A C T A U N I V E R S I T A T I S L O D Z I E N S I S
I-OLIA L IT T E R A R IA A N G LIC A 1, 1997
Agnieszka Lowczanin
TR AVELLERS FR O M T H E U N DISCOVERED CO UN TRY R ETU R N - T H E SU PERN A TU RA L IN J . S. LE FANU’S I N A G L A S S D A R K L Y
From am ong the great num ber o f Victorian ghost story writers, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was the first to use successfully a new m ethod o f treating the su p ernatural; th at is, building the story on d o u b t and leaving it unresolved. According, to m any critics he is also the best. M. R. Jam es says that “ he stands), absolutely in the first rank as a writer o f ghost stories”,1 V. S. Pritchett speaks of his “individual accent and a flawless virtuosity” , which, because produced during the p a rt o f the V ictorian era m ost overflowing with writers o f fiction, was “pushed into limbo by the great novelists” .2 M. Summers adds: “ in my opinion he has seldom, if ever, been approached, and m ost assuredly never excelled.”3
Since his works provide us with the necessary “ hesitation” experienced when faced with the supernatural, and, since the explanation o f th e supernatural in his works teeters between the uncanny and the m arvellous, leaving the reader hesitating over which resolution to opt for, J. S. Le F an u deserves the term o f a writer o f the “ fantastic” , in keeping with T o d orov ’s structuralist formula:
In a w orld which is indeed our world, the one we know, a world w ithout devils, sylphides, or vampires, there occurs an event which cannot be explained by the laws o f this same fam iliar world. T he person who experiences the event m ust opt for one o f tw o possible solutions: either he is the victim of an illusion o f the senses, of a product o f the im agination - and laws o f the world then rem ain w hat they are; or else the event has indeed taken place, it is an integral p a rt o f reality - b u t then this reality is controlled by laws unknow n to us. Either the devil is an illusion, an imaginary being; or else he really exists, precisely like other living beings - with this reservation th a t we encounter him infrequently.
1 M. R. James, after: J. Briggs, Night Visitors. The Rise and Fall o f the English Ghost S tory (London: Faber, 1977), p. 44.
2 V. S. Pritchett, The Living Novel (London: A rrow Books, 1960), p. 102.
3 M . Summers, Introduction, The Supernatural Omnibus (H arm ondsw orth: Penguin Books, 1976), vol. 2, p. 32.
The fantastic occupies the duration o f this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighbouring genre, the uncanny or the marvellous. The fantastic is th a t hesitation experienced by a person w ho knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.4
A t the end o f the nineteenth century M. R. James form ulated a similar idea, saying th a t it is necessary to leave a “ loophole” for a n atu ral explanation, but “this hole should be small enough to be unusable.” 5
O f the fourteen novels written by Le Fanu only The fVyvern M ystery m akes use o f the supernatural.6 Thus, the fact that he is credited for being ‘a good deal m ore than a ghost am ong the ghosts” ,7 rests entirely upon his short stories, o f which the best collection is In A Glass D arkly (1872).8 The stories collected in this volume include this narrow “ loophole” M . R. Jam es speaks of; it is provided even by the n arrato r himself, as the stories are a set o f “ cases” investigated by “ a medical philosopher” , D r M artin Hesselius, whose “ scientific” explanations o f the disturbances experienced by the characters draw considerably on Swedenborg’s theories ab o u t the relation o f mind to body.
To the G othic, or, m ore precisely, Radcliffian tradition, Le F an u is indebted for ascribing importance to the “preparation stage” in the introduction o f the supernatural - for introducing an enhanced background against which the supernatural emerges and thanks to which its appearance becomes even m ore terrifying and overwhelming.
One o f the im portant elements in the preparation stage, or background, for the supernatural is the appropriate setting, which in Le F a n u ’s stories dem onstrates close affinities with the T error school of M rs Radcliffe. To her achievement Le Fan u added an im portant innovation - the apparitions in his stories are not confined to one particular abode and they can be discerned at any time, not only at night, looming indistinctly o ut of the darkness o f a m urky castle. His improvement lies also in m aking the image o f his edifices m ore concrete and detailed; where M rs Radcliffe achieves awesomeness through insinuation, Le F an u provides us with accurate details.
T ogether with the setting go the suggestions o f the n a rra to r, either indirect or else very direct, which give the impression that som ething out o f this world is going to take place. In “ M r Justice H a rb o ttle ” an
4 T . T odorov, The Fantastic. A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (Ithaca, New Y ork: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 25.
