The animal withinAn ecocritical approach to the Gothic supernatural hybrid in the fin de siècle

Abstract

This thesis approaches the fin de siècle supernatural hybrid from an ecocritical perspective, focusing on the role that the binary human/animal plays in the construction of monstrosity. It demonstrates that not all turn-of-the-century Gothic narratives portray the hybrid from an ecophobic angle of fear and rejection of the animal-other and the animal-self. Just the opposite, this dissertation shows that there are proto-ecocritical renditions of all types of Gothic hybrids that query the negative connotations associated with animality, ranging from external, abject monsters to invisible inner ones. To prove this hypothesis, the dissertation studies four main supernatural agents: the monster, the pagan god, the ghost and the double.This thesis also argues that the story’s overall visual angle greatly determines the ecocritical view from which the hybrid, the normative character, and their interactions are portrayed. The narratives that tend to hold sight as the only trustworthy epistemological human sense adhere to a Cartesian perspective of identity. They regard sight and reason as ‘human’, and the body and its senses as animal, and present the possession of a ‘rational soul’ or ecophobic ‘moral compass’ as the key element that distinguishes humans from non-human animals. Finally, the influence of the supernatural hybrid is presented as an all-pervasive phenomenon that reduces protagonists to animal behaviour. Presenting the influence of the hybrid as forced and inevitable frees the influenced subject from any sort of guilt, and successfully displaces the threat of the animal within out into an external other...