The Beetle Gender

The Beetle, an 1897 novel by Richard Marsh, takes place in the dark and supernatural country of Egypt, where said creature of horror is believed to change its form at will, and use its hypnotic powers to prey upon young middle-class English people. The novel appears to, more often than not, deal with society’s anxiety surrounding the turn of the century. Marsh analyses the opposing views of sexuality and femininity through the exchange of sexual manipulation in the novel. By numerous means of sexually influenced interferences, and the degenerate figure of the colonized, The Beetle builds a sort of parallel between the practices of the British Empire, allowing the British characters to see their individual wrongdoings in a horrific other form.

The novel goes into depth exploring these in comparison to the approaches of the Victorian man. Said approaches actually demonstrate plenty about the fundamentals of our own culture in respect to our ethnic customs and our outlooks on gender roles. The Beetle completely turns around gender roles by depicting a leading dominant woman who is rather frequently mistaken for a man. An abundant amount of the gender swapping is enforced by the entrancing of the Beetle who forces its powers on Marjorie Holt, the New Woman. Holt’s feminism is compared to her transgender dominance by the Beetle. Not only is the Beetle capable of controlling her victims emotionally and mentally; she is also capable of walking in the world of women and men equally. She is the utmost sexual and physical predator. On page 141 of The Gothic Body, Kelly Hurley states that, “At the same time that the novel manifests a terror of engulfment by the Orient, it evinces, from a masculine perspective, a terror of an overwhelming female sexuality as embodied in the supernaturally potent Beetle woman”. The thought alone of the woman using her sexuality was something terrifying to the Victorian mind. The constantly redirected homosexuality flowing amongst the male characters seemed to repeatedly come back to the obliteration of the feminine non-heterosexual. The Beetle is an exceptionally relevant novel essential to

At the same time as Britain saw Egypt simply as the entryway to other colonies, the British characters in the novel look at the Beetle simply as an opening broadcasting all colonized subjects. In conclusion, the entire novel constantly revolves around the two major themes of sexuality and feminism, and the degenerate figure of the colonized. Richard Marsh surpasses excellence in analyzing the opposing views of sexuality and femininity through the exchange of sexual manipulation in the novel. The Beetle builds a sort of parallel between the practices of the British Empire, allowing the British characters to see their individual wrongdoings in a horrific other