OROSZ Gyrgy Endre Laurence Kane 17. January 2013.

Late Victorian Literature

Ghosts from the Colonies

Orosz 1 The year 1815 marks an important turning point in history. On the one hand, that year meant the end of the Napoleon Wars and the downfall of the French Empire, on the other hand, it marks the beginning of Pax Britannica, of the hegemon state of the British Empire, which continued to expand, reaching its peak in the late 19th century. By that time, Queen Victoria ruled over one-quarter of the world's land and population. The reasons for colonising a particular area are rather straightforward: territorial gain, the use of the colony as a source of cheap resource and as a market. The British, however, also saw themselves as educators, the bringers of light, who, with or without the consent of the target nation, brought their own knowledge and culture to civilise the noble brutes. In the aforementioned time period, gothic fiction, or more precisely, Victorian Gothic was a very prominent genre that focused on gothic, uncanny and decadent elements in the late Victorian culture. One of the popular topics of this genre is reverse colonisation. This narrative decline expresses fear that the world what has been represented as civilised is on the verge of being colonised by primitive forces (Arata 162). In this essay I wish to examine how these forces and reverse colonisation are depicted in B. M. Crokers The Dk Bungalow at Dakor, Arthur Conan Doyles Lot No. 249 and Rudyard Kiplings The Mark of the Beast. The main similarity between these short stories is that they present a supernatural phenomenon or entity that cannot be comprehended or understood through the ways of logic or reason. All three share the typical characteristics of gothic stories: an atmosphere of fear, horror and mystery. Your Gods and my Gods do you or I know which are the stronger? (Kipling 84). This native proverb is the first sentence that Kipling presents to us in his work, which outlines the main theme of these stories: a battle between two gods, two worlds, two cultures. The time of three stories are the same (19th century), but the spatial setting differs: Crockers and Kiplings works are set in the jewel in the crown, namely, British India, while Lot No. 249 plays in England. In the first case, the English protagonists explore a

Orosz 2 territory that is, though colonised, unfamiliar to them (where their God might have a very limited power or none at all), while in the second case, a piece of the unfamiliar is brought to England from colonised Egypt in the form of a four-thousand-year-old mummy. The image of the mummy is especially interesting, for the English thought of themselves as the bringers of light, while this undead being the complete opposite: the consequence of colonising Egypt, a small piece from this heathen world which brings darkness with itself, contaminating the heart of the Empire. Kiplings work starts off in India, where, according to some, Providence ceases, and man is handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia (84). The source of the conflict in The Mark of the Beast is that one of the protagonists, Fleete, consumed a copious amount of alcohol on New Years Eve, became inebriated, then ran into the temple of Hanuman, the Monkey-god, and desecrated the statue of Hanuman by putting out the end of his cigar on its forehead. After this deed, the Silver Man, who is a leper and presumably one of the priests, produced a sound which resembled the mewing of an otter (86), then touched Fleete, which seemed to have calmed the other priests down. This suggests the Silver Mans doing was a satisfactory reaction to Fleetes desecration, though the protagonists did not understand what just happened. Although one of the priest says that Hanuman is not done with [Fleete] (86), they pay no heed to his warning. They believe that they are out of the woods, so to speak, as no physical harm came to them. From this moment on, sings of the curse begin to show. Fleete smells blood, develops a craving for raw meat and black blotches appear on his chest. Later on, when the protagonists try to get close to their horses, another sign indicates that the curse was effective and real. As animals are instinctive creatures, the horses feel that a negative change took place. The description of their reaction is rather detailed: they reared and screamed, sweated and shivered and lathered and were distraught with fear (88). They let Strickland and the narrator approach them, however, when Fleete tries the same, one of the

Orosz 3 horses knock him down and escapes. This scene is very similar to the one in Crockers short story; when the female protagonists are approaching the haunted bungalow in a tonga (horseor bullock-drawn carriage), the bullocks instinctively feel the danger ahead; some of them refused to go any further and lay down, while some kicked and ran off (Crocker 99). At this point, Strickland, who is familiar with the natives of India, already has a presumption concerning his friends change, but he does not share his hypothesis, as it would sound foolish to any civilised man. Fleetes state worsened; he desires more and more meat and he eats like a beast. Before this unknown force overtakes Fleete completely, they find him grovelling (as a dog, on his hands and knees) about the garden, avoiding the lights and craving for more chops, bloody ones with gristle (Kipling 90), then the transformation becomes complete. He gave out a howl of a wolf, to which the Silver Man answered in a similar matter. As the narrator describes Fleete, [t]he human spirit must have been giving way all day and have dies out with the twilight. We were dealing with a beast that had once been Fleete (91). From this point forward, the narrator only refers to him as it, but he still tries to cling to his Western knowledge, to his civilisation, as he tries to find a rational explanation for his friends bestiality in the symptoms of hydrophobia (rabies), but he feels that he is lying to himself. Dumoise, the doctor tries to explain unexplainable exactly the same way, but he, too, fails. After the narrator and Strickland capture the leper in the hope of lifting the curse from their friend, they tortured the man, but the details were intentionally left out. [That] part is not to be printed (94), because whatever happened there, they do not conform to Victorian morality. After the curse was lifted, and all returned to normal, the narrator starts to quote from Shakespeares Hamlet: There are more things, but he is silenced by Strickland. In Shakespeare, the complete sentence (There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy) it uttered by Hamlet to Horatio, who just witnessed something supernatural, more precisely, the ghost of Hamlets father. Stricklands interrupting

