The Strange Face of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

It is said that eyes are the windows to the soul. If this is true then the face would be the house in which the soul lives. And just as one paints a house, or decorates it for a holiday, a person’s outward facial expression can represent the thoughts contained inside. A person’s face can convey the feelings one has deep in their soul. This is the reason that Robert Louis Stevenson pays such close attention to the faces of his characters in his novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Faces represent more than emotions, they represent the characters at their core.

Stevenson uses people’s faces to describe a lot more than what they look like. The first place in the story that Stevenson discuses faces is an important one. It comes up during the incident in which Hyde is being detained by the angry mob that saw him trample a little girl. “I never saw a circle of such hateful faces…” (8). Stevenson could have said ‘hateful people’ but he chose to describe their faces as hateful instead, as if their faces represent who they are as people. This idea is echoed later on when Stevenson describes Dr Jekyll’s staff as standing together “with faces of dreadful expectation” (39). Again, Stevenson is describing a group of people by the looks on their faces.

The next time Stevenson mentions faces is in the second chapter. This time, by the use of repetition, he establishes the theme, enabling it to continue throughout the story. Utterson begins to develop an obsession with Hyde—

…and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in the lawyer’s mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate curiosity to behold the features of the real Mr Hyde.” (13)

From this quote it becomes apparent that he doesn’t necessarily aspire to meet Hyde he just wants to see what he looks like. But more than anything Utterson wants to see Hyde’s face.

And at least it would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had but to show itself to raise up… a spirit of endured hatred. (13-14)

Stevenson is doing two things here. First, by the repetition, he is establishing the importance of a person’s face in the novella. Secondly, he shows the power of the face. Hyde’s is a face that can, just by being seen, cause a person to feel an immense hatred. And then, of course, when Utterson does finally encounter Hyde one of the first things he says is “will you let me see your face?” (15)

Stevenson makes it a point to include a description of faces whenever describing a character, especially if that person is experiencing any sort of intense emotion. For example, when the maid witnesses the murder on the street below her, she describes the murdered mans face to the police.

…the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-worn kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content. (21)

The maid’s assumptions in regards to the man’s personality were brought to her mind, supposedly, from just catching a glimpse of the man’s face. And from that one moonlight glimpse of his face she gathered so much about his character.
Another maid in the text, the one of Mr Hyde’s, is described as “an ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman” (23) and that “she had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy…” (23). This description of the “evil face” makes sense when, pages later, Jekyll describes the woman as a “creature whom [he] well knew to be silent and unscrupulous” (59). This adjective, “unscrupulous,” or lacking in honesty and being oblivious to what is honorable, echoes Hyde’s character. If she mirrors Hyde’s characteristics, in Stevenson’s world, so too would her “evil” face.

This brings me to the interesting juxtaposition of the sight (and description) of Dr Jekyll’s face and that of Mr Hyde’s. Stevenson introduces the reader to Mr Hyde before we get a description of Dr Jekyll. The first time Stevenson uses a facial reference is through Utterson’s thoughts after his encounter with Hyde— “The last, I think; for O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend” (16). This, of course, is the exact opposite description of Jekyll’s face, given a couple pages letter when we first meet him: “a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness…” (19). Stevenson’s choice to use the description “smooth-faced” is an interesting one. The word smooth is comforting, conjuring up feelings of pleasantness, it is the exact opposite feeling one gets when looking at Hyde. And, in fact, Hyde is often described as hairy and ape-like, unlike Jekyll who, Stevenson makes it a point to show, is completely without hair on his face. The use of the word “mark” in his description of Jekyll could parallel the word “signature” used in the description of Hyde, showing how both are “marked” by opposing ideas; Hyde, by evil, and Jekyll, by kindness. Moments later we see Dr Jekyll’s “large handsome face” change at the mention of his counterpart, Hyde. Jekyll’s face goes from being “handsome” to “[growing] pale to the very lips, and there came a blackness about his eyes” (20). This shows how Stevenson uses the strange change in Jekyll’s face to give an allusion to his famous plot twist. Remember the mention of the eyes being the windows to the soul? It is probably no coincidence that Utterson mentions Jekyll’s eyes turning black when thinking about Hyde.

