Preparation

Right away, I’m begging you to immerse yourself mentally in Victorian culture. The best way to do this is to read some helpful fictional works (it’s also fun, of course).

Start by reading some Sherlock Holmes, especially The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and The Return of Sherlock Holmes (you want lots of examples of different characters, which you don’t get so much in the novels, and the really late stories sometimes become a little bizarre). While you read, pay special attention to Holmes’s “demonstrations,” in which he deduces a person’s complete background from appearances, and then explains his reasoning to Watson. Holmes is the ultimate Victorian in this area, able to make a complete set of deductions where the ordinary person will only make a few. It’s not that his abilities are unlike others’; rather, he works consciously where others work unconsciously, and he thinks logically where others work impressionistically.

Next, read Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Keep thinking about Holmes, and notice the ways in which every place and person can be analyzed through Holmesian logic. Notice also that this logic fails completely, because it is founded on the notion that Jekyll’s behavior cannot be utterly at variance with his appearance, class, and station—and that magical science does not exist.

You might also read George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, both of which deal with class and masks in complex ways. If you want something truly creepy, read J.-K. Huysmans’ À rebours, of which the Robert Baldick translation Against Nature is the best. Avoid modern novels that romanticize the Victorian era, because they tend to assume either that Victorians were like they wanted to appear, or that they were all hypocrites. There are good modern novels set in the period, such as George MacDonald Fraser’s Mr. American (actually in the Edwardian period, but close enough), but you have to look carefully. See the Bibliographies for more suggestions.

{Character Creation <--> Concept}

-- ChrisLehrich^? - 23 Dec 2004