This essay will examine the representation of doubles in Irish Gothic literature and its thematic significance. For the purpose of this essay when invoking the phrase Gothic, I am referring to the definition of Gothic as a genre of fiction ‘characterized by suspenseful, sensational plots involving supernatural or macabre elements and often having a medieval theme or setting.’ In addition, by a Gothic novel I am implying the definition to be that ‘with scenes of cruelty and horror and […] sharing a grotesque, or claustrophobic atmosphere.’ In light of this, the texts that I will explore this Gothic doubling and its thematic relevance are Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1890, alongside John Banville’s Birchwood, published nearly a century later in 1973. Each of these authors explores the Gothic genre using beautiful, flamboyant language and disconcerting imagery of doubles. There are many instances of doubling in both novels. Firstly, I will examine Wilde’s Dorian Gray and how it exemplifies doubling through the reflection of self in the characters of Basil, Lord Henry and Dorian. It is also seen through Dorian and his evil doppelgänger portrait and again through the uncanny similarities between Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer. Secondly, I will examine Banville’s Birchwood which, on the other hand, tends to explore doubling out of morbid curiosity with the mirror imaging of the self in others. This essay will look at his extensive fascination with twins in Birchwood, the possible doubling of the house with Gabriel’s familial life and the doubling of Birchwood and Banville’s Mefisto.
Firstly, Oscar Wilde published his first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1890. At this time his classic was deemed fit for ‘none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph-boys’ by a critic from The Scots Observer on July 5, 1890. Nearly a century on this novel is renowned for its flamboyancy as well as pushing the boundaries of 19th society. Quite often the theme of doubling becomes an integral part of literature due to the author projecting their own wants and desires into their fiction, imposed upon them by the conformities of society. In the case of Dorian Gray, this reflection of self is particularly prevalent. As Dorian is a double of Wilde, they are each simultaneously a double of Basil and Hallward as this essay will show. For instance, there are parallels between Wilde (Dorian) and the characterisation of Basil Hallward and Lord Henry. Basil ‘represents Wilde’s moralist personality, who lives in Victorian society trying to follow the social manners and customs.’ He is portrayed as morally incorrupt, his only fault is his unfaltering devotion and adoration to Dorian. Basil’s doubling acts as a moral barometer for Dorian. This is exemplified on numerous occasions throughout the novel, the most important being when Basil is reunited with a grotesque imitation of his painting. He entreats Dorian to save his soul by repenting, ‘It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot remember a prayer. Isn’t there a verse somewhere, “Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow”?’ As Basil is a projection of who Wilde would like to be, it is significant that this version of himself is killed by an evil, narcissistic alter ego. Having Basil murdered by Dorian in a trance-like state, Wilde provides ‘a ‘Gothic’ explanation for Dorian’s action by adding an act of “supernatural cruelty” to the narrative. He does this to confront and condemn society idolatry and narcissism as emphasised by Basil (to Dorian), ‘I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.’
Lord Henry’s doubling, on the other hand, represents ‘Wilde’s primitive ego, his malevolence and a part of Wilde’s restricted desire under Victorian strictness.’ He behaves as a morally corrupt depiction of Wilde (Dorian) as highlighted by his statement, ‘There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr Gray. All influence is immoral […] Because to influence someone is to give him one’s own soul.’ Quite unlike Basil who symbolises a relief from moral degeneration. This distinction is reiterated by Dorian’s own observation, ‘‘He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful contrast.’ His decadent lifestyle attracts and quickly perverts Dorian’s character, making him egocentric. This is demonstrated through the discourse between Dorian, Basil and Lord Henry over Dorian’s cruelty towards Sibyl. While Basil condemns Dorian for his behaviour, Lord Henry conversely exonerates him stating, “If you had married this girl, you would have been wretched.” It is because of Lord Henry’s candidness and his being true to the cynical and amoral self, that Dorian is enamoured by and imitates his lifestyle. Lord Henry’s duplication through Dorian is thematically significant as his ‘moral and cultural decline, as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure and luxury’, represents the flawed, incongruous Victorian society. In fact, the theme of the ‘double life of caring about one’s reputation, while secretly transgressing society’s moral codes is central to the plot of Dorian Gray. Dorian emulates Lord Henry’s dandiacal disdain for established pieties’, yet shows more regard for his standing than Henry. This is exhibited when Dorian murdered Basil and asked (Name) to protect his reputation, Q. While Lord Henry’s amoral actions appear to warrant no consequences, finally we see a crack in Dorian’s “respectable” camouflage. Wilde’s own image and stature as part of upper-class Victorian society were marred due to his dubious lifestyle. Particularly pertaining to his association with a ‘recent scandal involving a homosexual brothel in London.’ The parallel between Wilde’s antics and Lord Henry’s is emphasised by a letter written to Lord Alfred Douglas where Wilde acknowledged that the characters are a reflection of himself, ‘Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks of me.”
