and becomes engaged to be married to the client who brings them the mystery – Watson is quite a fast worker!

Holmes’s powers are not taxed greatly. The murderer leaves footprints at the scene, and a trail of tar from the scene to their hideaway. The murderer’s accomplice has previously been seen shadowing the victim’s father, and leaves marks of his wooden leg outside the window. There is little attempt at concealment or deception. Holmes is slightly delayed in capturing the villains by their cunning ruse of hiding their boat in a boatshed, which it takes a particular genius to discover. It’s all done and dusted in less than a hundred pages, with plenty of time for some light drug taking and observational parlour tricks.

How does one explain the enduring appeal of the Holmes stories? Victorian England couldn’t get enough of the curmudgeonly consulting detective, forcing Conan Doyle to bring him back after the Reichenbach Falls attempt to kill him off. It can’t be the thinly constructed plots. While Holmes and Watson (and Mrs Hudson) may have survived as characters, the novels and stories themselves are little read, and usually discarded in any adaptation. Holmes represents the victory of rationalism and reason against the forces of nature and the threatening world outside our borders. It is hardly surprising that the villains in Holmes’ adventures are invariably foreigners, threatening our great British institutions. Tonga, the Andaman islander with the feet of a child, is described in purely animalistic terms. When first spotted on the boat, he is “a dark mass which looked like a Newfoundland dog”. (178) Closer up he seems to Watson to be a “savage, distorted creature. He was wrapped in some sort of a dark ulster or blanket, which left only his face exposed, but that face was enough to give a man a sleepless night. Never have I seen features so deeply marked with all bestiality and cruelty. His small eyes glowed and burned with a sombre light, and his thick lips were writhed back from his teeth, which grinned and chattered at us with half-animal fury” (178) Only half-animal Watson? Holmes can defeat any puzzle, any challenge, with the application of logic and knowledge. The world can be tamed. The fact that this is all smoke and mirrors, and that the final resolution usually depends on a pistol or noose rather than a logic puzzle, is passed over quickly.

If you have read any of my previous attempts at close textual analysis you might want to try the game yourself. Here are two passages from ‘The Sign of the Four’ which jumped out at me. The first describes Mary Morstan, Holmes’s client and Watson’s love interest, seen from Watson’s perspective:

“She was seated by the open window, dressed in some sort of white diaphanous material, with a little touch of scarlet at the neck and waist. The soft light of a shaded lamp fell upon her as she leaned back in the basket chair, played over her sweet, grave face, and tinting with a dull metallic sparkle the rich coils of her luxuriant hair. One white arm and hand drooped over the side of the chair, and her whole pose and figure spoke of an absorbing melancholy. At the sound of my footfall she sprang to her feet, however, and a bright flush of surprise and of pleasure coloured her pale cheeks.” (182)

The colours are interesting – virginal white, diaphanous like a wedding dress perhaps, but with some touches of scarlet at the neck and waist, suggesting something more carnal? None of these details are accidental, from the observation that she is sitting in a basket chair, (baskets usually being used for possessions) to the fact that her “white arm” is drooping over the side of the chair. Why the whiteness of her arm needs to be emphasised here, given we have already established her ethnicity and dress, is worth asking, and what is suggested by the fact her arm droops rather than rests?

In the second scene I have picked out, Holmes and Watson are watching the boat yard, and while they do so they spot some workmen coming from work: Holmes says

“’See how the folk swarm over yonder in the gas-light’
‘They are coming from work in the yard’
‘Dirty looking rascals, but I suppose everyone has some little immortal spark concealed about him. You would not think it, to look at them. There is no a priori about it. A strange enigma is man’” (177). This reverie is interrupted by the signal that the suspects are leaving.

The verb choice “swarm” is telling here, even though describing working men in these terms was not unusual – they are alien, threatening. But Holmes comes close to doubting their humanity. What does this tell us about the portrayal of class in late Victorian literature?

