Oscar Wilde Trial Cartoons

Artifact: Newspaper Cover Cartoon from 1895

“The Illustrated Police News” was a newspaper published in England from 1864 to 1938. It reported on crimes and proceedings in the legal system. People were interested in such proceedings so naturally a tabloid, one of the first of it’s kind developed. It was considered very sensationalist. It was known to contain overdramatic reports of the incidents it reported on which were meant to entertain readers. It also had very graphically drawn  images of cases and their aftermaths.

Homosexual activity was illegal/criminalized and considered mostly improper and not something high society or Britain should be associated with. The general attitude was generally more lenient than some eras in some history but there were still many men persecuted and eventually sent to prison. Many convicts committed suicide which led to many trying to “protect” their sons from corrupting influences. There were many studies of human sexuality during this era but people were just beginning to understand its complexities.

Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and playwright who was well respected in England. Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry who was the father of Lord Alfred Douglas, a lover of Wilde’s, on the charges of “criminal libel” after he left a note for Wilde claiming he had been “posing as a sodomite". Queensberry was acquitted as his claim was not false since Douglas had been arranging Wilde several meetings with male prostitutes. Wilde was soon after charged with “gross indecency” with men following the Queensberry case. Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years of hard manual labor. He was in prison between May 25, 1895 and May 18, 1897. Prison life was not kind to him and his failing health. He left England forever upon his release and died 3 years later in France.Wilde was eventually pardoned in 2017. Despite Wilde's reputation, when people began to see him as "other" his popularity meant nothing since Britain's government was obsessed with keeping the nation "pure". Wilde's homosexuality cast him out of regular society. 


Seeing how horribly his friend and college was treated, Bram Stoker used Dracula to safely express his frustration with society as a whole as it had allowed this to happen to Wilde. It is highly suspected that Stoker personally related to Wilde's plight and feared for himself as well as other writers. He was frustrated with his own internal struggles with sexuality. Dracula reflects this in it's many rejections of modern society and it's parody of how people view any form of other, particularly sexual others. 


Quotes From Dracula:

“It is nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere "modernity" cannot kill.” (63)

“A year ago which of us would have received such a possibility, in the midst of our scientific, matter-of-fact nineteenth century?” (278)

“There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina's eyes and cause her pain; but it is the truth.” (69)

The fair girl went on her knees, and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. (71)

Stoker is almost parodying the way the British Empire was so set on being straight laced and British. The novel reflects how Stoker would have seen people being afraid of the status quo being challenged and those who were not like them gaining power over them.  Even upstanding citizens were at risk if they did not conform. Stoker didn’t want modern society to take over if it was going to hurt people he respected like Wilde.

'”This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with me.' The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him:-
'You yourself never loved; you never love!' On this the other women joined, and... a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room... Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper:-
'Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so?' " (70-71)

This is often referred to as so called “homoerotic subtext”. Weather or not this is necessarily a reflection of Stoker’s internal issues it is almost certainly a critique of the strange ways society viewed gender and sexuality as the measure of a person. All portrayal of sexuality in the novel would be considered strange and excessive to assist in this critique.

Discussion Questions:

How do you think images in such publications influenced public opinion of criminal investigations?

How does Wilde’s treatment reflect how anyone who did not fit the mold of what was “properly British”, even if they had once been respected?

How to Bram Stoker’s portrayals of vampires reflect people’s perception of sexuality in modern society? Does Stoker’s portrayal of sexual other reflect an internal struggle with himself as well as with society?

Works Cited:

Archive, The British Newspaper.  Register | British Newspaper Archive. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2017.

Beckson, Karl. "Oscar Wilde." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 21 Aug. 2017. Web. 21 Nov. 2017.

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Bram Stoker." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 12 Apr. 2017. Web. 21 Nov. 2017.

