Human nature is a product of evolution, the result from the adaptation of the human mind and body to the diverse challenges human individuals have faced until some 10,000 years ago. Consequently, this natural selection has shaped the human condition into a dichotomy, a duality between kindness and cruelty, between empathy and evil, that has pervaded and still influences the art world. Complex historical and philosophical lines of thought about this so-called “human nature” have explored the origins of human “moral instincts” and the sense of ethical commitment, trying to explain the conception of humans as ethical and responsible agents. Nowadays, challenging the traditional belief that sympathy and compassion are a product of human culture, there is the strong idea that the afore mentioned qualities are innate. However, the catastrophic violence and organized slaughter of the 20th century persuaded many Western philosophers to shy away from this belief in an innate consciousness, presenting human beings as just “cultural beings” and empathy as a product of moral civilization. That is, cruelty was believed to be a uniquely innate human feature, though perceived as an aberration and not an essential aspect of the human condition. The following essay will try to examine, by analyzing and comparing William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies (1954) and Marina Abramovic’s experimental performance Rhythm 0 (1974), the notion that cruelty – within the duality of good and evil – is not merely a primitive instinct, but a product of the emergence of consciousness and civilization. In this sense, both previous artworks will be analyzed as a response to the political environment in which they were produced, as parables that – being part of the 20th-century political reality and through an aesthetic experience, the explicit use of unlimited cruelty as a theme, and the creation of a fictional moral world – depict human civilized propensities towards atrocity. In other words, these artworks portray the horrific consequences of an “irresponsible power” (Frederick Douglass 32), the premise that “the approval of an authority figure is sufficient for ordinary human beings to perform and rationalize cruel acts” (Stanley Milgram 135).

Golding’s Lord of the Flies can be interpreted as a moral parable that focuses on the nature of man, his propensity towards evil, and the general distinction between chaos and civilization by examining the state of man’s soul through the moral nature of its characters and the problems raised by the presence of a weak ethical commitment. William Golding was an author deeply preoccupied with morality and ethics who established his own moral framework, which permeates all his literary production. Heavily influenced by the writer’s brutal experiences during the World War II, the afore mentioned novel is a cruel depiction of a battle for survival that highlights the question of what is innate to human nature and what is derived from the outside world, and delves into the characters’ ability to distinguish between the so-called good and evil, as well as their compliance to these constructs. Consequently, as Kristie Farley suggests, the author’s moral framework is based on man’s moral choices (3). Intentionally analogous to the island setting of the innocent and untainted The Coral Island (1858), Golding’s novel portrays, in contrast, the horrors of the apparent idyllic surroundings – which mirror the miseries of the war –, and the characters’ savagery, which not only comes from the external environment – as in Ballantyne’s book –, but from within themselves. This dual source of cruelty is depicted through the characters of this dystopic and allegorical novel, each of them representing a different set of moral principles and attributes, manifesting the two fundamental instincts to human beings, the distinctive behaviors of the savage instincts and the civilizing instincts. Moreover, these behaviors become more prominent than the characters’ personality features and, by extension, they represent more than their identities, embodying different degrees of savagery and civilization in a narrative that can be divided into two main branches, one being the distinction between law and chaos, and the other, between good and evil. Particularly, these oppositions can be analyzed through the antithesis between both main protagonists (Ralph and Jack), who, though being antagonistic in the second distinction, may be considered equally “lawful” figures. This last condition implies that civilization is not necessarily parallel to kindness, an equation that is clearly reversed by the character of Jack, who, being the embodiment of the savage instinct and thus the main power of evil in the narrative – the “bad lawful” that lacks a moral code –, abuses of his “irresponsible authority” and benefits from the laws of civilization that, in fact, assist and facilitate the progress of his evil. Conversely, Ralph – the “good lawful” – is the main representative of the civilizing instinct as he delineates the values of civilization and establishes rules in order not to succumb to chaos. Nevertheless, involved in one of the character’s (Simon’s) murder, Ralph also shows that civilization, although comprehending goodness, can be overpowered by the savage instinct in extreme situations. It is noteworthy that, throughout the narrative, there are many manifestations that embrace savage behavior. These manifestations can be classified, following Farley’s thesis, into three evils, which are cruelty, present in many forms and enacted by all characters (with the exception of Simon); ignorance, which begets evil as it rejects and dismisses the reality of a cruel situation; and the unawareness and abuse of power, which includes the powerful tools of intellect, language and authority (21). As a result, all these previous aspects reflect Golding’s premise that civilization does not always equal goodness, and, by exploring the conflict between violence and civilization – in an imaginary moral world where freedom is exercised without boundaries –, and man’s tendency towards evil, savagery (the source of cruelty) is an instinctual human feature aided by civilization, by social constructs. This moral proposition is also depicted in Marina Abramovic’s performance Rhythm 0, albeit through a different artistic experience.