 

 

The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane – 1889

I am not sure whether this is really a novel in the traditional sense of the word. It’s very short – about 125 pages – and there is very little plot or characterisation. The events of the novel, (a term I will retain for convenience’ sake), take place over a couple of days during the course of a battle in the American Civil War. They are shown largely from the perspective of a raw recruit, who initially is terrified, and runs away, but once he gains his “red badge of courage” (i.e. a wound) he finds new reserves of bravery, and takes an active part in the remainder of the battle.

The novel was written over 25 years after the end of the war. You would in the normal course of events have expected the novel to be part of the healing process, the rebuilding of the nation – if not, why write it in the first place? The soldiers on both sides of the battle are shown as human and fallible – they show fear, lie, gossip, cuss, and die. They do heroic things and cowardly things side by side, they have a healthy contempt for their leaders, (although the narrator allows the reader to see that the officers are reasonably good at their jobs, even if that includes being cold-blooded about potential casualties) and rarely have anything other than the sketchiest of ideas what is going on in the confusion of the battle. The politics of the war are ignored completely, including the most obvious issue of slavery, which is not mentioned. This arguably gives the novel some verisimilitude, but the reality was the given both armies were volunteer forces, soldiers would have had some idea of why they were fighting, and may have cause to mention it from time to time. Ignoring slavery allows the novel to appeal to both North and South, but is still a puzzling omission given the novel is written entirely from a Unionist (northern) perspective.

Crane uses some interesting techniques to give atmosphere and credibility to his novel, making it in some ways similar to a survivor’s account of the battle. He uses short chapters, making the narrative move quickly. The principal character – Henry Fleming – is almost always referred to as “the youth”, giving him an everyman status, and the other characters are usually referred to in a similar way – the tall soldier, the loud soldier, etc. – to depersonalise them. The soldiers’ heavily accented language is recorded phonetically to give the narrative a sense of authenticity. The point of view stays closely with the youth, and we see what he sees, feel what he feels. The novel’s language focusses on colour, giving an almost impressionist feel to the descriptive passages that form the core of the narrative.

Given the absence of plot or characterisation, it is hard to understand why this is considered a great American novel, or one of the definitive novels of the American Civil War. It seems a calculated attempt to show the war not as a series of great set piece battles where the field of combat was bestrode by might men doing might deeds, but as peopled by real, flawed, people, pushed on by fear of death and failure. I can only speculate, but I suspect the answer is somewhere in this mix. The Civil War was, and remains, America’s bloodiest conflict. The scale of the national trauma was hard for Europeans to imagine, particularly given that America had only been an independent country for less than a hundred years. Civil wars must be much harder to recover from as a country than wars fought against a common enemy. Once the war is over you have to somehow carry on living and accepting the defeated enemy, which remains part of your country. So showing that the war wasn’t a struggle of good versus evil was probably part of that healing process. I read this novel in a Wordsworth edition, which includes two other short stories by Crane. The first, The Veteran, published in 1893, shows Fleming, the protagonist of the Red Badge, much later in life, and acts as  a useful coda to the Red Badge. As a survivor of the war he is a greatly respected member of his community, but he refuses to romanticise his experiences:

“Could you see the whites of their eyes?” said the man who was seated on a soapbox.
“Nothing of the kind” replied old Henry warmly, “Just a lot of flitting figures, and I let go at where they ‘peared to be the thickest. Bang”
“Mr Fleming” said the grocer – his deferential voice expressed somehow the old man’s exact social weight – “Mr Fleming, you never was much frightened in them battles, was you?”.
The veteran looked down and grinned…”Well I guess I was, he answered finally”. Pretty well scared, sometimes”. (121)

He even has the courage, in old age, to admit his cowardice in his first battle, despite his tarnishing his image in the eyes of his grandson. So the civil war wasn’t a romantic struggle, it was at best a necessary evil.

Three Men in a Boat (not to mention the dog) – Jerome K Jerome – 1889

Mildly amusing. Whimsical. Harmless  These are the words that come to mind when I reflect on the experience of reading this Victorian “classic”. For some reason while many comic novels age appallingly, “Three Men in a Boat” seems bullet-proof against the passage of time. It is feather-light – there is no plot to speak of, very few events, no characterisation, or only the barest. The title sums up pretty much all you need to know about the novel – three middle class single men of indeterminate age or occupation take a short trip in a rowing boat up the Thames. It rains. They fall in occasionally. The narrator tells several stories of similar incidents on similar trips. These stories all follow the same pattern – the principal character is hugely over-confident in his own abilities – to sail, hang a picture, pack a bag, navigate a maze etc. – and retains this over-confidence in the face of every failure.