5 M . R . Jam es, after: T. Todorov, op. tit., p. 26.
6 Cf. J. Nałęcz-W ojtczak, Picture and Meaning: The Visual Dimension o f Sheridan Le Fanu's Fiction (Łódź: W ydawnictwo U niwersytetu Łódzkiego, 1991), p. 85.
7 V. S. Pritchett, op. tit., p. 107.
* The collection includes the following stories: “ G reen T ea” , “T he F am iliar” , “ M r Justice H arb o ttle” , “The R oom in the D ragon V olant” , “ C a m illa ” .
introduction to the proper story is an account of the apparitions encountered by the tenant o f a haunted house. However, before we find out w hat actually happened to the unfortunate inhabitant, we learn that he was
... a dry, sad quiet m an, who had known better days, and had always m aintained an unexceptionable character. N o better authority could be imagined for a ghost story.5 In “ Green T ea” , before we are allowed to discover the nature o f the disturbances Jennings is plagued with, Hesselius notices that people “ rem ark som ething o d d ” in his behaviour. It is his way of “ looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followed the movements of something there” and his “ glance travelling along the floor ... both shy and anxious” (p. 8) that first intrigue us.
In “ Carm illa” this stage o f preparation is achieved by m eans of the setting, as well as by the direct comments o f the n arrator. This is the only story which is narrated directly by the person who experienced the supernatural disturbances herself, and who is also the only one that survived. The story’s incredibility is stressed from the very beginning:
Listen and wonder! (p. 245)
I am now going to tell you something so strange th a t it will require all your faith in my veracity to believe my story, (p. 248)
While the background against which Le F a n u ’s weird creatures are presented is easy to grasp due to its artistic forcefulness and univocal function in the story, the understanding of the supernatural confronts the reader with m any questions and ambiguities. One of the possible interpretations is suggested by the fact that in some o f the stories the supernatural disturbs the sinister characters, those with a m urky past, thus coming as a punishm ent for the deeds for which they have not yet repented. This could certainly be the case in “ M r Justice H arbo ttle” and “The F am iliar” . This function o f the supernatural draws a great deal from the use to which W alpole p ut it; the statue o f Alfonso torm ents the castle because evil had been committed in the past. Once the w rongdoer is punished, the supernatural vanishes never to plague O tranto again. These two stories seem to yield such an interpretation.
W hereas B arton in “The Fam iliar” at first does not seem to deserve any supernatural affliction, in the case o f H arbottle we are convinced from the very start th at he deserves it. The very description o f the judge has m any Lewis-like images o f the H o rro r Gothic: he has the m ost dreadful,
9 J. S. Le F an u ’s, In A Glass D arkly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 84. T he following stories from the collection have been analysed: “G reen T ea” , “The F am iliar” , “ M r Justice H arb o ttle” , “ C arm illa” . All subsequent quotations refer to this edition.
m ulberry-coloured face, a carbuncled nose, and a brutal m outh, like the sinister characters in H o g arth ’s engravings. His external features seem to be a projection of his depravity; he is the organiser o f “dubious jollifications” , delights in revelry, in which he is “ the roaring king, and in some sort the tyrant also, o f his com pany” (p. 90). He is an “old reprobate in scarlet and erm ine” (p. 99). He lives with a lecherous wom an, who, after a scandal, had left her husband, Lewis Pyneweck, who had been tried by H arbottle for forgery and sentenced by him to death. As a result of m any supernatural persecutions, H arbottle is finally found dead, hanging from a banister at the top o f a staircase. The cruel judge gets what he deserves; the punishm ent fits perfectly the crimes he had comm itted. He is an arch villain, who, although warned, does not change his conduct, and this is why he has to comm it suicide and, by doing so, to sentence himself to eternal dam nation.
The same pattern o f revenge exacted by supernatural m eans seems to organise the plot in “The F am iliar” . However, while in “ M r Justice H arb o ttle” the initial mystery is solved after a few pages, in “The Fam iliar” the secret of B arton’s persecutions is sustained till the very end of the narration. The story relates the case of Sir James B arton, a British naval captain, who, after the Am erican Revolution, returns to D ublin. H aving decided to m arry a Miss M ontague, he often visits her and her aunt in a rem ote p art o f the city. D uring these night walks B arton is persecuted by strange footsteps which are later accompanied by even m ore disquieting disturbances - m ysterious letters o f w arning and a dw arfish dem onic creature. As the persecutions increase, the once rational, self-possessed sceptic becomes a nervous wreck, desperately looking for solace in bizarre form s o f mysticism as well as in orthodox religion.
