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Cross, Bonnie

English

2013

M.A.

With theories of evolution revealing the growing similarities between humans and animals, many began to argue which characteristics of humanity made humans unique from animals. Language was one human characteristic thought to be the ultimate divider between man and animal. Both Robert Chambers and Charles Darwin reported that articulate language was one of the distinguishing characteristics of humans and was not present in animals.
However, with the publication of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) and Dracula (1897) came monsters who were clearly non-human, yet possessed the ability to speak and understand language. The Island of Dr. Moreau reveals the lack of uniqueness in the organization of the human body through the creation of the Beast Folk and fear of human degeneration through the loss of language by the end of the novel. Dracula threatens human speech through the vampire's ability to silence speech and control the flow of information. In both of these novels, the monster loses the ability to speak, but human speech is also threatened by silence. Through the use of language, the monsters in The Island of Dr. Moreau and Dracula reveal Victorian anxieties regarding the role of language as the barrier between humans and animals.