Very late to the party, but that MA thesis on Jonathan and Mina's gender presentation that circulated on Tumblr some time ago (Jonathan, Mina, and the Holiest Love: Intimations of a virtuous queerness in Dracula (1897) by Viktor Karlsen Hessen) really is so, so good. From a deep dive into Jonathan as a Gothic heroine, complete with step-by-step comparisons with an actual Ann Radcliffe's heroine as well as the other female characters he's paralleled with in the text - Scheherazade and Lenore - to an exploration of how Mina's masculine traits are treated as positive throughout the novel and survive into the ending. Also, the author is very careful and rational when talking about Stoker's personal views and sexuality, neither jumping to conclusions based on a few facts nor disregarding those facts at all.
Also, there's a section comparing Mina to other female characters in Gothic literature who do not act in accordance with the Victorian gender norms but are punished for that - Helen Vaughan from The Great God Pan and Marjorie Lindon from The Beetle, and I personally am 1) always there for some The Great God Pan talk, 2) always there for dragging The Beetle.
I can't believe this exists and I make no promises as to its quality (such as it could be) having just started to listening to it myself but by golly I had to share
A couple of months ago now, I, through my own volition, got victimized by best selling book of the 1890's, Richard Marsh's 'THE BEETLE' I was under the asumption--- foolishly, that this was a work of political intrigue, gothicism and strange forces messing with London. What i got was a very unintentionally humorous discount Dracula, with insane characters and surprising Victorian slang (yes, it’s canon: a character calls someone’s house a “crib”).
Let's just say i had a good time. Down below I discuss some of my thoughts on the novel and my design.
Read more on the design and other thoughts!
One character i was partcularly taken with is the book's namesake! heavily summarised 'The Beetle', is a shapeshifting scarab type creature/person out for revenge due to bad past liasons with a famous british politician of the time....! what drama.
Unfortunately Marsh's predjudice does show strongly in his writing, this book and several of the other books he has written feature heavily the theme of 'foreign invasion' and the dangerous seductive and primitive nature of 'the other' particularly those in what at the time was called the 'oriental region'. (it's alarming how many times he wrote the same book if just judging by the abstract, makes me feel like he has a thing for this lol...)
Marsh clearly harbors the obviously racist views of his time and some may find the book difficult to read because of this. Beetle is treated without much nuance: the discriptions in the book are a clear give away the writing leans heavily into stereotype, which is a shame, March actively forgoes interesting plotlines and twists by leaning in to his dogma. I wish he had touched on so much more than just 'egypt thingy bad.' The potential was there.
Hence why i like to feature the character in my own universe. The design I have drawn up for Beetle here depicts them as the form they take as 'the woman of songs', not the form Beetle appears in for most of the novel. Which i haven't seen anyone do yet. I took Dick's discriptions with a grain of salt and have hopefully brought them to life in a more nuanced way.
FEATURES
The book does not give a discription for the woman of songs, but it's reasonably assumed that she and Beetle are the same person. Therefore i presumed that her facial features should be a more youthful (and less stereotypically exagerated) version of Beetle's.
Beetle has a soft, rounded face with a prominent but gentle aquiline nose, full lips, and naturally curly hair styled in a loose updo distinct from Victorian fashions. Her skin is a rich ochre, and her striking amber-yellow eyes are shaped to subtly echo the Eye of Horus symbol. You can see on her hand crawling tiny scarabs, they are a part of her.
When creating her costume i imagined her in her WOS persona to be well situated, having access to wealth because of her affiliation with other characters in my story.
COSTUME
This is the garment of a prietstess and idol. The general silhoutte follows the standard trendy shape for the mid 1880s and is egyptian revival themed.
Segmentation; when drawing up initial ideas in my mind, i was reminded of another insect like woman; Coraline's Beldam. i carried it over to Beetle with her outfit divided distinctly into three sections.
Chitin plating and elytra; Scarabs have a chitin exoskeleton you can see the bolero mimics this plated look .
The elytra, these are the armoured bits that cover the insects wings, is seen in the draping of the skirt bustle. This actually worked extra well because this is honestly very reminiscent of ancient egyptian headdresses with falcon wings. Happy accidents.
Colour and materials; Real scarabs shimmer with structural pigments, giving them iridescent greens and golds which I tried to mimic with satin fabric. The skirt bustle is layered over cooler blue tones for depth. Underlayers are wool, the garment is worn in England.
Embelishment;
-The Scarab is literally present, if you look closely you can see a scarab lace shape at the base of the neck. Scarabs roll dung balls and in Egyptian Mythos, this was seen as sun imagery. In Beetle's case the sun is represented by a bold carnelian brooch. The lace even has the falcon's wings and was directly inspired by Tutankhamun's Lapis Scarab amulet.
