The experimental Gothic: the mad scientist and the horrors of unexceptionality

This thesis analyzes the figure of the mad scientist as they exist within Victorian works of Gothic fiction. At the end of the 19th century, there was frequent interaction between the literary and scientific communities in Britain and through this relationship developed landmark works such as Emile Zola’s The Experimental Novel. This thesis is concerned with understanding late-19th century Gothic tales as examples of experimental fiction. Within these works of experimental Gothic, the characters themselves conduct experiments, beginning with observation as understood through Michel Foucault’s clinical gaze. In each of these tales, the bourgeois protagonist begins with complete faith in both the reality and power of their clinical gaze. By contextualizing the specific instances of observation that occur within each tale with regards to the observation-based pseudosciences that flourished during the Victorian era and the economic factors that necessitated such pseudosciences, I argue that the tales ultimately dismantle the myth of the powerful clinical gaze right before each protagonist’s eyes. The clinical gaze— and the bourgeoisie who benefit from such a mode of observation— is exposed as not the natural mode of digesting and interacting with the world but a weapon of capitalism bent on erecting boundaries through labor, class, and humanity in its entirety. The introduction to this thesis focuses on constructing the theoretical framework from which the two following chapters are built. The first chapter analyzes Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story The Body Snatcher, establishing the ways the clinical gaze and the mechanisms of capitalism, work in conjunction to bolster the myth of bourgeois exceptionality. The second chapter, dealing first with Stevenson’s novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and later with H. G. Well’s The Island of Dr Moreau, considers each work as compared to Victorian criminal anthropology writing, outlining each protagonist’s shift from such a mindset to the horrific reality of both class and human unexceptionality. All three of these tales work to unveil the false realities presented by the mechanisms of capitalism as a means to construct harmful boundaries which are ultimately created in order to best regulate labor.M.A.Includes bibliographical reference