If one reads closely it become obvious that every time Hyde is mentioned to Jekyll, Stevenson makes reference to his face. For example, when Jekyll talks about Hyde in a conversation with Utterson, he (Jekyll) “covered his face for a moment with his hands” (28). Jekyll may be almost unconsciously masking his face to draw illusions to the way that his face becomes “masked” by Hyde’s when he makes his change. This theme of masking is brought up again later in the novella with the character of Poole. Poole explains to Utterson his concern with the odd behavior of his employer, Jekyll. “‘Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?’… [Poole] paused and passed his hand over his face” (41). This time it is Poole who may be unconsciously masking his face, mirroring his own masters disturbing change.

It is no doubt that faces are a crucial theme in the novel. Now we can ask the question, why did Stevenson include this? What can this signify? As I mentioned before, I believe that Stevenson placed such an importance on the face because it is the window to the soul. The soul is a very important theme of the novella. The duality of the soul, the possession of a soul, etc., are important issues brought up by Stevenson. In Carl Jung’s book Man and His Symbols he directly addresses Jekyll and Hyde when discussing “Disassociation,” or “the splitting in the psyche, causing a neurosis” (Jung, 7). Jung mentions the novella saying, “a famous fictional example of this state is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde… In the story Jekyll’s ‘split’ took the form of a physical change, rather than (as in reality) an inner, psychic state” (Jung, 7). I mention this because the word “psyche” can also be taken to mean “soul.” In analyzing the neurosis of Disassociation he hits on what could be referencing in his novella, knowingly or not.

Among such people, whose consciousness is at a different level of development from ours, the “soul” (or psyche) is not felt to be a unit. Many primitives assume that a man has a “bush soul” as well as his own, and that this bush soul is incarnate in a wild animal…, with which the human individual has some kind of psychic identity. (Jung, 6-7).

This “bush soul” could be embodied in Hyde. It would explain why Hyde’s face would be hairy, so as to mimic the features of an ape.
Jung goes on to explain further—

In some tribes it is assumed that a man has a number of souls; this belief expresses the feeling of some primitive individuals that they each consist of several linked but distinct units. This means that the individual’s psyche is far from being safely synthesized; on the contrary, it threatens to fragment only too easily under the onslaught of unchecked emotions. (Jung, 7-8)

This separation of souls could explain why it is that Hyde’s face is so hard to describe. I don’t want to go so far as to say that Hyde doesn’t have a soul but I would suggest that perhaps he has a different kind of soul, one more like the “bush soul” that Jung describes. He can not be described because other human beings can not recognize themselves enough in him to be able to clearly see him. This is rather unlike Jekyll who contains a human soul whose face looks “handsome” and can be clearly seen by the narrator and the reader.

When taking into account the writings of Jung it seems that Stevenson, by placing such importance on the face as representing emotion, feeling, and humanity, was trying to show the state of a person’s soul. It is no wonder then why people who are generally upset by unthinkable acts are described as “angry faces.” Or people who have been shaken to the core by fear are “faces of dreadful expectation.” It also brings great importance to the different descriptions of Jekyll and Hyde’s faces. Jekyll, who contains a soul with a consciousness, has a kind and smooth face, whereas Hyde has one that is satanic or ape-like. By placing emphasis on faces, Stevenson is actually using a unique way to address the importance of the duality of the soul by locating the presence of the soul in the face. Stevenson is literally showing us that the eyes are the windows to the soul and, therefore, they are the windows to our very humanity or, in some cases, the lack there of!

copyright Megan Tharpe 2004

The Overcoat and The Namesake: The Changes

Essay illustrating the paralels between Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake to Nikolai Gogol's short story "The Overcoat."

Jhumpa Lahiri includes a quote from Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat” as the inscription to her novel The Namesake but the parallels do not end there. Allusions to the short story can be found everywhere— Gogol gets his name from the author Nikolai Gogol, Ashoke is literally saved by a page from “The Overcoat,” and a brief biography of Nikolai Gogol is given by a school teacher as he assigns the story to Gogol and his classmates. But the most important allusion to the story is the way that Gogol Ganguli changes his name just as Akaky Akakievich changes his overcoat. And the wearing of both of these things greatly change these two characters in very similar ways.