Schaffer, Talia. ""A Wilde Desire Took Me": The Homoerotic History of Dracula." ELH. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 01 June 1994. Web. 21 Nov. 2017.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Edited by Glennis Byron, Broadview Press, 2000

The New Woman and Stereographs

Cover of Puck Magazine

The Artifact

Puck Magazine was an American publication founded by an Austrian born cartoonist, Joseph Keppler. It started off as a German language publication in 1876. Puck’s first English language edition was printed in 1877. This cover of Puck magazine was published September 21, 1888 at the height of the hysteria surrounding Jack the Ripper. It shows the back of a man who holds a bloody knife, Jack, looking at several drawings of what people thought he would have looked life. The bottom reads “Jack the Ripper. Who is he? What is he? Where is he?”  

Background of Jack the Ripper

In the 1880’s Britain experienced a large influx of immigrants from Ireland, Jewish refugees, and other foreigner’s from Eastern Europe. They mostly congregated in the slums of the East End by the parish of Whitechapel. This area became very overcrowded with the lower class, and there became a high population of low class prostitutes. On March 12, 1888 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde debuted as a play, and in late August of 1888 the first Ripper murder happened. Jack the Ripper sent a collection of letters to the police mocking them for not being able to catch him. He has 5 confirmed victims, and there are 6 murders after the canonical five that were never fully confirmed to be his. The media was a big part for establishing the famous idea that Jack the Ripper was at least a middle class man, making it easy for him to get away from the crime scenes. The police believed that it was a foreign man, most likely a Jewish man or a middle eastern. Jack the Ripper’s case has become one of the most famous serial killer stories of all time. He has showed up in many works of literature, movies, and television shows.

Media Sources and Quotes

New York Times

“There is a bare possibility that it may tun out to be something like the case of Jekyll and Hyde, as Joseph Taylor, a perfectly reliable man, who saw the suspected person this morning in a shabby dress, swears that he has seen the same man coming out of a lodging house in Wilton street very differently dressed….What adds to the weird effect they exert on the London mind is the fact that they occur while everyone is talking about Mansfield’s “Jekyll and Hyde” at the Lyceum.”

The London Times

“The series of shocking crimes perpetrated in Whitechapel, which on Saturday culminated in the murder of the woman Chapman, is something so distinctly outside the ordinary range of human experience… this murderer’s brutish savagery.”

Jekyll and Hyde

“God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say?” (42)

“Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness…” (41)

“Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport if glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight in every blow.” (87)

“The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hate that now divided them was equal on each side.” (91)

Jack the Ripper and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Jack the Ripper has been compared to Jekyll and Hyde many times through history. If we go back to the New York Times article a witness reported seeing a man in shabby clothes go into a lodging station and then come out “very differently dressed.” (New York Times) Although the police had the idea that the suspect was a foreigner, even though there was not a lot of evidence supporting that idea, the media and the public were fixed on the idea that this murderer could easily stay hidden by being a regular englishman. Looking at both through the lense of Darwin’s work also brings to light similarities. Darwin states that rudimentary organs are always present in man, not matter how successfully they are suppressed they are still able to become active should reversion occur. As is seen in both Jack the Ripper and Mr. Hyde they have reverted and used the ‘rudimentary organ’ that would have caused them to become murderous. Darwin also describes primitive man as having a large jaw with canine teeth and as being hairy. Hyde is referenced by Jekyll as having hairy hands. If the cartoon is examined again several of the figures have wild beards or other hairy attributes, including the figure who is looking at the poster.  

Discussion Questions

Is there anything regarding both Jack the Ripper and Jekyll and Hyde as they relate back to the texts by Darwin that would explain why they’ve both stayed in the public eye for so long?

How do you think these events, both Jack the Ripper and the publication of Jekyll and Hyde, affected the British public’s view of Darwin and his work? Do you think they influenced the imperialist views of the British?

Sources

• Curtis, L.. Jack the Ripper and the London Press, Yale University Press, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/wheatonma-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3419898.
• Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Edited by Martin A. Danahay, Broadview Editions, 2005.
• “Puck.” U.S. Senate: Puck, United States Senate, 23 Jan. 2017, www.senate.gov/artandhistory/art/puck/puck_intro.htm.