-The bodice embroidery hints with an abstract rib cage design at the asociations of scarabs with death and rebirth.
- The cord you can see dangeling at the hips i added to suggest an even more exotic look.
- On the hem you can see what is a directly borrowed 19th century egyptian revival wallpaper pattern.
Beetle is a creation from the ancient world now unearthed by the forces of the modern era. In my story, her character explores themes of 19th century archaeological greed, colonial manipulation, the exploitation of local women by foreign men, human sacrifice in the ancient world and the influence of Egyptian Revivalism on cult worship during the period.
Her special abilities include hypnotism and shape-shifting. Beetle’s body is composed of countless tiny scarab like creatures; with the faintest flutter of their wings, she can assume another human form. Once transformed, her assumed identity functions similarly to a false hydra, concealing her true nature and influencing the memory and will power of those around her.
When Robert Holt in Richard Marsh’s Gothic novel, The Beetle (1897), exclaims that to be mesmerised is to be ‘unmanned’ and rendered ‘impoten[t],’ he is pointing to a system of thought, already one hundred years in existence, which characterises susceptibility to trance as a sign of mental and moral weakness.
So I've heard quite a bit about Richard "Em Dash" Marsh and his book The Beetle, but I've been quite curious: What elements about it are compelling? I refuse to read the book itself (made that mistake with... other gothic-based media (Damn you, Moore), so I was curious about your thoughts on it?
I think it's just the sheer amount of wasted opportunity for metaphor left laying around. Like, I know everyone likes to call it "Dracula but so much shittier," but I've always seen more resemblance to Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," and not just for the insect element.
The two characters we're introduced to as (mistaken) protagonist and antagonist are Robert Holt and the Beetle. Holt is a clerk who lost his job, applied everywhere after, followed all the rules he was taught to trust in, certain that society would naturally play as fairly with him...only to find himself homeless and starved and refused entrance even to a shelter because it was too full. He watches on in mingled surprise and envy as a fellow vagrant blithely breaks a window and waits to be arrested, thrown in jail for the sake of shelter from the rain.
Robert Holt does not throw a brick with him. Robert Holt is too shackled by his ingrained sense of If I Follow the Rules, If I am a Good Citizen, I Will be Helped.
He isn't. He walks away into the rain, still starving, still scraped off the edge of society, shooed like vermin. He reaches the Beetle's home with its window ajar. He slinks in.
And then is immediately preyed on by the Beetle, his free will suddenly ripped away, ordered to strip and walk and talk and die and live and rob and generally be violated on every mental and external level. He is literally so low as to be overpowered and stepped on by an insect.
But Holt isn't immune to his own (read: Marsh's) callousness. He refers to the Beetle, who is an Egyptian visitor here for revenge reasons, in some fairly ugly terms. How much we can shrug off as being a fear/disgust response versus being Conditioned to Other Anyone Not Anglo-Saxon Enough is up in the air in-universe.
The frustration here is that between this opening and the future cast members' rancid treatment of Holt, who tries to help and warn them, and of the Beetle, met with disdain simply for being a foreigner in England before one chitinous move can be made, there could have been SO MUCH to play with in terms of...
Human beings reduced to pests not worth dignity or care because they are Poor, they are Homeless, they are the Lowest Rung of Society, they are Foreign, they are Dirty and Different from What's White Right
The examination of in-fighting of 'verminous' people. Figurative insects living underfoot in supposedly civilized countries, now preying on and demeaning each other rather than extending the empathy they were never shown by polite*** society
Spotlighting the brutality and villainous aspects of our group of well-to-do "heroes", the main cast being mixed up in building genocidal weapons and plotting asylum stays for romantic rivals and hypocrisy and so many layers of bigotry it makes your eyes ache
A better version of the story in which the aforementioned genocidal weapon, a killer gas to be used on South America for some fucking reason, becomes the focus of the story--bonus points for the accidental 'bug spray' comparison to be made--with the potential of the Beetle and Holt switching tracks from singular vengeance and/or the desperate thwarting of this fruition; knowing that the existence of such a thing would be a prelude to 'dealing with the vermin problem' on a terrifying scale. Perhaps by making use of a new kind of 'shelter.' The insects become the heroes, the polished creme of England now turned to fertilizer.
...a better version that might have Holt ending the story with his own metamorphosis, but as a Gregor Samsa with actual strength and will of his own, and acceptance waiting for him on the other side of the change.
But no.
Richard Dickard Marsh couldn't be bothered to reach beyond squeezing out a Sydney Atherton-shaped turd onto the typewriter and calling it done.
It's so, so, SO goddamn infuriating as a storyteller to find the seeds for something that would have been amazing and groundbreaking, especially for its time period, only to see the whole thing salted and burned until all that's left is racist caricatures, a trashfire of a plot, and the most eye-watering syntax ever put to paper.