It is very characteristic o f Le F a n u ’s stories th at his supernatural torm enting can be divided into stages, in which its intensification is accom panied by a progressive deterioration o f the physical and m ental state o f the haunted person. In “The F am iliar” the supernatural evolves from m ere footsteps into dwarfish, m alignant figure, which at first follows B arton, and then begins to pursue him with blasphemies and cries o f appalling hatred. B arton, on the other hand, first perceives it as an illusion, then becomes “unusually absent and out o f spirits” (p. 49), and seems fatigued and overworked. In the next stage he decides to consult a doctor, who diagnoses his sufferings as “ some slight derangem ent o f the digestion” (p. 53). Finally, in his despair to com bat the dem on, B arton even consults a “ celebrated preacher” .
Page by page, the reader is given m ore and m ore details abo ut B a rto n ’s past. His seduction o f a girl and cruel treatm ent o f her father are finally disclosed - the deeds from the past throw a shadow on his life and the interpretation o f the narrative as a revenge story is suggested by the m ain
character himself. The supernatural comes, or is sent, by “ the Justice o f heaven” which has perm itted “the Evil one to carry out a scheme o f vengeance” (pp. 74-5). Having an indelible m ark on his past, B arton cannot change his fate - the sin, once comm itted, cannot be erased.
As has already been rem arked, we can detect some early G othic, W alpolian affinities in the revenge pattern - in disturbing the wrongdoers after years and in restoring the natural equilibrium between G ood and Evil by m eans o f the supernatural. We can also trace the a u th o r’s indebtedness to the T erro r G othic in his enhancing the supernatural by m eans o f imagery, m ainly by the descriptions o f houses. But as far as the ingenious m alignity o f the supernatural and the way it influences the characters’ lives are concerned, the m ore likely tradition seems to be rather th at o f the H o rro r G othic school. Heightened with the touches o f H orror, the overall atm osphere o f the T error school is an im portant heritage, which, nevertheless, seems to constitute only the background - the foundations upon which som ething entirely new has been built.
A lthough in the above detailed stories we can perceive the supernatural as the executor of revenge, not all Le F a n u ’s supernatural m anifestations can yield such an interpretation. In fact, even the attem pt - suggested above - to categorize the supernatural as a m eans o f adm inistering justice covers only one dimension o f Le F a n u ’s weird reality, because with the problem s verging on the borderline between the real and the unreal, the natural and the supernatural, the answers are never straightforward or univocal.
As has been previously agreed, we can either accept the supernatural reality - th at is, believe in the objective existence o f its visitations - or else try to squeeze it into M. R. Jam es’s “ loophole” ; th at is, attribute these occurrences to the m ental instability o f their witnesses, and, by doing so, “m ake for an open sea” o f the psychological ghost story. J. Briggs points out th at it is in the nineteenth century th at apparitions, which for centuries had been regarded as types o f demonic possessions, came to be considered as sym ptom atic o f m ental disturbances, and th at the later theories of Freud can be seen as an im portant step in “de-mystifying m agical states” . Consequently, the psychological ghost story is seen as encompassing two possible interpretations, since rooted in it is the existence o f two realities: the reality o f the “ sane” and the reality o f the “insane”, in which the latter supernatural has its place. The supernatural reality o f the afflicted person can be treated by science and explained away by doctors, who interpret it as a pathological creation o f a sick m ind, but in the case of J. S. Le Fanu the existence o f this reality is never questioned. As W. Allen has points out, the supernatural and the purely natural can never exist side
by side for they are irreconcilable, “ [t]he rational m ust prove the supernatural an illusion; I do not think Le F an u was convinced the supernatural was an illusion.” 11
“ G reen T ea” is a story about a possessed m an. The Reverend M r Jennings is at first possessed by his studies on the metaphysics o f the ancients. As he believes, when m an sets about doing something in earnest, there occurs a “m aterial waste” th at should be hourly supplied, because the mind can “pass out o f the body, unless it were rem inded often o f the connection by actual sensation”(p. 22). Consequently, he supplies the w ant by indulging in green tea. After some time, this otherwise m odest and benevolent preacher, becomes molested by a dark hairy m onkey. A t fist “jaded and sulky” (p. 25), “dazed and languid” (p. 26), the m onkey from the very beginning evokes the atm osphere o f an “ unfathom able m alignity” . L ater on the sullness o f the spirit is replaced by vivacity and aggression. Wearied by the visitations, Jennings consults a physician, who treats the m onkey as a “ spectral illusion” . However, very gradually the spirit begins to exert an even stronger influence over the oppressed Priest, finally urging him to com m it suicide.
