The Thing on the Doorstep
Jan. 8th, 2005 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joysilence posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
darkling_talesLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hellbound_heart)
I'll be the one to break the ice and start with some of my responses to this atmospheric little story then shall I?
I won't structure this in any way...I figure if I can manage to pick up on some interesting points overall then the rest of you can come back with your ideas and we can have a merry old chat.
Firstly the, I like the way this story is structured by framing it within a confessional narrative. I've also enjoyed other stories that have done this, because you have to work to negotiate whether or not the person doing the telling is of sane mind, how much is fact, how much is impression. It gives a story just enough of a hint of the rational and the everyday to give it some plausibility, then revels in dragging you down to its totally irrational depths. This whole story gives me that delicious, sinking feeling in the stomach due to the seeming great proximity of evil even in a rational time and place.
I also enjoyed the references to the potential for places and dwellings to control the atmospheres and indeed the lives of their inmates. Lovecraft seems to be adding to a great American tradition (and feel free to contradict me if there's enough of a history of this in the literature of other places!) of the overriding power of house and home over person. I'm thinking of Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables and The House of Usher of course, oh and the house in Mettingen in Wieland which I mentioned in that short review I did for this community a while back. I adore the creepy picturesque of Arkham and Innsmouth and the way that an arcane past has filtered into them somehow, and acts as a foundation for a bizarre strand of modernity.
The character of Asenath gives me a bit of trouble, mind you. On some levels she seems to be threatening on account of her femininity - the fact that she's the product of a mysterious, veiled woman, and entrances Derby so utterly...but the woman herself bewails being female and complains that "a male brain had certain unique and far-reaching cosmic powers". Indeed Asenath disappears quite quickly and is replaced by that old stoat Ephraim. I'd like to hear anyone's responses to Asenath - is it just the physicality of women that is dangerous? Is she really present on any other levels? How does this tie in with contemporary lines of thought, as a lot of the references to the juvenile nature of women's brains seems like it could be from a much earlier era? How much of the desire to become a man and thus somehow complete is Asenath's, and how much is it the will of Ephraim to go on forever?
One very interesting point in the story, for me, is the part where eternal life seems to be something horrid and not at all to be sought after...ED has a barely spoken fear about whether Ephraim "were really dead - in a spiritual as well as a corporeal sense". It seems fairly unusual to regret the possibility of continuing existence. Life is subjected to personality transferences, confusions, and eventually total bodily breakdown. The most horrific part of this story for me is the appearance of the dead-alive Edward Derby, trying to gurgle out a warning for his friend...here's a real 'thing', faceless, voiceless, and this part of the story reminds me of turn-of-the-century tales by chaps like Machen and HG Wells and all the horrid 'things' of their stories.
hellbound_heart)I'll be the one to break the ice and start with some of my responses to this atmospheric little story then shall I?
I won't structure this in any way...I figure if I can manage to pick up on some interesting points overall then the rest of you can come back with your ideas and we can have a merry old chat.
Firstly the, I like the way this story is structured by framing it within a confessional narrative. I've also enjoyed other stories that have done this, because you have to work to negotiate whether or not the person doing the telling is of sane mind, how much is fact, how much is impression. It gives a story just enough of a hint of the rational and the everyday to give it some plausibility, then revels in dragging you down to its totally irrational depths. This whole story gives me that delicious, sinking feeling in the stomach due to the seeming great proximity of evil even in a rational time and place.
I also enjoyed the references to the potential for places and dwellings to control the atmospheres and indeed the lives of their inmates. Lovecraft seems to be adding to a great American tradition (and feel free to contradict me if there's enough of a history of this in the literature of other places!) of the overriding power of house and home over person. I'm thinking of Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables and The House of Usher of course, oh and the house in Mettingen in Wieland which I mentioned in that short review I did for this community a while back. I adore the creepy picturesque of Arkham and Innsmouth and the way that an arcane past has filtered into them somehow, and acts as a foundation for a bizarre strand of modernity.
The character of Asenath gives me a bit of trouble, mind you. On some levels she seems to be threatening on account of her femininity - the fact that she's the product of a mysterious, veiled woman, and entrances Derby so utterly...but the woman herself bewails being female and complains that "a male brain had certain unique and far-reaching cosmic powers". Indeed Asenath disappears quite quickly and is replaced by that old stoat Ephraim. I'd like to hear anyone's responses to Asenath - is it just the physicality of women that is dangerous? Is she really present on any other levels? How does this tie in with contemporary lines of thought, as a lot of the references to the juvenile nature of women's brains seems like it could be from a much earlier era? How much of the desire to become a man and thus somehow complete is Asenath's, and how much is it the will of Ephraim to go on forever?
One very interesting point in the story, for me, is the part where eternal life seems to be something horrid and not at all to be sought after...ED has a barely spoken fear about whether Ephraim "were really dead - in a spiritual as well as a corporeal sense". It seems fairly unusual to regret the possibility of continuing existence. Life is subjected to personality transferences, confusions, and eventually total bodily breakdown. The most horrific part of this story for me is the appearance of the dead-alive Edward Derby, trying to gurgle out a warning for his friend...here's a real 'thing', faceless, voiceless, and this part of the story reminds me of turn-of-the-century tales by chaps like Machen and HG Wells and all the horrid 'things' of their stories.
