|
Towards A Definition of
Horror Fiction..
This Study explores the puzzling
question: Why is Horror Fiction as
popular today as it was in its first days, in the eighteenth Century? What
quality gives the genre its resilience?
Some horror stories were instantly successful, as Frankenstein,
(1802) by Mary Shelly, or Dr. Jykle and Mr Hyde, by R L Stenvenson (1886) or Where are
you doing where have you been? (1968) By Joyce Carol Oates ; while others did
not succeed right away, such as Dracula,(1892) which only became famous
when it was made into a movie in the 20s of the twentieth century. Still, the
story became very popular, and is as successful today as Frankenstein.
Both books continue to be available in cheap reprints for readers since the
thirties. kids know something
about Dracula and Frankenstein. And the name of Sherlock Holmes, and Mr Hide
are equally known. The question one might pose is: Why are such films, and literary
works, which do not appease
viewers, but rather irritate them,
popular? What distinguishes this strange genre from other productions of
western civilization?
Usually horror
stories seek to frighten those who watch them.. The main character in those
narratives is usually unstable, suffering from difficult circumstances, and
lives in an ambiguous setting, so that the viewer expects the worse for the
protagonist. And these three features make watching or reading these kinds of
books interesting. The setting of many of those stories is an old house, or an
ancient mansion with underground corridors,, and secret chambers. The story
also has its own secrets and methods for revealing them. The narrative depends
on a secret which must be uncovered. If the truth is a light, the path leading
to it is dark and dangerous.
It is ironic
that horror fiction begun in the late eighteenth century,, the age of
enlightenment characterized by the trust in reason, scientific research, and the
fight against medieval superstitions. The texts of authors as Copernicus,
Galileo, and others whom the church expatriated, are exemplary sciencfic. Francis Bacon stated that the scientific method is the only
method suitable to discovering the world, while he considered other systems of
thought as idols that must be destroyed. Therefore it is obvious
that the eighteenth Century suffered a clear conflict between the philosophy of
enlightenment and the common believes of people, often originating in medieval
times.. As Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno state in Dialectic of
Enlightenment : The hatred of
(enlightenment) was extended to the image of the vanquished former times and
its imaginary happiness. The chthonic gods of the original inhabitants are banished.
[1]
one can consider horror art during the eighteenth century as a form of the
return of these repressed myths in an art form
Therefore, one of the main symbols of horror fiction
remains the ghost haunting the mansion, s symbol for a past which cannot be
destroyed and annihilated, but resurges to culture as a nightmare. All what
happens in the plot is the effort to destroy the ghost, or the vampire, and
force it back to the past from which it eloped
Thus horror fiction retains the symbols
of anti rational, anti reason anti science aspects while apparently trying to
defeat them without success. It is
well known that for every successful horror movie there is a sequel, so that
the repressed elements, defeated finally by knowledge, resurge for vengeance, as though it can
never be eradicated
Now, this complicated vision of the past, and the
medieval past in particular are
exemplified in the two classics Frankenstein and Dracula .
Frankenstien was a scientist who invented a creation and sought to kill it. The
story is a rewriting of the Milton
myth paradise lost which was based on the vision of medieval age of
creation. one might say that Mary Shelly was critical of the enlightenment in
her text, particularly as the novel suggests that science does not bring human
beings happiness. As for Dracula, his very name stems from a medieval
legend: He is supposedly a character which ruled certain parts of Eastern
Europe. He supposedly fought the Turks, and saved his country and Europe from
the Islamic invasion, but he was a ruthless Dictator who impaled his enemies.
Still he was not a blood drinker certainly. The ending of both tales suggest
the impossibility of getting rid of those symbols of the past.. Frankenstein,
the scientist, dies, while the creature he made stays on. and Dracula dies, but
some of his likes remain. Horror fiction asserts that science can not kill the
myth.
Other elements of the
Genre, as the location of events, also challenge the ability of the reasoning
faculty. The castle of Dracula, and the house in William Hope Hodgeson House
of the borderland (1910) both
stand on the edge of a yawning valley which swallows the house in the last
novel actually. dark underground
passages, icy mountains in Frankenstein, stormy seas in the Narrative
of Arthur Gordon Pyme, (1838) and the mores in the Hound of the
Baskervilles, all these locations represent chaotic nature which the mind
cannot fully control or contain. In the castle of Dracula, there are dangerous
female vampires . and from the hole comes threatening peg like creatures in house
of the borderland. And these dangers show the limits of reason and logic,
and its inability to comprehend all the dangers of existence.