Abramovic’s Rhythm 0, also an allegory that stablishes a division between civilization and chaos in order to depict human savage and civilized sources of evil, can be interpreted as an attempt to present the body of the artist not only as an unidentified object to be used and abused by the cruel potentialities of the audience, who embody the so-called “irresponsible power”, but as a political object, a moral world whose corruption is a reflection of conflicting political ideologies of the 1970s. Rhythm 0 became an iconic and important piece of performance art that marked a turning point in the art world as the artist entirely submitted her bodily identity and autonomy to the hands of an audience who dangerously exercised an escalating extreme violence, revealing those human cruel potentialities. In a way, Rhythm 0 examines the limits of human consciousness as well as some socio-psychological aspects about humanity, which lead to negative conclusions about human nature and the influence of social constructs on human equation. Following these interpretations, Frazer Ward provides a political dimension, emphasizing the inherent political nature of the art piece (120). In this sense, Ward suggests that the performance is an inherently political piece about power relationships, about the
ownership of the body in relation to the dichotomy between the individual and society. That is, the artist consciously surrendered her bodily ownership to the audience, who, at the same time, divided over whether or not to exert physical and verbal violence on her, creating an ideological breach between those individuals defending the morality of lawfulness and those seeking chaos. By extension, Rhythm 0 presents the body of the artist as a political object that must be contextualized in reference to the violent political climate of the “Years of Lead” (1960s-80s), of an Italy tainted by ideological conflict and civil unrest. Therefore, the surrounding politics show Abramovic’s art work as an inherently political canvas in which the conflicting political ideologies of that time become part of the artist’s body and identity, a violence that is, at the same time, metaphorically extrapolated to the audience in moral terms. In other words, the author’s body, which incites opposite reactions from the audience divided into savagery and civilization, becomes both a political and an unidentified object to be abused that depicts not only the political conflicts of the 1970s, but the premise that, in a corrupted reality where free will is exercised limitlessly, the instinct of savagery arises aided by civilization and thus, when individuals are given the opportunity to exert and “irresponsible authority”, they engage in acts of violence and cruelty.

In conclusion, human nature, the result of thousands of years of evolution, is sometimes divided into a duality between good and evil, savagery and civilization. Both William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 0 are a response to their respective political environments, which provide the ideological dimension upon which the authors try to portray the potentialities of cruelty – a product of both human nature and culture –, breaking the intellectual descriptions of human beings as ethical and responsible instruments. These parables, however, portray human tendencies towards atrocity, towards the use of an “irresponsible power”, through different artistic strategies and aesthetic experiences. Golding’s allegorical novel, by examining the characters’ moral features and establishing a clear division between good and evil through its antagonistic heroes (Ralph and Jack) as a depiction of the clash of the two basic human instincts (the savage instinct and the civilizing instinct), creates a moral word that mirrors the struggle of power and brutal violence during World War II, and in which savagery, the source of cruelty, is an innate human attribute aided by civilization. Regarding Abramovic’s symbolic performance, by transforming the artist’s body into an unidentified but also political object that embodies the political conflicts of the1970s in Italy, which, at the same time, are metaphorically transferred to an audience divided between savagery and civilization, the author expresses the premise that instinctual cruelty emerges hastened by social constructs. Finally, it is worth mentioning that these artworks, despite being sometimes analyzed in universal terms, exist in limited contexts, in their own microcosmos of time, space and gender, and, as a result, they cannot be considered as moral declarations about humanity as a whole, but as artistic reactions to the specific political environments they were produced in.