Orosz 4 the quotation suggests that in spite of witnessing and going through everything that happened, he still does not, or at least does not want to believe it. They both disgraced [themselves] as Englishmen for ever (95), they both fought the Silver Man to make him lift the curse, and by doing so they acknowledged that these foreign deities do hold power over them. The ending of the short story is as ironical as it could get, as the narrators conclusion is that it is well known to every right-minded man that the gods of the heathen are stone and brass, and any attempt to deal with them otherwise is justly condemned (95), which is the complete opposite of what they witnessed with their own eyes. The fact that Hanuman is worshiped also to get rid or win over demons, demi-gods, evil spirits and other powerful negative energies1 is also ironical, since this deity was responsible for the beastly transformation that befell Fleete. The Dk Bungalow at Dakor, similarly to The Mark of the Beast, plays in India. The two female protagonists, Mrs Goodchild and the narrator, Mrs Loyd, who live in an upcountry station, Karwassa, decide on going for a three-day journey to Chanda. There is another woman at the station, Mrs Duff, who is described as elderly and averse to locomotion (Crocker 97), so she does not participate in adventures but enjoys listening to tales of them. She is the one who tries to dissuade the two women from going to Chanda, for she has heard that there is an unhealthy or haunted (97) bungalow there. Her words already foreshadow what might happen later on, but just as in The Mark of the Beast, the warning falls on deaf ears, as they agree on Mrs Duff being a silly old thing (98), meaning that the reject the idea of anything being haunted. On the third morning, their troubles began: as it was already mentioned, the bullocks refuse to go any further, consequently, the women cannot go any further. In a nearby village, they look for the supposedly haunted travellers rest-house. They are warned once more by an old, native woman who shook her hand is a warning manner, and called out something in a
1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanuman

Orosz 5 shrill cracked voice (100), but again, the sign is disregarded. The surroundings of the bungalow are not reassuring: the drive was as grass-grown as a field; jungle grew up to the back of the house (100). There is a huge contrast between the description of Karwassa and this village; the British station is referred to as a pretty place, an oasis of civilization, amid leagues and leagues of surrounding forest and jungle (96), while the village is described as the following: There were the usual little mud hovels, shops displaying, say, two bunches of plantains and a few handfuls of grain, the usual collection of gaunt red pariah dogs, naked children, and unearthly-looking cats and poultry (100). If Karwassa is regarded as an oasis of civilization in the middle of the jungle, the description of the surroundings of the bungalow can be interpreted in a way that the uncivilised world, the untamed jungle claims that government property as its own. The narrators feeling of superiority to the natives is hard to miss in the portrayal of the village. This feeling is also apparent on the following page: when the villainous-looking caretaker refuses to open the bungalow (claiming that it was out of repair), Mrs Goodchild rebuked him for not making available the government travellers bungalow but drawing government pay, as if he had asked for the British to be there, or in other words, to be colonised. When the sun set, the air became chilly, and two important symbols appeared: the owl and the jackal. As nocturnal predators, owls are linked with the feminine, night, the moon, death magic and dreams (Werness 306), while jackals are the guides of souls, often associated with cemeteries2. During the night, the khansamah (caretaker) shows himself once more. The narrator portrays him as if he had the face of an animal: his teeth were fangs, like dogs teeth and he looked as if he could cut [their] throats (Crocker 103). After spending two nights at Dakor, the protagonists experienced something supernatural: a vision of the past and/or the apparition

