In his new novel The Wardrobe
Mistress, Patrick McGrath portrays the horrors of London after WWII. His
tale commences with the death of the famous theatrical actor Charlie Grice
(familiarly known as ‘‘Gricey’’) in January 1947 and his overcrowded funeral in
which some of the main characters of the story already emerge. Therefore, the
reader learns from Grice’s widow, Joan, and his daughter, Vera. These female
protagonists can be considered as two of the most elaborated personalities
penned by the author so far. The narrative focuses on ‘‘the racist cruelty of
Oswald Mosley’s British Fascist movement as perpetrated by some sorry remnants
still clinging to their black shirts and delusions’’ (Battersby). Yet the novel
is full of subplots in which actors and the people around them struggle to
maintain a certain quality of life in the gloomy and semi-destroyed city. Their
jealousies, passions, and fears are shown; however, there are three main
subjects that grabbed my attention as a student of the Gothic: the employment
of the folkloric dybbuk, the trope of madness linked to the film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920), and the theatrical plays McGrath
utilises to relate fiction to reality. This blog post will analyse these three
features.
The Dybbuk Figure
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| Dybbuk, by Ephraim Moshe Lilien (1847-1925) |
Ghosts are present in this story with the glee dead chorus girls who
comment on the plot. Nevertheless, the main supernatural element in the novel
is the dybbuk. In Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is ‘‘a disembodied human spirit that, because of former sins, wanders restlessly until it finds a haven in the body of a living person'' (Encyclopedia Britannica). This remarkable ‘‘demon’’ is present all throughout the story as Joan
believes his dead husband dwells in the body of actor Frank Stone, a Jewish who
fled from Germany to settle down in London with part of his family. Grice’s
clothes and his wardrobe are relevant to understand Joan’s obsession with this
dybbuk and how she discovers the ‘‘sins’’ of her husband. Frank substitutes
Grice several times during the novel, be it as an actor playing Shakespeare’s
Malvolio from Twelfth Night once
Grice dies, be it when Joan gives Frank her husband’s clothes and,
consequently, when Vera compares the young German to her father. McGrath
introduces Freud’s concept of the ‘‘uncanny’’ or ‘‘the interrelatedness of the familiar
and the unfamiliar, the circular effect whereby what is found to be strange and
alienating is also recognized as already known’’ (Zlosnik 6). The doubt of
Frank’s identity at certain moments is intertwined with the dybbuk creature.
Joan’s dispair after Grice’s death and her grief suddenly create a belief from
her first meetings with Stone: ‘‘But a drink with this threadbare actor in whom
dwelled like a dybbuk the spirit of her dead husband?’’(44) This spirit is also
described in psychology as an hysterical symptom (Billu, Beit-Hallami 26) and,
as the plot develops, Joan sinks into a nervous breakdown which deepens her
delusions and her conviction of the
demon: ‘‘ Yes, the dybbuk, she knew all about that, the demon in Frank’s body,
its sole entire purpose to do her harm’’(McGrath 210). Her fixation with her
husband outraged with her and his haunting her increase as the plot continues.
Yet Joan will not be the only character who displays mental instability;
McGrath wisely employs a Gothic trope he masters and which is a common feature
in his fiction: madness. Insanity is present in masculine and feminine
characters, however the ways of depicting it vary according to their
personality. Notably, McGrath echoes the silent film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari to portray lunacy.
Madness
and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
In McGrath’s fiction ‘‘madness and reality are not two opposed
entities, but rather two close states of mind which stem one from the other and
which are defined reciprocally’’ * (Falco 28). In his latest narrative,
specific characters show symptoms of insanity. At first, the most recognizable
one may be Vera, who chooses to live in her attic instead of sharing room with
her husband; a fact that worries her mother: ‘‘He (Julius) must have thought
she was mad…that’s why he let her go up there, that’s where you put the
madwomen’’(25) . This homage to Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre (1847) as the hysterical wife who dwells in the attic
(though in this case voluntarily) is combined with echoes to Charlotte Perkins Gillman's ''The Yellow Wallpaper'' (1892), story in which the woman who desires to remain in the room thinks that sees women creeping behind the wall and senses ''a yellow smell'' (11), the same as Vera imagines somebody ''creeping along the fence''(53) of her home and that she ''could smell'' the perfume from the person in the garden (56). Remarkably, Julius's hands are ''yellow'' (31), being the colour a tribute to Gillman's story or a connection to its bad luck in theatre (Julius is a theatrical impresario who loses his theatre).