The Antebellum American Literature – a response to the fears and anxieties that permeated the North American reality – is characterized by an optimism and idealism that exalts the divine in every human being, attempting to consolidate an American identity, an American self based on the affective bonds in a paradox represented by the relationship between the Unum and the Pluribus, a constant tension that deeply influenced the American imagination of the 19th century. As a consequence, these premises led to a profound democratic movement that presents the American experiment as a potential democracy, a political and social vehicle dependent on the organic emotional relationships between the citizens of this idealized equal, social, and biological system. The political and emotional projects of Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman reflect this connection between love and the political, a connection that still pervades our understanding of society, of our obligations towards other individuals as co-citizens as «lovers» in a democracy.

Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience: Breaking the Law against Inmorality

Thoreau, after inscribing – in his work Walden – the invitation for his readers to contemplate those emotional needs or priorities that satisfy their existence in order to live deliberately, proceeds to write a text, Civil Disobedience, in which he highlights a radical individualism whose consciousness, through its caring and kindness to the other, creates a paradoxical tension that defines Thoreau’s political ideal. In Civil Disobedience, due to the impact that the perpetuation of slavery in the American country and a war motivated by geopolitical affairs had on him, thw author introduces the idea that of self-emancipation «within» and not «of,» in which the individual is critical with the piblic discourses that enslave the population the population leading them to live «miserable failures.» Consequently, Thoreau proposes the possibility for the moral action of the individual against the inmoral state or institution. In other words, sovereignty must be found on the individual consciousness, on his/her deliberate and thoughtful life against the power of the intitution. This individual moral action establishes the aforementioned contradiction of the intertwined individualism and altruism. That is, Thoreau prioritizes the individual, but, at the same time, an ultimate altruism that results from a radical individualism that has the moral obligation to intervene with the state, to reform a life that is not devoted to social improvemet. Furthermore, this moral action is the outcome of an empathy that rejects the «banality of evil» (Hannah Arendt), that develops these ethical obligations, breaking with the ideological state apparatuses that hinder the love for the other and shape the understandong of a moral reality. therefore, through these previous claims, the text’s climax revolves around the idea of breaking the law and embracing justice when the former is inmoral, a radical action that would not be possible without loving bonds between the population. In this sense, Thoreau’s political ideal – which not only includes democracy, but a system based on human rights – that emphasized the moral obligations towards the other, the stranger, due to that individuals are independent, but also ontologically co-dependent, which is a social dynamic clearly determined by the caring for the other.

Many of today’s conceptions of sexuality and gender roles derive from the Victorian époque, whose rigid sociocultural prejudices and values became a traditional referent deeply ingrained in the Western societies of the subsequent centuries. The present article seeks to examine the treatment of female sexuality and gender distinctions in the nineteenth century, and the depiction of these social concerns in the Gothic Mode, specifically in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), by providing the historical context of the Victorian age, describing the (sub) genre known as Gothic Mode and its main features, and analyzing the representation of Victorian social principles and anxieties in the aforementioned novels.

The ‘Blue Stocking’ vs The ‘Angel in the House’

