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The Monsters, the Men, and the Spaces Between in The Island of Doctor Moreau and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Dissertation (MA--University of Pretoria, 2017.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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University of Pretoria
2021
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| _version_ | 1867613455540813824 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author2 | Noomé, Idette |
| author_browse | Noomé, Idette |
| author_facet | Noomé, Idette |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | © 2019 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
| description | Dissertation (MA--University of Pretoria, 2017. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/78944 |
| institution | University of Pretoria (South Africa) |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:36:25.392Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publishDateRange | 2021 |
| publishDateSort | 2021 |
| publisher | University of Pretoria |
| publisherStr | University of Pretoria |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| spelling | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/78944 The Monsters, the Men, and the Spaces Between in The Island of Doctor Moreau and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Noomé, Idette adriaan.venter22@gmail.com Brown, Molly Venter, Herman Adriaan UCTD Anton van Gennep binary opposition Charles Darwin degenerationism Homi Bhabha Dissertation (MA--University of Pretoria, 2017. In this dissertation I explore the dynamics of how the definition of the human is established and subsequently challenged in both H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and R.L. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Late nineteenth-century Europe was a time and place where an exploration of the definition of what it means to be human was particularly uncomfortable. The structures that upheld the then accepted conceptions of the human were under assault by new scientific discourses such as Darwinist theories of evolution, criminal anthropology and degenerationism. I show how the anxieties that these discourses inspired are reflected in the texts, and also examine how the communities in the texts act to reinforce the collapsing definition of what it means to be human. Victorian efforts to resolve this crisis of identity were mainly rooted in attempts to classify the natural world and to find or create some form of stable categorical distinction between the ‘human’ and the Other, or the not-human. The nature of the Other varied widely but manifested in terms of species, race, gender and class, to name but a few categories. The mechanisms through which humans, both as individuals and as communities, created and maintained their ‘humanity’ is examined through the use of theories of the liminal, from Anton van Gennep ([1909] 1960) to Homi Bhabha (1994). The reasons for the fear of the liminal characters are explored through Julia Kristeva’s (1982) notion of the abject – a phenomenon which arises in a confusion of the boundaries and distinctions between the subject and the object, the Self and the Other. Using Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s (1996) ‘Monster Theory’, I examine what the texts reveal about the society in which the authors were writing and what the appeal or horror of each monster’s particular type of liminality might have been for contemporary readers. In my conclusion I show that the fears and anxieties in Wells’s and Stevenson’s texts are still extant today. The monsters in the texts reflect changing conceptions of what it means to be human. By examining the nature of the fear that these monsters inspire, one can better understand both the readers of the time and the origins of the modern understanding of what it means to be human, what it means to be Other, and the realisation that, ultimately, perhaps we all exist somewhere betwixt and between. English MA (English) Unrestricted 2021-03-04T10:02:37Z 2021-03-04T10:02:37Z 2018 2017 Dissertation Venter, HA 2017, The Monsters, the Men, and the Spaces Between in The Island of Doctor Moreau and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, MA (English) Dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd <http://hdl.handle.net/2263/78944> A2018 http://hdl.handle.net/2263/78944 en © 2019 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. application/pdf University of Pretoria |
| spellingShingle | UCTD Anton van Gennep binary opposition Charles Darwin degenerationism Homi Bhabha The Monsters, the Men, and the Spaces Between in The Island of Doctor Moreau and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde |
| title | The Monsters, the Men, and the Spaces Between in The Island of Doctor Moreau and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde |
| title_full | The Monsters, the Men, and the Spaces Between in The Island of Doctor Moreau and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde |
| title_fullStr | The Monsters, the Men, and the Spaces Between in The Island of Doctor Moreau and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Monsters, the Men, and the Spaces Between in The Island of Doctor Moreau and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde |
| title_short | The Monsters, the Men, and the Spaces Between in The Island of Doctor Moreau and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde |
| title_sort | monsters the men and the spaces between in the island of doctor moreau and strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde |
| topic | UCTD Anton van Gennep binary opposition Charles Darwin degenerationism Homi Bhabha |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/2263/78944 |