Moreover, Joan listens to her husband’s voice until the
triggering of the terrible ending, and Frank is questioned by the chorus girls
/narrators. ‘‘Was he mad? Well, we asked ourselves the same
question!’’(198). Yet there is a characteristic in
Frank that at the beginning may not be taken into account, though it is
important: he is a stage actor, but is described as a film actor too: ‘‘A smear
of powder still on his temple, and again the mascara, this time with a
suggestion of the silent screen about it, ghost of Valentino’’(42-43). When
Frank visits Joan later in the novel, he does not remove his make up properly,
and he even ‘‘gets out the black pencil and touches in his lips and eyes,
leaving enough pallor high on the cheeks and brow to suggest the shadow,
merely, of the persona that is becoming more himself than himself…’’ (261) This
image of black makeup recalls Conrad Veidt’s ''Cesare'' from The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. While I first I did not connect both pieces
of fiction, as I deepened my research, I concluded that they have several
similarities:
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| Theatrical poster of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari |
The German film tells the story of a lunatic doctor who takes advantage of a somnambulist so that he commits murders while asleep. If at first the plots seem to have no point in common, the reality is that both narratives depict how an insane administration or government can lead to the ultimate destruction. Where the film focuses on the Germany after WWI and it can be a premonition of Hitler and the Nazi Party with the figure of the tyrannical doctor Caligari (Kracauer), McGrath proposes the British situation after WWII. Surprisingly, Kracauer’s study on the German films between the wars was published in 1947, setting of McGrath’s novel. Furthermore, extremism is perceived as supernatural beings in both pieces of fiction: at the beginning of the film (minute 1:13), one character remarks: ‘‘There are spirits everywhere. They are all around us. They have driven me from hearth and home-from wife and child’’. In the novel, Joan reflects: ‘‘what Mosley intended, was to resuscitate the fascist spirit, raise it from the dead- if ever it could die, thought Joan, for perhaps like Gricey it only slept’’(219). This concept of being asleep and then awakened to do evil, also emerges in the film in Caligari’s diary: ‘‘Now I shall learn if it’s true that a somnambulist can be compelled to perform acts which, in a waking state, would be abhorrent to him…’’ (minute 58:17). Therefore, if the cruel doctor can awake Cesare whenever he wants to, fascism can stir again. If Cesare embodies the ‘‘soldier’’ of the despotic doctor to obey his commands, Grice followed Mosley’s ideology and desires. Furthermore, both ‘‘soldiers’’ seem to be imprisoned: Grice in his coffin-wardrobe, where he does not rest; Cesare in his coffin-box, where he dwells until awakened to murder. Frank personifies Grice according to Joan at the beginning of the novel, and he wears his clothes, blurring the distinction between both men. Yet Cesare/Frank/Grice are not the only correlation; at the end of the German film, the audience learns that the characters are patients of an asylum, and that the plot was simply the delusion of Francis, one of the main characters. Delusion also occurs in the novel (though I will say no more not to spoil it). McGrath gets inspired by a film whose mad doctor threatens the citizens of the town he lives in. While in the motion picture the fairground seems to be linked to a fascist character and how others fight against that ideology, the novel depicts that situation in the theatrical world.
As the novel is set in the stage world, theatrical plays are employed
to illustrate the personal situations the main characters struggle against. The
next section will focus on the study of the two main plays depicted in
McGrath’s narrative and how again, madness and evil are present in them.
Drama and its connections to the characters’
reality
There are two plays vital to understand McGrath’s novel: Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night (1601-1602) and John
Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1612-1613).
These plays divide the novel into two halves and serve not only to develop the
themes of madness and evil afore-mentioned, but also to interpret Frank Stone’s
relationship with Joan and Vera.
When the reader learns from Frank Stone (his professional name is
Daniel Francis) he is substituting Charlie Grice in his role of Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Malvolio is a steward to Countess
Olivia, one of the main characters. Shakespeare’s plot narrates how Viola,
another character, is separated from her twin brother and it depicts the
different love interests among the main roles. Curiously, Viola disguises herself
as a man named ''Cesario'' (which reminded me of Caligari's ‘‘Cesare’’),
although McGrath’s novel focuses on Malvolio. This role serves to illustrate
Stone’s affair with Joan at about the first half of the novel. The first hints
of uncanniness between Grice and Stone are present when he plays the role so
convincingly, imitating Grice so perfectly, that Joan focuses all her attention
on him. But the character of Malvolio is more meaningful than what at first may
seem. Malvolio, in love with Olivia, is a man who is unfairly imprisoned and
considered mad when he is sane. McGrath employs some lines to emphasise
Malvolio’s role: ‘‘Good Sir Topas, do not
think I am mad. They have laid me here in hideous darkness’’(34). This line
foreshadows Joan’s relationship with her deceased husband and Stone, who
replaces Grice on and off-stage. Joan gives Grice’s clothes to Frank and when
the plot is more developed, she imagines he listens to him shouting from inside
his wardrobe, where he dwells in darkness as Malvolio: ‘‘I say this house is as dark as ignorance though ignorance were as hell
and I say there was never man thus abused. I am no more mad than you are’’(240)
. And Grice continues: ‘‘Madam, you have
done me wrong, notorious wrong’’ (240). Therefore, Joan perceives her dead
husband outraged and haunting her. Grice may embody Malvolio as he comments
while alive: ‘‘I walk away, Gricey said, and the clothes get packed up, and
he’s the ghost. But when I’m dead,
old Mavol will still be here’’(67). Mavol is still present in the novel with
Frank, yet Stone also plays another important theatrical role, one that portrays
his relationship with both Joan and Vera: The
Duchess of Malfi.
