QCQ #9
Quotation: “Be so good as not to trifle, Mr. Atherton. If what you say is correct, and the wretch to whom you allude really has Miss Lindon at her mercy, then the woman I love – and whom you also pretend to love – stand in imminent peril not only of a ghastly death, but of what is infinitely worse than death.” (254)
Comment: This is one of the first times Lessington begins to acknowledge what happened in his past when he is around Atherton. He has already told the story of what happened to Augustus Champnell so we can guess at what he is alluding to when he says a peril worse than death. Lessington is probably assuming the followers of Isis are planning on sacrificing Miss Lindon like they did to all of the other English women when Lessington was being held by them. He doesn’t come right out and tell Atheron what he suspects is going to happen, but Atherton can probably tell by his tone of voice and his actions that it is something very bad.
Lessington’s fears are further confirmed when they get to the house and find Miss Lindon’s clothes and jewelry under the loose floorboard. They claim all of the garments are there so whoever was wearing them must be naked which is how the women were sacrificed. From the perspective of Lessington, the monster of the novel is probably the followers of Isis which follows with the definition of the late Victorian Gothic monster provided by Ortiz-Robles. Lessington going to save Miss Lindon from the evil monster/monstrous people follows the description of the novel and of Dracula provided by Anna Maria Jones in her essay. Jones claims the novel follows the story line of a resourceful gentleman combating an ancient evil and saving the woman in distress in the process.
Question: Does this novel follow the traditional fin de siecle style of a monster by having the main monstrous being be a person or group of people who become evil throughout the novel? Or is this novel more of a mix between early Victorian ideas of the monstrous with an obvious monster and the fin de siecle style of the monstrous? Who or what could even be considered the main monstrous being in this novel?
One thought on “QCQ #9”
I think this is a mixture of early Victorian and fin de siecle style. We see the early Victorian style through the obvious monster of the beetle itself but then we see the fin de siecle style in the morphing from human to beetle and the whole group of the followers of Isis being the monsters. There is also the animality of the monsters and how that relates to fin de siecle style by being commentary about Darwinism and evolution and equating a group of people to being lesser than because of their animalistic behaviors.