The Victorian book of man-eaters: On the evolution of cannibals, seductresses, and tigers.

摘要

This dissertation explores literary and scientific narratives about man-eaters in the Victorian era. While mythical man-eaters predated the nineteenth century, the theory of natural selection made the emergence of new man-eaters a theoretical probability. Natural selection, which posited a “struggle for existence” in which not the meek but the predatory would inherit the earth, effectively naturalized man-eaters as a logical implication of the theory. Still a symbol of social disorder, man-eating now represented a plausible challenge to British masculinity. The new epoch of man-eaters began with the young Charles Darwin on his Beagle voyage. Chapter 1 considers Darwin's fear of man-eaters on this trip and the ways in which fear structured his interaction with the people of Tierra del Fuego, whom he suspected of practicing cannibalism. Chapters 2 and 3 concern biting women, symbolic man-eaters whose bite is a metaphor for speech and complaint; the chapters explore the connection between increasing legal rights for married women in Victorian England and dangerous, destructive brides in fiction. By the fin de siècle, these characters had become part-cat. Chapter 4 turns to tigers, who, along with lions, became the archetypal Victorian man-eaters and could actually be killed. As Indian tigers were decimated by the unflagging determination of British sportsmen, the most tireless of the tiger-hunters finally conquered their fear of man-eaters—they began to identify with their prey. Man-eaters were laid to rest for half a century before recently reappearing, in a scientifically updated guise, as viruses; the laboratory scientists studying viruses have been cast as the reincarnation of the great big game hunters. Chapter 5 considers the recent slew of virus narratives in light of Victorian man-eaters and finds that this monster-figure is still as much an expression of social fears as it is of a biological menace.