I am clearly missing something, because many online reviewers describe this novel as “laugh out loud”, and it has never been out of print. The lead review in Amazon goes to far as to say “If you don't love this book, and don't weep laughing whilst reading it, then there's something wrong with you”. I can’t recall ever weep laughing at any novel, let alone one with so flimsy an appeal. There is admittedly a whimsical charm to the whole enterprise, and the appeal to a late Victorian bygone era where the outside world rarely intrudes is clear. There are however a few points in the novel where this approach is discarded, and these jar badly. Mostly these are the scenic descriptions which were the novel’s original premise, (it was commissioned as a travel book) and they do not fit at all with the tone of the rest. But there is also a casually gratuitous use of a racial slur – the n-word – which may have been acceptable in the 1880’s but is hateful now. Possibly even worse, there is a description of a suicide. I can only assume Jerome included this distressing scene – a woman falls pregnant without being married, and, shunned by her family and friends, she finally ends it all by drowning herself in the Thames, to be discovered by our three men – as a contrast to the nonsense about frying pans and banjos. Victorians were famously mawkish and sentimental, so presumably this also seen as justification for this scene, but to a contemporary reader it is deeply uncomfortable.

So in a way I feel that, as does happen sometimes, I have failed. Failed to unlock this novel, to find a way of reading it that gives it some value, the value others clearly believe it to have. Which is of course nagging me. I was tempted to try to read this as social commentary, a reflection on late Victorian England, a period of change of course as technology gathered pace and the lower classes began to find their voice. The three men are clumsy buffoon, but there are closer to Grossmith’s Mr Pooter, or indeed Wells’ Mr Polly, that Wodehouse’s much later creations. This is a confident, relaxed country, peopled by citizens not afraid to assert their challenge to order – the boatmen for example are very clear that fencing off backwaters on the Thames is reprehensible, and signs denying picnickers the right to rest on land adjoining the river are to be ignored – no great respect for property rights are shown. But in all honesty this remains thin stuff, nostalgic and comfortable compared to much of the challenging literature being written elsewhere around this time. So for now I admit defeat – there must be a reason why this novel remains so popular, but what that is I cannot tell.

 

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll - 1865

Why read “Alice”? Isn’t it a children’s book? And haven’t you already absorbed every detail of it, through cultural osmosis. After all, every scene is iconic, every character very well known, (the white rabbit, the mad hatter, the Cheshire Cat, and so on) - even many of the phrases – “off with his head”, “Curiouser and curiouser”, “I’m late” etc. – have entered the language. Is there anything left to be learnt?

A little. For every book that falls into this category – very well known, but very little read – reading the novel, in this case for the first time, in other cases for the first time for decades – is a very interesting experience. What characters and scenes have entered the cultural lexicon, and which missed the cut? In Alice an extraordinary proportion of the scenes have made it. Reading the novel was like revisiting familiar childhood scenes. There were very few chapters or scenes that were not well known, and that had survived the transition from book to popular knowledge largely intact – the Mad Hatter and the March Hare are exactly as random and bizarre as you think they are going to be, the Cheshire Cat and the Caterpillar are slightly creepy, and the Mock Turtle sadly irritating.
The Internet will tell you that Alice is a satirical portrayal of Victorian England, with disguised portrayals of political and other prominent, and that the nonsense comments of the characters either are coded commentary on the events of the day, or simply a portrait of the topsy-turvy nature of society – “We are all mad here”. Critics have been able to divine critiques on the Monarchy, colonialism, evolution, politics both left and right and many others in Alice – how fruitful these attempts at decoding the text have been is debateable. Alice is a wonderful children’s book, where the dream-like transitions from one bizarre situation to another, capture perfectly a child’s flexible perspective on the world. I suspect it is that aspect of the novel, rather than its “hidden” meanings, that have made it so popular, and why the characters have been so resilient, when other Victorian children’s literature – The Water Babies for example – have faded from the popular imagination.  

