A FEW WEEKS AGO, Jason Kimble at Trickle of Consciousness posted a very astute analysis of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I've edited, expanded, and re-presented my comments on it here.
Jason's thesis is that both volumes of the comic revolve around its Victorian society's struggles between sexuality and "civilization":
League the first starts with its characters in all manner of un-civilized, carnal pursuits, and it's up to Mina to reclaim every one of them. If I remember correctly, actually, each of the three characters Mina collects is in the middle of some kind of decidedly uncivilized sexual activity: Hyde is raping prostitutes, Griffin raping schoolgirls, and if I'm not mistaken Quatermain himself was covered by girls in his opium den (it's been a while since I read the first series, so I may be entirely wrong on that last).
While a quick consultation of Volume 1 irons out some of the wrinkles in this scheme, I think it also confirms the overall argument. Most of the characters' recruitments aren't the straightforward examples of carnality that Jason suggests, but are highly sexualized nevertheless.
Quatermain isn't covered in women when Mina recruits him from his opium den - he's far too enervated for any activity other than self-destruction. But Mina is assaulted and nearly raped, a truly painful scene as you watch her aura of self-possession flicker and die. The assault happens solely to provide Quatermain with motivation to save her, and when Mina is assaulted again by Hyde later in that same issue I'm left with the hollow feeling that Moore, of all people, should know better.
I'm also not certain whether Hyde has been raping the prostitutes whom he's been killing. That sounds like a meaningless distinction, but consider: Volume 2 tells us that Jekyll is gay (and that Hyde may embody his unrepressed sexuality, viz. his rape of Griffin), yet he is a prostitutes' regular in Paris. Perhaps he's been trying to spark a nonexistent heterosexual attraction by frequenting these demimondes - and then, in the resulting stress when the attempt fails, out comes Edward. These may yet be sexual crimes, but in a fairly complicated way.
So that's one Gentleman detected and caught because of his illicit sexuality - because he tries to contain his (homo)sexuality and fails. Griffin is another, highly obvious example, and Mina herself is a ruined woman, suitable for the League only because of her scandalous encounter with Dracula. Quatermain isn't marked in this way, but then he's the straight arrow of the bunch, more or less.
The really interesting case, though, is the one Jason doesn't address - Nemo. We never see his sexual behavior (or, for that matter, his recruitment), and he seems to contravene the tendencies of most of the Gentlemen. He's the only Gentleman who's still married and who still has a living child. As a nineteenth-century Sikh, he disapproves of Western women and grumbles about having one on his ship, but he nevertheless treats Mina with the utmost courtesy - she refers to him as "my friend" and a "gentleman" and the first thing she says about him is "He has his eccentricities but at least he is courteous." He also seems to be one of the most principled Gentlemen, disapproving of Griffin's and Hyde's actions, taking the initiative in halting Moriarty's aerial bombardment of Limehouse, and resigning over the conclusion of the Martian war.
I would suggest that Moore has crafted a pointed irony in which Nemo, the Empire's "nightmare" who terrifies its schoolchildren, proves to be the most civilized Gentleman of them all - were it not for this scene in part 6:
Here Nemo terrifies Quatermain and Mina even more than Hyde does. Mina suggests this is because "Hyde can be persuaded. Nemo can't," but that persuasion may simply be a function of Mina's unique hold over Edward. Quatermain's horror arises from another place; I wonder if he doesn't find Nemo the greater monster because the captain slaughters Moriarty's men not out of unconstrained passion, but with science and cold, merciless reason.
In issue 1 Quatermain rants about "Nemo the science-pirate," suggesting that Nemo frightens the world with the spectacle of science misapplied. In that sense, the captain isn't wholly unlike Moriarty, the series' ultimate rationalist, ultimate authority, and ultimate monster, but while Nemo still has his principles, Moriarty's intellect is completely unbound by any morality. He might praise "the golden, mathematic logic" of his schemes, but his intended victims, upon working out the elegant details of their disposal, can only wonder that "It's all so calculated." Moriarty's amoral intellect converts MI5 into one of its own enemies, its own shadows; the bat-winged war chariot he builds is no less diabolic than those of the various enemies - Robur, Mors, or the Limehouse doctor - against whom he supposedly protects.