Desperately trying to find some explanation o f his suffering, Jennings turns to Swedenborg’s teachings, to his theory o f opening the “ interior sight” . Swedenborg’s theory does n ot propose any solution, b ut at least it suggests som ething like the reason Jennings expects - an explanation different from the m aterialistic rationalization suggested by D r Harley. Jennings has to realize th at the m onkey is not a m ere illusion, caused by overwork, indigestion, or problem s o f sight. His visit to D r Hesselius, a “ philosophic physician, who gives spirit its proper ran k ” (p. 28), however, takes place too late - after three years o f demonic persecutions Jennings is driven to take his own life.
“ G reen T e a ” is a story with a “loophole” , which Le F an u leaves for a possible natural, or rational explanation. This loophole is used on the level of the plot by D r Hesselius, who gives m any “ scientific” explanations for Jennings’s case, one o f them being th at his affliction is a “ spectral illusion” , which is “ no less simply curable than a cold in the head or a trifling dyspepsia” (p. 38). A nother one is that it is Jennings’s indulgence in green tea th at affected the equilibrium o f the fluids circulating through the nerves. The abundance o f fluids, which accum ulate on the br?in, form s a “m ass” upon which “disembodied spirits m ay operate” . H aving produced the above diagnosis, Hesselius adds that Jennings additionally succumbed to a hereditary suicidal m ania.
11 W. Allen, The English Novel. A Short Critical H istory (H arm ondsw orth: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 213.
Hesselius’s scientific approach is only a very apparent utilization o f the “loophole” for the natural explanation, because, although supplying “ scien- tifically” -based causes, he never denies the existence o f supernatural reality. His rational explanations are based on the assum ption that the w orld o f spirits does exist and that, accordingly, it can interfere with the “real” world. Accepting Hesselius’s theory th at the m onkey is just “ a disembodied spirit” , the reader accepts the existence o f supernatural reality.
Leaving aside Hesselius’s explanations, the m onkey m ay be also seen as a product of Jennings’s twisted m ind, his disordered im agination, which, by subordinating the sensual organs, m akes the eyes see w hat it wants to be seen, be it even a hairy m onkey. But does anything in the short story suggest th at Jennings is a m an with m ental problem s so serious th at he begins to imagine things? In the very beginning he m ay, indeed, be overworked after poring over the m aterials on pagan m ythology, and an excess o f stim ulants coming from the green tea, in which he indulges, m ay have caused some tem porary instability. But even if this was the case the symptom s would not last as long as three years and m ore; they would abate after the “change of a ir” which Jennings in fact often had, travelling from his country parish to London.
Is it then that Jennings is punished for researching the non-Christian religious beliefs? This interpretation is encouraged by the Vicar himself, by the way he talks about his own studies. H e admits th at they “thoroughly infected” him and th at “ all the m aterial ideas connected with it were m ore o r less o f the beautiful, the subject itself delightfully interesting, and I, then,
without a care" (pp. 21-2). W hen relating the events to Hesselius he cries:
“ G od forgive me!” (p. 21). R. Tracy suggests:
His studies have led him into pagan mythology, to half-realize th at the gods and goddesses o f Greece and R om e are m etaphors for a sensuality he can neither accom m odate nor confront ... His unintended invasion o f the world o f spirits causes him to see o r imagine a m etaphor for his own suppressed erotic self, his anim al nature. ... Jennings’s haunting monkey is an aspect o f himself, from w hom there is no escape.12
Seen in this light the m onkey becomes “a very Freudian anim al” .13 W. Allen also agrees that, although Hesselius explains away Jennings’s diabolic possession, “for the reader today the m onkey will probably seem a striking projection o f the unconscious” .14 This explanation, however, also seems to ignore another question. Namely: why should Jennings in particular be haunted by the supernatural, whereas Hesselius also adm its that the subject
12 R. T racy, ‘“ Introduction” , in J. S. Le Fanu, op. cit., p. xiv.
15 V. S Pritchett, op. cit., p. 104.
o f “the actual religion of educated and thinking paganism ” is “ a wide and very interesting field” (p. 21)? A nd, coming back to “The Fam iliar” , why should B arton be haunted to his grave by the supernatural when he was only an indirect cause of the sailor’s death? The forem ast-m an himself com m itted a crime a thousand times m ore cruel: the crime of infanticide.
