Good news!

I awoke this morning looking forward eagerly to visiting the chemist in the hopes of finding pharmalogical relief for this damn head cold and with trepidation to collecting my English essay. I'm still reeling from the shock of so much good news in so little time :) I got a fantastic mark on the essay and have published it below as I'm too busy with study to post much else on here. I also heard back from Manpower and I have the job with National Bank!! :) In practical terms its data entry and manipulation but technically its data integrity management and project implementation which should look just dandy on my CV! Also, because we're part of the 'testing' team it means that they have to pay us minimum IT rates instead of standard administration pay :) So i start bright and early on November 14th right after my exams finish; yay!!

Racial discourse in Frankenstein and The Island of Dr Moreau

6. Discuss the trope of the Undead or inhuman as a figure for narrativizing history.

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?—
Paradise Lost (x. 743-5)[1]

Are we not men?—
The Island of Dr Moreau[2]

Contained within the ideological discourses of the novels Frankenstein and The Island of Doctor Moreau is a question that was hotly debated by nineteenth-century British society – the question: ‘What is a man?’ This question did not have a simple answer as it was inextricably linked to formative ideas of class, nationalism and race during a century of aggressive imperialism, expanding boundaries and scientific change. I wish to take a New Historicist approach to these texts and examine the way in which European society sought to define itself in relation to the ‘other’ and the way that demonizing the Other into something inhuman was a way for them to narrativize history in order to present their actions as acceptable and to express the fears and doubts contained within society; specifically, the ‘other’ set into relationship with Imperial Britain was racial. Changing attitudes towards race and the way that this affected British interaction with other races, especially in their colonial enterprises, can be traced through public debates, scientific texts and through the literature consumed by the public where overtly xenophobic racial fears are displaced onto an imaginary field.[3]

The term ‘race’ entered the English language in the sixteenth century but its definition was vague, and its usage equally varied; for instance, it was used to describe people with a common occupation or wines that shared a characteristic flavour.[4] However, imperialistic expansion over the next two centuries meant that as words like ‘tribe’ and ‘nation’ emerged, understanding of the term ‘race’ began to change in relation to these. As new colonies were added the English people had a greater idea of themselves as being part of a nation and, more importantly, as being part of an empire where they were the ruling elite. Imperialism required the old medieval inspired hierarchies of societal order, chiefly based on civility and rank, to be re-examined in light of the new hierarchies of coloniser and colonised, of rulers and ruled, of masters and slaves, and the key to this new hierarchical concept was that of race.[5] By the end of the eighteenth century ‘black’ and ‘white’ had ceased to be adjectives and had become racially connotative nouns, as skin colour became a primary signifier of human difference.[6]

The nineteenth century emerged as an age of enlightened, rational thought that applied empirical science, natural history and analytical systems of classification not only to natural phenomenon but also to society and humanity. In 1795 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach argued that humanity was one species and that it consisted of five racial variants: Caucasian [European], Mongolian [including Inuit], Ethiopian [Africans], [Native] American, and the Malayan [including Pacific Islanders].[7] Furthermore, he argued that Caucasians were the most pure and superior race from which the other races had descended.[8] Blumenbach’s beliefs were not unquestioningly accepted, however, his ideas reflect a change in intellectual thinking and focus.[9] The prevailing belief that had taken hold in Europe was that race was defined by physical characteristics and these physical differences were intrinsically linked to intellectual, behavioural and moral qualities.[10]

These ideas of race were taken hold of in Britain to develop a racial myth of superior English origin; this was used to show that Anglo-Saxons were culturally dominant in order to reinforce social identity and sanction societal attitudes towards the ‘lower orders’.[11] Tim Barringer argues that this myth of superiority required ‘respectable society’ [the upper and middle-classes] to define itself through “a series of structured oppositions by which any group thought to adhere to different concepts of social and sexual behaviour, of work and time discipline, of value and religion, was accorded the status of an inferior and potentially hostile other.”[12] Shearer West adds that this meant that the English middle-class therefore considered themselves as more civilized, physically perfect and morally correct than not only non-European peoples but also the other Europeans, non-Protestant religions and the working class.[13] However, the most powerful trope of otherness was that of race, which in both a geographical [spatial] and cultural sense represented the peripheral of the cultural norm.[14]

Thus, as English identity became defined in relation to the ‘other’, represented racially, the concept of ‘otherness’ underpinned imperial and colonial discourse and white middle-class English identity was conflated to represent Europe and superior civilization.[15] Race was used as a justification for subjugation as arguments arose that ‘lesser races’ required the guiding hand of civilized Englishmen.[16] However, the nature of this ‘guidance’, and the responsibility of master to slave, was much disputed.[17] Some felt that slaves should be given a full secular and religious education but the plantation owners felt that knowledge was power and that withholding it was a highly symbolic action representative of the master-slave relationship.[18] It also seems likely that they felt a subtle fear of what might happen if the slaves became aware of their permanently subordinate position and exclusion from European society regardless of any attempts they made to bridge cultural gaps. H. L. Malchow argues that plantation owners also refused to baptise slaves because baptism, like education, would decrease cultural differences and because it would be difficult to justify enslaving fellow Christians.[19] As the abolitionist debate raged, heightening in intensity with the Barbados slave revolts in 1816, those in favour of slavery sought to use racial fears to demonize the slaves and thus define [civilized] humanity by the seemingly inhuman; they found the language of the Gothic ideally suited to evoke such racially motivated terror, revulsion and alienation.[20]

Gothic literature was used by the anti-abolitionists to frame their discourse on slavery by using the monstrous, inhuman, figures within these texts to represent a demonized slave population onto which European fears of repressed anger, leading to violent rebellion, were projected. As the abolition debate progressed there was a mutual influence between it and contemporary Gothic literature, leading to the gothicization of racial discourse and the racialization of Gothic fiction.[21] One of they key texts to be appropriated by the abolitionists into the forum of public debate was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, first published in 1818. For example, in 1823 George Canning spoke out on behalf of the London Committee of West India Merchants and Planters, effectively a political lobby group, against abolition. As part of his reasoning, he compared the slave population and their potential threat to society as being the same as that represented by Frankenstein’s monster.[22]

In considering racial discourse within Frankenstein it is difficult to look back and know if Mary Shelley intended an overt racial or imperial reading to her novel. However, growing up at home she was exposed, through her father’s writing and houseguests, to the hotly contested issue of slavery.[23] Also, her diary indicates that in 1814-5 she read several volumes relating to race and plantation politics, for instance by Bryan Edwards.[24] Debbie Lee argues that the events of 1816, the year Mary began writing Frankenstein, must have had a significant influence on her novel.[25] It was the year of the major slave revolt in Barbados, one of England’s most lucrative plantation islands, and a year of heated public debates over slave emancipation. It was also as Mary had just begun her novel, before the creature has been introduced, that Matthew Gregory Lewis stopped to visit the Shelleys and Byron on his way home from his Jamaican plantation. He fascinated them with stories of his trade and with his poem, The Isle of Devils, which centres on a rejected African, called ‘demon, fiend and monster’, who is a creature of painful ugliness, longing and sad rejection.[26] It seems likely that slavery was at least one of the ideas consciously, or unconsciously, embedded within the text, as it became a topic permeating society.