One other point – the book is very short, can be read in a couple of hours, and is free on the Kindle, which is where I read it – so why not try it? The Kindle edition, although free, does not have any of the wonderful illustrations that form such a large part of the book's impact. Mervyn Peake illustrated the book for one edition, which is worth getting your hands on if you can - if not take a look at his extraordinarily powerful drawings on the web.

The Professor - Charlotte Bronte (2)

Written in 1846, although not published during her lifetime, The Professor is a largely autobiographical account of Charlotte's two years teaching in Belgium. Her attempt to narrate the story through a male character is at best a mixed success. There is, as with Villette, a degree of wish fulfillment, as the romance is successfully concluded with marriage, a child, and a comfortable country cottage. Reader, I married him. If this was all The Professor had to offer then its obscurity would be understandable, however well drawn the romance is. However, there are other elements that draw the attention.

One of the minor characters is Mr Hunsden (if he is given a first name, I missed it), an acquaintance and latterly friend of Mr Crimsworth, the eponymous professor. Despite being relatively prosperous, Hunsden is undoubtedly a radical. He describes England in terms which would surely have been shocking to Victorian England in its Imperious pomp

“A little, corrupt, venal, lord-and-king-cursed nation, full of mucky pride… and helpless pauperism; rotten with abuses, worm-eaten with prejudices. ….Come to England and see ….examine the footprints of our august aristocracy; see how they walk in blood, crushing hearts as they go. Just put your head in at English cottage doors; get a glimpse of famine crouched torpid in black hearthstones, of Disease lying bare on beds without coverlets, of Infamy wantoning viciously with Ignorance, though indeed Luxury is her favourite paramour, and princely halls are dearer to her than thatched hovels”. 175

This is purple but very effective prose which Dickens and other observers of Victorian England's darker side would hesitate to use. The speech is dismissed by Frances Henri, the Swiss teacher and fiance of the Professor to whom it is addressed, and the theme is largely dropped.

In contrast the novel also has a vigorous anti-Catholic element. Frances is the spokesperson for this point of view:

“I know nothing of the arcana of the Roman Catholic religion, and I am not a bigot in matters of theology, but I suspect the root of all this precocious impurity, so obvious, so general in Popish countries, is to be found in the discipline, if not the docutrines, of the Church of Rome. …These girls belonged to what are called the respectable ranks of society. They had all been carefully brought up, yet was the mass of the mentally depraved." (page 71)

“ I long to live once more among Protestants. They are more honest than Catholics. A Romish school is a building with porous walls, a hollow floor, a false ceiling. Every room in this house Monsieur has eye holes and ear holes, and what the house is the inhabitants are - very treacherous.” (page 106/7)

It is easy to forget in liberal, 21st century Britain how virulent anti-Catholicism was in this country for centuries - only 60 years earlier London had been torn apart by the Gordon riots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Riots) - Frances's anti-Catholicism can presumably be read as a simple reflection of Charlotte's own feelings.

Finally, there is room in the novel for Charlotte's defence of her occupation as a novelist. She clearly felt the prejudice against women writers deeply, as she puts these words in the mouths of another female character:
 

“It appears to me that ambition, literary ambition especially, is not a feeling to be cherished in the mind of a woman. Would not Mlle Henri be much safer and happier if taught to believe that in the quiet discharge of scial duties consists her real vocation, than if stimulated to aspire after applause and publicity? She may never marry, scanty as are her resources, obscure as are her connections, uncertain as is her health (for I think her consumptive).” (page 111) How many times must she have heard these sentiments, or suspected them. The final parenthesis - "for I think her consumptive" is sadly chilling.

The Professor - Charlotte Bronte - inadvertent smuttiness?

Here's a fun game for anyone finding 19th century romatic literature just a little too slow - "spot the subconscious sexual metaphor".