J. Nałęcz-W ojtczak points out that
... the explanation concerning the ghost in a typical ghost story accounts for only a superficial aspect o f the supernatural which, in contrast to the early G o th ic novel, becomes here an independent reality whose depth and complexity far exceed the scope o f the answer. ... Presenting [the] hauntings, J. S. Le F anu with the subtlety o f a great master, confronts the reader with some elusive and yet irresistibly present reality o f condensed evil, haired and cruelty ...
The real m eaning o f the supernatural presented in Le F a n u ’s stories
... can be read only if we accept the existence o f an independent, complex and intellectually ungraspable supernatural reality as the centre o f the poetic world of the ghost story.15 /
The conception of the supernatural, as a m ulti-dim ensional reality, seems to be suggested by Le F anu himself through his very intriguing m ethod of n arration. All the stories collected in In A Glass Darkly, are a collection o f cases investigated by D r M artin Hesselius. They are collected by Hesselius’s medical secretary who, out o f an “ immense collection o f papers” (p. 5), chooses the m ost interesting cases. The stories, before they even begin to be related, are thus “ filtered” at least twice. But Le F a n u did n ot stop at this; W alpole’s idea of presenting an old rediscovered m anuscript seems nothing in com parison with the technique of narration Le F a n u used. “ G reen T e a ” , for example, is a story which had been related originally by Hesselius to his friend Professor Van Loo o f Leyden. W ritten in English, French and G erm an, it was then translated by the editor who “ omit[ted] some passages, and shortened] others” (p. 6). Consequently, in the case o f “ G reen T ea” it is a “three-fold” filtration. “ M r Justice H a rb o ttle ” is even m ore m ediated than “ Green T e a ” . It had also been written originally in the form o f letters, this time to D r Heyne, but the events described had been gathered by Hesselius from a M r H arm an, who, in turn, had heard them from his father. The level o f filtration in this story seems alm ost unbelievable; it accounts for as m any as four different narrato rs repeating the same story one after another, plus D r Heyne to whom the correspondence had been addressed.
15 J. N al?cz-W ojtczak, “T he Old and the New in the Victorian G host Story” , A cta Universitatis Lodziensis, Folia litteraria, 18 (1987), pp. 96-7.
This complicated, many-layered narration in itself implies the existence o f an alm ost K afkaesque reality, in which m an is only one o f m any cogs in a sophisticated machine, only a pawn, dependent on others, and controlled by others. So, it is not Jennings’s interest in paganism th at awakens the m alignant, supernatural forces; nor is it his suppressed sexuality. Jennings’s only sin seems to be his indulgence in green tea, and this is w hat he is punished for - an interpretation suggested by the title o f the story. J. Sullivan notices:
The very title o f the tale registers the fundam ental irony: the awful disjuncture between cause and effect, crime and punishm ent. W hat emerges is an irrational feeling o f guilt and persecution.“
This is a world in which m an can be punished for m ost ridiculous reasons, a world in which all his steps, and even his thoughts, are carefully watched, and where his slightest slip can activate “agencies ... m ost inexplicable and terrific” (p. 60), which “carry out a scheme o f vengeance” (p. 75). The troubled m an can expect mercy neither from the spiritual world, n o r from anyone am ong the living. Having been spotted by the supernatural agencies and abandoned by the m ortal world, Le F a n u ’s characters die in solitude and nobody witnesses their final m oments. As in G othic novels, the doors swing closed, cutting off the vulnerable victim from the outer world. In The F am iliar” , for example, the servant who is supposed “never to suffer [Barton] to be alone” (p. 76)
... had ... hardly entered the lobby, when the d o o r behind him slowly swung to under the impulse, as it seemed, o f some gentle current o f air. (p. 78)
Barton dies alone, and so does Jennings, abandoned by his doctor, while H arbottle, in a house peopled with servants, hangs him self at the to p of a great staircase. Le Fanu presents
... a world where things refuse to fit together, where terrible things happen to the wrong people for the w rong reasons, where horrors leap o u t o f the m ost trivial and ridiculous contexts. 17
To the vast phantasm agoria o f Le F a n u ’s supernatural apparitions we m ust add yet another figure - a vampire, who becomes a credible, flesh and blood character in “ Carm illa” . One of the m ost interesting aspects o f the supernatural in this story m ay be that it became a m eans for Le F an u to cross certain boundaries, directly inaccessible to the Victorian m ind. The
16 J. Sullivan, Elegant Nightmares. The English Ghost Story fro m L e Fanu to Blackwood (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1978), p. 18.