One of the most
important characters who represent reason in Horror fiction is the detective.
In the Hound of the baskervilles the famous detective Sherlock Holmes
investigates a wolf which threatens the life of more than one victim. And he
discovers in the end that the enemies of the family use this myth in order to
cover up their criminal activities.
The detective proves that the laws of mind and reason are functional in
the world, and myths are not real. The detective in general is a character
which poe invented, and the cause for his invention might well be the necessity
of creating a character which presents reason in horror fiction, someone to
bring order to this disorderly world.
The nature of the location where the
story is set, and the events, confuse the main characters in these works, and
make them unstable. Often, a character is divided to two parts, one
representing reason, the other the darker, mythic side. Stephenson explores, in
Dr. Jykle and Hyde, the splitting of the character through the symbolism of
names. Jykell stems from two languages, the French Je, which means the first
personal pronoun, I, and Kill. And Dr. Jykle actually commits suicide as the
tragedy draws to a close. But, he is equally hyde, the short man who kills and
hides. What is most clear about this split character , one part of which
representing reason, and the other mythic monster, is that both segments are
equally weak morally. If a moral vision was present, the character would not be
split in this fashion.
Black and White
appear as a duality which is actually a oneness in horror fiction. It is
possible to accuse the Genre of Racism, as it might equate white with goodness,
and black with evil doings. In actuality, these works show immorality to reside
everywhere, regardless of color. The reader of Pyme remembers the Black character, who enjoys
killing people. The natives of the island who destroy the ship and kill the
sailors are so black that their teeth are dark. But, are the white characters
any better? They actually eat one another in an cannibalistic orgy, without
need. Thus, the black and white men fight, and each envies the other, without
being able to destroy him. Both lack a moral perspective, and the will to act
on principle.
Desire and envy control the
relations of the close enemies in those works. In Frankenstein, the
monster envies his creator, Vector, and because of this jealousy, seeks to
destroy him. In Dr. Jykle and Mr. Hyde Dr. Jykle surrenders to the
wishes of Hyde, to commit murder. The two desire the same thing. Women play a
vital role in this system of desire. Since both men usually crave the same
girl, and neither gets her in the end. Since her fate in Horror fiction is
death. . As poe puts it in a famous Statement: The death of a beautiful woman
is the most poetic of themes. In Frankenstein, the monster kills Elisabeth
at the night of her wedding to his rival. And in : Where are you going, Where
have you been? The beautiful heroine does not die, but is defeated. Probably,
it is necessary for horror fiction to kill the heroin in order to avoid giving
the reader the pleasure of a happy ending.
To write of so much
misery, the author must have suffered. Some of the sufferings of the writers of
horror fiction resemble the events depicted in their stories. They are not
happy individuals. Mary Shelly eloped from her parents and lived with the poet
Shelley, and suffered social isolation as a result of this liaison. Her
hysteria following the deaths of her children is well known. Stephenson, The
author of Dr. Jykle and Mr Hyde, suffered from a serious lung disease,
and got married to a maternal
woman many years his senior. Stoker, the author of Dracula, was
disabled, from early childhood until the age of fifteen..As for Hudgeson,
author of House on the borderland, he loved the sea, and escaped from
his parents to work on a ship. Soon, he came back on land and learned Judo in
order to defend himself from the violence of other sailors. And after he
traveled the world three times, he admitted his hatred for this work, and
depicted the sea in his fiction as a source of danger and threat.
Finally, we return to the
question posed at first: why do people like horror fiction? For various
reasons: First, because the plot is a plot, it thrills the reader.. But also
because it shows the moral weakness of human beings, assuring us that we are no
better than our despised enemies. Horror fiction shows us our nightmares on the
page.
While these works are creations of enlightenment, they
do not belong to its age, and they are neither the property of balck not white
men. And if they sympathize with good, they indicate the presence of bad.
After all, the goal is to
scare the reader, isn’t it?
Some Links:
Narrative
of Arthur Gordon Pym
Any comments?
|