The Monsters Within: Gothic Monstrosity in Dracula, Frankenstein, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and its Role in Nineteenth Century English Society
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Ortiz Trueba, Rubén
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Since ancient times, monsters have
populated
the human mind and, along with us, they
have evolved throughout the centuries. This evolution was finally delineated in the
nineteenth-century, when monsters were finally given psychological depth in order to better fulfill their function as bearers of
human fears and preoccupations. In this process
monsters finally acquired further complex features that differentiated them from their
primitive
predecessors, establishing these supernatural creatures as proper, developed
characters participant in the stories in which they take part. This paper thus explores the
importance of such development and its consequences for the literature of the period in
three of the most important English Gothic works from the nineteenth-century: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus
(1818), Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(1886), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897)by
interpreting the inherent meaning of their monstrous creatures situated within their
socio-cultural frames.
Hence, through the rejection of
such
monstrous features, fear
towards difference arises and transforms said difference into
immoral
traits, which
ultimately determine
the condition of the creatures at hand.
In addition, the study of
several of the numerous themes
conveyed in these stories highlights the underlying
nature of Gothic monstrosity when related to nineteenth-century English preoccupations
such as human corruption, scientific excess or reverse colonization.
Thereby, by
crossing socially accepted limits determined by the period in which they occur,
monsters become the embodiment of the Other, the element which
stands different from us.
This reflection on the figure of the Gothic monster hence poses it as a human
construct conceived to hypothetically represent socially rejected humane concepts such
as irrationality, anger, or savagism; embracing difference so as to epitomize the
considered inappropriate behaviors of human being regardless of their controversy or
connotations
as part of a fictional world.