story is a very sensuous and erotic account o f the unearthly relationship between L aura and Carmilla - the vampire. D ue to the story’s direct, first person n a rra tio n by the m ain heroine, this eroticism is filtered th ro u g h L a u ra ’s perspective o f incom prehensibility and inexplicability. Alongside its being the embodiment o f implied, perverse sexuality and a representation of the anxiety of the age - hom osexual love - the supernatural in “ Carm illa” is, as in all the stories discussed above, a m e ans o f presenting the intricate and im placable world o f evil gaining a total victory.
A nd again, the working o f the supernatural on the mind and body of the victim is gradual. The process of seducing o f L aura is slow and stealthy, ju st like the development o f her affliction, the progress of which, although noticeable in daylight (“I had grown pale, my eyes were dilated and darkened underneath, and the languor ... began to display itself in my countenance” , p. 281), really takes place at night.
The inseparable bond established between the girls is from the very beginning deeply erotic. L aura is attracted to Carmilla, or rather to the pleasurable and unparalleled state o f excitement with which she constantly supplies her; Carmilla is the carnal visualisation of her dreams and unconscious desires.
A t the same time, however, L aura is aware of a growing sense of repulsion and o f “ an tip a th y ” tow ards Carm illa. H er “ a d m iratio n ” is “mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust” ; she is “conscious o f a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence” , (p. 264)
Just as Carm illa is the only supernatural m anifestation which we can observe so closely, so is L aura the only character who survives her m olestations. She survives in physical terms only because, having once experienced the “m alignity o f hell” (p. 293), she cannot, like other characters in Le F a n u ’s stories, recover fully.
... to this hour the image of Carm illa returns to m em ory with am biguous alternations - sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the w rithing fiend ...; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step o f C arm illa a t the draw ing-room door. (p. 319)
In fact we doubt if she can ever recover at all, because, according to the theory expressed by Baron Vordenburg, a vampire expert present at the ordeal of Carmilla, her victims “ alm ost invariably, in the grave, develop into vam pires” (p. 318). Besides, Carm illa herself says: “ you, in your turn, will draw near to others” . Does it mean th at Laura, too, as Sullivan suggests, is doom ed to become one o f them ?18 Even if she does not, the
am bivalent image o f the vampire haunts her till the end o f her life, and is m ost probably the reason o f her prem ature death.
The ambiguity of the story, expressed, first o f all, by L au ra’s am biguous attitude tow ards C a m illa , can also be felt in the possibility o f a double understanding o f Carmilla herself - Sullivan speaks of her as both “ victim and victimizer” .19
We see Carm illa in her youth as the prey o f dem onic visitations; forced, against her will, into the world of vampires. There she can either lead the life o f a vampire and rem ain a pawn draw n to the scene by a weird ghostly retinue, or have a stake driven through her heart, be decapitated and crem ated and thus “ on ... expulsion from ... am phibious existence, [be] projected into a far m ore horrible life” (p. 318). The supernatural reality is again presented as m onstrous and m alignant, but this time, by draw ing the character of Carm illa so minutely, and by m aking her o f equal status with those from the “real” world, Le F an u provides a deeper insight into this reality and hints at its m ode o f operation.
Carm illa is a victim o f the same “atrocious plan” (p. 28) th at ruins the lives o f Jennings, H arbottle and Barton. The General, whose ward is wearied to the grave, feels a fool when he realises that he had received a fiend, a m onster into his house. But so is Carmilla, “ the agent o f all this m isery” (p. 250), “ the dupe of a preternatural conspiracy” (p. 294). Just as Jennings’s only flaw is indulging in green tea; Carm illa’s and L au ra’s - being young and beautiful.