A close examination of Frankenstein, taking into account the social and political climate within which it was received, reveals why it was so easily seen by the public as narrativizing concerns about slavery and race relations. The novel has a Russian doll narrative structure with Robert Walton providing the authoritative voice for the frame of prologue and epilogue. The prologue establishes and confirms the English myth of civilized authority being white, male and Anglo-Saxon. Furthermore, Robert’s narrative also establishes the superiority of this demarcated authority by the condescension that he displays in regards to the crew of his ship as he bewails the lack of a “cultivated…capacious mind” as suitable companion.[27] Robert also fulfils an important role in the prologue by establishing that Victor Frankenstein remains within a privileged position despite his “expression of wildness, and even madness.”[28] We are introduced to Frankenstein by being told that he is not “a savage inhabitant of some undiscovered island, but an European,” furthermore, he possesses the virtues of ‘respectable society’ by being ‘noble’, ‘poignant’, ‘gentle’, ‘wise’, ‘cultivated’ and eloquent.[29]

Frankenstein, however, does not recognise his creature with similar welcoming joy, instead, upon the moment of the nascent creature opening his eye, he realizes that the new species he has formed is not beautiful, it is not of likeness to him, but instead it is repulsive.[30] The relationship of physiognomy determining characteristics and racial type had already been established.[31] Frankenstein’s reaction to the Creature is one based upon aesthetic appearances and of an instinctive recognition of ‘otherness’ and the threat that it poses. The Creature is visually coded to suggest the non-Europeans, united under the term ‘Negroid’, that were used as colonial British slaves.[32] He is larger and stronger than a European, he has ‘dull yellow eyes’, ‘lustrous black hair’ and “teeth of a pearly whiteness.”[33] His racial status and the way this encodes him as a separate, threatening, inhuman species is emphasised throughout the novel. Everyone that he meets is European and he is judged according to the racial stereotypes that he visibly connotes by his ‘otherness’.[34] Thus the rustic is unable to believe that the Creature is trying to save the drowning girl’s life, children run, women faint and little William believes that the Creature means to eat him because Negroids represented the threat of savage impulses, cannibalism and rape.[35]

The Creature further conforms to the xenophobic fears present in early nineteenth century racial discourse by showing a duality of nature that Negroids were believed to have as intrinsic to their character.[36] He is shown as affectionate and anxious to please, such as when he collects firewood for the De Lacey family, but he also shows a readiness to exact bloody vengeance when he is harmed or scorned, such as when he murders Elizabeth.[37] In addition, the image of him maniacally dancing around a house that he is burning down, or of him murdering a wife and a child, resonates with images, common in literature describing the West Indies plantations, of rebelling slaves.[38] In order to neutralize the threat that the Creature represents, and to emphasize his dependency upon his master for existence, it is a narrative necessity that he commits suicide after finding Frankenstein dead. The Creature thus accepts his inexorable separation from society, as a result of being the racial ‘other’ permanently excluded by it, due to oppositionally defining it, and his suicide, fittingly, also involves binary opposites, those of fire and ice.

However, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein doesn’t accept the apologists’ stance in the debate about slavery without critique. The title page includes a quote from Paradise Lost and it reminds readers that although the apologists claimed that the inferior races beseech the aid of their superiors,[39] that this wasn’t necessarily true, and having taken on the responsibility of ‘moulding men’ there is something horrible about the way that both Frankenstein, and the British plantation owners, admit a paternal feeling but deny paternal responsibility and affection.[40] Mary deliberately gives the Creature an intelligent and emotive voice in the novel. He is abandoned, cursed, and denied a heritage, a community and even a Christian name – instead he is called ‘wretch’, ‘daemon’, ‘animal’ and ‘abhorred monster’.[41] Yet, he still feels the strength of his connection to Frankenstein and speaks in feudal-vassalic terms that express his expectation of what this entitles him to; “I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me.”[42]

Unfortunately for the Creature, both the world within and external to the narrative are reliant upon sight as humans’ most powerful mode of understanding, even though human vision is often ideologically blinkered. The only sympathy that the Creature receives is from blind old De Lacey and from Frankenstein when he metaphorically has his sight taken by the Creature and this sympathy is only temporary.[43] In Britain sympathy for the ‘racial other’ was also limited in its extent. Slavery was legally abolished in the British colonies in 1834 but the indentured labour that replaced it didn’t necessitate an improvement in conditions or a change in attitudes. Instead, ideas of racial difference hardened as the nineteenth century wore on.[44] The height of British imperial power was reached but as England’s geopolitical borders expanded, and contact with non-Europeans increased, fears about maintaining real and imagined borders, including race, multiplied.[45] At the same time, Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution arose and became widely disseminated. His ideas were often used to show that non-Europeans were near the bottom of the evolution chain, like animals, yet the idea that races were not separate species and that Anglo-Saxons had quite possibly arisen from Africans also created a heightened sense of unease because it suggested that the borders between races and between human and inhuman were possibly not as distinct as previously assumed.[46]

This fear of collapsing boundaries and of decreasing distinction between ‘self’ and ‘other’ can be seen in H. G. Well’s novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau, published in 1896. Moreau, an educated Englishman, can be regarded as representing the furthest expansion of British imperialism, as he takes for his domain an unknown and unnamed island. He also represents British colonialism, in light of new beliefs in scientific naturalism, taken to its extreme as he reserves the right to take any action to improve the ‘lesser orders’. Scientific naturalism argued that humans were ‘natural objects’ subject to the universal laws of nature and obliged to work on ‘race instinct’; by submitting to the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ the moral onus, and the need to feel compassion or responsibility, was removed from the colonizer’s role.[47] Thus Moreau, as a superior European, need feel no remorse in subjecting lesser creatures to the “bath of burning pain” in order to “make a rational creature” like himself.[48]

The creatures upon which Moreau experiments reveal the way that non-Europeans had become conflated in European eyes to represent a threatening racial ‘other’. There are the “amazingly ugly” brown men wearing turbans and cloths like men of the East, there is the Ape Man with his “black Negroid face”, and there is “the black-faced man”, M’Ling.[49] He also represents a Negroid, one suggestive of Neanderthal man or ‘the missing [evolutionary] link’, with his “thick coarse hair”, “big white teeth” and his “facial part projected, forming something dimly suggestive of a muzzle.”[50] The racial discourse of the start of the nineteenth century is still present at its end as Prendick, and the captain of the Ipecacuanha, judges according to physical appearance and the creatures are cast in the role of “the diabolical” and of the old racial stereotypes of devils and cannibals.[51]

However, the Beast Folk can also be considered as representing an additional racial fear that had gained strength over the nineteenth century that of diluted racial purity leading to degeneration, due to miscegenation. The Beast Folk are the mulattoes of the plantations, considered half-breeds whose loyalties could not be trusted and whose mixed heritage made them unstable, unnatural and dangerous in public opinion.[52] They blur the implicit and fundamental distinction between the biological and political differences of master and slave, black and white.[53] The Beast Folk provide a grotesque parody of European society in their ‘upward striving’ to follow the teachings of the missionary who visited.[54] Yet even in their attempts to follow European societal and religious customs, the very structure of their recital of the Law, with each line of prohibition followed by the question of “Are we not men?”, sets up a disjunction that suggests that imitation is not enough to alter their inhuman nature and lesser [non-European] status.[55] As Prendick describes them these slaves ‘stumble in the shackles of humanity, live in a fear that never dies and are fretted by a law they could not understand.’[56] Ultimately, the Beast Folk will regress and give in to their natural racial instincts.

