Dancing on a Volcano: Subverting Catastrophe in M.P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Kent Linthicum is a visiting assistant professor at Oklahoma State University. His research focuses on the intersection of literature, science, and the environment in the nineteenth century.

Notes

1 See “Cross-Dressing at the End of Time: Orientalism and Apocalypse in M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud” by C J. Keep (1993-1994); “From Decadence to Racial Antagonism: M. P. Shiel at the Turn of the Century” by William L. Svitavsky (2004); and “Madness, Unreliable Narration, and Genre in The Purple Cloud” by Monique R. Morgan (2009).

2 See “Waste of the Earth by Modern Man” (1892) for coal, “Famine of The Future” (1891) for overpopulation, and “Crack of Doom” (1909) for celestial collision.

3 For example, Shiel includes a discussion of the chemical composition of the purple cloud in the novel. The scholars in the novel decide that the cloud probably started as “potassic ferrocyanide (K₄FeCn₆), which, undergoing distillation with the products of sulphur in the heat of eruption, produced hydrocyanic acid (HCn)” (The Purple Cloud 173). The scholars also list rocks that would have the necessary elements for such a compound (171). The volcano even mimics the process by which potassium ferrocyanide was manufactured at the end of the century, which does in fact give off the primary chemical of the cloud, hydrogen cyanide (Simon, 385-389).

4 See ThermoPoetics (2010) by Barri Gold, Victorian Literature, Energy, and the Ecological Imagination (2014) by Allen MacDuffie, and Victorian Literature and the Physics of the Imponderable (2015) by Sarah Alexander for example.

5 Adam mocks Leda because she has a hard time pronouncing the liquid consonants ‘l’ and ‘r’ (426-427).

6 Shiel appears to be aware of Mallet’s map, or came to the conclusion on his own, as Adam asks “Strange that volcanoes are all near the sea: I don't know why; I don't think that anyone ever knew” (277).

7 While continental drift is often seen as Alfred Wegner’s theory, published in 1912, other thinkers had proposed drift theories before him. Shiel’s version seems most closely linked with Antonio Snider-Pellegrini’s 1858 theory published in La Création et ses Mystères Dévoilés (Snider-Pellegrini 314). That book received little attention, but Snider-Pellegrini’s drawings and ideas were reprinted in John Pepper’s The Playbook of Metals (1861) a popular children’s book focused on chemistry (Pepper 9; Le Grand 1988, 29).

8 Shiel also likely recognized the importance of citrus production. When describing Montserrat he quotes from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795–96) saying “‘Knowest thou the land where the orange-blossom blooms? It is there! It is there!’” (Morse 1980, 667).

9 Significance is defined as “Moderate damage (approximately $1 million or more), 10 or more deaths, Magnitude 7.5 or greater, Modified Mercalli Intensity X or greater, or the earthquake generated a tsunami” (National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration).