Interstitial Space and the Gothic ‘Monster’ Body in Richard Marsh’s The Beetle: A Mystery
By Maneesha Sarda, Claremont Graduate University
‘The most obvious observation one can make of a monster is in its difference’ (Baumgartner and Davis, 2008: p. 1). To agree with Baumgartner and Davis, the monster, indeed, sets itself apart because of a sense of difference or unfamiliarity that serves as its identifier. This difference is recognised against ‘the norm’ or ‘the normal’ that is influenced by two predominant deviances: biological and cultural. First, by non-compliance to the standards of the ‘normal’ looking body by way of abnormal physical characteristics; and second, by non-conformity to the cultural and ideological constructions of ‘the normal’ as shaped by the normative system of a particular culture. In other words, the physical identity of the monster body that exists as a material part of nature, along with the socio-cultural constructions of it, converges on the monster body — so much so that its mere existence draws from this interstitial expanse. Cohen (1996) terms this interstice as the ‘liminal’ space which comes into being due to the hybrid body of the monster — that is a ‘harbinger of category crisis’ (p. 6). The liminality outlined against the abnormalities of nature and culture pushes monstrosity in between the threshold of what is ‘non-cultural’ and ‘non- natural,’ leading to the genesis of the spectral and sublime quality that serves as the very characteristic of the Gothic monster.
The potential of the monster body to be representative of new meanings of culture and nature in the non-absolute interstitial space, is particularly noticeable in the Gothic fiction The Beetle: A Mystery (1897) by Richard Marsh. This novel revolves around the supernatural creature, ‘the Beetle’ — an androgynous monstrous shapeshifter who mysteriously morphs into a gigantic insect (or, indeed, any human person irrespective of its sex). The plot is driven by the Beetle’s attempt to avenge the murder of his Priestess who belongs to the cult of the deified Isis (which is the Beetle itself). The enigmatic creature targets its revenge on Paul, who is believed to have murdered the Priestess in order to escape her sexual captivity. In this process, Marjorie — the latter’s fiancée — and Robert Holt — a common man — become pawns in the hands of the demonic entity. Finally, the story ends with the Beetle’s implied destruction.
As suggested above, The Beetle: A Mystery represents monstrosity in various forms that are noticeable as sources of fright and horror. At the very beginning, it is manifested in the physical body, particularly that of the Arab’s and the Beetle’s. For instance, the first time Holt casts a look at the Beetle, he describes it as a ‘monstrous spider… afflicted by some terrible disease’ which has made it ‘so supernaturally ugly’ (Marsh, pp. 20-23). Holt’s commentary makes it clear that the Beetle is designated the monster because of his unusually abnormal physical features. It can be interpreted that this deformity, specifically marked by physical standards, interconnects itself with the monster’s corporeal ‘body,’ that exists as a material part of nature and cannot be undermined because it functions only through its material existence. Furthermore, the idea of categorising what defines deformity, is consciously generated only through the cultural value system, which in this case, is the Egyptian cultural attitude that is apparently unaccepting towards all things that do not fit into its established standards of beauty. For instance, ‘freak shows’ or ‘creep shows’ that were popular in Europe and the USA, particularly in the 19th century, did not demonise deformity in any manner. Rather, it glamorised abnormality as a form of a commercialised entertainment business by hosting shows where the disabled were put to public display as a showpiece.1 This attitude is clearly different from that of modern society — which harbours a sympathetic, yet a prejudiced attitude towards disability. As a matter of fact, people belonging to a culture at a particular time carry different cultural ideologies shaped by their societal attitudes. As such, the idea of a society’s value system — and what is considered to belong to the category of the ‘deformed’ or the ‘abnormal’ — draws from the cultural perspective specific to a society. In this respect, the Beetle, in the personality of the Arab, emerges as a monster due to its unconventional physical persona marked with a deformity defined by the Egyptian cultural values of the beauty and the demon. Thus, this deformity or abnormality generates the EcoGothic aura of the novel that is inter-dependent to the definitions of nature and culture, and which is manifested in its interstitial existence of the monster body. It can also be interpreted that interstitiality hybridises the monster body as a product of both nature and culture and is internalised by the monster’s existential existence, thereby thrusting it as the uncanny corporeal subject. Thus, the monster’s body as a material part of nature, in its affiliations with the cultural attitudes, becomes significant since this internalisation makes the monster a material body of cultural relevance.