The Victorian era (1837-1901) is characterized as a transitional and also liminal period between conventional social doctrines and the rise of a new lifestyle permeated by the increasingly stronger role of science and technology. Over those decades, England underwent a rapid industrial development that would bring about profound societal and economic changes, such as the emergence of the middle-class or bourgeoisie, followed by multiple moral doubts and shaken social beliefs. This age of new scientific knowledge and intellectual criticism forced the Victorian society to question the old aristocratic power and those long-stablished traditional values. Consequently, this political, social and cultural turmoil revealed a growing concern about the redefinition of social classes, sexual identities and gender relationships, leading to the construction of certain fears and anxieties particularly related to female sexuality and women’s role in both the private and the public sphere. Up until the nineteenth century, the subjection of women had been an inherent part of the social standards due to the predominant theory that men and women were physically and mentally built to perform different activities. As a result of what was believed to be a natural separation between both sexes, women were considered physically weaker and less rational, but morally superior and thus best suited for the domestic sphere. The issue of domesticity was a key element in the construction of femininity as a social notion and it was reinforced by the virginal ideal of the ‘Angel in the House’, a concept coined by Coventry Patmore’s 1854 poem, which stablished the feminine model of the domestic deity or spirit, who is the center of the household and also retains her chastity even as wife and mother. The concept of chastity, meaning pure or virginal, manifested itself in the objectification of women’s body as the property of both sociocultural principles and legal system, which strengthened male supremacy. In fact, the strict regulations on female sexuality and behavior were due to the great importance placed on maintaining a family’s lineage. Middle- and upper-class girls were expected to aspire to this feminine ideal and thus they were educated in terms of what was known as accomplishments in order to have the best qualifications to get a good husband and also not to be mistaken for an individual devoted to intellectual pursuits, the so-called unfeminine “blue stocking”. Furthermore, women were not only assumed to be chaste, but “obsessed with their personal appearance, with beauty and fashion”, rather than being rational beings. Therefore, women were educated in the shadow of men as superficial and delicate objects that should desire marriage as it allowed them to become mothers. However, in this marital union, women were suppressed and forbidden from fulfilling any sexual or emotional desire in order to show some semblance of modesty, a behavior that abided by the idea of the sexless female introduced by Dr. Acton’s in his The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs (1857). By extension, women were relegated to certain roles within society under the omnipresent protection of some male figure, usually the father or the husband, and without the possibility of having individuality or personal desire. According to their social standing, Victorian women’s identity was encapsulated and could only be described and formulated through one of the following four terms, which are the concepts of the virgin, the mother, the governess, and the prostitute. It is essential to mention that all these social, cultural and political changes that shaped the Victorian conceptions about sexuality and gender roles, especially female sexuality and identity, had a profound impact on and were reflected in the Gothic Mode.

The Victim vs The Predator

        The Gothic Mode is an art movement originated as a result of the sociocultural changes of the nineteenth century and also as a (sub) genre of Romanticism. It is usually related to those elements that exert awe – in the sense of simultaneous fascination and repulsion – and also to concepts such as alienation, upset time chronologies and the uncanny, which is the process of defamiliarization by which a familiar place becomes unhomely and disturbing. This latter idea explains the particular phenomenon in literature by which many women writers of that time cultivated the Gothic mode with stories that reflected domesticity through the notion that the home is both a shelter and a prison. Most importantly, this transgressive genre explores power relationships in terms of gender and sexuality containing many stories about psychological and physical abuse, perversion and sexual violence. In general terms, Gothic female characters can be divided into two different roles, which are the “victim”, who is defined as fragile and vulnerable; and the “predator”, who represents the sublime, the figure that is both attractive and fearful. This division is also reflected in the separation many scholars have stablished between two gender-based categories, which are the Female and the Male Gothic. Although some critics believe that this model, which was first introduced by the scholar Ellen Moers in 1976, is a construct of the second-wave feminism, it can be, in fact, a helpful classification in order to comprehend the thematic choices in Gothic literature.  A naïve description of what distinguishes both groups is the gender of the writer. However, this division goes beyond a plain binary gender, exploring issues such as sexuality, power and rights equality. Therefore, Female Gothic novels, beyond being generally written by female authors, tend to express the imprisonment Victorian women suffered in the household and in their own body, as well as the inconformity towards a strict patriarchal system (Smith, 2000). Moers presents Anne Radcliffe as the first female author to create a narrative in which the main character is both a heroine and a victim that becomes a model for Female Gothic. On the contrary, Male Gothic is characterized by introducing a negative misogynistic representation of women, who appear as an “unnatural being or monster driven by a psycho-sexual force” (Miles, 2009, p. 78). These arguments lead to the distinction between terror and horror by Ann Radcliffe in her essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” in which she privileges the former as the element that expands the soul and leads readers towards the sublime, while the latter, generally identified with male authors, annihilates those faculties to an elevated life. Therefore, the different characteristics between Female and Male Gothic, as well as between terror- and horror- Gothic, can be found respectively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, two Gothic that depict female identity in antithetical terms.