Both of the characters, Gogol and Akaky, are born without a name picked out. As baby’s both of their parents struggle to find the right names. In the end they are both, in a way, named by their fathers. “With a slight quiver of recognition, as if he’d known it all along, the perfect pet name for his son occurs to Ashoke… ‘Gogol,’ he repeats, satisfied” (Namesake, 28). “It’s evidently his fate. If so, better let him be named after his father. His father was Akaky, so let the son also be Akaky” (Overcoat, 395). In both cases of naming the authors suggest that the names were fated. As Nikolai Gogol writes in his story and as Lahiri quotes in her book, in both cases “the reader should realize himself that it could not have happened otherwise, and that to give [them] any other names was quite out of the question.”

The resistance Gogol shows, as a child, to getting a new name parallels the resistance Akaky shows to getting a new overcoat. When it came time for Gogol to assume his “good name” at school and be called “Nikhil” he was upset. “Gogol doesn’t want a new name. He can’t understand why he has to answer to anything else” (Namesake, 57). Akaky acts very similarly to Gogol when the tailor, Petrovich, tells him that his overcoat is impossible to repair and that he will have to get a new one. Like Gogol, Akaky is unable to even understand why this change needs to be made. “‘Why impossible, Petrovich?’ he said almost in a child’s pleading voice” (Overcoat, 403). At this point both of the characters are child-like, resistant, confused and scared to change.

The characters are very comfortable with the things they cling to. Akaky is a character who is afraid of change. He lives his life doing the same things day in and day out, never varying from his routine--

“However many directors and other superiors came and went, he was always to be seen in one and the same place, in the same position, in the same capacity, as the same copying clerk, so that after a while they became convinced that he must simply have been born into the world ready-made, in uniform, and with a balding head” (Overcoat, 396).

Part of that “uniform” is his overcoat, so it is no wonder why Akaky has trouble changing it. Comfort is also the reason that Gogol doesn’t want to change his name at first. “As a young boy Gogol doesn’t mind his name. He recognizes pieces of himself in road signs: GO LEFT, GO RIGHT, GO SLOW” (Namesake, 66).

Soon Gogol starts to believe that his misery might stem from his name, just as Akaky comes to believe that his misery “might perhaps lie with his overcoat” (Overcoat, 400). So they both decide to make the change, believing, for different reasons, that they have no other choice. Akaky gives in because his tailor will absolutely not mend his old overcoat. “Here Akaky Akakievich saw that he could not get around a new overcoat, and his spirits wilted completely” (Overcoat, 405). Gogol, however, believed that he had no other choice because he believed he wouldn’t be happy without making the change. “In spite of his parents’ sanction he feels that he is overstepping them, correcting a mistake they’ve made” (Namesake, 101).

Before both of the characters make the official change they already begin to experiences changes in their personalities just by the thought of making the official change. As a boy “Gogol does not date anyone in high school. He suffers quiet crushes, which he admits to no one” (Namesake, 93). But when Gogol, one night, tells a girl his name is Nikhil he acts very different. “It is the first time he’s kissed anyone, the first time he’s felt a girl’s face and body and breath so close to his own” (Namesake, 96). When his friends notice the change Gogol “shakes his head in a daze, as astonished as they are, elation still welling side him… he doesn’t tell them that it hadn’t been Gogol who’d kissed Kim. Gogol had nothing to do with it” (Namesake, 96). Gogol’s suddenly assertive behavior mirrors Akaky’s very same change when he just thinks of getting a new overcoat. “He became somehow livelier, even firmer of character, like a man who has defined and set a goal for himself. Doubt, indecision- in short, all hesitant and uncertain features- disappeared of themselves from his face and actions” (Overcoat, 407). In both cases the characters have a complete change of personality just by the thought of the actions they could take. These preliminary changes highlight one of the important and similar themes to each story, that a person does not need a change of costume to make a change in behavior.

Perhaps it is this feeling of change that comes over both of the characters that enables them to make the official change. Akaky must have liked the feeling of empowerment that the idea of getting a new overcoat gave him, therefore he decided to go through with the change. And sure enough once he put on his new purchase he was “in the most festive disposition of all his feelings. At each instant of every minute he felt that there was a new overcoat on his shoulders, and several times he even smiled from inner satisfaction” (Overcoat, 409). It is probably because he feels much like Gogol does after his change— “[Gogol] wonders if this is how it feels for an obese person to become thin, for a prisoner to walk free” (Namesake, 102). The two characters are both re-born into their newer, happier, more assertive selves because the changes they each make enable them to have the self-confidence they once lacked.