Volume 2 introduces another mad rationalist, Dr. Alphonse Moreau. Jason argues that Moreau's forest of human-animal hybrids represents a forward-looking and stable society, since the doctor "accepts the bestial half of his citizens and indulges it as necessary," namely by allowing Rupert the Bear to have congress with a local gypsy woman. Yet Moreau attempts to "restrain" the hybrids' "animal urges," forbidding them their baser instincts to crawl or lap water; I suspect he allows Rupert the safety valve of the gypsy woman largely for his own self-preservation, lest the bear become "frustrated and aggressive."
We might regard Moreau as a biological imperialist, bringing his experimental subjects the dubious and unsought gifts of human clothes and behavioral codes to which they are ill suited. He's another monster in gentleman's clothing, subjecting his hybrids to punishing and often fatal surgeries and developing bacteriological weapons even as he maintains the sham civility of his vegetarian dinners. (Update: A visit to Jess Nevins' annotations and a quick consultation of issue 5 show that Moreau is serving mice and birds, a violation of his own laws.)
Whether it is carnal or rational in origin, every one of the Extraordinary Gentlemen is marked by the same deviance or monstrosity the Empire would use them to contain. To find that theme we need look no further than the back cover of Volume 1, issue 1: "The British Empire has always encountered difficulty distinguishing between its heroes and its monsters."
Waits for Jess to come along and respond to *this* one.
Posted by: Matthew Rossi | May 12, 2004 at 11:33 PM
Moreau was definitely a flaw in my argument, as I think I focused on the scene at the train station (re: the gypsy woman) to the exclusion of other obvious actions that bely the civil high ground he tries to claim.
You're also quite right to point to Nemo's absence in my discussion. I couldn't for the life of me work out how he fit into the thesis I'd developed, yet the thesis seemed to work so well up until I hit Nemo. The Moriarty parallel works nicely, though, in finding the monster in Nemo I couldn't identify.
Posted by: Jason Kimble | May 13, 2004 at 08:44 AM
I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment (interviewing someone today and under deadline pressure), but I'll say this and try do a longer response tomorrow: Moore's stated purpose with much of both volumes was -satire-. Having Mina assaulted in the opium den was a satire of the Victorian "fate worse than death." Whether it's effective satire is another thing, but satire was Moore's intent. I realize authorial intent ain't all that, but if we're going to make interpretations about what Moore meant to do we should keep the satirical intent in mind.
Otherwise--interesting stuff, and once I'm free of things I'll try to write a response.
Posted by: Jess Nevins | May 13, 2004 at 09:48 AM
It is quite conceivable that Jeckyl both wants to fuck men and is a prostitute's regular. Modern homosexuality is something of a cultural construct of the past century or so (a consequence of not having a name prior; nothing that lacks a name can be defined). Modes of sexual expression arise from biological impulses, but have a lot of cultural construct in how they're expressed.
For an unmarried man of a certain class in the Victorian era, patronizing prostitutes might be the accepted means of partnerless sexual relief in contrast to masturbation. Jeckyl might want to have a lover who's a man, but he doesn't have a lover, so he gets off with prostitutes.
Of course, I don't actually know anything.
Posted by: Greg Morrow | May 13, 2004 at 11:48 AM
I finally wrote up my reactions to what was written and posted them in my LiveJournal here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ratmmjess/62985.html#cutid1
jess
Posted by: Jess Nevins | May 17, 2004 at 01:37 PM
A couple of thoughts in response to Jess's cogent comments.
First, I think you're absolutely right that Hyde's rape of Griffin is an act of vengeance and humiliation, not sexual desire. Nevertheless, I wonder if Moore isn't also using that act as a further demonstration that Hyde embodies Jekyll's unrestrained drives, including sexual drives; it seems more than coincidental that he rapes Griffin in the same issue he confesses Jekyll's desire for men. In that close juxtaposition, Griffin's rape serves as "evidence" of Jekyll's sexuality even if it should only confirm Hyde's malice.
