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Richard Marsh The Beetle (1897) (The features of the "man":…
Richard Marsh
The Beetle
(1897)
Queer coding:
the use of "gender deviance" to up the spooky
"I saw someone in front of me lying in a bed. I could not decide if it was a man or woman. Indeed, at first I doubted if it was anything human. But , afterwards, I knew it to be a man" (53): can't be a woman because she's not pretty (and i can't be attracted to men); reinforces able-bodiedness
fetishizes whiteness; "what a white skin you have! What would I not give for a skin as white as that" "devouring me; "powers of penetration"--there is a violence in looking, it is coercive, it's being put onto someone. The horror comes from turning the violence onto a naked white body?
"My only covering was unceremoniously thrown off of me" "beast for a butcher's stall" "Nothing fashioned in god's image could wear such a shape as that" "the blubber lips were pressed to mine" (57). Sexual passivity/passivity undermines masculinity and humanity;
"Paul Lessignham's impenetrability is proverbial" (75)--reinforcing that men can't be "penetrated" over emphasizing his masc, impenetrable means he is collected, cool, and rational...but also bodies?
When the beetle comes back: Chpt 5: "his nose was not so grotesque" "essentially feminine--so feminine indeed that I wondered if I could by any possibility have blundered" "ghastly reminiscence of womanhood"--god forbid a woman doesn't conform to (racist, colonial) European features she is a monster to her sex
Plot: an English homeless man gets mind controlled by an androgynous Egyptian demi-god?
The First Beetle Encounter: "They moved--towards me. "Squelch" as a word that invokes grossness, stickiness." The use of an unclear pronoun--does "they" refer to eyes (yes) but also allows us to not gender the creature. "The creature"
"I realized the creature was beginning to ascend my legs. [...] It mounted me" (50-1). "They embraced me softly" "Higher and higher! It had gained my loins" Frames this as violation--"invasion." Frames the horror as loss of bodily control--this is unnatural.
makes readers uncomfortable with sensory overload
How do we talk about gender non-binary or gender non-conforming folks?
In 2019, we respect pronouns: "He, she, or "they"" Mx instead of Mr. or Mrs. or Ms
gender variant versus gender deviant? (we frame it as an alteration on a spectrum rather than someone doing something they shouldn't be doing)
The features of the "man": "a safron yellow skin" "suggestive of something animal" "this deformity for the abscence of chin amounted to that--appearance of something not human"
plays on Egyptian images of bird-headed gods
relies on flattening out racial differences and combines them into one horrifying body
historically we use noses to assign race and then disqualify base don appearance--you can tell race by proof of nose
racializes based on "blubbering nose"
classist af: relates vulnerabilities and weakness to poor English folk
Paul Lessingham
19th Century Chad: "good to look at" visually pleasing, sexy, tall, strong, white. But what if this is again putting the gaze onto male-bodiedness?
his reaction to the Beetle: (77); removes his masculinity (if masc is based on self-control, autonomy, put-togetheredness, impenetrability); for Marsh, cultivating a sense of fear for or empathy with Lessignham.
WHat makes a man a man in Marsh's worldview?
"For the time I was no longer a man; my manhood was merged in his. I was, in the extreamest sense, an example of passive obedience" (54)
a man takes control, a man dominates.