These novels invariably put young men and women in the prime of their lives in close proximity, and despite every attempt to restrain their sexual impulses, it just can't help bursting through. Usually nature is the chosen vessel in which to convey their instincts, with tree buds bursting into blossom, waterfalls spouting, and so on, but I don't think one needs to be too smutty minded to see this effect happening elsewhere. "The Professor" provides some excellent examples. The scenario is this: William Crimsworth is teaching English to Belgian schoolgirls in Brussels. There he meets a young womanF rances Henri - we are told she is 19 - , and eventually after some complications falls for her charms. He visits her archetypal 'umble abode, and she lights a fire to warm the place. He is worried she is using up her limited supplies of firewood and coal, and wishes he could be in a position to help her:

"I am glad it is not yet winter, thought I, but in two months more come the winds and rains of November. Would to God that before then I could earn the right and the power to shovel coals into that grate ad libitum” (page 132). At his pleasure indeed.

Later he desbribes the moment he declares his affection for her, and instead of this being a stumbling, formal declaration in the manner of Mr Darcy and his peers, he grabs her and sits her on his knee:

“The frost of the master’s manner might melt; I felt the thaw coming fast, whether I would or not. ….There are impulses we can control, but there are others which control us, because they attain us with a tiger leap, and are our masters ere we have seen them”. (page 165).

 

The use of the term "our masters" is particularly significant here as Crimsworth is always described as Frances's master, even after they are married. This is an arguably less-Freudian use of language - instead of the sexual metaphors jumping unbidden into the author's head, this second example seems more deliberate. For a Victorian female novelist to write this frankly about sexual desire - a tiger leap - and to acknowledge the sexual frisson between husband and wife is unusual, if not unique. The initial submissiveness of their relationship matures into a flirtation which is preserved by Frances's enjoyment of chastistement. William says at one point “I fear the choice of chastisement must have been injudicious, for instead of correcting the fault, it seemed to encourage its renewal”. (188)

 

Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte

There’s a Darwinism in play which determines whether novels continue to be read after the author’s death and the passage of a few decades. Authors that were once widely read and popular turn out over time to be of interest to only a very specific audience, and do not translate well into later periods. As the years pass the number of surviving and still read authors dwindles further, until even once great, Nobel-winning titles are only downloaded for £0.00 on the Kindle, to remain on aspirational reading lists but never quite got round to. But some novels buck the trend, going into hibernation for a century or more only to be rediscovered with a fresh relevance by a new generation. Agnes Grey undoubtedly is not one such novel. It is dull beyond comprehension, and only appears here a) because of the previously mentioned Kindle free availability, b) it is an AS text, c) it was written by a Bronte (Anne, her first novel).

A measure of the novel’s popularity is that it has never been adapted for television and screen. For good reasons – very little happens. We expect, from Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, for Bronte leading female characters to have some spirit, if not spunk, but Agnes is limp, passive, and dull. She gets her man in the end, but doesn’t really deserve him, AB simply rewarding patience and virtue with a predictable long foreseen happy ending which is a complete anti-climax. With most Bronte novels it’s not really about the destination, more about the journey, but with Agnes there is little if any self discovery or personal growth. Some novels deserve to be forgotten, not disinterred to torture A level students, when there is so much great literature out there waiting to be read and discovered. Sorry Anne.
Now I should end there, but I feel guilty. This novel must have some redeeming features, surely, and it is my self appointed task to seek them out. There’s a natural instinct to be protective towards Anne, a romantic figure over-shadowed by her sisters, dying tragically at a young age, a compelling part of the Bronte mythology. ( Forgive me, but I can’t resist mentioning here the academic discoveries of that great critic Mr Meyerburg who postulated, indeed demonstrated, that Bramwell was in fact the author of all the “Bronte sisters’ novels”, and that his alcoholism was all a heroic act to disguise the dissolute nature of his siblings.)

Agnes Grey, simply put, is juvenilia. It is an author learning her craft, using autobiography as material. No-one could possibly criticise Anne for writing this, following a path taken by many authors, but that doesn’t make the novel any more readable.

