An English Cover-Up: Masks, Murders, and English Cruelty in Goncourt, Lorrain, and Schwob

ABSTRACT

Fin-de-siècle writers from diverse disciplines were drawn to the seductive potential of masks and disguise; mask-wearing characters of indefinite identity, indeterminate gender, and insecure psychology proliferate in their texts. However, when characters are designated as English in such stories, they are also, and with remarkable frequency, associated with cruelty or murder: the mask-wielding murderers of Marcel Schwob’s ‘MM. Burke et Hare, Assassins’ carry out their crimes in Britain upon British victims; Edmond de Goncourt weaves his theatrical narrative around the mask-like demeanour of Lord Annandale in La Faustin; and Jean Lorrain’s malicious Lord Ethal exacerbates the Duc de Fréneuse’s perverse obsessions with masks in Monsieur de Phocas. This article explores this unexpected correlation, and examines the ways that English masks are used as narrative devices – at once to mould and play with national distinctions, and to reflect upon the psychological state of the French subject.

KEYWORDS:

• English
• masks
• cruelty
• murder
• Marcel Schwob
• Edmond de Goncourt
• Jean Lorrain
• Les Vies imaginaires
• La Faustin
• Monsieur de Phocas

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Hannah Scott is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham. Her current project explores French representations of the British from 1870 to the Entente Cordiale, examining ways in which the French sought to define and articulate their relationship with their cross-Channel neighbours in both popular and high culture at the fin de siècle.

ORCID

Hannah Scott http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0152-6904

Notes

1 See, for example, Jennifer Birkett on Lorrain’s attraction to masks in her discussion of the perversions and obsessions associated with Decadence (1986: Chapter 5); Robert Ziegler on the manifold tensions between vision and masking (2009: Chapter 4); Will L. McLendon on Monsieur de Phocas at the intersection between literal masks and their metaphorical counterparts (masking in narrative structure, linguistics masks including pseudonyms, cosmetics and make-up) (1978–79: 104–14); Leonard R. Koos on shifting names and genders among Lorrain’s transvestite characters (1999: 198–214); and going beyond Lorrain, Cédric de Guido on the destabilizing effect of masks on point of view and perception of truth in Marcel Schwob, with an important discussion of masks and linguistic signification (2015: part III).

2 There are a number of other texts that are pertinent to this discussion but that are excluded due to constraints of space, such as the medieval pillagers with their ambiguous Anglo-French identity in Schwob’s ‘Les Faulx-Visaiges’ (1892) and the masked murders of Jean Lorrain’s ‘Masques de Londres et d’ailleurs’ (1901), and on which I am working for another project.

3 To give one example, Marie Anne de Bovet, in her travel writing on Scotland, claims to be able to identify on sight the different nationalities of the members of the Highland Regiment: ‘Bien qu’on voie, parmi eux de ces grands […] Celtes calédoniens pur sang et fils des clans des Hautes-Terres, ces régiments comptent dans leur rangs plus de John Bull et de Paddy que de Donald’ (1898: 25).

4 For example, the Indicateur de l’exposition universelle announced in November 1889 that the Ministre des travaux publics had decided to send an ingénieur des ponts et chaussées to the inauguration of the Forth rail bridge – in England.

5 Firmin Roz remarks in the preface to his tour of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales on the Celtic spirit fighting against England: ‘le génie national survit à l’indépendance: il a résisté, lutté, imposé enfin, après des péripéties souvent douloureuses, toujours pathétiques, sa victoire aux mœurs, aux institutions et aux lois’ (1905: I).

6 To give just one embattled pair of texts, see the contentiously entitled À quoi tient la supériorité des Anglo-Saxons? (Demolins, 1897) and a passionate response, Les Français sont-ils inférieurs aux Anglais? (Crespin, 1898).

7 The Baron de Coubertin famously upheld the English public education system as a model for France in works such as L’Éducation en Angleterre (1888); whilst philologist Hippolyte Cocheris saw the two races as irreconcilable on a level well beyond the linguistic scope of his study: ‘la lutte qui a existé pendant trois siècles entre l’anglais et le français n’est pas un combat de mots, mais un duel entre deux races: la race germanique d’un côté, la race néo-latine de l’autre’ (1881: 126).

8 These remained popular topics in novels, children’s illustrated stories, and dramas throughout the century, for example Joseph Fabre’s patriotic Jeanne d’Arc libératrice de la France (1882), V. Canet’s Marie Stuart, la Reine martyre (1888), Abbé Joubert’s Marie Stuart: tragédie en cinq actes et en vers (1897), and Paul Féval père’s Les Libérateurs d’Irlande (2000).

9 In volume 2 of Edmond de Goncourt’s La Maison d’un artiste, he describes his ‘Cabinet d’Extrême Orient’, filled with ivory figurines including ‘sept masques d'hommes et de femmes ricanantes, dont les grimaces ressemblent à ces dépressions que les doigts obtiennent en s'enfonçant dans des têtes-joujoux en caoutchouc’ (1881: 222).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the British Academy [grant number pf160034].