Week 4: New Weird

What is “weird”? Before reading From Hell, I had anticipated a historical fiction graphic novel that simply focused around the story of Jack the Ripper. The only previous knowledge I had of it was the film adaptation that I had watched many years ago. Upon reading, I quickly learned how loosely adapted it was.

   In From Hell, Prince Albert Victor weds and fathers a child with a girl from London’s East End known as Annie. To cover up this scandal, Queen Victoria separates Annie from Albert and has her sentenced to a mental institute, where her royal physician, Dr. Gull, impairs Annie’s sanity. A group of prostitutes discover the secrets of this scandal and attempt to use it as blackmail against the crown. Dr. Gull then begins to kill off these prostitutes, not only to suppress an illuminati threat, but also to ensure male dominance through mystical ritual.

     This historical fiction story reels in a more science fiction element, bringing out it’s “weird” quality, playing with the idea of time. Visions and prophecies are constantly recurring throughout the narrative, in the prologue, Lees tells Abberline how all his visions were false, yet they still came true.

    “What is the fourth dimension?”.  

   As Dr. Gull murders his last victim, he has visions of the future, where the art takes us away from Victorian London to a more modern setting of skyscrapers and businessmen on their computers. As he dies, his soul transcends through the past and future, inspiring other serial killers and visiting those that escaped him and aided him of his murders.  Dr. Gull is portrayed as an extremely misogynist character that believes women had ruled over men for some time:

   “Women had power once: Back in the caves, life hinged on childbirth’s mystery, and we served mother goddesses, not father gods, ‘twas thus for several million years. Then men rebelled, perhaps a few at first, a small conspiracy.. who, by some act of social magic, politics, or force, cast woman down that man might rule. Time passed, and kingdoms passed from father unto son. The matriarchy was forgotten.”

   During his vision on his death, Dr. Gull believes to have become God and has ensured male dominance throughout the twentieth century.  

       “And this perplexing vision is the last thing that I see as I become God.”