by Emily Miranda
Introduction
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein paved the way for the art-horror genre, introducing one of literature’s most iconic monsters. Acceptance and companionship are withheld from the creature throughout the novel, pushing him to unspeakable acts of revenge due to the inability of mankind to reconcile with anyone deemed to be other. “The other” in Shelley’s novel is Frankenstein’s monster, a creature incapable of acceptance because of his terrifying visage. As well as influencing the development of the horror genre in the early 19th century, Shelley comments on our human nature to identify “the other” and unwillingness to accept such individuals. Hanya Yanagihara’s 2016 novel A Little Life presents a modern narrative of a man unable to reconcile with his horrific past and overcome with self-hatred over the horrific acts of abuse committed against him. This novel demonstrates a new form of horror that reflects our collective idea of horror. Physical deformity has continued to be an othering factor in the modern perception, but Yanagihara's A Little Life describes the psychological damage and trauma associated with modern monstrosity as it has evolved since Shelley's Frankenstein. These works reflect the evolution of our shared idea of otherness from purely visual repulsion to our modern perception of otherness in the weak, abused, and the unknown, as well as how each work depicts an individual’s reaction to othering.
The Art-Horror Genre
Frankenstein paved the way for the art-horror genre as it emerged in the early 19th century. Noel Carroll developed a working theory to define art-horror in his paper The Nature of Horror. As he defined it, art-horror encompasses the “combination of terror and disgust” (Carroll, 54) we feel towards the “monster” of the story. As opposed to just horror itself, art-horror evokes the same fear that horror attempts to, while also manipulating its audience to believe that the monstrous subject of the story is a real and tangible threat to us. We see how Frankenstein informs Carroll’s description when Dr. Frankenstein first beholds his creation. He exclaims that “breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 58). Novels such as Frankenstein evoke a unique type of fear within the audience as well as the characters interacting with the story’s source of horror. Dr. Frankenstein, upon seeing his creation, immediately makes every effort to put as much physical distance between himself and the monster as possible. He is possessed not only by fear, but overwhelming repulsion and revulsion. Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, while iconic and legendary within the horror genre, is hardly considered the most horrifying image to a modern audience. We have long since moved past monsters such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and zombies keeping us awake at night. Those classic monsters that categorize art-horror are no longer as terrifying as they used to be. A Little Life is not art-horror, nor is it horror. However, the qualities of this novel align strikingly with many components of Carrol's art-horror theory. The novel, throughout its entirety, evokes a sense of disgust and uncleanliness as the events unfold and more about Jude, the central protagonist, and his traumatic past is revealed. That physical response of disgust along with a feeling of impurity are both characteristics Carroll found to be representative of art-horror works. A Little Life is not art-horror, but it is terrifying far beyond the horror that a classic monster could bring about today. Among critics and readers, A Little Life has been dubbed “torture porn.” Jude is subjected to seemingly endless trials, from childhood sexual abuse, forced prostitution, sexual diseases, and continued sexual abuse throughout his adult years. Not only is it emotionally trying to watch this character constantly be subjected to the worst actions one can subject another human being to, but also to imagine suffering through that trauma ourselves. As our social consciousness of issues such as abuse and trauma expand, they are represented more in our art. It feels like a new kind of horror, one drastically different to Frankenstein.
Physical Deformity and Acceptance
One of the driving forces behind Dr. Frankenstein’s and the audience’s disgust with the creature is his jarring physical deformation. Jude, by comparison, was crippled when he was hit by a car as a teenager and walked on crutches since then. His deformity is not as impactful in other character’s perceptions of him as the creature’s deformity is. Both Yanagihara and Shelley express this physical deformity as a central othering feature in their respective perceptions. Where they diverge are the exact way in which that deformity manifests. In the creature’s case, Frankenstein describes the creature’s form once he had succeeded in bringing life to it as a “demoniacal corpse” and “a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived” (Shelley 59). The perfect image of horror here is a form so hideous that it hardly appears to be of this world; it is a hellish form. For Jude, his othering characteristics stretched far beyond his disability.
Frankenstein’s monster, as it is continuously reinforced throughout the novel, is barred from his desire for acceptance purely due to his outward appearance of deformity. In his time observing the De Lacey family, he says, “The more I saw of them, the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness” (Shelley 134). The creature first approached the old man, as he was blind and could not see the creature’s “unnatural hideousness” (Shelley 134). The old man says when talking to the creature, “there is something in your words which persuades me that you are sincere” (Shelley 136) yet this belief in the creature’s sincerity dissipates once the old man’s family reveals the creature’s horrific appearance. The creature’s acceptance is proved to be impossible in Frankenstein’s narrative. A Little Life explores a similar theme of acceptance; however, Yanagihara shows “the other” being accepted and still incapable to deal with his identity as an individual seen as monstrous to society. Jude first experiences friendship with his college roommates, Willem, Malcolm and JB, who would become his life-long friends. However, he remains closed off in all of his friendships, never revealing the nature of his past, because “to do so would be an admission of extreme otherness” (Yanagihara 106). Like Frankenstein’s creature attempting to gain the De Lacey family’s friendship, he masks the horror of his condition for fear of being deemed other. This attempt to mask the horror of one’s condition, whether a physical deformity or the horror of past trauma, is perhaps the only way these two individuals are able to experience acceptance from a world that labels them as other. The creature could momentarily hide his deformity and Jude is able to avoid speaking on his past with his closest friends. The creature viewed his hideous visage as the single, unbreachable barrier blocking his ability to be accepted. Jude’s less visible qualities appear to be the ones that he believes bar him from true acceptance. It is true that, throughout the entirety of the novel, Jude does not tell any of his friends, other than Willem, about his past sexual abuse or the accident that led to his disability. Jude believes that the acceptance from his friends is conditional, in that so long as he is able to mask the extent of his trauma, they can treat him normally. Each of these individuals’ acceptance to society is dependent on masking their own nature. This idea is critical both to Shelley’s commentary on human nature and the truth of modern society’s treatment of the other. It also suggests that, in the case of both characters, true acceptance is not possible. Although this is fairly apparent in Frankenstein, Jude’s character carries the illusion of a type of acceptance in which he shares only a fraction of his whole self.