Akaky’s new overcoat enables him to become a different person. Gogol (the author) shows this when he at first mentions that after his dinner Akaky would “take out a bottle of ink, and copy documents he had brought home. If there chanced to be none, he made copies especially for his own pleasure…” (Overcoat, 398). Then after he gets the overcoat he writes that Akaky “dined cheerfully and wrote nothing after dinner…” (Overcoat, 410). His change becomes apparent when he makes the significant move of taking his old overcoat out to compare to his new one and finally is able to perceive its shabby state. Akaky even laughs at the coat, which becomes a symbol of his “old” self and then thinks “so far was the difference!” (Overcoat, 410). Gogols change is very similar— “But now that he’s Nikhil it’s easier to ignore his parents, to tume out their concerns and please… It is Nikhil, that first semester, that grows a goatee, starts smoking Camel Lights at parties and while writing papers… It is as Nikhil that he… gets himself a fake ID… It is as Nikhil that he loses his virginity at a party… “ (Namesake, 105).

Just as their changes cause their new personalities to appear, their new changes also cause their old selves to completely disappear, though in different ways. The overcoat causes Akaky’s death. If he hadn’t of gotten the new overcoat he would never have been out at a party late at night and wouldn’t have been assaulted and robbed. It was in order to recover the overcoat that he went to the important person for help, only to have his spirit broken, which caused his ultimate death. Perhaps if Akaky had not changed his “uniform” he would have not died. Lahiri parallels this when Gogol realizes that because of his name change, only a few people still call him Gogol. And when those people are gone, so too will his old name, and its history be gone. “Without people in the world to call him Gogol, no matter how long he himself lives, Gogol Ganguli will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved one, and so, cease to exist” (Namesake, 289).

Both characters suffer a “death” of their old selves but live on in new forms. Though Gogol Ganguli ceases to exist, “Nikhil will live on, publicly celebrated, unlike Gogol, purposely hidden, legally diminished, now all but lost” (Namesake, 290). Akaky is also able to live on as a ghost that haunts his town. As the ghost of his former self Akaky continues to get stronger. He is not afraid to be assertive and take revenge on those who have hurt him. Like Nikhil Ganguli, Akaky Akakievich is able to live on in his new form despite the death of his old self.

Gogol wears his name like Akaky wears his overcoat. Both things give them confidence, makes them feel like different people, and gives them the strength to do things they never thought they could do. But hopefully when Gogol finally reads “The Overcoat” he will learn that perhaps what Dostoyevsky meant by “we all come out of Gogol’s overcoat” is that our true selves are deep inside and that sometimes we just need an overcoat to make us feel confident enough to become who we truly want to be.

Copyright Megan Tharpe 2006

Cultural Histories Influences on Narratives

I often feel as if I have no history. That probably comes from the fact that I feel as if I have no culture either. My ethnic friends often call me a “WASP” (white, Anglo-saxon, protestant), which is just the slang term for “ridiculously white.” I don’t really have a cultural identity. There are no clubs or groups for people like me at school. I don’t really face much discrimination and/or problems because of my ethnicity to warrant support from others of my “race.” So reading cultural-based novels really makess me realize how much history a person carries with them, based on their ethnicity or race, and how little cultural history I seemed to have. Most cultural-based novels touch upon the idea of cultural histories- how it is passed down, re-told, remembered and forgotten— and how these histories affect the characters and impact the narratives.

Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire is a book that deals very much with the importance of history. It was one of the only books that dealt with my “WASP” history at all, though not in a very good light. I got to read about how my “history” was shaped by the slaughter of other people’s cultures. Memory of Fire is the perfect example of how history shapes a narrative. In Galeano’s work he uses history to form his linear narrative. Before the narrative even starts Galeano writes a description of exactly how he uses history to shape the narrative of his book (and even the ones to follow) in a section titled “This Book.”