The Beast Folk follow stereotypical conventions of nineteenth century racial discourse. They rebel, they result in the death of their white master thanks to the black puma, they burn down the structures of colonial oppression and they then die or regress. However, Montgomery and Prendick reveal increasing fears that despite concepts of race becoming increasingly rigid that some members in ‘respectable society’ were overly friendly with the lesser races. There were fears that constant association with non-Europeans, as Britain’s borders expanded, could result in a blurring of racial boundaries due to taint or becoming accustomed to the ways of the ‘other’.[57] In Prendick’s case the Beast Folk aren’t even sure if he is an ‘other’ to them and he returns to London unsure if ‘taint’ is racial or, if we are all descended from one origin, whether we are not all tainted with something primitive and bestial.[58]

The racial ‘other’ conceptualised in nineteenth century British discourse was a way of asserting Anglo-Saxon ideas of superiority as the British empire grew, but perhaps it was also a way of displacing fears of the dark interiors that could lie within any human soul. Savage practices, unnatural desires and diabolical natures were projected onto a racialized, non-European, ‘other’ that could be viewed as standing in binary opposition to the civilized Briton thus establishing a unified, pure, moral, civilized European ‘self’. The ideology of race was used to stratify society based on beliefs about the innate inequality of certain human groups, thus justifying actions such as slavery.[59] English Gothic literature written during the nineteenth century is deeply encoded with allusions to the empire and to these concerns with race that permeated society. This literature provided an ideal way to narrativize racial discourse as it examined the boundaries between human and inhuman, between [good] men and [evil] devils and, like the racial discourse found within public debates, insisted upon the ability to read signs of depravity and the demonic in physiognomy, dress and mannerisms.[60] However, the Gothic also provides an ideal model for the conflation of opposites as boundaries between self/other, heimlich [familiar] and unheimlich [uncanny], collapse into each other so that racial coding and commentary becomes polysemic and as we see, for instance, “old Moreau, white and terrible…[with a] hand that was smeared red” we are forced to question just how fixedly distinct our conceptions are of what is civilized, of what should be valued and what makes a man.[61]

Works Cited

--, ‘Race’, Wikipedia [online encyclopedia], <>, accessed 9th October 2005.

Barringer, Tim, ‘Images of otherness and the visual production of difference: race and labour in illustrated texts, 1850-1865’, The Victorians and race, ed., Shearer West, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996.

Brody, Jennifer Devere, ‘Deforming Island races’, Making Humans, ed., Judith Wilt, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003.

Bryden, Inga, ‘Reinventing origins: the Victorian Arthur and racial myth’, The Victorians and race, ed., Shearer West, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996.

Christensen, Timothy, ‘The “Bestial Mark” of race in The Island of Dr Moreau,’ Criticism, v.46, no.4, 2004, pp. 575-595.

Elbarbary, Samir, ‘Heart of Darkness and late-Victorian fascination with the primitive and the double,’ Twentieth Century Literature, v.39, no.1, Spring 1993, pp. 113-128.

Ellis, Markman, The history of Gothic fiction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd, 2000.

Freud, Sigmund, ‘The Uncanny’, The Pelican Freud Library, vol. 14, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985, pp. 339-76.

Hannaford, Ivan, Race: the history of an idea in the West, Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Lee, Debbie, Slavery and the Romantic imagination, Philadelphia: University of Pennyslvania Press, 2002.

Lorimer, Douglas A., ‘Race, science and culture: historical continuities and discontinuities, 1850-1914, The Victorians and race, ed., Shearer West, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996.

Malchow, H. L., Gothic images of race in nineteenth-century Britain, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Malchow, H. L., ‘The half-breed as Gothic unnatural’, The Victorians and race, ed., Shearer West, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996

Said, Edward, Culture and Imperialism, London: Vintage, 1994.

Shelley, Mary, ‘Frankenstein’, Making Humans, ed., Judith Wilt, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003.

Smedley, Audrey, "Race, Concept of", The Oxford Companion to United States History, ed., Paul S. Boyer, Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Auckland University, , accessed 9 October 2005 .

Smith, Andrew, and William Hughes, ‘Introduction: the Enlightenment Gothic and Postcolonialism’, Empire and the Gothic: the politics of genre, ed., Andrew Smith and William Hughes, New York: Palgrave MacMillan Ltd, 2003.

Wells, H.G., ‘The Island of Doctor Moreau’, Making Humans, ed., Judith Wilt, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003.

West, Shearer, ‘Introduction’, The Victorians and race, ed., Shearer West, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996.

Wheeler, Roxann, The complexion of race: categories of difference in eighteenth-century British culture, Philadelphia: Philadelphia University Press, 2000.


[1] Mary Shelley, ‘Frankenstein’, Making Humans, ed., Judith Wilt, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003, p. 19
[2] H.G. Wells, ‘The Island of Doctor Moreau’, Making Humans, ed., Judith Wilt, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003, p. 213.
[3] H. L. Malchow, Gothic images of race in nineteenth-century Britain, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, p. 38.
[4] --, ‘Race’, Wikipedia [online encyclopedia], <>, accessed 9th October 2005.
[5] Roxann Wheeler, The complexion of race: categories of difference in eighteenth-century British culture, Philadelphia: Philadelphia University Press, 2000, p. 7.
[6] Ibid. p. 2, 98.
[7] Ivan Hannaford, Race: the history of an idea in the West, Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 207-8.
[8] Ibid. p. 208.
[9] Ibid. p. 213.
[10] M. Banton, The idea of race, Boulder: Westview Press, 1977, referenced by Wikipedia, loc. cit.
[11] Inga Bryden, ‘Reinventing origins: the Victorian Arthur and racial myth’, The Victorians and race, ed., Shearer West, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996, p. 141.
[12], p. 34.
[13] Shearer West, ‘Introduction’, The Victorians and race, ed., Shearer West, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996, pp. 8-9.
[14] Barringer, pp. 34, 37.
[15] Samir Elbarbary, ‘Heart of Darkness and late-Victorian fascination with the primitive and the double,’ Twentieth Century Literature, v.39, no.1, Spring 1993, p. 113.
[16] Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, London: Vintage, 1994, p. 8.
[17] Malchow, Gothic images of race in nineteenth-century Britain, p. 27.
[18] Ibid. p. 28-9.
[19] Ibid. loc.cit.
[20] Andrew Smith and William Hughes, ‘Introduction: the Enlightenment Gothic and Postcolonialism’, Empire and the Gothic: the politics of genre, ed., Andrew Smith and William Hughes, New York: Palgrave MacMillan Ltd, 2003, p. 1.
H. L. Malchow, ‘The half-breed as Gothic unnatural’, The Victorians and race, ed., Shearer West, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996, p. 102.
[21] Malchow, The Victorians and race, p. 102.
[22] Debbie Lee, Slavery and the Romantic imagination, Philadelphia: University of Pennyslvania Press, 2002, p. 182.
[23] Malchow, Gothic images of race in nineteenth-century Britain, p. 14.
[24] Ibid. p. 16.
[25] Lee, p. 171.
[26] Lee, p. 172.
[27] Shelley, p. 26.
[28] Ibid. p. 30.
[29] Ibid. p. 29 and 31; I have added the underline.
[30] Ibid. pp. 50-1.
[31] Audrey Smedley "Race, Concept of", The Oxford Companion to United States History, ed., Paul S. Boyer, Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Auckland University, , accessed 9 October 2005.
[32] Malchow, Gothic images of race in nineteenth-century Britain, p. 18.
[33] Shelley, pp. 48, 51.
[34] Safie, as an Arabian, could have fallen outside of this communal image of civilized Europe except that Shelley specifically states that she is fair and the daughter of a Christian Arab (p. 94, 99). Since she lived in Constantinople (p. 99) there is a strong suggestion of her being descended from the [white, European] Christian crusaders.
Old De Lacy is an exception in his reactions but I will discuss the ramifications of his blindness later in the essay.
[35] Shelley, pp. 86 and 112. Malchow, Gothic images of race in nineteenth-century Britain, pp. 24-5.
[36] Malchow, Gothic images of race in nineteenth-century Britain, p. 17.
[37] Shelley, pp. 90 and 151-2.
[38] Malchow, Gothic images of race in nineteenth-century Britain, p. 23.
[39] Said, p. 8.
[40] Lee, pp. 185, 192.
[41] Shelley, p. 51, 64, 65, 81, 96-7,
[42] Ibid. p. 82.
[43] Shelley, p. 83.
[44] Jennifer Devere Brody, ‘Deforming Island races’, Making Humans, ed., Judith Wilt, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003, p. 343.
[45] Ibid. p. 343.
[46] Ibid. p. 345.
[47] Douglas A. Lorimer, ‘Race, science and culture: historical continuities and discontinuities, 1850-1914, The Victorians and race, ed., Shearer West, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996, pp. 25-9.
[48] Wells. p. 228.
[49] Ibid. pp. 177 and 190.
[50] Ibid. pp. 179-80.
[51] Wells, pp. 182, 187, 197.
[52] Malchow, The Victorians and race, p. 105. Malchow, Gothic images of race in nineteenth-century Britain, p. 233.
[53] Markman Ellis, The history of Gothic fiction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd, 2000, p. 216.
[54] Wells, pp. 228-9.
[55] Timothy Christensen, ‘The “Bestial Mark” of race in The Island of Dr Moreau,’ Criticism, v.46, no.4, 2004, p. 581.
[56] Wells, pp. 241-2 [tense altered].
[57] Ibid. pp. 233, 242.
[58] Ibid. pp. 213, 234, 267-8.
[59] Smedley, loc. cit.
[60] Malchow, The Victorians and race, p. 102.
[61] Smith, p. 3. Wells, p. 207.
A full definition of the heimlich and uncanny can be read in Sigmund Freud’s treatise ‘The Uncanny’, The Pelican Freud Library, vol. 14, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985, pp. 339-76.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe [well, it is Halloween]