Another crucial point that must be noted herein, is the way in which wilderness, as portrayed in the novel, highlights monstrosity as a spirit of nature that exists aligned to its mysterious powers of trans-corporeality. For instance, the Beetle’s transmigratory potential enables it to transform into any physical shape, as is shown through the characters of the Beetle (in insect form), and the Arab, the Priestess, and The Stranger (in human form). This becomes evident at the first encounter of Holt with the Beetle: where the latter, from its insect form, transforms into the ‘diseased’ and ‘deformed’ decrepit man (Marsh, pp. 22-23). Likewise, a reverse physical transformation from human to insect form is noticeable at the Temple of Isis, wherein Paul strangles the Priestess to death (p. 255). The Beetle also possesses the ability to morph into thin air: for example, when the Beetle, in the form of The Stranger, comes to meet Sydney with the aim of making him an accomplice against Paul (p. 142). Evidently, the monster body defies all known laws of nature that strictly do not permit such physical transformations. This defiance thrusts the monster’s trans-corporeal identity to the liminal borders of organic/inorganic and monster/human existence. As a matter of fact, this trans-corporeality creates a terror for the Gothic monster since all things which are culturally unfamiliar, or unknown, are often looked upon as ‘othered’ objects of awe. Thus, this adds to the spectral and sublime character of monstrosity that manifests only in the interstitial space as cultural bodies and as objects of nature. This strengthens the fear and the nature of the uncanny spectre itself, which exposes wilderness and its vulnerable associations with the cultural structures of society that categorise everything out of its accepted ideological standards as non-acceptable.
In this sense, monstrosity transgresses the limits of nature by escaping material homogenisation because its physical identity creates an eccentric category that complies only to its own existential being. In another sense, it seems impossible to define the monster through the standardised categorisations of how nature identifies its subjects because the monster body apparently belongs to no specific class of entity since it is living/dead and natural/unnatural at the same time. However, this crisis in categorising the material body of the monster does not undermine the fact that it is not a part of nature. In fact, this very attribute helps the monster to de-limit itself and create a new possibility of meanings beyond nature’s defined descriptions of physicality. What can be interpreted here is that the monster body emerges as a powerful source which, in drawing its existence from the interim space between nature and culture while defying their norms, privileges itself as an entity in its own prerogative right.
Indeed, it is this interstitial character of the monster which connects it to the determinants of nature and culture — so much so that it finds complete meaning only in this affiliation. In fact, the monster body of the Beetle dismantles all stereotypes and subverts the hegemony of established norms by its very existence. It undoubtedly registers the prejudiced cultural pathologies and ecological anxieties that arise from modern human societies. In this process, monstrosity also represents the fascination with the realities and representations of the darker side of modern societies through its interstitial existence that epitomises and breeds the dynamic dichotomisation between nature/culture and human/environment. The monster body merely becomes a kind of a physical awareness that arises from the flux of a diseased body as a part of nature and a diseased ideology as a part of culture. Nonetheless, in the absence of any of these agents, monstrosity is rendered powerlessly redundant because its complete meaning finds foundation not only as a product of nature or that of culture, but as a product of both nature and culture. Thus, the discourse of monstrosity is ambivalent to the concepts of nature and culture which together determine its identity. Nevertheless, it is doubtless that the monster body derives greater strength in this ambivalence.
1 For more on 19th-century ‘freak shows’, please see Esme Cleall’s “Missing Links: The Victorian Freak Show”. History Today. vol. 6, no. 69. February 2019.
Works Cited
Baumgartner, Holly Lynn and Davis, Roger. “Introduction”. Hosting the Monster. New York: 2008. 1-9. Print.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, editor. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. NED-New edition, University of Minnesota Press: 1996. 3-25. Print.
Cleall, Esme. “Missing Links: The Victorian Freak Show”. History Today. vol. 6, no. 69. February 2019, missing-links-victorian-freak-show. Accessed 1 Nov, 2021.
Marsh, Richard. “The Beetle: a Mystery.” The Project Gutenberg EBook. Feb, 2004.1- 360. www.gutenberg.org/files/5164/5164-h/5164-h.htm.
Author Biography
Maneesha Sarda is a Graduate Student and Researcher at Claremont Graduate University, California, the USA. She loves to read, especially literature, which, for her, is less of an academic journey and more of a discourse on life. She is a staunch believer in the philosophy of literature and strives to use its power to work towards a better version of herself.