'Heart of Darkness' and late-Victorian fascination with the primitive and the double - novel by Joseph Conrad

There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity. (34)

Dr. Lanyon describes Hyde's regressive appearance: "small . . . with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility of constitution" (77). "Particularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what the maid calls him" (48). To Utterson "Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish . . . hardly human! Something troglodytic" (40). He assaults Carew "with ape-like fury" (47). Poole describes him as "cry|ing~ out like a rat" (66). Hyde speaks of "the animal within me licking the chops of memory" (92).

The animal image is equally appropriate in Dracula's case. This is largely suggested by his landing in England in canine form, through his nocturnal incarnation as a wolf, and crawling "face down" like a bat, and his direct description as "a tiger," a "man-eater," and "panther-like in the movement" (33, 188, 228, 230, 308, 294). His "aquiline nose" with "great nostrils" (271), "very massive eyebrows almost meeting over the nose," "bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion," hairy palm, and "pointed" ears (17) suggest the animalistic quality of his features. His "peculiarly sharp white teeth" (17) "like those of a wild beast" (271), "eye-teeth long and pointed" (294), "broad" hand "with squat fingers," "long" nails (17), and "terrible grip" (271) bespeak his vampirism. His "hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere" (17) brings him close to Dr. Moreau's "animal-men," who are described as having "scant bristly hair upon their heads" (60).

The animal context is present throughout The Island of Dr. Moreau; it controls our reading of the novel. Although the bulk of the "beastly" characters (153) reveal new properties and new capacities, essentially they have "the unmistakable mark of the beast" (61). The awesome figure of Moreau shares to some degree the features of animals. Wells depicts him as "a powerfully built man" with "rather heavy features" "and the fall of his heavy mouth at the corners gave him an expression of pugnacious resolution" (38). His rage, as described by Prendick, is close to that of an animal:

In a moment he had gripped me by the shoulder with a hand that was smeared red, had twisted me off my feet, and flung me headlong back into my own room. He lifted me as though I was a little child. I fell at full length upon the floor, and the door slammed and shut out the passionate intensity of his face. (73)

Even his "directness in discussion" is described as "brutal" (48). At the end of his beastly career, after the beast-men have turned against him, he turns into a beaten animal: "He lay face downward in a trampled space in a cane brake" (151). There is also Montgomery, who "was in truth half akin to these Beast Folk, unfitted for human kindred" (157).