This book is the first of a trilogy. It is divided into to parts. In one indigenous creation myths raise the curtain on pre-Columbian America. In the other, the history of America unfolds from the end of the fifteenth century to the year 1700. The second volume… will cover the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The third volume will reach up to our times. (Galeano, xvi)

In this way Galeano fashions his novel in an historical chronological order starting from stories about the creation of the world that were, for specific cultures, taken to be historical accounts and, eventually, ending his historical accounts in present day America.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Indian culture-based novel The Namesake, like Galeano’s novel, is arranged in sections according to date. Chapter one is seemingly entitled 1968 and it ends in Chapter twelve which shows that the book has made the journey to 2000. It becomes obvious that Lahiri thought it important to show the time in which this novel takes place. But the narrative is not linear such as Galeano’s. The reader gets glimpses into the past of the characters before the year it starts and even into the future. In the last chapter Lahiri switches from narrating present tense to future tense. “He wonders if he will be married again one day, if he will ever have a child to name. A month from now, he will begin a new job at a smaller architectural practice, producing his own designs” (Lahiri, 289). Lahiri does not stay in the lines of the linear narrative to tell the histories of the characters. She shifts from past to present to future. This is because it takes all of these elements for the characters to come to terms with their cultural histories, new and old.

Toni Morrison, in her novel that deals with African-American culture, Song of Solomon, uses history to shape her narrative as well. In Morrison’s novel the idea of forgetting history or the absence of knowledge in regards to a familial or cultural history shape the events of the novel. Morrison takes the reader along on the same journey as the character, Milk Man, to find the truth of his family’s history. As Milk Man learns things, so does the reader. History does not reveal itself to the reader until it is revealed to a specific character. In this way history, much like in Momaday’s book, is not told in a direct linear fashion. History affects the narrative because the discovery or the recovery of forgotten or hidden stories or histories, pull the novel along. Additions the Dead’s family history and Milk Man’s cultural history serves to drive the narrative further. The best example of this is how Milk Man, from a small child, had a habit of always looking behind him. “It was becoming a habit—this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had” (35). But Milk Man’s future actually exists in his past.

It wasn’t true what he’d said… that it wasn’t important to find his people. Ever since Danville, his interest in his own people, not just the ones he men, had been growing… Who were they, and what were they like? …why did she want to keep that awful name? To wipe out the past? Slavery? His slave past? And why didn’t his own father, and Pilate, know any of their own relatives? (293)

He has to find out his history, familial, personal and cultural before he can become a man and deal with his future. The book mimics this idea by constantly moving forward aided by details of the past.

N. Scott Momaday’s autobiography The Names: A Memoir is also a story that is concerned with coming to terms with ones past cultural histories. The Names is created from his personal history as a Native American, and not (as in Galeano’s book) concerned with retelling the history in a linear fashion. This is because Momaday is not concerned with the actual order of how things happened historically as much as he is concerned with how he remembers, or even imagines, it. “In general my narrative is an autobiographical account. Specifically it is an act of the imagination… This is one way to tell a story. In this instance it is my way, and it is the way of my people” (Momaday, i). Momaday is explaining that, to re-tell a history in a non-linear fashion as he does in his novel, is to remain true to and to fully represent his culture. And as far as history is concerned in his narrative, Momaday believes that his history is shaped fully by him and not, as Galeano is concerned with, by the specific placement in time an event actually occurred. Therefore, there is no true linear version of history neither in his mind nor in his book.

I invented history… The past and the future were simply the large contingencies of a given moment; they bore upon the present and gave it shape. One does not pass through time, but time enters upon him in his place… Notions of the past and future are essentially notions of the present. In the same ay an idea of one’s ancestry and posterity is really an idea of the self. (Momaday, 97)

Since Momaday feels that history doesn’t just exist in dates, rather in memories and are as much in the present as it is in the past, so then does his narrative. Momaday is the perfect example of cultural histories shaping a narrative. His Indian culture doesn’t follow traditional, linear patterned narratives. Rather they allow their stories lines to flow and intermingle the present with the past.

As a person with a feeling of disconnect from a particular culture, I find myself being drawn into the various re-tellings of cultural histories from various novels. In Memory of Fire Galeano uses actual events to form his linear re-telling of history from a particular culture’s perspective. In the The Namesake Lahiri follows a linear narrative in her chapters, but within those chapters the narrative slips from present to past to highlight the journey her characters take to find their cultural identities. The narrative of Song of Solomon is guided by the discovery of cultural/personal history. And then, of course, N. Scott Momoday’s autobiography The Names follows his cultural idea of history by not retelling his story in any sort of linear fashion. Culture has a profound effect on the telling of a person’s history. As I feel stripped of culture I also feel stripped of history. But, if Momaday is correct and we, as individuals, can make our own history I am not without hope of one day having my own history to discover and then, hopefully one day, to narrate for future generations.