Frankenstein (2) - Mary Shelley

In this post I would like to explore the possibility that the monster was the creation of Dr Frankenstein's ego or unconscious, and that the crimes in the novel were committed by the good doctor himself. Furthermore I would like to suggest that the source of this psychosis is his fear of his own sexuality. This answers the question most often posed about this novel - who is the real monster, Frankenstein or his creation, with the answer "They are one and the same". It also explains why the doctor and his creation are so often confused in popular culture, with the name Frankenstein being used for both of them.

To deal with the most obvious objection first - how could the monster be Victor's alter ego when there are numerous references in the novel to other people seeing the monster? It is important to remember that almost all this evidence is in fact presented through the doctor's conversations with the explorer, Walton, he meets at the beginning of the novel. We are invited to accept Victor as a reliable narrator, but objectively there is little reason to accept what he tells us without question. First and foremost his story is utterly fantastic - if you met someone raving about having created a monster you wouldn't just say, "oh yes, that's interesting". You would naturally want to know more, and to challenge what you are told. The absence of that challenge, just the plan recitation of the tale, presented unquestioningly, lulls the reader into accepting Frankenstein's story. As well as its fantastic nature, consider also the context - he is alone in an Arctic waste, chasing after a distantly glimpsed figure that may or may not have been himself. His story tells of a monster that kills his family and friends. Could not the monster be that part of his personality that he considers monstrous? Was, in fact, Dr Victor Frankenstein the first recorded case of manic schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder, the forerunner of another famous self-creator of monsters, Dr Jekyll?

This reading explains a lot, for example the lack of detail over how the monster is created - if this was a delusion then the subconscious could easily skip over the process to focus on the outcome. The disgust Victor feels in the process of creation can be explained by his disgust with procreation, simply put, sex, and cannot believe what he has done. In his psychological crisis he creates the monster to separate the innocent part of himself from the monstrous.

The murders of family and friends is further circumstantial evidence, although Victor can't be tied closely to any of the murders. There is enough evidence to at least cast suspicion, to the extent that he is even arrested for the killing of his best friend Clerval, and later held during his breakdown after the murder of his wife. The murder of his bride, on the first night of their honeymoon, represents the apotheosis of his sexual horror - rather than consummate his marriage he kills his wife and then faints. His conversations with the monster represent the inner monologue of the two parts of his personality. Virtually no-one else sees the monster in the whole of the novel, albeit admittedly with some exceptions. You would expect a beast lumbering across central Europe to be the cause of some comment - but the monster is never seen or spotted other than at a distance, and then only as reported by Frankenstein.

The exceptions to this are the family he haunts - but this could easily be Frankenstein himself, or just another delusion about his dreams of acceptance into a happy family. The other important exception is the occasion when explorer sees the monster just after doctor's death at the very end of the novel. This is harder to explain away, but hardly conclusive - the explorer is not necessarily the reliable narrator we are led to believe.

The source of Victor's psychosis emerges from a closer reading of the section of the novel dealing with the murder of his wife, Elizabeth. Chapter 22 opens with their engagement and wedding. Having been promised that he will return on his wedding night, VF is tortured by fear of the monster, and wants to shun the company of others - "I felt attracted to even the most repulsive among them, as to creatures of an angelic nature and celestial mechanism. But I felt I had no right to share their intercourse." Who is most commonly characterised by VF as angelic? Elizabeth of course. And who feels unworthy to share "intercourse" with his fellow man? VF feels guilty and worthless because of his "unhallowed acts" - a suggestion that he is unable to face sex with his bride on their wedding night because of previous repulsive and criminal acts. This is the language used to describe homosexuality in the 19th century.

Unable to accept his sexuality VF at first avoids contact with Elizabeth, running away from her to the extent of travelling the world. Apart from her, the part of his personality that wants a conventional relationship comes to the fore, and he agrees to marry her. Before their wedding he writes to her telling her he has a "terrible secret" which will "chill your frame with horror". VF knows that the monster will unavoidably be with him on his wedding night, because he and the monster are one and the same, and the monstrous, hidden aspect of his personality is his sexuality. There is no hint whatsoever in the way he speaks of Elizabeth of any sexual feelings, only tenderness.
Chapter 23 brings us closer to the wedding night, and the confrontation with the "monster". VF sends Elizabeth to bed, knowing this is the scene of the coming confrontation. He resolves not to join her until "I had obtained some knowledge as to the situation of my enemy" - here the enemy being his recalcitrant sexuality.

