The Horrors of Hypnotism

What could be more terrifying than the idea of losing control over your own thoughts and actions? For the Victorians, not much. And with the growing popularity of a technique called mesmerism, it seemed like an increasingly likely possibility that you might encounter someone with the power to take over your mind. I’ve written before, in my review of the anthology Death by Suggesstion, about how hypnotism was a serious source of horror throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today I want to discuss how those fears played out in classic works of Gothic literature.

“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)

This is one of Poe’s lesser-known stories, and it’s a pretty strange one if you’re not familiar with the way hypnotism was viewed in the 1800s. In the story, the unnamed narrator uses his friend’s impending death to conduct a little science experiment in order to learn more about the afterlife. Slowly dying of tuberculosis, Mr. Valdemar allows the narrator to hypnotize him in the moments right before he draws his final breath. From then on, he remains in a suspended state, seemingly dead but capable of narrating his experiences beyond the veil. The story takes a suddenly gruesome turn when the narrator attempts to wake Valdemar up after seven months have gone by, but the moment that the trance is lifted the dead man spontaneously decays into a liquid mass. To readers today, the idea that hypnotism could keep the consciousness alive and prevent a body from decaying after death seems absurd. But in the nineteenth century, mesmerism was closely tied to Spiritualism—a religious philosophy focused on contacting the dead that swept through American and British society after the Fox sisters gave their first public seances only a few years after this story’s publication. Poe found himself at the head of the curve, then, in considering how the techniques devised by Franz Mesmer, a German doctor from the previous century, might be used to contact the spirits of the deceased. In most seances, however, it is the living who are put into trances, not the dead.

Trilby by George du Maurier (1894)

But hypnotism is not just the purview of well-meaning mad scientists. In Gothic literature, this skill is more often one of the deadly tools of the novel’s villain. One of the most famous examples is in George du Maurier’s Trilby. The antagonist of this novel is Svengali, a masterful musician and hypnotist. When the beautiful but tone-deaf artists’ model Trilby falls into his clutches, Svengali uses hypnosis to make her into a famous singer, but she can only perform while under his trance and afterwards never remembers the experience. At one point, Svengali is attacked during one of her performances, and Trilby humiliates herself onstage, suddenly unable to sing once the trance is broken. The constant trances wear on Trilby’s physical and mental health, and by the end of the novel she dies, not long after the death of her tormentor. This novel showcases one of the deepest fears that people held about mesmerism before its limits were really known—that a skilled hypnotist could completely take over another person’s life. The character of Svengali left such an impression on turn-of-the-century audiences that his name has become synonymous with the idea of any person who dominates, controls, and manipulates another.

The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker (1911)

Another hypnotic villain can be found in Bram Stoker’s final novel, The Lair of the White Worm. Edgar Caswall is the heir to a Derbyshire estate known as Castra Regis, and his family has long had an association with mesmerism. He even inherits a chest filled with various tools and instruments belonging to Franz Mesmer himself. But Caswell’s interest in mesmerism is not merely scientific. He is obsessed with a local girl named Lilla Walford and makes many mesmeric assaults on her, attempting to bring her under his power. Despite the efforts of Lilla’s cousin Mimi to protector her, their final encounter ends in Lilla’s death.

Stoker’s more famous novel, Dracula (1897), also has some instances of hypnotism. The bloodthirsty count has a mental connection with his victims and, while targeting Lucy, causes her to become entranced and sleepwalk. But unusually for a Gothic novel, Dracula also portrays hypnotism in a positive light. After Mina has been bitten, Professor Van Helsing  puts her into a hypnotic trance so that she can use her connection to Dracula to report on his location and help to track him down. However, the suggestion of vampires with hypnotic powers seems to have had a longer lasting cultural impact than the portrayal of hypnotic vampire hunters.

What other Gothic novels have you read that use hypnosis as a source of horror? How do you feel about hypnotism—is it as scary as it is portrayed in literature? Share your thoughts in the comments!