THE GOTHIC DOPPELGANGER 3
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THE GOTHIC DOPPELGANGER 3
The Gothic Doppelgänger
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The Gothic Doppelganger
Introduction
The theme of the doppelganger is often presented in sceneries characterized as dark signifying the horrifying environment that is associated with doubles. In Frankenstein 1931 film, Mary Shelley’s becomes the ordained doppelgangers to its creator, Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Poe was captivated with the theme of the doppelgangers. Ligeia, the narrator’s soulmate, in death she incorporates the body and the personality of Rowena, obliterating her as if she never existed at all. Poe central theme suggests that Lageia’s love is more prevailing than death. The doppelganger from Oscar’s novel The Picture of Dorian Grayis Dorian’s and the painting, “the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his body so that it would reveal to him his soul”(Wilde,& Nevile, 1989).All the three literature are images for protuberant nineteenth-century social fears and anxieties subjective to advancements in science, rules of modesty and atavistic theories. The literature, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe and Frankenstein are appropriately representing human desires and pleasures.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ligeia and Frankenstein are introductory works in the Gothic norm of literature. All the three texts continue to engage readers and have enthused numerous adaptations of theater, literature as well as films. The doppelgangers are classic Gothic epitomes. However, they are also perceptible characters that can surpass the pages of each text. Gothic literature offers a conducive platform of criticizing precise social developments through the adoption of symbolic mechanisms for instance doppelganger, to high point the anxieties and deficits of advancement. The exoticism that subsists in these texts also pinnacles the deformities and clampdowns of both doppelganger and their human equivalents. In spite of the dismaying actions of Dorian Gray, Ligeia, and Frankenstein, readers may still be characterized by the empathy towards doppelganger as a result of the encounters, pain as well as suffering they are preordained to stomach. Nonetheless, the readers might also perceive how doppelgangers symbolize something substantial of a past culture and society. Therefore, the listed literature is durable triumphs of Gothic literature with their intense understanding of the weakness of the nineteenth-century humanity.
The main purpose of this research is to examine the significance of doppelganger in Gothic literature. The writing will also discuss what makes doppelgangers still relevant to contemporary Gothic texts. In addition to previous arguments about doppelgangers, I argue that The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ligeia and Frankenstein also embody past standing fears of scientific advancements, decent in addition to the unfamiliar.
The recognizable features of the doppelgangers in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ligeia and Frankenstein are indebted to nineteenth century England social fears and anxieties. This paper will, therefore, be centered on the progress and profiling of doppelgangers in Gothic literature in the nineteenth century and address the following questions: what are the recognizable features of the doppelgangers? What are the recognizable features of the doppelgangers relevant to contemporary Gothic texts? What are the criticisms bound for doppelgangers? Elaborate London doppelgangers and its implication? What are the symbolic significances of doppelgangers on the today’s society? In discussing these questions, this paper will focus on the nineteenth century London’s doppelgangers and consequently describe and profile Gothic doppelgangers.
London Doppelgangers and its Association
The effect of London nineteenth century was significant in the development of the Gothic doppelgangers. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ligeia, and Frankenstein, England cities and environments are frightened by the effect of Dorian, Ligeia, and Frankenstein’s monster. Although the setting in the Frankenstein, Ligeia and The Picture of Dorian Gray transport characters outside the city of London, the town’s deception resonates in all of the three kinds of literature. In fictional, Gothicism critics describe London as being “two towns concurrently.” The dualism of the city flourished ass the town mushroomed and the poor become gradually jam-packed into the grimy slums in the eastern fragment of the town while the rich and the middle class established themselves in the western suburbs. This clearly defines where the London mirror image began.
In the 1800s, London was termed to be corrupt or majestic. London’s arising darkness as well as corruption mirrors foreign presence which is fascinatingly recurrent in Frankenstein, Ligeia and the Picture of Dorian. The duality in this texts calls to mind foreign entities since they are unknown phantoms that suggest terror and mystery. Furthermore, the discrepancies between a “corrupt London” and “majestic London” stirred a nineteenth-century novelist Oscar Wilde to narrate about the doppelganger. London doppelganger is effectually documented in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The dissection between soul and the body isn’t as direct as Dorian envisions. The portrait painting chronicles and reveals both his inner and exterior reality, nonetheless it cannot feel. Temporarily Dorian, too, loses this ability. He is not shocked but merely ‘interested’ in the corruption in his portrait, and feels ‘pity’ for his soul – an emotion the text labels ‘purely selfish’(Wilde,& Nevile, 1989).
The Representation of Doppelganger in the Primary Texts
London’s evident doppelganger stimulated Gothic themes about race, class, sexuality, gender, the physical versus the metaphysical, abnormal versus normal psychology, and the colonizers versus the colonized. Frankenstein film (1818) is the oldest of the three literatures with its rigorously brilliant sceneries that educe the sublime. The hostility of Frankenstein’s monster, for instance, echoes the impurity and decay of London town. This ugliness is patent when the monster for the first time remarks on his appearance, “incompetent to be certain that he was in truth the monster and conceding that he “did not yet entirely know the disastrous special effects of his depressed abnormality” (Bauer, 2014).It is in this instance of consideration; the monster starts to apprehend his physicality, which comes to represent his creator as well as the doppelganger. Consequently, it is the moral evil of the supernatural being, Frankenstein that is embodied in the presentation of the monster. Therefore, Frankenstein is depicted as a being that stabs to abide by the British pacts of politeness, and the monster, his doppelganger serves as evidence that he continually fails to fit into social norms (Bauer, 2014).