Elizabeth is strangled and VF falls senseless to the ground. When the hotel owner and others come into the room a little later, there is no sign of the monster. There is some confused business here in which he appears to awake from his faint in another room, surrounded by the people of the inn, because he then goes back alone to the bedroom where Elizabeth's body lies, where he then spots the monster goading him. Again no-one else sees the monster, and after a fruitless search "most of my companions believing it (the monster) to have been a form conjured up by my fancy". If they genuinely believed this then they can have drawn only one conclusion about the cause of Elizabeth's death, the identity of her murderer. His guilty behaviour continues as he flees the village without telling anyone, and returns to Geneva. He descends into madness and is kept locked in a cell and his again suspected of being the criminal.

In moments of lucidity VF recognises he is responsible for the killings. He tells his father "I murdered her. William, Justine and Henry - they all died by my hands". Indeed.

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

With 200 years of critical analysis weighing down on any critic or reviewer, what is one to do with a novel such as Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus? Trying to find new insight or interpretation is almost pointless. Such is the nature of the novel that it opens itself to an almost boundless variety of interpretations, on human relationships, sex and sexuality, or science and the modern world. That burden of scholarship can be oppressive and hamper the ability to say anything sensible or interesting about such a complex novel.

Let's start at the beginning. The story of the novel's genesis is well know, probably much better known than the novel itself. It did not come as a surprise to me, with the experience of reading Dracula last year, that the novel bears little or no relationship to its popular culture incarnation. Crucially, the monster is not an incoherent, stumbling beast, but a highly intelligent and articulate creature, albeit one which is monstrously ugly and extremely, dangerously strong. The sub-title of the novel, the Modern Prometheus, should not be overlooked. Wikipedia says that "Prometheus became a figure who represented human striving, particularly the quest for scientific knowledge, and the risk of overreaching or unintended consequences. In particular, he was regarded as embodying the lone genius whose efforts to improve human existence could also result in tragedy". Quite. Is this then a straightforward anti-science parable - don't meddle with nature because you will create a monster beyond your control? Certainly the anti-GM protagonists would support that reading. But simple readings of this kind, however attractive, are invariably over-simplistic and resisted by classic texts, and this is no exception. I suspect this is a bit of authorial mis-direction. The sub-title invites us to a simplistic don't meddle with the unknown interpretation. Suspicion of science and where it might take us at the beginning of the 19th century was certainly understandable. For me the novel's themes about parenthood and original sin are more interesting.

The narrative structure of the novel is the complex "Russian doll2 approach much loved of 19th century novelists. To be honest this adds little to the story overall - you quickly forget you are reading a letter from the explorer who has met Frankenstein and is passing on his tale to his loved one, in much the same way you forget Wuthering Heights is told as a series of fireside gossipy chats from the ever present domestic servant to the new tenant of the neighbouring house. It is almost as if the truly omniscient narrator had yet to be accepted by authors or readers at this stage of the development of the novel, (which in the early 19th century was not quite so anachronistically named). The author appears to feel compelled to show the reader what happens by using increasingly artificial devices - someone claims to have observed what happened - rather than just tell the story. In this novel this is pushed to ridiculous extremes - so for example the monster lives for almost a year in a hovel adjoining the house occupied by the DeLacey family without their once wondering "I wonder who it is who lives next door?". Dracula uses much the same technique, despite the almost 100 years between the two novels. Is this in homage to the early 19th century spirit of the novel?