The Raven
by Edgar Allan Poe
First Published in 1845

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door."
'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore,
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,
Nameless here forevermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me---filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,"
'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door,
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door.
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened wide the door;---
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word,Lenore?,
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word,"Lenore!"
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before,
"Surely," said I, "surely, that is something at my window lattice.
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore.
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore."
'Tis the wind, and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven, of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door.
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore.
Tell me what the lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore."
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door,
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered;
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before;
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore,---
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never---nevermore."

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore --
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl, whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee -- by these angels he hath
Sent thee respite---respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, O quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!
"Quoth the raven, "Nevermore!"

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted--
On this home by horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore:
Is there--is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me I implore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil--prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore--
Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore---
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting--
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! -- quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming.
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted---nevermore!

Corpse Bride

I've been waiting in great anticipation for Tim Burton's latest film to come out and expected artistic brilliance. I certainly respect the work that was done as a project of that kind requires years of painstaking work with the claymation set and characters. There was a certain gothic feel to it and a sense of mixing Victorian England with far older and possibly East European mythic fireside tails. I particularly liked the critique of drab, colourless, socially stratified 'upside' when compared to the compassion, cheer, equality and colour found down below. It reminded me of the 'Three Dead' - "As we are so shall you be": it's a medieval woodcut that became increasingly popular in various artistic forms after the Black Death that essentially means that Death is the great equalizer [and inevitable].

Sadly though, the film lacked some essential vitalic spark to bring it to life. Helen Bohema Carter as Emily [the corpse bride] was lovely and she was the only character that really showed a display of emotions. The problem was that the characters were 2-d and stereotypic without being so deliberately or at least if they were they weren't used reflexively i.e. to provide comedy or to perform a function in providing a well presented argument.
There were songs but they were forgettable, although the piano music was quite nice, and so were the lines. The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my favourite films and has a certain 'je n'ais pourquois' and 'Jack the Pumpkin king' can get stuck in my head all day. The Corpse Bride unfortunately feels like a particularly bland meal that you've almost forgotten you ate when you walk away from the table. :(

Oh, and Agnieszcka, my Gothic tutor, was sitting in front of us. I felt like an errant child when she told me she'd see me at the exam - it's hard not to feel guilty when your tutor catches you at the movies even if you have been researching that day! On the bright side, a bunch more essays were delivered to the office this afternoon so bright and early Monday morning I can run and pick mine up :)

Aw, Benn and Anna look so cute!

This is from my 24th earlier this year. Benn, Anna, Sridat and Paul. They look so dressed up and posh :)

Renovations

The owner of our house is quite lovely but has the disadvantage of living in Wellington and his property agents therefore not paying him too much attention since he can't storm into their offices. He was up here to visit about a month ago and was horrified that work he'd authorised at the start of the year still hadn't happened. So we've got a new property manager and she finally rang me back last night to discuss my request that she provide us with some kind of date as to when work would start on the house as he was wanting it done before his next trip back up here at Christmas. Not only did she give us a date but it's like now! We had our renovator co-ordinators around today to inspect the property and they're coming back next week to do measurements before supplying quotes. So they're replacing the rotten weatherboards and painting the exterior of the house; removing most of our trees because our next-door neighbours are evil anti-environmentalists; replacing the carpet that's worn out and possibly replacing the carpets through all of the house; potentially redecorating the entire interior but definitely redoing the lounge with the peeling wallpaper. We even get a say in the colour scheme!! So they want us to get back to them as which paint we'd like used and what colour carpet we'd prefer :)

English Angst

Agh! My Theory and the Gothic essay still hasn't been marked. The class was designed for approx. 60-70 people and 120 enrolled. I don't know why, probably budgeting reasons, but they decided to stick with having only one tutor and decided that she could do all the marking. So, unsurpringly, it looks like 30-50% have been marked and we don't know when the rest will come in. It's worth 40% and it's my first Stage III essay, and I have to confess written kind of at the last minute, so I'm freaking out about the exam being next week and still not having any kind of feedback as to whether I'm holding my own or not. That and I have to get at least a B on the paper (it's for my major) to get into post-grad and I hear she marks really hard....so....angst.

On the bright side, I've started studying for the exam and decided on my topics. I'm doing Interview with a Vampire for the pre-announced section and then Invasions: so Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Night of the Living Dead (you can't help but feel there's going to be a comparison question there) and the Poe section. I loved Pit and the Pendulum with Vincent Price and he so reminds me of our lecturer Alex Calder in that film. It's like a mix of Poe's short story of that name, Poe's story The Fall of the House of Usher and another film that production company made in the 1960s called The House on Haunted Hill. It takes elements from all the stories to make a new plot that is fantastically gothic. It seems really strange in some ways that I'm doing the zombie section since I like horror/thriller films but I mostly avoid generic splatter/gore horror. It's all very well to tell yourself that really they're eating a leg of roast pork covered in chocolate sauce and wearing a shoe to get the right cannabilistic look in black and white but somehow it just doesn't help. Yet I walked home from the video store last night with an armful of Romero's work and silently cursing them for having sold off several of the old classics recently [those AV library chairs just aren't that comfy eh!]. The zombies are just really easy to write on though. I was originally going to avoid them because I used New Historicism as a theoretical approach in my essay and looked at slavery and racial attitudes within British imperial culture. I think I'll be alright in the exam though as American racial attitudes were present in the construction of a discourse on zombies up to the 1940s or so but Romero's work quite radically reinvented them and they became much more about modernity in general and the soullessness of capitalism etc...

Mmm Rotorua....I've taken ages to get the film developed; this was from near the start of this year!

Nixie!

Castle Pamela

Before Anna and I left for Rotorua Sridat told us that we needed to bring him back a homebaked cookie from the trip. We decided to get photographic proof in Hastings (doesn't the Waikato look deceptively unpolluted) and we did also pick up cookie in Rotorua (you'll have to take our word for it :P )

This was a public park in Rotorua. What's truly scary about the big gaping bubbling hole is that we could see where the public safety fence had collapsed into the hole thus necessitating the temporary chicken wire fence!

Christmas Parties

W00t, went to my fourth recruitment agency interview and had a pleasant revelation. She laughed and told me that I was joining agencies at a good time as the one social event that all the agencies provide is a Christmas party/gift pack. So...six agencies should be six corporate parties to go to :) Excellent!

And! the car worked this morning after charging for 12 hours, thank God!