In the The Duchess of Malfi,
Stone performs different roles. The first character he assumes is the First Madman, who speaks the line ‘‘Doomsday not come yet?’’ (196)
This part serves to depict the aforementioned madness plus the devastating
situation the story shows after WWII. Moreover, it also exposes Joan's personal
journey and predicts the ending, the doomsday to come. Webster's play is about
a widow (the Duchess) who commences a relationship with a man (Antonio) from a
lower social class against the wishes of her corrupted brothers.
 | |||
| Elisabeth Bergner (kneeling) in a 1946 George Rylands production | of | The Duchess of Malfi in New York |
McGrath plays a homage to the play with the secret affair between Joan and Frank. Stone also plays the role of Antonio and when his character listens to an echo (the voice of the murdered Duchess), he states: ‘‘Echo, I will not talk with thee/ For thou art a dead thing'' (285).While Antonio can hear the dead Duchess, Joan can feel Grice's voice, as I have already explained. However, what I really find thought-provoking is McGrath's move regarding incest. In the play Ferdinand, the Duchess's twin brother who becomes mad and believes he is a werewolf, has lustful desires towards his sister. Nevertheless, in the novel incest is perceived between Grice and his daughter Vera through the figure of Stone. The attraction between Vera and Frank is even suspected by Joan, yet Vera's attitude in statements like ‘‘She touched his (Frank's) sleeve, rolled the fabric between her fingers, and mouthed the word, Daddy’’(204) illustrate her view of Frank as a substitute of her father, mainly because he wears Grice's clothes all the time. The wardrobe and the outfits inside it serve to depict how Grice and Stone's personalities are blurred. Therefore, the novelist takes advantage of the ‘‘uncanny’’ to relate it to the Gothic trope of the incest taboo, a trope the writer controls and has written about in other novels and pieces of fiction. An article by Magali Falco on McGrath's novel Port Mungo (2004) is added in the bibliography for further reading.
In conclusion, this blog post has analysed
Patrick McGrath's latest novel regarding the three main tropes that fascinated
me: the employment of the dybbuk figure, the presence of madness (the main
characteristic in the novelist's fiction), and the theatrical plays it is based
on to develop its plot. I do consider they are vital to understand the
complexity of the novel. Before reading The
Wardrobe Mistress, my favourite novel by McGrath was Asylum (1996); however, now I am seriously in doubt, as the
novelist has gratefully surprised me with his elegant prose and story.
*Falco’s original text: ‘‘La folie et la
réalité ne sont pas deux entités opposées, mais plûtot deux états proches qui
découlent l’un de l’autre et qui se définissent réciproquement.’’
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Battersby, Eileen, ‘‘The Wardrobe Mistress: Theatrical triumph from a
master of English Gothic’’, The Irish Times https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-wardrobe-mistress-theatrical-triumph-from-a-master-of-english-gothic-1.3214555#.Wb0kdIRSaYI.twitter
Billu, Y; Beit-Hallahmi, B., "Dybbuk-Possession as a hysterical
symptom: Psychodynamic and socio-cultural factors". Israel Journal of
Psychiatry and Related Science. 26: 138–149, 1989
Encyclopedia Britannica, ‘‘dybbuk’’ https://www.britannica.com/topic/dybbuk-Jewish-folklore
Falco, Magali, La poétique néo-gothique de Patrick McGrath: discours de la folie sur l'écriture post-moderne (Paris: Publibook, 2007)
--- ''The Painting of the Urban Dreamscape in Patrick McGrath's Port Mungo'' https://erea.revues.org/168
Gilman,Charlotte Perkins,‘‘The
Yellow Wall-paper. A Story’’, The New England Magazine, 1892 http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=newe;rgn=full%20text;idno=newe0011-5;didno=newe0011-5;view=image;seq=0655;node=newe0011-5%3A12
Kracauer, Siegfried, From
Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film ( New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1947)
McGrath, Patrick, The Wardrobe
Mistress (London: Hutchinson, 2017)
Zlosnik, Sue, Patrick McGrath
(Wales: Wales University Press, 2011)
Wiene, Robert, The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari, Decla-Bioscop, 1919 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecowq77Y3C0
IMAGES:
The
Wardrobe Mistress, by Patrick McGrath https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wardrobe-Mistress-Patrick-McGrath/dp/178633058X
''Dybbuk'', by Ephraim Moshe Lilien. Book of Job, appearing in Die Bucher Der Bibel
''Das
Cabinet des Dr. Caligari'' poster. http://blackholereviews.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/cabinet-of-dr-caligari-1920-fundamental.html
The
Duchess of Malfi, Elisabeth Bergner (kneeling) in a 1946
George Rylands production of The Duchess
of Malfi in New YorkPhotograph: Eileen Darby/Time and Life/Getty Images.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/gallery/2014/jan/16/gemma-arterton-duchess-malfi-pictures