http://incredibleart.org/lessons/middle/animals2.htm

Orosz 6 of ghosts. They both saw with their own eyes the murder of an Englishman (who was later identified as Gordon Forbes) by the hands of the khansamah, who stabbed Forbes in the back and buried the dead body outside. Unlike the protagonists in The Mark of the Beast, the two women believed their visions to be true, they did not try to rationalise what they saw. The murder was discovered, but the murderer vanished. The reason of the crime and the identity of the khansamah remain unknown. If we rely on the narrators description of him, he might not be human, but a beastlike creature instead. Whichever is true, the fact that he got away with the murder of an Englishman could be interpreted as the colonys attack on the Empire. Arthur Conan Doyle's short story differs from the previous two in the sense that the colony visits England, and not the other way around. The story tells of a student of Oxford University who is fascinated by, or rather, obsessed with Eastern languages (he's a demon at them (Doyle 88)) Egyptian culture and Egyptology. He keeps a sarcophagus, and in it, a mummy in his room. The narrator depicts the mummy as horrid, black, withered thing, which is, of course, an accurate description. The troubles begin after the owner of the mummy, Edward Bellingham screamed, then fainted, which alerts the other residents of the college. When Bellingham comes round, one of the first question he asks from the medical student, Abercrombie Smith is if he knows anything of Eastern languages. Smith assures him that he does not, and this answer seemed to lift a weight from the Egyptologist's mind (116-117). This sentence indicates that whatever Bellingham did needs to be kept a secret. Smith examines the mummy and describes it similarly to the narrator, but he has the strange feeling as if it contained a sensation of energy, a sparkle of life. This foreshadows how the plot might develop later on. After the incident, Bellinghams queer statements, such as [i]t is a wondeful thing... to feel that one can command powers of good and of evil a ministering angel or a demon of vengeance, make Smith wonder if his mind is weakening. As a medical student, he interprets these signs

Orosz 7 as symptoms of insanity, because his way of thinking is rational, but in reality, Bellingham is becoming a part of, or taken over by the Eastern ways, which cannot be measured in a rational way. The reason why he initially fainted is that he was frightened by his own doing, but as the story progresses, he becomes more and more comfortable with the thought of animating the dead. His ability to exert black magic... or cast spells by consorting with the dead (Snodgrass 250) makes him, by definition, a necromancer. Bellingham turned this reanimated corps into his puppet, and uses it to do away with people he holds a grudge against. Long Norton, Monkhouse Lee and Smith are its potential victims. The first victim was ignorant of Bellinghams doings, Lee, however, is attacked because he found out what the necromancer is up to. Before he is attacked, he cautions Smith to stay away from Bellingham, but he does not go into details due to his vow to keep it a secret. It is rather peculiar that Monkhouse Lee is aware of what Bellingham is capable of, he knows that a dead corpse has been brought to life, and his acquaintance, Smith is in danger, but still, he does not tell him why, because he lives by the code of Victorian morality. It is rather strange to think that he would still find breaking his promise, in this situation, a dishonourable act. Right after Lee was attacked, Smith decides on taking the matter into his own hands: he sets out to reclaim England and banish this evil force from the country. He even shares his intentions with Bellingham (Youll find that your filthy Egyptian tricks wont answer in England (132).), which is a rather bold move, because by doing so he made himself the primary target. Lot No. 249 is similar to The Dk Bungalow at Dakor in the sense that the characters acknowledge the supernatural rather easily, while the protagonists in The Mark of the Beast are trying to deny it to the very end. In the end, Smith threatens to shoot Bellingham unless he chops up the mummy and burns it with every belonging that he has that would enable him to return to his dark magic.

Orosz 8 Before this is done, Bellingham offers to share his knowledge with Smith, but he firmly rejects his proposal, which means that Victorian values triumphed over Egyptian occultism. Of the three short stories, Lot No. 249 has the most positive ending, as no permanent harm came to anyone, and the protagonist defeated the supernatural without being compromised, while Strickland and the narrator in The Mark of the Beast disgraced [themselves] as Englishmen for ever (Kipling 95). The Dk Bungalow at Dakor was the only story in which the colony has taken its toll. Although the murderer had vanished, at least he was searched for, while in Lot No. 249, though Bellingham was defeated, his deeds were left unpunished; he did not need to flee, he could just simply leave England, which, I believe, makes the end of the story, if not negative, but neutral. In spite of these dissimilarities, all three short stories share the underlying notion that these distant worlds are familiar with the supernatural (beasts, ghosts, and mummies) which are unknown to the civilisers, and that they possess inscrutable powers with which the colonies can strike back against the Empire.

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Works Cited
Arata, Stephen D. The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization. Gelder, Ken. The Horror Reader. London: Routledge, n.d. 161-172. Crocker, B. M. The Dk Bungalow at Dakor. Luckhurst, Roger. Late Victorian Gothic Tales. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. 96-108. Doyle, Arthur Conan. Lot No. 249. Luckhurst, Roger. Late Victorian Gothic Tales. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. 109-140. Kipling, Rudyard. The Mark of the Beast. Luckhurst, Roger. Late Victorian Gothic Tales. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. 84-95. Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature. New York, 2009. Werness, Hope B. The Continuum Encyclopedia Animal Symbolism in Art. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006.