On the vaguely related subject of rape and satire. Good satire manages to convey the author's normative view of how the world or characters ought to operate; while we can reasonably assume Moore doesn't favor rape, nothing in his treatment of the repeated sexual assaults suggests that writers (Victorian or present day) shouldn't be subjecting female characters to the kind of treatment Mina gets. I don't buy it as literary metacriticism.
At most, LoEG seems to parody certain practices of Victorian fiction, as with Rosa Coote's academy. (Although Griffin's willy-nilly rape of every teenaged female character he can get his hands on is still disturbing; this suggests another motivation for his fate, that of karma.) I don't really see the satire in attacking Mina twice in the first issue.
Posted by: Marc | May 20, 2004 at 10:37 AM
Marc,
I wrote rather vaguely about my problems with the sexual assualts on our old blog and while I wouldn't say it the same way now, the issue does still trouble me for basically the reasons you pointed out, that there seems to be too much assault and not enough criticism.
Posted by: Rose | May 20, 2004 at 11:36 AM
You: "First, I think you're absolutely right that Hyde's rape of Griffin is an act of vengeance and humiliation, not sexual desire. Nevertheless, I wonder if Moore isn't also using that act as a further demonstration that Hyde embodies Jekyll's unrestrained drives, including sexual drives; it seems more than coincidental that he rapes Griffin in the same issue he confesses Jekyll's desire for men. In that close juxtaposition, Griffin's rape serves as "evidence" of Jekyll's sexuality even if it should only confirm Hyde's malice."
Me: I suppose. I guess, for me, it's a case of "What's foremost in Hyde's mind?" I think the urge for power/degradation is foremost, and rape is simply the vehicle (albeit a pleasurable one, for him) by which to achieve that. (I also think that, if Moore and O'Neill had been publishing the book through an independent publisher, Griffin's death would have been a *lot* worse).
But you might well be right, too.
Actually, I now remember that I asked Moore about this:
"When I was thinking the scene through, I thought, “What would Hyde do if he got hold of Griffin?” And the answer was, “The worst possible thing. And when he’d done that he’d think of the next worst possible thing.” And he would do all of them. And rape was obviously somewhere along the line of the spectrums of the very bad things to do to the Invisible Man. And it was something that would occur to Hyde. Hyde’s a monster. And terrifying, brutalizing, murdering people, that’s something which is kind of cozy to him"
You: "On the vaguely related subject of rape and satire. Good satire manages to convey the author's normative view of how the world or characters ought to operate; while we can reasonably assume Moore doesn't favor rape, nothing in his treatment of the repeated sexual assaults suggests that writers (Victorian or present day) shouldn't be subjecting female characters to the kind of treatment Mina gets. I don't buy it as literary metacriticism."
Me: It was Moore's stated intention, though. Whether it's -good- satire is another question. I don't particularly think it is. But I do believe that Moore intended it to be.
Me: I'd have said, btw, that good satire illuminates the (intellectually/emotionally/spiritually) flawed aspects of the target and exaggerates them until they become obviously ridiculous. In that sense, I think, the attempted rape scene in the opium den does somewhat work--an exaggeratedly Victorian Female woman, racistly exaggerated Arabs, and an exaggerated opium den, all quite similar to stories (less explicitly told, naturally) in penny dreadfuls and story papers.
You: "At most, LoEG seems to parody certain practices of Victorian fiction, as with Rosa Coote's academy. (Although Griffin's willy-nilly rape of every teenaged female character he can get his hands on is still disturbing; this suggests another motivation for his fate, that of karma.) I don't really see the satire in attacking Mina twice in the first issue."
Me: I believe Moore when he says that he intended it satirically. But I don't think it works well as satire. The criticism we expect to see from satire is lacking. Moore, I think, sees it as something we're automatically going to understand and will supply for ourselves.
Posted by: Jess Nevins | May 20, 2004 at 05:42 PM