Frankenstein: the Voice of Women’s Opression

        The following section will describe and analyze the different female characters in Frankenstein and how they are portrayed as part of a strict aristocratic system that shapes their behavior. Characterized by an almost all-pervading male narrative voice, Shelley’s Frankenstein usually conveys the impression that her female characters play an irrelevant role in the story. Nevertheless, it seems contradictory to believe that the daughter of such a prestigious feminist as Mary Wollstonecraft would produce her first literary work with the slightest attention to the female characters and just from the perspectives of three male figures. Conversely, the apparent disdain towards a strong female representation within the narration (or different patched up narratives) allows Mary Shelley to depict with precision and harsh criticism the adverse and peripheral social position of Victorian women in the nineteenth century through the tragic outcome male dominance may bring to society. Following the political, social and cultural contextualization analyzed in the first section, notwithstanding the scientific, technological and intellectual progress driven by the effects of the French Revolution and the First Industrial Revolution, the society in which Mary Shelley and her first novel were linked to was still an age of critical imbalance between both genders. Hence, such a prejudicial society led Shelley to experience difficulties in trying to express herself and achieve a writer status, deciding to first publish Frankenstein without asserting her authorship in 1818. As a result, this female subordination, also underwent by the author, is reflected in the four main female characters, which are Margaret Walton, Elizabeth Lavenza, Justine Moritz and Caroline Beaufort, whose stories are told by male focalizers. For instance, the first female character that emerges in the narration is Margaret Walton, and the fact that she is presented with a passive attitude, which may seem a logical behavior due to her correspondence with his brother as she is not physically present in her sibling’s expedition to the North Pole, establishes a model for the successive introductions of the rest of the female figures in the novel. In a way, Margaret becomes a powerful symbol that sets the male dominance in the novel and through which the reader can comprehend the social position experienced by the rest of the female characters. In the case of Elizabeth Lavenza, she is the ideal instance of a loving woman who has continually been controlled, subjected and forbidden from expressing her desires. This submissive conformity comes from both the influence of her family, which considers her a possession for her future husband (Victor), and from her own deeply ingrained social conventions. It is noteworthy that Caroline, Victor’s mother and Elizabeth’s aunt, is the one that offers her as a present, showing the negative effects Victorian principles had on women as female subordination is so rooted in her mindset that even she acts towards female in such a repressive way. Another example that supports these arguments is the character of Justine Moritz, who, although embodying the ideal of a compliant object, ends up being executed owing to the false accusations of a murder committed, in fact, by a male creature created by another man (Victor), who, despite knowing who the real killer is, selfishly decides to not stand up for her innocence depicting the lack of control Victorian women had over their lives. It is essential to mention that Shelley also subtly declares, as some literary critics (Smafie and Smolka) suggest, that the Victorian strict separation of both genders into different spheres not only has a negative impact on women, but also on men’s lives. In this sense, Shelley presents Victor’s ambitious endeavor to experimentally create life as a neglect of the only edge women have over men, which is the gestation process, due to men’s wish to dominate women driven by the fear of female sexuality. It is also argued that Shelley uses the creature’s voice, even though the latter is defined as a male, in order to denounce Victorian women oppression as both, the author and character, are alienated from society. Therefore, Frankenstein is a sophisticated novel that asserts female value in society as equal as men using an omnipresent male narrative (or narratives) as a parallel with the androcentrism of Victorian times. 

