Mercury (a novella) and critical essay, Cycles of Sickness: the role of the abject in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde and the Millennial Zombie Outbreak Narrative

Abstract

This thesis questions how sociocultural anxieties are evoked through representations of the abject in the horror genre. Two interlinked components – a creative piece and a critical essay – form this analysis of the abject in horror texts, and its reflection of broader, and recurring, concerns in a cultural context. Evaluating deeply held sociocultural fears and concerns, as they emerge through horror texts at the turn of the century (fin-de-siecle and millennial), has resulted in the identification of shared preoccupations at these times. These include fear of disintegration of the self and loss of individual agency, fear of invasion, the collapse of society, and an overall loss of purpose and order. These themes are expressed through the literature of both these periods as states of madness, infection, and degradation. This research locates the zombie resurgence in the gothic, rationalising the cyclical nature of millennial sociocultural anxieties, and the way these can be mapped through extant horror texts. A focus on the gothic and its perennial expression of sociocultural anxieties serves to draw parallels between Victorian and millennial horror narratives, demonstrating a historical continuity with its culmination in the hollowed-out walking dead of modern-day zombie apocalypse narratives. The reflexive activity of simultaneously writing horror fiction while investigating this process exposes and amplifies the compulsion towards the abject of both horror writers and audiences, whether these are subconscious or otherwise.The creative component is a horror novella, set in an abandoned asylum on a remote island. Jack wakes to find that he is imprisoned in the Facility, his memory wiped, his identity a mystery. A contagious virus has devastated his hometown, transforming the population into berserk beings, afflicted with a degenerative skin condition. In an effort to contain the outbreak, authorities have removed affected citizens to the safety of the Facility. The Facility staff keep Jack and his fellow patients suspended in a chemically induced twilight, while a team of scientists and medics, under the supervision of their controller Dr. Omar Bain, work diligently at finding a cure. Soon after his admission, Jack encounters Hadwin, a mysterious, eccentric sage who warns him of more sinister motivations behind the Facility’s operation. With the aid of a third ally, Jack and Hadwin uncover the Facility’s dark secrets and determine to overthrow Bain and his colleagues. Throughout the novella, abjection is explored through the recurring motif of the contagious and degenerative skin condition. There is gradual, and grotesque, movement from corporeality to formlessness (a point of departure that Bataille describes in his philosophy of formlessness, l’Informe, and which Kristeva imagines as being the transgression of corporeal boundaries). This explicit abjection is accompanied by a persistent sense of isolation and disconnectedness – a sense of otherness, experienced both personally and interpersonally. This psychoanalytical concept is commonly found in horror narratives, and particularly the gothic subgenre represented in Mercury. The critical essay examines the role of the abject in horror and connections between fin-de-siecle horror fiction and millennial zombie outbreak narratives. I have selected Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Zack Snyder’s 2004 reimagining of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead as representatives of these respective narratives; and, through a close reading of these texts, I explore the sociocultural anxieties they reflect. Kristeva’s work underpins my exploration of the boundaries and breakdowns experienced by consumers of horror texts as they willingly seek opportunities to engage with the abject. My research finds that certain horror tropes persist at times of sociocultural stress, and that audiences at the turn of a century, especially, consume horror narratives in order to engage with and process their core anxieties. Horror consumers synthesise and apprehend such fears as moral decline, social disenfranchisement and inadequacy, cynicism about emerging technology, and distrust of the Other through the complex mechanisms involved in abjection’s interplay.