Broken Car

My car broke down in the supermarket carpark a week ago and we thought it was just a faulty battery. After a couple of hours I found someone to jump start the car and got it to Dad's work and we were able to put a new battery in. She ran sweet as could be until last night when all of the power suddenly disappeared on the Dominion Rd flyover. I crawled/coasted home at around 5-15km/hr only to have the engine completely vanish as I was turning to park outside the house. You can imagine how thrilled I was that at midnight the car had zero juice and was ass-end into the road blocking one lane. It turns out that the AA, cunning bastards, have a 24-hr stand-down policy so that if you're joining them because your car's broken they charge you the full call-out fee. So my absolutely fantastic, kind, wonderful, long-suffering father got woken up and he, and my equally awesome little bro, drove all the way over from the North Shore to jump start the car and try to see what was wrong with it. It's currently sitting in the garage getting juiced and I'll need to charge it before taking any necessary trips in it. After exams I'll drive it over to Dad's and hopefully it is an electrical fault, it doesn't seem mechanical/structural, in which case he may be able to figure out what's wrong with it and fix it himself without stupidly expensive mechanics bills that I can't afford to pay. Did I mention that I love my family?

Armageddon II

Hmmm...was it worth it? Well, walking in with only $20 to spare there's a limit as to how much merchandise you can buy. I looked longingly at some fantastically gothic undead dolls and Jack, the Pumpkin King [Nightmare before Christmas] merchandise but at $40+ they were well out of my league. I discovered a stack of Warhammer Fantasy books that I desperately desired [well, maybe not desperately but definitely wanted] but they were priced pretty much at new retail. So, in the end, I dutifully spent the money buying the latest publications of one of my friend's from high school {Richard Fairgray} who is successfully working his way into the local NZ comic market. *g* I plan to read them later tonight so I don't even know what the plot is yet. I did get to meet and greet a bunch of people, most of whom can be loosely referred to as geeks, that are scattered through Auckland and nearby cities that I know from ages ago and now mostly bump into at Armageddon :) Of course, the other great find was discovering advertising for a sci fi/fantasy swap meet to be held at the Grey Lynn Library Hall, 10-2pm on Sat 12th November. These are far less advertised but have a huge range of stuff at cheap prices so hopefully I'll pick up some good finds there to celebrate the end of exams :)

Unleashed

Jet Li's new movie is worth seeing if you like Hollywood stylized martial arts films. It's an interesting mix of violence, psychology and heart-tugging plot. The fight scenes are well choreographed, varied and include a mix of stylized display fighting and genuine hard-out punching and kicking that you'd be more likely to use in a brawl. It was also amazing to see Li, who's how old now?, pull off convincingly appearing much younger - as his character is in some ways still a child in an adult's body.

Oh, and the bonus to seeing the movie was meeting one of Sridat's friends afterwards. I have to confess that I'd always believed that the sterotype of engineers as beer guzzling, pot-bellied simians who spend far too much time in the computer labs/shadows had a certain small element of truth in it. Last night I was proven wrong in meeting a computer geek, software devpt. I think, who's part-way through a Ph.D. and built like Vin Diesel! Don't get me wrong, I still miss my ex every day and still end up crying on the bus, in lectures, at home, well you get the drift, still, it's nice to know there's buff geeks out there when I'm up to looking again.

Armageddon

Yay our yearly geek fest returns this weekend :) It's a shame though that it's becoming increasingly commercial and aimed at kiddies. Well, it was always commercial but now there's huge areas taken up by xbox etc.... and less of the swap-meet random treasures. Still, it'll full up Sunday afternoon and I may go along to some of the forum/talks this time around and see if they're interesting.

Recruitment Agencies II

Hmmm, three rounds of interviews in three days - there are definitely other things I'd rather be doing with my time! Like watching Season 3 of Angel on VHS which I finally got hold of. It's nice to see they've got closer to Season 1 with some character development, humour and Angel not being mopey and depressed all the time. Cordelia and Wesley's imitation of Angel and Buffy is also a classic.
I wish the agencies would agree to print out the test results on letterhead so that I didn't have to repeat them each time! On the bright side my results improve each time as the questions look increasingly familair. But I'm definitely sick of watching health and safety videos! It's weird, I remember looking for work after I got sick and spending a couple of months going to interviews before I got the job with council. Now that I've got that experience under my belt I've been offered about three full-time positions this week by the end of my interviews!! *g* I've told them I'm definitely only interested in temp. work as I've got some potential plans up my sleeves but they keep trying to sell me on these offers anyway :P It's reassuring though to know that if I decide to take a break between post-grad and my teaching diploma that I should be able to find work even as a BA bum :)

Recruitment Agencies

It feels bizarre that when I should be studying for exams instead my days are filling up with interviews with various recuitment agencies so that I hopefully have temp work lined up directly after exams so that I can pay my rent! The interviews take so bloody long though! Three hours taken out of my afternoon, though part of that was driving out to Ellerslie and back. On the bright side, they gave me copies of my test results so that might mean I can skip that part at the other agencies. Oooh, I can type over 8000 key strokes per hour. It doesn't feel like it means much though when you look at a huge number like that. I guess they decided that was more practical for some reason then the old words per minute thing. On the bright side, they offered me a job while I was there! The plus side was a six month contract at a minimum of $15/hr just for reception work but the downside was a lengthy commute out to Penrose every single day. With petrol prices being so high that's an expense I'd prefer to avoid. Doesn't matter though, they really want someone to start right away and I'm not free until after exams so they reckon they'll have a city job lined up by then. I'll end up on the books of five or six agencies so hopefully they'll be able to keep me in the green :)

The joy that is the English Dept

The ideal time to beg for an extension is definitely after a night of no sleep because you've up for 24 hrs working on another department's assignment and you really do look like the walking dead that your course is covering. Happily, I got my two day extension and handed it in on time. However, I was surprised, along with everyone else, to find out that there was no need. During a discussion in class about our assignment (40%) and the exam we found out that the late essays are not going to be penalized. Well, they are, they're not going to get any comments but the marks won't be affected at all. I don't particularly care as I probably work harder under the pressure of a deadline anyway but it would have been nice to take advantage of that and have time to rewrite the first draft. It was quite funny as the lecturers couldn't understand why half the class was suddenly complaining (all the people who got there's in on time).

Lisa's 24 Hr Film Festival entry

Yay for "The Flash Man" *g* it's very cool Lisa :) I love the geek convention :P
http://www.nzshortfilm.com/film,1173,play,1872.sm

Angel Pic

The html link is broken unfortunately but the picture on the site is pretty -

Mythic Creatures

You scored as Angel. Angel: Angels are the guardians of all things, from the smallest ant to the tallest tree. They give inspiration, love, hope, and positive emotion. They live among humans without being seen. They are the good in all things, and if you feel alone, don't fear. They are always watching. Often times they merely stand by, whispering into the ears of those who feel lost. They would love nothing more then to reveal themselves, but in today's society, this would bring havoc and many unneeded questions. Give thanks to all things beautiful, for you are an Angel. Angel 92% Faerie 92% Mermaid 59% Dragon 34% WereWolf 17% Demon 0% What Mythological Creature are you? (Cool Pics!) created with QuizFarm.com

Discworld Character (another tie)

You scored as Carrot Ironfounderson. You are Captain Carrot Ironfounderson of the City Watch in the greatest city on the Disc â?? Ankh-Morprok! A truly good natured, honest guy, who knows everyone, and is liked by all. Technically a dwarf, but only by adoption. Youâ??d rather not be reminded that you are the true heir to the throne, but that does explain why people naturally follow your ordersâ?¦ The Librarian 75% Carrot Ironfounderson 75% Lord Havelock Vetinari 63% Esmerelda (Granny) Weatherwax 63% Gytha (Nanny) Ogg 63% Commander Samuel Vimes 50% Rincewind 50% Greebo 44% Death 38% Cohen The Barbarian 25% Which Discworld Character are you like (with pics) created with QuizFarm.com

Yay for orangutangs!

