Originally
published in Creative Loafing
The Machineries of Madness
The gothic novel isn't dead; it's
just been floundering. Horace Walpole unwittingly created the
gothic mode in 1765 with his bizarre little novel, The Castle
of Otranto. Novels like Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho and
Matthew Lewis' The Monk soon followed. These novels possessed
dark, desolate settings replete with ghostly figures and tortured
minds.
Since then, writers like Shelley,
Hawthorne, Poe, and, today, Anne Rice have all been influenced
by the gothic tradition. Horror sprang from this genre, as did,
arguably, science fiction. Plundered for its elements by the romance
novelists in this century, however, the gothic novel has fallen
out of vogue. Writers like Patrick McGrath and Bradford Morrow
(who together in 1991 compiled The New Gothic, an anthology of
recent literature in the gothic vein) currently are spearheading
a resurgence of the gothic novel. Now McGrath follows the success
of his earlier works--The Grotesque and Spider--with Asylum, a
carefully wrought novel that combines all the traditional elements
of Gothicism with a modern understanding of the machineries of
madness.
Stella is the wife of Max Raphael,
a terminally boring psychiatrist who aspires to the position of
superintendent at a mental hospital in rural England. One of the
patients, the psychotic sculptor Edgar Stark, seizes Stella's
attention as she watches him renovate a Victorian greenhouse in
her garden. Her infatuation blossoms at the hospital's annual
dance. She dances with Edgar and discovers more of his manliness
pressing against her than appropriate; consequently, she finds
it difficult to forget that dance. When Peter Cleave, the novel's
narrator, learns of her growing attachment to Edgar, he tells
her why the artist was committed to the hospital: convinced his
wife was a whore, Edgar cut off her head, cut out her eyes, and
proceeded to manipulate what was left of her head as if it were
a piece of clay. (Pleasant chap, eh?) Warned of Edgar's shortcomings,
Stella nonetheless allows her infatuation to deepen. She follows
Edgar from rural England to the seamier, bohemian quarters of
London. When she finally, fearfully leaves Edgar and returns to
her husband, Max is dismissed from the hospital, and the couple
moves with their son Charlie to the dank, atmospheric isolation
of Wales.
From the beginning, it is obvious
that the novel's outcome will be tragic, but McGrath surprises
us by taking an unexpected route. In the end, it will be Stella's
infatuation for Edgar that causes the most harm, not that man's
continuing delusion. McGrath further complicates the novel through
Peter Cleave's perspective as the narrator. Cleave isn't deceptive,
but his opinions are colored by his own fondness for Stella.
Though Asylum certainly isn't a
didactic novel, McGrath does succeed in framing a compassionate
view of his doomed characters. Reflecting upon her alienation
in Wales, the impassioned Stella decides, "This is the nature
of people: they unerringly select as their victim the one who
most needs their warmth." How eloquently phrased; how sadly
true.
Asylum is a fine modern addition
to the gothic tradition.
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