Greetings Everyone!
My new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft:
White Fragility in the Weird Tales, was recently published by Bloomsbury, the
foremost academic publisher in the United States and in the United Kingdom!
I hope that all of you will pick up a copy; you can
order it online from the publishers and, of course, from Amazon and other
online booksellers around the world. The
book is also available in bookstores here in the states as well as overseas.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/
Lovecraft’s theory of evolution reveals a fear on his
part that degeneration is a stronger force than development; that human beings
can more easily degenerate than they can regenerate. 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 who get a close look at him 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 of the novel, Jekyll cannot
return to being Jekyll, and 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 seems to be making the same argument
that Lovecraft makes in his hybrid, degenerative monster tales: degeneration is
a stronger force than regeneration.
Or, to put it more bluntly, devolution is stronger
than evolution!
JLS