You scored as The Librarian. Youâ??re the Librarian! Once a wizard, now an Orang-utan (due to an unfortunate magical accident), you refuse to be turned back for a few reasons: In this form, itâ??s easier to reach the shelves and hold more books; having the strength of five men makes people return their books on time; lifeâ??s great philosophical questions boil down to â??when do I get my next banana?â?¿ You say â??ookâ?¿ but are usually understood well enough. The Librarian 75% Carrot Ironfounderson 75% Lord Havelock Vetinari 63% Esmerelda (Granny) Weatherwax 63% Gytha (Nanny) Ogg 63% Commander Samuel Vimes 50% Rincewind 50% Greebo 44% Death 38% Cohen The Barbarian 25% Which Discworld Character are you like (with pics) created with QuizFarm.com

Serenity (Zoe)

You scored as Zoe Alleyne Washburne. The Soldier. You are the second in command, and that is fine. You like a chain of command, but only when the one in charge has earnt your respect. Those who earn your love or loyalty will find no one better to guard their back. Zoe Alleyne Washburne 75% Shepherd Derrial Book 75% The Operative 69% Kaylee Frye 63% Simon Tam 63% Capt. Mal Reynolds 56% Hoban 'Wash' Washburne 56% River Tam 50% Inara Serra 31% Jayne Cobb 31% Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Serenity

You scored as Shepherd Derrial Book. The Preacher. Out here, folks need a minister, if only to remind them that God hasn't forgotten them. It isn't about making them worship, it is teaching them to do right by themselves and other people. Why is that so hard for some to understand? Zoe Alleyne Washburne 75% Shepherd Derrial Book 75% The Operative 69% Kaylee Frye 63% Simon Tam 63% Capt. Mal Reynolds 56% Hoban 'Wash' Washburne 56% River Tam 50% Inara Serra 31% Jayne Cobb 31% Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Vampire Watermelon

There's a great article in Wikipedia claiming gypsie beliefs in vampire watermelon!! It's fantasically funny :)

Last Week of Classes

Ah...the last sun-filled week of classes. Our film lecturer gave us the topic of every question in the exam - in almost word for word detail which was kind of him. We have an essay due for history, instead of an exam, so we spent our last lecture watching excerpts from movies. There's nothing like getting a room of medieval buffs to watch modern movies set in the 'medieval period'. *g* we hope they intended us to laugh at some of the scenes as well as with them. The start of A Knight's Tale is brilliant; you'd expect Queen's We Will Rock You to be non-diegetic in most films but no, the peasants and musicians really are playing it and you can even see the resident lord mouth the words at one point!

Microchips for 'dangerous' animals

Check this out:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/10/13/
japan.animals.microchips.reut/index.html
This is the sort of thing you'd expect to read on April Fools Day but CNN aren't exactly known for their humourous qualities...

Political Rant

So...the news is in...I'm glad that Labour has finally been able to formally announce government and prove all the fearmongers wrong who predicted Don would make a last minute comeback but at what a price!! It wasn't quite as bad as I feared, the Greens voting student librarian was bemoaning Winston Peters as the new Finance Minister. I rushed home and discovered that Dunne and Winston had indeed been offered ministerial positions. I'm not to worried about Dunne; Labour got through the major social policy changes last term so I think he'll prove reasonably solid. But I have to agree with John Campbell that there's something ironically shocking about seeing Winston Peters, after all his bigoted comments over the years, being given Minister of Foreign Affairs; I could see Helen's pain as she calmly explained that they had been forced to work with what the voters had supplied.

I heartily wish Act hadn't got in and that the Greens had got that tiny fraction of the vote more that they required to retain Nandor (who is just lovely). It's hard to say whether that would have significantly affected this outcome however. Every election I pray that Winston won't get in and will finally retire to a bach full of pin-ups of himself and every time he weasels his way back in. I suppose this shows how great his skill is as a politician, after all, his new campaign of neutrality worked a charm to resuscitate flagging votes. What I fail to understand is how anyone who doesn't suffer from severe memory loss falls sucker for his charm every time? Did people honestly believe his humble claims of creating cheery stability without self-serving wile and negotiations coming into play? Both Helen and Don shuddered at the thought of having to do deals with Winston, and how many truly desired to see him as a Minister again?, yet here we are again with Winston being given the prime position of kingmaker by the NZ public. *sigh* *shudder* *groan*

Black Death II

Researching the Black Death was fascinating especially since it caused so many changes that it wasn't possible to cover them all in the essay I wrote; *g* I thought I'd wait to publish it until I got the mark back. I love doing research to try and delve in and connect all the pieces together from different sources. It's always frustrating to read something and realize that the only research they've done is to books published by other historians and they've completely ignored the primary sources as well as failed to contribute anything new to the argument - which is perhaps understandable in a greatly restricted word limit but not when they're able to publish a whole book on the subject! The seperate and perhaps more intense historiographical deabate revolves around what exactly the Black Death was and if it still remains as an organism i.e. is it accurate to describe it as bubonic plague [which is a distinct bacillus responsible for the nineteenth century plague in India and China]. I still think Samuel Cohn Jr. is one of the most comprehensive and wel researched writers on the subject and highly recommend his book:
Cohn, Samuel K., The Black Death transformed: disease and culture in early Renaissance Europe, London, 2002.

Black Death

18. In what ways did the Black Death change European society? Was its impact entirely negative?

In 1346 an extremely infectious plague,[1] travelling west along the silk route, reached the Genoese colony at the port of Caffa on the Black Sea; from there the plague would spread throughout Europe and thus began what chronicler Henry Knighton described as “a universal mortality of men throughout the world.”[2] As the plague spread it decimated the population; the effects of such a sudden change in demographics were varied and compounded by sporadic outbreaks of the plague that continued until the seventeenth century. The advent of the plague resulted in changes to land-holding, living conditions, intra-societal relationships, medicine, the Church and more. This essay aims to examine a number of these effects and to consider whether this plague, now known as the Black Death,[3] should be considered merely a catastrophe or whether it provided a positive catalyst for lasting change.

Upon reaching Europe the plague moved from port towns, such as Pisa, Venice, Marseilles and Barcelona, into the hinterlands and then moved northwards. Between December 1347 and December 1349 the disease had affected almost all of Europe. The symptoms of the disease were varied; they included a combination of large glandular swellings [buboes] in the groin, armpit or neck, pustules, spitting blood, fevers, headaches and sharp pains.[4] Chroniclers were shocked by the speed in which the plague spread and killed.[5] The majority of victims died within three to five days of exhibiting symptoms but others could appear healthy and be dead the next morning.[6] Chroniclers were also astonished at the universality of the plague; it seemed to be engulfing the entire world, it affected both man and mammals, and it killed indiscriminately, ignoring both wealth and status.[7]

The immediate effect of the first outbreak of the Black Death wherever it struck was to create a temporary breakdown in the normal societal order. Chroniclers, such as Boccacio, described immoral behaviour in the face of what seemed certain death; this included women being cared for by male strangers, drunken gluttony and lechery, and looting.[8] The breakdown of familial ties, as the potentially healthy abandoned the sick, concerned many.[9] Although ruling elites attempted to continue asserting their power, respect for them was undercut by the fact that many fled to isolated locations and that their decrees sometimes seemed a breach of natural order.[10] Boccacio was not alone in his shocked grief that the ordinances of many Italian city-states no longer allowed traditional funeral customs and instead bodies were gathered onto carts and taken to mass graves outside the cities.[11] There was also surprise at the letter of Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury who informed his clergy that, due to the plague, it was now necessary for parishioners to confess their sins to their neighbours and that faith could replace the extreme unction if no priest remained alive to perform these duties for them.[12]

