February 28, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my newest book! You can get it on Amazon, Bloomsbury and other on-line sites

In my previous posting, I argued that H. P. Lovecraft’s theory of devolution derives, in part, from  Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Lovecraft was also influenced by  Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of  Dorian Gray, written around the same time.

The plot is fairly well-known: Dorian Gray, a beautiful young man, wishes that he could stay young and beautiful while his portrait ages.  He gets his wish; he looks exactly the same for twenty years; the painting, however, grows old and ugly.

Dorian complicates the issue by living a terrible, evil life—he commits murder and he drives men as well as women to suicide.  The portrait reveals Dorian’s inner corruption and it ends up looking even worse than simply an ugly, old man; it looks like a  misshapen, degenerate monster—a half-human, half simian monster.

At the end of the book, Dorian can no longer stand seeing himself like this and he stabs the portrait; the painting  becomes beautiful again, but Dorian dies, and he leaves behind  the ugly, deformed body of his alter ego—much as  Jekyll in death left behind the hideous body of Hyde.

The moral of Wilde’s story is the same as Stevenson’s: devolution is stronger than evolution!

The themes of degeneration and devolution are also central to Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula.  And this goes for J. Sheridan Le
Fanu’s equally famous novel Carmilla.   We shall look at these books in my next two postings.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107706/

JLS

February 16, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my newest book: Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, available on Amazon, Bloomsbury, and other online booksellers!

You can read all about Lovecraft’s theory of evolution, which reveals a fear on his part that degeneration is a stronger force than development; that human beings can more easily devolve than they can evolve. Lovecraft’s theory derives, in part, from Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), a book that Lovecraft was very familiar with.

Mr. Hyde is described by numerous characters in the novel as “deformed” or “degenerate.”  When  Jekyll transforms into Hyde, this can be interpreted as a devolution from a higher form of life into a lower one.  Over the course of Jekyll’s transformations, Hyde begins to dominate Jekyll, such that Jekyll finds it increasingly difficult to make the transition back to his integrated self.

Finally, in the climax, Jekyll cannot return to being Jekyll; frustrated, he commits suicide and dies.  Interestingly, however, Jekyll still cannot break free; the dead body that remains is Hyde’s body.  The transformation is permanent, even in death.

Here, Stevenson is making the same argument that Lovecraft makes in his hybrid, degenerative monster tales: devolution is stronger than evolution!

In my next two postings, I will examine two additional Victorian horror masterpieces that inspired Lovecraft’s evolutionary theories: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/

JLS

February 9, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my recent book,  Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales!

In my last posting, I talked about Lovecraft’s racist, polygenetic theory of  evolution.  Lovecraft argues that  Anglo-Saxons and the other white races, who are genuine human beings, are descended from advanced types of apes.  In contrast,  blacks and the lesser races are descended from lower, less evolved apes. Therefore, blacks and whites are  separate species and blacks should not be considered as human beings.

In his fictional works, especially in the early works—the tales that I refer to as the hybrid, degenerative monster tales—Lovecraft carries this argument even further.

He suggests that when it comes to separate, but similar species such as blacks and whites, there is a built-in genetic barrier that excludes members of the “lower” species from becoming members of the “higher” species.  However, the reverse is not true— members of the higher species can move between the barriers  and de-evolve if they so desire, but this will force them to leave their “humanity” behind.

You can read all about Lovecraft’s theory of de-evolution and how he uses it to justify his xenophobic political beliefs in Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft!

In my next posting, I will examine one of Lovecraft’s main sources for his views about de-evolution—Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/

JLS