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Session 6b: Monsters and Heroes Strike Back
Chair: Natsumi Ikoma

American Parricide: Monstrous Children in the Work Of S. Jackson and L. Shriver
Bernice Murphy
School of English, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland

In this proposed paper I will discuss the manner in which the crimes of parricide and mass murder are depicted in Shirley Jackson’s 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, winner of the 2005 Orange Prize. I intend to examine the manner in which two particularly significant American murder cases inspire and shape both texts. I will suggest that they also provide their respective authors with the opportunity to investigate difficult (even taboo) questions about the relationships between parents and children, the expectations society has of women, and one of the most challenging legal and moral quandaries of all: whether a child can be possibly be born ‘evil’ or rather must be considered a product of his or her upbringing and societal context.
As I will discuss, the spectre of the infamous Lizzie Borden and her (alleged) part in the most famous double murder of the nineteenth-century arises twice in Shirley Jackson’s fiction, first as a brief anecdote in her 1956 novel The Sundial and later in the figure of We Have Always Lived in the Castle’s beguilingly deranged Merricat Blackwood, who murders her parents, aunt, and little brother with arsenic before the main action of the novel even begins. For Shriver, (as for D.B.C. Pierre in the Booker prize-winning, but very different, Vernon God Little) it is the particularly 1990s phenomena of the American high-school massacre which provides the inspiration for a scathing, often bitterly humorous dissection of conventional notions of motherhood and the presumed innocence of children.
I will argue that both novels represent at their most obvious level important literary additions to the fertile ‘evil child’ subgenre of modern horror and gothic fiction – a subgenre to which texts such as William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, William March’s The Bad Seed, Ray Bradbury’s story ‘The Small Assassin’ and films such as The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby and The Ring also belong. I will also suggest that the controversial subject matter provides Jackson and Shriver with a means of dramatizing serious critiques of contemporary American society in the 1950s and in the late 1990s respectively by depicting deeply disturbed teenagers, who, rather than say the unsayable, do the unspeakable.

The Monstrous Hero: Medicine and Monster-Making in Late Victorian Literature
Sylvia Pamboukian
Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, USA

As critics have noted, a common Victorian literary trope involves doctors creating monsters. For example, in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Island of Dr. Moreau doctors re-fashion the human body using pharmacy and surgery, and the resulting monsters are commonly viewed as anxiety amalgams, representing a hodgepodge of cultural fears (including homosexuality, professionalism, New Women). What about the doctor as doctor? Is the doctor-as-monster-maker merely literary expediency? How do various formulations of this common trope reveal the multivalent nature of medicine? How does the circulation of this trope reflect the epistemological status of science in late Victorian culture (and in our own time)?
This paper will explore the epistemological power of science in late Victorian culture by examining the literary trope of the doctor as monster-maker. Unlike earlier humanist doctors such as Woodcourt in Bleak House (who treats homeless, smallpox-ridden Jo without charge) and Graham in Villette (who takes home unconscious Lucy Snowe), late Victorian doctors employ the language of beneficence but scorn virtues such as compassion. Yet, their scientific power, monstrous creations, and anti-social philosophy only add to their mystique. Far from acting as a literary expedient (merely providing a pedigree for the monster) or as a symbol of anxiety, I argue that these doctors represent the disjuncture between scientific epistemology (including materialism and objectivity) and competing cultural epistemologies (such as spiritualism and Christianity) in a productive manner that is powerfully attractive, if not heroic.
The doctor-as-monster-maker participates in new cultural formations, where scientific vices are more attractive than humanistic virtues. This paper will explore this figure as the hero of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau and “The Stolen Bacillus,” Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Round the Red Lamp. Where Dr. Jekyll commits suicide as a means of finally privileging spirituality, Dr. Moreau founds a scientific-religious cult. On the other hand, doctors in “The Stolen Bacillus” and Round the Red Lamp usurp the cloak of monster-maker as a mantle of honor (and glamour) to great comedic effect. The attraction of the doctor-as-monster-maker makes productive an epistemological disruption that is at the heart of modernity, that between the surface-depth models of culture and the materialist and objective. In place of mere anxiety amalgams, monsters in these texts testify to science’s epistemological power and to the pleasurable (and often funny) frisson of the anti-social, the disruptive and the criminal.  

The Alp and the Monster in pre-Islamic Epic (The Book of Dede Korkut) and Beowulf
Hulya Tafli
English Literature Department, Nigde University, Turkey

In Turkish epics it may be asserted that there are two types of heroes: the hero and the monster. Before Islam the hero is considered to be the god-like creature that has the exemplary characteristics and does his best for the sake of his nation. Especially in the belief system of the Sky-God and shamanism before Islam, the hero is selected by the Sky-God by means of trance or dream. Being a hero is such a privilege that is not acquired by coincidence. It may be asserted that in pre-Islamic epics the hero has supernatural powers or inborn abilities to fight against the monsters. The major character of the epic is an alp, or epic hero, who endures the worst possible scenarios in life to save his people from disasters. Epic is usually known by the alp's name. He is fully supported by a sizable cast of characters and is opposed by powerful and treacherous foes and villains. Regardless of the hopelessness of the circumstances, the alp can never be subjugated and can never abandon the fight. Although, the audience, are aware of the fact that he has inborn abilities, he, on his own, has to find his way to prove his prowess. He is at the age of fourteen expected to kill the monster(s). In this respect the concept of the monster varies; it is sometimes in disguise of a giant, a wicked hag, a serpent, Satan, wicked angel, or underworld creature. The hero deserves his title after killing the monster in Turkish Literature. In this article the relation of hero and monster will be shed into light and the concept of monster in Turkish epic (The Book of Dede Korkut) and in English epic (Beowulf) will be depicted. 

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