Joseph Sheridan Le F an u is strongly indebted to the early G othic novel for the revenge m o tif for his supernatural, and to the T error school of M rs Radcliffe for stressing the im portance o f the subjectivity o f the weird experience. Follow ing the conventional G othic patterns he sim ultaneously enriched them with new, distinctive and powerful features. His supernatural takes on the m ost ingenious and varied forms - it comes to torm ent its victims over a long period o f time, causing irreversible, psychologically- -m otivated changes in the m inds o f the characters. The supernatural comes apparently for retribution, but the enorm ity o f suffering caused by its actions far exceeds the supposed crimes. The supernatural can haunt in any form and at any time; there is no escape from its omnipresence and om nipotence - no chance o f survival for those who have been once exposed to its malignity.
T he am bivalence o f the sensations the characters feel tow ards the supernatural suggests its am biguous and m ulti-dim ensional nature. Instead o f providing easy solutions and univocal interpretations, Le F a n u ’s stories end by posing questions concerning the essence o f the suggested supernatural:
is it a product o f a mind under stress, o r o f a guilty conscience, a projection o f subconscious anxieties, a spectral illusion, or a real agency o f “ the m ost inexplicable and terrific system” “carrying out a scheme of vengeance”? In this respect Le F an u differs from W alpole, who understood the supernatural as a power coming from a world beyond hum an perception, as well as from M rs Radcliffe, whose supernatural anticipates the psychological interpretation o f individual perception. Le F a n u ’s supernatural encompasses it all. Its ambiguity, enhanced by rich poetic imagery, suggests the conclusion th a t final explanations o f the impenetrable mystery of the universe are far beyond us.
Institute o f English Studies U niversity o f Łódź
Agnieszka Łowczanin
ŚWIAT NADPRZYRODZONY W OPOWIEŚCI O DUCHACH J. S. LE FANU
Joseph Sheridan Le F anu, przez wielu krytyków uznany za najwybitniejszego przedstawiciela w iktoriańskiej opowieści o duchach, czerpiąc w dużej mierze z tradycji powieści gotyckiej nadaje światu nadprzyrodzonem u w swoich opow iadaniach zupełnie now ą funkcję i znaczenie.
Niewątpliwym wpływem prekursora powieści gotyckiej, Horacego W alpole’a, jest wyposażenie św iata nadprzyrodzonego w element zemsty jak o jeden z motywów jego działania N aw iązanie d o tradycji A nn Radcliffe i fazy „T error G othic” ujaw nia się szczególnie na płaszczyźnie obrazowości opisów i jest jednocześnie doskonałym kompozycyjnie zabiegiem przygotowującym czytelnika d o kon tak tu z rzeczywistością nierealną. Innow acja Le F an u polega n a rozbudow aniu tego etapu przez wprowadzenie, obok opisów zniszczonych lub niedostępnych dom ów tradycyjnie towarzyszących występowaniu elementu nadprzyrodzonego, opisów osobliwego zachow ania bohaterów lub bezpośredniej narracji, co m a n a celu jeszcze większe podkreślenie niesamowitości przedstaw ionej sytuacji. Z fazy „H o rro r G othic” zaczerpnął Le F an u , obok niezwykłego okrucieństw a i dużej dosłowności opisów w niektórych opow iadaniach, bardzo szczegółowy sposób przedstawienia wysłanników z zaświatów, nie ograniczając się jednocześnie d o nadania im jednego tylko kształtu. Kolejnym wpływem powieści późnogotyckiej jest niewątpliwie fakt, że skutkiem nawiedzenia jest wywołanie nieodwracalnych zmian w życiu i osobowości nękanego bohatera, a w przypadku omawianych utw orów jego śmierć.
W ykorzystując i modyfikując niektóre z istniejących już wzorców, Le F an u udało się jednak stworzyć zupełnie now atorską wizję świata nadprzyrodzonego, rządzącego się swoimi własnymi praw am i, którego motywy działania i pow ody ingerencji w świat rzeczywisty nie d ają się wytłumaczyć n a podstawie wydarzeń przedstaw ionych w opow iadaniach. Jest to św iat w którym b ohatera spotyka k ara niewspółmierna w stosunku d o popełnionych przewinień lub k ara zupełnie niezasłużona. Niezwykła złożoność tego świata wydaje się być zasugerowana przez samego autora, przez skom plikow aną narrację, k tó ra z jednej strony przedstaw ia możliwość quasi-naukow ego wytłumaczenia istnienia świata nadprzyrodzonego, z drugiej jednak strony, przez swoją wielowarst- wowość zdaje się wykluczać jakąkolw iek możliwość racjonalnej interpretacji.