However, this immediate disruption to society did not continue indefinitely. As the plague passed, communities attempted to re-create the life they had before the Black Death;[13] this was not entirely possible. The percentage of deaths caused by the plague would have varied in each community; some may have had death rates as low as 20%,[14] some as high as 80%,[15] and Johannes Nohl estimates 200,000 market towns and villages in Europe were completely depopulated.[16] The general agreement among historians places the conservative estimate of deaths, averaged across Europe, as being approximately 30%, although Rosemary Horrox argues in favour of this being raised to 40-55%.[17] The Black Death had significantly altered population levels in Europe and recurrent outbreaks of the plague, including 1361-2, 1369 and 1375, kept the population artificially low into the fifteenth century.[18]

One of the key changes that occurred as a result of this newly altered demographic was that land-use altered in several ways as a result of vacated holdings and a decreased supply of labourers. Throughout Europe many landlords reacted to this situation by altering property boundaries; this allowed more coherent parcels of land to be created while adjusting section sizes to allow for fewer tenants, for example breaking up demesne land into more modest-sized units suitable for farming or amalgamating small parcels of land.[19] These newly created parcels of land became sites of negotiation between landowners and tenants. In France, the Italian states and Mediterranean countries sharecropping rapidly increased while in England there began to be move away from direct farming using serfs to leasing out land for monetary rents.[20] Several historians have argued that these land-use changes had further long-term effects. C. Hollister argues that these changes resulted in the disintegration of the manorial system, with its demise evident by the sixteenth century;[21] Philip Ziegler cautions that the Black Death acted as an accelerant factor in this process but was not the sole causal agent.[22] David Nicholas argues that continued recurrences of the Black Death contributed towards uncertain grain prices and high wages of labourers resulting in a diversification of farming throughout Europe, by 1450, that included cultivating vegetables, stock rearing and an increase in wool farming.[23]

Immediately following the Black Death the wages of workers did rise dramatically; chroniclers such as Jean de Venette expressed their astonishment at the wages of hired labourers, farm workers and servants doubling.[24] There were attempts by the nobility to mitigate these pay increases. In England the Ordinance and Statute of Labourers were passed in 1349 and 1351 respectively; similar laws were passed elsewhere in Europe.[25] These laws were designed to prevent free-market wage setting; they stipulated that wages were to be reduced to pre-plague levels and that a peasant was required to accept their first offer of work.[26] There is disagreement over how strictly labour laws were adhered to, however, the situation altered with the outbreak of plague in 1361-2; it, and subsequent outbreaks, kept labour in high demand.[27] As a result the wages of workers throughout Europe remained higher than pre-plague wages for the rest of the fourteenth century.[28] In turn, this resulted in a higher standard of living; records indicate that their diet improved, as did the quality of their possessions, for example the replacement of earthenware cooking vessels by metallic ones.[29]

However, the increase in wages and improvement in living conditions for workers, as well as attempts by the nobility to mitigate these, provided a new cause for tension between workers and the nobility. Horrox suggests that the relationship between landlords and tenants became increasingly confrontational in the second half of the fourteenth century.[30] In addition, she argues that many contemporary writers began to complain about the decline of visible marks of social distinction and to condemn workers for the ‘frivolous leisure pursuits’ that were indulged in as wages increased.[31] Hollister suggests that the growing sense of grievance at upwards mobility and at this mobility being resisted may have been the cause of popular uprisings, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, in France (1358), England (1381) and also in Spain, the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire.[32] Ziegler contends that many factors contributed towards these and that the Black Death cannot be attributed as a direct cause, however, he does suggest that the Black Death contributed towards a feeling of discontent and a desire for change.[33]

Ziegler suggests that the Black Death creating a growing social self-awareness was part of a wider changing attitude towards death.[34] A preoccupation with death wasn’t new to European society however the magnitude of the Black Death forcibly drew society’s attention to death as inexorable, as indifferent to status and as violently affecting the human body; this caused death to be re-evaluated. Death had been part of medieval artwork prior to the Black Death but afterwards there was an increasing emphasis on death as ‘the great equalizer’.[35] The plague had visibly demonstrated that death came for peasants, clergy and royalty alike. David Herlihy and Horrox also argue in favour of a distinct change, displayed in writings and artwork, following the Black Death. They suggest that death is no longer portrayed as being welcomed but as a commanding monster that ignores any desire to live and that increasingly life is portrayed as fragile and death as unpredictable.[36] The fragility of both the human body and the ability to show it reverence after death were emphasised by the numbers of rotting corpses and the necessity of mass graves and banned funeral rites during plague outbreaks.[37] This resulted in the formation of funeral fraternities and Horrox argues that it also contributed to the rise of transi tombs in the late fourteenth century.[38]

The Black Death not only changed attitudes towards death but also significantly altered attitudes towards the human body as it became increasingly important to understand it and the workings of disease. After 1348 there was a fundamental break in intellectual tradition as the authority of Aristotle declined and was replaced by Galen and as medicine turned from God to science for explanations.[39] The plague broke down the divisions between theorizing physicians and practicing surgeons.[40] Theoretical texts were replaced by writings focussed on practical advice and procedures based on actual experience.[41] The study of anatomy, previously banned by the Church, began to be urgently pursued.[42] Rather than attributing disease to God or astrology medical writers began to consider, as contributing factors, famine, overcrowding, lack of hygiene and unburied corpses and they supported the creation of health boards, quarantines and new sanitary regulations.[43]

Changes in medical attitudes reflected a wider disillusionment in the Church.[44] There appears to have been resentment that a catastrophe presented as divine punishment had not been preceded by warnings from the pulpit and in addition the Black Death was accompanied by both lay and ecclesiastical criticism of clergy abandoning their flock or reluctantly performing partial duties.[45] Disillusionment with the Church was heightened as the need to quickly replace so many dead clergy saw ordination requirements being ignored.[46] Knighton and Archbishop Islip were among chroniclers complaining about existing priests haggling for extra pay and new priests including the middle-aged and illiterate.[47] However, Sean Martin emphasises that disillusionment in the Church did not mean that society turned away from faith in God.[48] He argues that rather it created a greater willingness to listen to alternative preachers such as mendicants, Lollards and Wycliffites.[49] As the Black Death continued to recur, and clergy continued to die in large numbers, several additional changes occurred by the end of the fourteenth century. New career opportunities emerged as administrative posts previously restricted to clergy became open to laymen.[50] In addition, these educated laymen, and clergy, were now being taught in vernacular languages due to a lack of teachers left who were fluent in Latin or courtly French; for instance in England, Ireland and the Holy Roman Empire.[51]

The Black Death was a pandemic that caused a catastrophic number of deaths in Europe and took further lives in recurrent outbreaks. It was an event that left almost every remaining person bereaved. It is difficult to examine this period, with the limited records remaining, and have a fully accurate idea of the impact on society of the Black Death. It is likely that some changes it caused directly, such as in medical attitudes, that in other cases it accelerated processes that were already present, such as in land-use, and that we can only speculate about its importance as a factor in others, such as the decline of the manorial system and the peasant uprisings. In considering whether these changes were positive things the question of bias has to be considered. For the peasants that survived there were increased job opportunities, higher wages and an improved living standard by the end of the fourteenth century. However, secular and ecclesiastical landowners were likely to have a different opinion as higher wages, combined with falling prices of agricultural goods,[52] meant decreasing profits. The Church struggled with criticism and disillusionment as it attempted to justify the plague, the actions of its clergy during the plague and what was seen as falling recruitment standards directly after plague outbreaks. On the other hand, to our modern eyes, the Black Death was a positive factor in moving medieval European society closer towards our own; land-use began to move towards a monetary rent system, medicine moved away from faith towards science and anatomical studies, and a change to teaching in vernacular languages would ultimately help aid the development of nationalism. The number of fundamental changes to society that the Black Death caused made it more than a catastrophe; it was a catalyst that altered society from that which came before.

Works Cited

Bolton, Jim, ‘The world upside down. Plague as an agent of economic and social change’ in Phillip Lindley and Mark Ormrod (eds.), The Black Death in England, Stamford, 1996.

