Monkeys in Gothic Literature

When you think of spooky or scary creatures, monkeys are probably not the first animal that crosses your mind. Cats, rats, and bats. Even corvids and canines. These creatures more obviously fit the aesthetic of the Gothic, and you’ll commonly see them crawling through castles, darkening the skies, or lurking in graveyards in Gothic texts. But there were also many who found monkeys to be deeply unsettling—especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is both the strangeness and the familiarity of these creatures that makes them excellent vessels for horror. On the one hand, primates bear a significant resemblance to humans in both their physical features and the actions they are capable of—a similarity which would ultimately lead Darwin to his paradigm-shattering theory of evolution in the mid-nineteenth century. On the other hand, these creatures are still distinctly inhuman. And for many Western writers whose only encounters with other primates came from colonial excursions, monkeys were inevitably associated with the Evil, Exotic East. You’ll see all of these elements brought out in the examples listed below of some of my favorite monkeys in Gothic literature:

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe

This 1841 short story is the first of Edgar Allan Poe’s “tales of ratiocination,” featuring his detective character Auguste Dupin. It is generally considered to be the first “locked room” murder mystery, as the plot centers on a mother and daughter who seem to have been killed within a room that was locked from the inside and the police cannot puzzle out who the murderer might be or how he got in. The case relies upon the similarity between primates and humans. The murderer is, of course, assumed to be a human man; witnesses describe him as speaking in an unfamiliar language, and the daughter’s throat bears marks that resemble a human handprint. At the time this story came out, Charles Darwin had not yet published his seminal work laying out his theory of evolution, On the Origin of Species (1859). However, Poe explicitly references one of Darwin’s precursors, Frédéric Cuvier, who established the scientific discipline of comparative anatomy—the study of similarities and differences in the anatomy of different species. In solving the case, Dupin quotes from Cuvier’s writings on the anatomy of “the large fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands,” ultimately concluding that an orangutan has a similar enough hand shape to a human to have committed the murders! Upon further investigation, it is revealed that the orangutan was captured by a sailor in Borneo and brought to Paris. The creature is clever and intelligent, easily able to break free from its confinement and prone to imitating the human behaviors of its owner. However, its animalistic nature is expressed in the form of violent brutality whenever it is enraged or frightened. Indeed, it may have learned such violence from the sailor, who had a tendency to beat the orangutan with a whip. But the animal’s inhuman strength made these outbursts lethal. Along with showing that a beast might commit murders in a deceptively human-like manner, this story serves as a cautionary tale about bringing such creatures out of their habitat in the East and into Western society.

“Green Tea” by J. Sheridan le Fanu

A murderous great ape not sinister enough for you? How about a tiny demonic monkey? “Green Tea” is one of the five stories included in le Fanu’s 1872 collection In a Glass Darkly, alongside his more famous vampire novella Carmilla. As the first story in the collection, “Green Tea” introduces the character of Dr. Hesselius, an occult detective whose case files are presented as “found documents” in the frame story of the collection. In “Green Tea,” Dr. Hesselius meets a clergyman named Mr. Jennings who suffers from an unusual condition. Jennings explains that several years ago, while writing a book about ancient religions, he suddenly started seeing the specter of a small, black monkey with glowing red eyes that followed him about wherever he went. The monkey was incorporeal and invisible to everyone else, yet it managed to thoroughly disrupt the reverend’s life by distracting him, sitting on his religious texts so as to block the words he intended to read, and exerting an almost hypnotic sway to make him lose his train of thought. After some time, it even developed the ability to speak to Jennings inside his head, and bombarded him with evil urges to hurt others and himself. Jennings becomes convinced that this monkey is an agent of hell, which singled him out to turn him from prayer and drive him toward sin and self-destruction. Dr. Hesselius draws a somewhat different conclusion, arguing that Jennings’s tendency to drink copious amounts of green tea acted upon his brain chemistry in a way that allowed Jennings to perceive and communicate with the spiritual plane. Though Hesselius suggests that Jennings’ interactions with the spiritual plane exacerbated his pre-existing condition of hereditary suicidal mania, the question of the monkey’s demonic nature is never quite answered. There is also no explicit reason given for why this spectral entity takes on the form of a monkey, except for a quotation from the philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg explaining that evil spirits take on an animal form that “represents [the] particular lust and life” of the person they correspond to. But while the monkey seems to be a manifestation of Jennings’s own dark side, its association here with the deleterious effects of green tea can’t help but once again draw a connection with the Evil, Exotic East.

“The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs

But if we want to get real explicit about the anxieties around colonialism, we of course need to discuss W. W. Jacobs’s 1902 short story “The Monkey’s Paw.” We don’t know much about the monkey in this story—in fact, no living monkeys even make an appearance. Yet the dismembered and desiccated appendage of one has become one of the most iconic cursed objects in horror fiction. The story’s title comes from a mummified monkey’s paw that an old British soldier has brought back from India. The paw is said to have been cursed by a fakir, demonstrating the dangerous power of Eastern magic. The listeners to the soldier’s tale laugh at the idea of the curse, yet they can’t resist making a wish upon the paw as instructed. Mr. White thinks to be humble and practical by wishing only for 200 pounds. But when the wish is granted, they realize that each wish comes at a terrible price.

Whether their horror comes from their resemblance to humans, from demonic influence, or from pagan curses, these sinister simians are truly scarier than they might seem at first glance. Can you think of any other examples of monkeys in Gothic literature? Let me know in the comments!