John Sutherland's book on puzzles in 19th century literature which I wrote about earlier this month has an interesting take on this novel, and in particular the question of how Frankenstein actually creates the monster. The author gives virtually no detail - there are glimpses of how he prepares, but the actual process itself is not described at all. Time and again Shelley uses the word "disgusting" to describe Victor's reaction to his work. This could be a response to the body parts he is presumed to have used, but when he begins to create the monster's partner later in the nvoel he does so in a remote Orkney croft-house with only his scientific equipment to hand, far from any mortuary or graveyard. Sutherland speculates a sexual component to Frankenstein's disgust, which is a seductive interpretation. How does man create life, after all? This would go some way to making sense of the original sin theme of the novel - Frankenstein creates life, then rejects it, and reaps the consequences. All parents will have some sympathy with how he feels.

As a central character it is hard to warn to Frankenstein. He is a complete idiot - for example, despite the monster making it clear to him that he will make him suffer if he does not create him a partner, and that he will see him again on his wedding night, the penny does not drop that there might be a threat to his fiancee. He lives a life of considerable privilege, but wastes his energies and gifts on ultimately fruitless personal obsessions.  The monster is a more interesting character, although again his "no-one loves me so I am going to kill someone....Why does nobody love me?" wears thin fairly quickly.

As I mentioned earlier, there are many ways to read this complex novel. The one that appeals to me the most is that the monster is, like Mr Hyde, a product of his creator's sub-conscious. Both doctors Jekyll and Frankenstein create monsters that run out of control and lead to their ultimate demise. Victor is arrested for the killing of Charval, and it is surprising that no-one suspects him of Elizabeth's murder. Several people fear he is mad, and few other witnesses see the monster clearly. The sexual under-currents of the novel could also explain Victor's terror of his wedding night. I appreciate I haven't explored this idea in any depth, and no doubt there are scholarly articles and books out there which explain the idea far more coherently than I could ever do, but it is an interesting reading of the novel I think.

Is Heathcliff a Murderer? – Puzzles in 19th Century fiction – John Sutherland

This book is a series of 34 short and not quite so short essays looking at “anomalies, enigmas and mysteries” in 19^th century fiction. The definition of “puzzle” is draw deliberately loosely. Some are genuine questions that would occur to any reader – how does Jane Eyre get Mr Rochester’s mysterious "celestial" message at the end of her novel? Others would not normally occur to an ordinary reader, particularly those in which the main concerns are timing. One does not normally worry too much about or even notice small anomalies in timings and obsessively working through all the time markers in a text to spot so called mistakes feels like a huge waste of time. (Othello is a great example of this - very few if any audience members and readers spot the parallel time schemes running through the play, which of course are anything other than accidental.)

Sutherland draws on his extensive knowledge of the most arcane and obscure of 19^th century novels and the period in which they were written to answer some of his puzzles. Mesmerism, for example, is suggested as the answer to the Jane Eyre puzzle. This was a rich mine for Sutherland - "Can Jane Eyre be happy?", and "Who Betrayed Elizabeth Bennett?" followed this book in due course, as well as a similar look at Shakespeare.

Obviously knowledge of the text (rather than a film of the text) is a useful prerequisite for enjoyment of each essay here, and as Sutherland fairly quickly moves from the novels that the average reader would be familiar with to ones that only students of 19^th Century novels could hope to have heard of ("Is he Popenjoy?" anyone?) I found myself reading more to enjoy his scholarship and learn a little about the text and author, than to share the judgment on the particular puzzle in question.

Genuinely original insight into the core texts are of course elusive. These – Bleak House, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch - are some of the most studied works in literature. So it is in the margins that Sutherland finds some gems. In Bleak House the crossing sweeper Jo sweeps what exactly? Is it "dust", an excuse for begging with no practical purpose, or is it excreta from the horses and humans of a crowded London? More controversially, what is the role of the slave trade in the prosperity of various families in Jane Austen's novels? I particularly enjoyed the close reading of Frankenstein, soon to appear here, which looks at precisely how the good Dr creates his monster. In the absence of Hollywood's lightning and hunchbacked servants, Sutherland deduces that there is a sexual component to the act of creation, which of course fits nicely with the creation myth reading of the novel.

I think I know why I enjoy this kind of literary sleuthing so much. In my blog entries the ones which I feel happiest about are the ones where I have from close reading and perhaps a bit of creativity come up with a new and different perspective on a novel - the parallel between A Casual Vacancy and A Christmas Carol for instance.