Byrne, Joseph P., The Black Death, Westport, 2004.

Cohn, Samuel K., The Black Death transformed: disease and culture in early Renaissance Europe, London, 2002.

Goldberg, Jeremy, ‘Introduction’ in Phillip Lindley and Mark Ormrod (eds.), The Black Death in England, Stamford, 1996.

Harper-Bill, Christopher, ‘The English Church and English religion after the Black Death’ in Phillip Lindley and Mark Ormrod (eds.), The Black Death in England, Stamford, 1996.

Hay, Denys, Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 2nd ed., New York, 1995.

Herlihy, David, The Black Death and the transformation of the west, Samuel K. Cohn (ed.), Cambridge, Mass., 1997.

Hollister, C. Warren, Medieval Europe: a short history, 6th edn, New York, 1990.

Horrox, Rosemary, The Black Death, Manchester and New York, 1994.

Martin, Sean, The Black Death, Harpenden, 2001.

Nicholas, David, The Transformation of Europe, 1300-1600, London, 1999.

Nohl, Johannes, The Black Death: a chronicle of the plague compiled from contemporary sources, 2nd edn, London, 1961.

Platt, Colin, King Death: The Black Death and its aftermath in later-medieval England, London, 1996.

Ziegler, Philip, The Black Death, 2nd edn, London, 1998.
[1] The focus of this essay is on examining the effects of the plague rather than the disease itself. There is heated debate among historians and epidemiologists as to the nature of the plague, chiefly as to whether it is correct to link it to the bacillus that is responsible for the modern bubonic plague. An excellent treatise on the subject is: Samuel K. Cohn, The Black Death transformed: disease and culture in early Renaissance Europe, London, 2002.
[2] The plague was not restricted to Europe; it also spread throughout Asia, the Mediterranean, Russia, the Baltic and Africa. The scope of this essay however will be restricted to examining the plague’s effects in Europe.
David Herlihy, The Black Death and the transformation of the west, Samuel K. Cohn (ed.), Cambridge, Mass., 1997, pp. 23-25. Cohn, p. 102,
[3] At the time it was referred to as the ‘Big Death’ and this term continued to be used in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to distinguish this plague from other diseases. Ibid. p. 104.
In the sixteenth century Danish and Swedish chroniclers renamed it the Black Death, meaning terrible/dreadful death, and this is the name that has continued in use to the present day. Herlihy, p. 17.
[4] Cohn, pp. 58-9, 61-2, 83.
[5] Ibid. p. 110; Philip Ziegler, The Black Death, 2nd edn, London, 1998, p. 23.
[6] Cohn, p. 84. Rosemary Horrox, The Black Death, Manchester and New York, 1994, p. 47.
[7] Cohn describes how contemporary chroniclers were shocked that the plague killed regardless of age, sex or social class, p. 100, 126. Horrox, p. 36, 54.
[8] Herlihy, p. 64. Sean Martin, The Black Death, Harpenden, 2001, p. 26, 28.
Johannes Nohl, The Black Death: a chronicle of the plague compiled from contemporary sources, 2nd edn, London, 1961, pp. 12-14.
[9] Nohl, p. 8. Martin, p. 27.
[10] Herlihy, p. 64. Nohl, p. 12.
[11] Herlihy, pp. 60-2. Horrox, pp. 196-8. Nohl, pp. 14-16.
[12] Herlihy, p. 42. Ziegler, p. 127.
[13] Horrox, p. 236.
[14] Ibid. p. 231.
[15] Herlihy, p. 17.
[16] Nohl, p. 7.
[17] These estimates are for the first outbreak of the Black Death, between 1347-1351. Cohn, p. 107. Horrox, p. 3, 231. Ziegler, p. 239.
[18] Significantly, although the first outbreak of the plague had no demographic restrictions, subsequent outbreaks largely targeted children suggesting that the disease had become endemic and that it was possible to build an immune reaction to it within the population. Cohn, p. 131, 212. Horrox, p. 11-12. Colin Platt, King Death: The Black Death and its aftermath in later-medieval England, London, 1996, p. 15.
[19] Joseph P. Byrne, The Black Death, Westport, 2004, p. 116. Denys Hay, Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 2nd ed., New York, 1995, p. 35. Platt, p. 11.
[20] Jim Bolton, ‘The world upside down. Plague as an agent of economic and social change’ in Phillip Lindley and Mark Ormrod (eds.), The Black Death in England, Stamford, 1996, p. 18. Byrne, p. 57. Hay, p. 35. Ziegler, p. 247.
[21] C. Warren Hollister, Medieval Europe: a short history, 6th edn, New York, 1990, p. 331. Supported by Martin, p. 47.
[22] Ziegler, pp. 249-252.
[23] David Nicholas, The Transformation of Europe, 1300-1600, London, 1999, pp. 95-6.
[24] Horrox, p. 57.
[25] Legislation of labour occurred in England, Aragon, Castile, Ragusa, many Italian city-states and in parts of the Holy Roman Empire.
Ziegler, p. 246. Nicholas, p. 94. Cohn, p. 127.
[26] Byrne, p. 65.
[27] Christopher Harper-Bill, ‘The English Church and English religion after the Black Death’ in Phillip Lindley and Mark Ormrod (eds.), The Black Death in England, Stamford, 1996, p. 102.
Horrox, pp. 238-9.
[28] Horrox. p. 240.
[29] Jeremy Goldberg, ‘Introduction’ in Phillip Lindley and Mark Ormrod (eds.), The Black Death in England, Stamford, 1996, p. 8. Martin, p. 80.
[30] Horrox, pp. 239-40.
[31] Ibid. pp. 242-3. Herlihy, p. 48.
[32] Hollister, p. 332.
[33] Ziegler, pp. 258-9.
[34] Ibid. p. 136.
[35] For instance, as in Orcagna’s fresco “Triumph of Death” painted in the church of Santa Croce in Florence immediately after the Black Death. Ibid. p. 284. Horrox, pp. 244-5.
[36] Herlihy, p. 63.
[37] Nohl, p. 20. Cohn, p. 124. Horrox, pp. 244-5.
[38] Horrox, pp. 96, 244-5.
Transi tombs are multi-layered. On the top they show a glorified image of the person while on the bottom is displayed the reality of a worm-ridden corpse.
[39] Aristotle claimed that the heart was the key source of life whereas the Hippocratic-Galenic tradition emphasised the importance of three key sources: the brain, heart and liver. The Black Death, with its three key locations of glandular buboes: groin (linked to liver), armpit (linked to heart) and neck (linked to brain), appeared to prove Galen correct. Cohn, pp. 69-70 and 216.
[40] Herlihy, p. 72.
[41] Cohn, pp. 66-8.
[42] In 1300 Pope Boniface III published a Bull forbidding mutilation of corpses, making the study of anatomy through dissection difficult; Ziegler, p. 71. This altered with the coming of the Black Death as authorities began to actively encourage physicians to perform autopsies; Byrne, p. 114; Herlihy, p. 72.
[43] Cohn, pp. 230-1.
Further information on the formation of health boards and the introduction of sanitary regulations and quarantines can be accessed from the following sources: Byrne, pp. 110-1, 117; Herlihy, p. 63; Horrox, pp. 100, 195-205, Ziegler, pp. 53-4.
[44] Martin, p. 80.
[45] Ziegler, pp. 35-6, 269. Herlihy, p. 64.
[46] Ziegler, p. 270.
[47] Harper-Bill, pp. 90-1. Horrox, p. 241. Martin, p. 80. Ziegler, pp. 270-2.
[48] Martin, loc. cit.; supported by Harper-Bill, p. 89.
[49] Martin, loc. cit.
[50] Harper-Bill, p. 89.
[51] Byrne, p. 69. Martin, p. 80. Ziegler, p. 260.
[52] Bolton, p. 18. Harper-Bill, p. 100-1.