Despite London‘s attractive landscape in the 1800s, the town extended poverty and contamination defaced its beautiful fundamentals. Corruption is an element of self-interest. The figure of duality is terrifying act undermining our sense of individuality, signifying aspects of ourselves that we don’t have knowledge about, even violently acting out suppressed needs. Dorian’s action of dividing the body and soul is fundamentally grounded on love for himself, not another, then in the course, something is lost. He suggests in the notion that ‘we can multiply our personalities’ by the spirited and hypocritical bureaucracies of polite society which he does with glittering fascination, nonetheless, he can by a whisker be straight since he is a living mask whose real recognition is in the loft. The novel is contradictory in how it visualizes London, nineteenth century, clearly demonstrating doubles. The literature has influenced many Gothic writers on how they view doppelganger (Wilde, & Nevile, 1989).
Poe, on the other hand, was captivated with the theme of the doppelganger. He exemplifies the theme of the doppelganger in two different occasions. The narrator’s soul mate, Ligeia in death she considers the body and the self of Rowena, obliterating her as if she never existed at all. The narrator presents Rowena’s love as more prevailing than death. Poe’s mother perished when he was a small child; his second mother, best friend’s mother, perished when Poe was in his teens; and Virginia, Poe’s wife, also perished young. Poe’s short story put up with his fascination with the undead stuck in the demise of numerous persons he adored. Poe short story, Ligeia derives a sort of ghoulish relief from the logic that these much-loved people were still present, a vibrant fragment of his life, alienated from him merely by the mask of death thus we still see ‘Ligeia‘ (Poe, 1838).
Doppelgangers Significance in Gothic Texts
Ascertaining the significance of doppelgangers in Gothic texts is important to appreciate what intimidates human scientific explorations. Doppelgangers are vital elements of literature, evident in most Gothic genres. Most notably, the nineteenth-century Gothic texts are part of tradition double doppelgangers narratives that has existed far back. Authors of that era contributed to the literary doable by assimilating classic themes with archetypical Gothic features. Gothic doppelgangers precisely were generated in this epoch to offer literature with both fictional procedures and character development.
The doppelganger is an unknowable character that provokes scorn, loathing, and fear. This is apparent in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ligeia, and Frankenstein, where the doppelgangers are protuberant figures that encourage disbelief. This factual is grounded on the classic Gothic features that render doppelgangers a threatening, strange and hideous corporeality. The appearances of doppelganger stimulate the feeling of horror and general fear. For instance, in Frankenstein film, it introduces viewers to a doppelganger that has an abhorrent physicality comprising of scarcely covered muscles and arteries underneath as well as a shriveled skin texture and conventional black lips (Bauer, 2014). The being lives insolated hovels away from the unwelcoming human world. Ligeia, on the other hand, is presented by her discreetness, she can sneak up on the narrator; she is also characterized by a pale skin with a low voice (Poe, 1838). All these featured combined create an image of an ethereal, supernatural woman. Consequently, Oscar Wilde presents Dorian Gray’s supernatural picture painted by Basil. Basil who admires Dorian, paints a portrait of Dorian which may be the most disturbing portrait in Oscar Wilde’s novel. The portrait is presented with blood flowed in his veins. The gloomy and esthetic faces stare back at Dorian causing him to reveal whether some abnormal poisonous germ sneaked from body to body till it had extended to his own (Wilde,& Nevile, 1989).
Conclusion
The Gothic doppelganger acts as an allusion in revealing social anxieties concerning repressions, sins, desires, and ambitions. The doppelganger symbolizes the hidden dubious and profound traits belonging to the England society. In Gothicism, doppelganger impends bourgeois normalcy as well as the ordered ideologies of elegant humanity and rational advancement. This menace is evident in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ligeia and Frankenstein literature where doppelgangers threaten society with no regards of consequences. Doppelganger addresses social criticism while remaining faithful to classic Gothic ground rules. Similarly, they have the capacity to symbolize less obvious characteristics of their human doppelgangers. Doppelgangers also demonstrate the horror of society, which is the foundation of vast morals, the fear of God, which is top-secret of religion. These are the two things that govern humanity. What doppelgangers call to youth is regarded to as a call to audacity. For instance, Dorian’s critical catastrophe to live up to Lord Henry’s morals is due to his failure to escape his integrity as portrayed in the picture. By trying to destroy the portrait to free himself from the persistent reminder of his guilt he, eventually, succeeds only to abolish himself. Doubles, therefore, designate the costs of disobeying decency and conventions.
References
Bauer A (2014, July 28). Retrieved January 10, 2017, from http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22c732_frankenstein-1931_shortfilms
Poe E. A. (1838). Ligeia Retrieved January 10, 2017, from http://poestories.com/read/ligeia
Wilde, O., & Nevile, J. (1989). The picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde. Oxford University Press.