John Banville’s Birchwood is the name given to the Godkin’s grotesque Gothic house which consumes its inhabitants. At a metaphorical level, ‘it also encompasses Gothic motifs such as family secrets and hauntings, dark doubles, a madwoman in the attic, and an incestuous affair.’ The Gothic doppelgänger is defined as ‘the alter ego or identical double of a protagonist […]; the split personality or dark half of the protagonist [or], an unleashed monster that acts as a physical manifestation of a dissociated part of the self.’ In regards to this definition. Birchwood, like Dorian Gray, presents multiple examples of the archetypal figure of “double or doppelgänger” as displayed through the persistent theme of twins and alter ego’s in the novel. Gabriel and his twin Michael are a perfect example of this. During the course of the novel protagonist, Gabriel is told a story of twins Gabriel and Rose by his aunt Martha. Succeeding this Gabriel searches for his twin sister Rose. Gabriel’s search for the “missing” part of himself- can be understood as a narcissistic quest for self-synthesis.’
Gabriel’s profound need to separate himself from his mad family leads him to seek for a fictional alternative. He denies his true twin Michael while convincing himself that the image of his mother as a child is the imaginary Rose, ‘No, I knew this girl was someone else,’ he insists, ‘a lost child, misplaced in time.’(17?) This denial stems from the Double’s or doppelgänger’s frequent search of self or wholeness associated with their narcissistic traits. Although Gabriel renounces his double for the majority of the novel, he admits he knew Michael was his true twin in the end, ‘I knew [..] but denied the knowledge, as Beatrice did for so long as her fractured brain would allow, and then went conveniently mad, and died caged.’ Gabriel’s fictional creation of Rose was a result of desperate unwillingness to face the truth about himself and his provenance as well as denying the existence of his twisted darker half.
Gabriel’s [futile search for Rosie was a result of] ‘a ubiquitous yearning for an unattainable perfect internal state’ that Michael could not attain. However, despite Gabriel’s attempts he could not deny their disconcerting connection, ‘I cannot say that I ever liked him, but there was between us a bond which would not be ignored however we tried…’ When Gabriel returns to claim his ‘mad’ inheritance at the end of the novel he finds a ‘twisted, parodic form of the sister he yearned’ for in his now transvestite twin Michael. He resolves to kill Michael as a cathartic release from his evil double, but could not, ‘Q.’ As though killing Michael would result in killing a piece of himself as seen in Dorian Gray. Thus, unlike the rest of the Godkin family, Gabriel breaks free from the Birchwood house’ disturbing cyclical consumption of its occupants. >In Birchwood, for example, Ada and Ida, or Justin and Juliette, almost but not quite identical, assonantal and consonantal versions of near harmony, serve the theme of a split identity with poetic precision. Justin and Juliette, the children of Silas and Sybil, appear to Gabriel as ‘an uncanny, disturbing couple… doubles in body and spirit, a beautiful two-headed monster.’ (find page) His friend, Magnus, ‘merged them into a single entity which he called “Justinette”.’ The palindromic Ada frightens Gabriel, whereas gentle Ida, for whom everything ‘was a perpetual source of wonder’
Thirdly, the theme of double’s and doppelgänger’s as represented through a narcissistic search of wholeness, like Birchwood, is prevalent in Dorian Gray, most notably Dorian’s egotism displayed by the portrait. The use of the popular Gothic trope, the evil double is reimagined by Wilde’s Dorian Gray as he creates the other self through the self and art. When Basil first presents Dorian with the beautiful, untainted portrait, Dorian is overwhelmed by ‘the sense of his own beauty [that] came over him like a revelation. […] He stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness.’ He wept that the image of his youth would haunt him always as he would grow old and ugly. His vanity thus, leading to a contract with the devil binding his soul eternally to the portrait, became his fatal flaw. Dorian determined, ‘I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I feel that.’ This connection as described by Dorian is emphasised by John Paul Riquelme, author of Oscar Wilde’s Aesthetic Gothic, ‘The portrait is a kind of mirror that contains not his image with inflamed cheeks but a dark version, a shadow.’ Like Gabriel, Dorian’s double is a ‘foul parody, some infamous, ignoble satire’ of the ‘whole’ self. Dorian’s evil double is extended through the ageing and decaying image of the portrait. His double existence reflects the contradictions of Victorian Society; as importance is given to his beauty rather than the immorality that exists deep within the classes. ‘The picture reflects Dorian’s downfall of moral degradation and grows ugly. Dorian becomes a lump of avarice and sin.’ Although it appears Wilde is living vicariously through Dorian’s decadent lifestyle, he is instead confronting society with the consequence of sin, perhaps even his own. Wilde highlights this in a comment on the degeneration of the portrait, ‘Here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls.’ Dorian stabs the portrait as an act of repentance to save himself. However, the result is that he inadvertently kills himself thus, the stabbing also acts as self-destruction. This stresses Wilde’s own beliefs of aesthetics of Art for Art’s sake, ‘all art is quite useless’ while also confronting society with the inevitability of penance.
Like Wilde, Banville reflects the double using a unique alternative to the other self with the Birchwood house and its inhabitants. Various Gothic themes constitute the background of the novel in order to reinforce the paradigm of the madhouse [in Birchwood]: the house that shelters the mad, and the transgenerational transmitting of the mad households own madness. The Gothic is an ideal platform for the exploration of family degeneration, inheritance, loss and incest, as well as doubles. At the beginning of the novel, Gabriel states, ‘I have come into my inheritance.’ However, Gabriel’s true legacy is a twin that threatens his existence and ‘transgenerational hauntings of madness’ that comes with the Birchwood plot. A general sense of disease and decay pervades the novel. This is firstly reflected in the regression of the Birchwood house itself as its foundations crumble around the Godkin’s family. Q. This regression is paralleled in the Godkin family’s mental deterioration as each family member is picked off by the house. Granda Godkin’s mind is the first to decline as it was ‘forever frozen in that moment of collision and clatter.’ Granda Godkin’s death began the first of the recurring deaths and declines in the home. Next, Grandma Godkin became trapped to her room for a time and meets her demise in a grotesque and supernatural act of spontaneous combustion. Her absurd death left the Birchwood home quieter as “the house, weary of this wild old woman, finally turned on her and extinguished her itself”. Leaving Only her two feet behind, an image so disturbing that it becomes comical as emphasised by Gabriel, “I can never think of that ghastly day without suspecting that somewhere inside me some cruel little brute, a manikin in my mirror, is bent double with laughter”. Martha is also destroyed by the madness of Birchwood as Beatrice, who had finally succumb to her demons over the incestuous birth of her “son” Gabriel, convinced her that her Michael was inside the burning hayshed: “Her dress burst into flames then, and she trotted on through the door” (p. 97) while “Mama still stood, still smiling placidly” (p. 97). The ‘grotesque cycle of life and death, symbolized by the birch tree, eventually loses its meaning so that dark and silent laughter can be the only response to the absurd repetition of madness.’ With this act, Beatrice seals her fate as the screaming woman in the attic frequently seen in Gothic literature, Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent for example. The Godkin family are converted into ghosts of themselves, both metaphorically and literally, while Gabriel continues the cyclical theme of the madhouse. The personification of the Birchwood house as “consumer” is also reflected at the end of the novel as it is transformed, Q. This perhaps alludes to the idea that without its disturbed occupants of the house was healed of its poisonous deterioration.