The Horror of Psychological Trauma
Monstrosity in modern society—and Yanagihara’s protagonist—has moved past the physical into the psychological realm. Jude’s psychological trauma causes him to devolve into a world of self-harm and cyclical punishment for a horrific condition forced upon him. His trauma extends so deeply that it is impossible to have Jude without his trauma, as it is impossible to have the creature without his physical deformity. Jude’s story highlights the still-present stigma around mental illness and those who are victims of abuse. One of the most jarring aspects of Jude’s experience throughout the novel is his relationship with self-harm. His use of self-harm, beginning before he even reached his teenage years and spanning well into his forties, was ever-present in Jude’s life. Each time the audience is confronted with this, it becomes more horrifying and unbearable to watch as he subjects himself to worse and worse self-mutilation. It becomes horrifying to imagine the mental state Jude must have after years of unimaginable abuse that leads him to commit these acts of self-punishment. Frankenstein solely emphasizes society’s repulsion towards those deemed other due to outward appearance, while A Little Life highlights how our modern perception of the other and what collectively horrifies us has changed to encompass a deep fear of psychological otherness. That is not to say that those suffering from mental disorders were not treated as other, in both reality and literature, during Shelley’s period. In fact, they were treated even more so as abnormal and outsiders to respectable society. However, what Yanagihara attempts to demonstrate through Jude is the modern epitome of otherness. What was the most terrifying to an audience during Shelley’s time was a monster, while we are horrified by the much more real fear of experiencing a life like Jude’s.
Othering
These two works show radically different relationships between the protagonists and their “creators.” The creature exclaims, “Accursed creator! Why did you form a creature so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?” (Shelley 133). The creature abhors Frankenstein for cursing him with his own miserable existence. He believes that his creator’s pain will “satisfy [his] everlasting hatred” (Shelley 209). This reaction to otherness forced upon the creature, in which the results of that abuse are projected onto the abuser, is entirely different from Jude’s reaction to his abuse. Jude was forced into prostitution as an adolescent by the man he believed to be his savior, a priest called Brother Luke who helped Jude escape the monastery he grew up in. Yanagihara details Jude’s struggle to reconcile with his belief that “Luke’s legacies were in everything he did, in everything he was” while simultaneously knowing that “his cutting, his hatred, his shame, his fears, his diseases—those were Luke too” (Yanagihara 480). He struggles to separate the horror of the condition forced upon him and is unable to remove blame from himself. Jude “had visions of taking an ice pick and jamming it through his ear, into his brain, to stop the memories” (Yanagihara 441). We see Jude’s hatred manifest in his own person, forcing a self-image of uncleanliness and the belief that he is responsible for his exile. These two reactions to exile from normality—projection onto one’s abuser and internalization of blame—contrast radically within these two characters. Although seemingly opposite, they contribute to the full picture of our reactions to otherness when forced upon us. Shelley’s novel centers on the human reaction to trauma with outward anger, violence and indignation while Yanagihara explores how trauma manifests itself in the form of the abused through self-punishment and mutilation.
Conclusion
Yanagihara and Shelley both explore the experience of “the other” in modern society. Both aimed to comment on the conditional acceptance these individuals experience as a result of masking the true self. Where they diverge is their depiction of how their respective societies would manifest the concept of otherness. In Shelley’s Frankenstein, the purest form of otherness was an almost hellish creature with a physically horrifying presence. Yanagihara’s manifestation of otherness in Jude combined our shared fear and rejection of those with abuse, trauma, as well as physical deformity. These works demonstrate how the modern perception of what is horrifying has changed since the early 19th century. Horror has moved beyond the realm of scary monsters and into deep explorations of the real fears that plague society, such as abuse, self-harm, and mental illness. These representations are complementary and, when compared, allow for a more complete analysis of how the image of the other has evolved over time.
Works Cited
Carroll, Noël. “The Nature of Horror.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 46, no.
1, 1987, pp. 51–59. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/431308. Accessed 15 Apr. 2021.
Shelley, M. (2013). Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus. London, England: Penguin
Group.
Yanagihara, H. (2016). A Little Life. NY, NY: Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random
House LLC.