The Vampire: the sexually free ‘New Woman’

        As described in the above contextualization of the nineteenth century, the Victorian era was a transitional period that led to the construction of certain social fears related, for instance, to the contrast between science and superstition, the Foreign, female sexuality and homosexuality, and the rise of the so-called New Woman. All these sociocultural anxieties are present in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). However, this fourth and last part will consider the depiction of female sexuality as a feared change of the traditional gender roles through the significance of blood and the ideal of the New Woman in the novel. The former concept, blood, is an essential body fluid that has been considered, throughout history, a cultural symbol for family identity, as well as for sexual desire and destruction. This substance becomes one of the motifs that Stoker uses as a powerful symbol of sexual intercourse, which can be analyzed through the characters of Lucy, Mina and the Weird Sisters. For instance, Lucy Westenra’s sexual desire is represented through her medical condition, which is caused by the loss of blood under Dracula’s power. This fusion of fluids from different origins confronts Victorian beliefs against intermixing bloods of diverse ethnic groups. Furthermore, the blood transfusions that Lucy undergoes, which always involve male donators in the novel, symbolize the previously mentioned coitus and are used by Stoker in order to depict the fact that Victorian women began to be concern about their own sexual pleasure as a rightful voluptuous and also promiscuous behavior. Therefore, the fact that Lucy is given blood by several men implies the notion that this female character is a sexually free woman who threatens Victorian principles. Consequently, Lucy, who becomes what is known as a Sexually Liberated Woman, must be exterminated, in this case, by driving a stake through her heart. This event shows the repulsion towards female sexual appetite and how women lacked the power to control their sexual lives. Another example of this attack on Victorian beliefs regarding blood impurity is the passage in which Mina is beaten and thus sexually abused (raped) by Dracula, who embodies the figure of the Foreign, the threatening Other whose main purpose is to profane Victorian women’s virtue, among other intentions, revealing their true nature. Another instance of this opposition to Victorians sexual prejudices is embodied by the Weird Sisters, also called the Brides of Dracula, who, after trying to seduce Jonathan Harker, emphasize the concern about female sexual desires through this attempt of a reversed sexual abuse. In this sense, all these scenes are clearly related by the underlying ideal of the New Woman, which can be analyzed through the transformations experienced by Mina and Lucy due to the influence of Dracula. By the late Victorian age, the idea of the New Woman emerged as a description of those women who would claim equal educational, labor and voting rights in order to be able to decide over their personal and professional life. The two above mentioned female characters represent the ideal of the New Woman, although in complete opposite ways. On the one hand, Mina is described as a virginal and sensible woman that embodies the figure of a moderate New Woman, the one that is able to integrate both tradition and modernity without rejecting the Victorian values as she is finally able to overcome Dracula’s seduction and welcome her submissive role. On the other hand, Lucy is described as a disobedient and sensual woman who also embodies the figure of the New Woman, but, in this case, portrays the aspiration for sexual equality, which threatens Victorian conventional gender roles, by being seduced and transformed into a living dead, a vampire driven by sexual desire. As a result, Lucy, as well as the Weird Sisters, is defined as a monster, both attractive and repulsive, that must be killed in order to preserve the patriarchal system. To conclude this section, Stoker’s Dracula depicts the Victorian fears and anxieties towards a changing social organization, and shows, as a warning to female readers, the fatal consequences of being flirtatious and promiscuous.

The Subordinated ‘Other’

      The Victorian age was a time of deep social, political and cultural changes that aroused fears and anxieties particularly towards female sexuality and the instability of the traditional gender roles. This context influenced the emergence of the Gothic Mode, which is sometimes divided into Female and Male Gothic. Furthermore, this categorization is respectively related to the distinction between Terror- and Horror-Gothic, which show different literary motifs and themes depending on the personal gendered experiences of the authors. This differentiation between Female and Male Gothic, as well as between terror and horror, can be analyzed through the opposite representations of female social and sexual identity in Shelley’s Frankenstein, which is considered a Terror- and Female-Gothic novel, and Stoker’s Dracula, which may be classified as a Horror- and Male-Gothic literary work. In this sense, the former, written by a woman, subtly and indirectly denounces female subordination under male dominance through the metaphorical absence of female strong voices in the novel. On the contrary, Dracula is an explicit and direct depiction of the social fears towards the freedom of female sexuality and, although introducing modern elements, a clear misogynistic statement that emphasizes the protection of Victorian principles. Therefore, while men feared the Other as a sexually free woman, women dreaded the domestic environment as the unhomely prison that subordinated their freedom.