Finally, both Wilde and Banville reflect the double by basing some of their novel’s content off another novel. There are some examples of how Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray’s content parallels the imagery of Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer. Wilde was the great-nephew of Charles Maturin and used this familial connection to influence his own work. In 1897 Wilde went into a ‘self-imposed exile’ in Paris and took the pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth. As Montgomery Hyde quotes from the letter Wilde wrote to Wilkinson in January 1900:
‘You asked me about “Melmoth”: of course, I have not changed my name: in Paris I am as well-known as in London: It would be childish. But to prevent the postmen having fits I sometimes have my letters inscribed by the name of a curious novel by my great-uncle Maturin: A novel that was part of a romantic revival of the early century, and though imperfect, a pioneer (Hyde, 454-455).
Both Dorian Gray and Melmoth have shared Gothic elements such as moral corruption and degeneration. In Dorian Gray with ‘liberation from all moral principles, especially with the (homo) sexual liberation.’ While in Melmoth, ‘moral corruption and degeneration flourish from the suppressed natural and human desires’, such as the need for power. Dorian pledged his soul for eternal youth, ‘If it were I who was to be young, and the picture that was to grow old! […] I would give my soul for that!’ Melmoth, on the other hand, sold his soul for supernatural powers, including an extended life of 150 years. Even their appearance shares some resemblance as Dorian’s eyes are described by Wilde as ‘discs of blue fire’, whereas Melmoth’s are ‘fiery orbs’. Both men have supernatural paintings of themselves and both succumbed to death as a consequence for their sins.
Like Wilde, Banville’s Birchwood doubles with another novel, his very own Mefisto. Both protagonists share the same forename, in Birchwood, it is Gabriel Godkin who narrated the story and in Mefisto it is Gabriel Swan. Both protagonists are twins who have “lot” their other halves. Gabriel Godkin is in search of his fictional “missing” twin Rose (in place of his actual twin Michael). Whereas, Gabriel Swan is haunted by the ‘stillbirth of his twin identical twin brother.’ Both characters are thus in search of ‘wholeness’. Banville himself acknowledged the similarities of the two novels in an interview he stated, ‘[there are] many overt and covert allusions to Birchwood made in the novel [Mefisto].’ Their loss of a twin links them through a sense of shared desolation and incompletion. Both journey outside of their home, escaping pandemonium and greeted again by new chaos. Gabriel Godkin searches for this unity by leaving home and joining the circus where he inadvertently finds his family double. Swan ‘struggles to find it through scientific enquiry.’ Gabriel Godkin then watches as his new family life crumbles under the weight of more deaths, Q. The fragmented sense of self appears to worsen as a result of searching for a fictional, unattainable wholeness that could be found in acceptance of self.
In conclusion, the representation of doubles in Irish Gothic literature is well represented by Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and John Banville’s Birchwood. Both Wilde and Banville use the Gothic tropes to make the content of their novels strange and unfamiliar. Wilde explores the double using art while simultaneously condemning and discrediting society for their shameful behaviour and for making art anything more than “art’s sake”. Banville, on the other hand, criticises society for their needless search of more using the Gothic double as a representation of this unattainable ‘wholeness’. Dorian Gray’s death represents the consequences of immoral acts, while Gabriel Godkin’s turmoil haunts him and serves as a reminder to accept self as whole instead of searching for a fictional, narcissistic whole.