Body Worlds: The Artistic Exhibition of Real Human Bodies

Short essay on the Body Worlds exhibit by Dr. Gunther von Hagens.

I have never had a very strong stomach, a fact which led me to fail Biology in high school because of a marked number of absences on days in which dissections were to take place. So right before I entered the Body Worlds exhibit at the California Science Center (described to me as “a biology textbook come to life”) I took a deep breath and reminded myself that, this time, ditching was not an option. My only hope was that I would find this exhibit to be more artistic than disgusting. I was more than happy; I was relieved to find that Dr. Gunther von Hagens’ “Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies” exceeded my hopes. Dr. von Hagens did an excellent job of introducing and exhibiting works of a new style of Anatomical Realism.

As I came face to face with my first dissected body I found that von Hagens’ plastination process had hardened all the normally soft and squishy human parts, which made the bodies look comfortingly fake and also hauntingly beautiful. I was delighted to find that, not only was I not passing out from horror and disgust, but that I found the entire body quite aesthetically pleasing. The bodies I was dreading were more like works of art that filled my imagination and piqued my curiosity— each body drawing me further and further into the exhibit and touching me on so many different levels, as all good works of art should do.

I attended the exhibit with my best friend who, like me, is an art history student. So it wasn’t too unlikely that we both found ourselves drawn to the artist renderings of human figures that were hung on the walls surrounding the plastinated bodies and body parts. We seemed to be the only two people in the over-crowded room who could tear their eyes away from the physical exhibits to appreciate the artwork on the walls. We stood in front of the oversized banners that hung from the ceilings and stared at the beautiful detailed sketches of limbs, muscular structures, and nude bodies. The effect that these banners was two-fold—they were aesthetically pleasing but also worked to give a nod to the artists of the past whose works, that bridged both art and science, were the stepping stones that made this exhibit possible many years later. I especially liked the addition of the drawings to the exhibit because it was nice to see wonderful examples of the two styles of Anatomical Realism intermixed, the old amongst the new.

The first style of Anatomical Realism had, until the opening of Body Worlds, been the only style for a very long period of time. The most famous of all Anatomical Realists was Leonardo DaVinci whose most famous anatomical drawing is the “Vitruvian Man” (see Fig. 1) which was one of the artworks displayed in the exhibit. As you can see by the drawing, this style aimed to show a higher reality of dissection by displaying beautiful, idealized bodies and body parts that float in the air with no reference to any one dissected person. These drawings were beautiful and always strived for perfection. The early anatomical illustrations began to achieve greater technical precision as knowledge about the boundaries and surfaces of the human body, due to scientific studies (and grave robbing), became more sophisticated.

The second style of Anatomical Realism is a direct result of the knowledge gained by those anatomical illustrations. Body Worlds is a perfect example of that newer style which aimed to show the reality of dissection— the cutting open of a particular body with all the furniture of the dissection. It shows the ugliness of anatomical mutilation (see Fig. 2). Until plastination this art style has not been able to be offered for mass viewings by the general public.

There are many people who viewed this exhibit with disgust. There are many people who questioned the ethics behind it. There are many people who were outraged and upset over the very existence of it. I am not one of those people. In fact, I had a hard time trying to see the exhibit any way other than a highly stylized art exhibit. I did not encounter one negative feeling while walking from one art piece to the next and, in fact, found the much-debated “Pregnant Woman” to be the most artistic of all the pieces.

Many of the people around me exclaimed how “sick” it was that von Hagens had her “posing” like a “sexual object.” I understood that viewers were taking issue with the position of her arm, slung up over her head in a way that could be taken to be sexually suggestive. Later that night, as I was lying in bed, that particular piece stayed with me. I began to wonder if there was another way von Hagens could have displayed her body that would have been less controversial. I shifted onto my side and played with that idea as I played with the position of my arm. No matter where I placed it, my arm interfered with or blocked the sight of my stomach. It became obvious that her “pose” was the perfect way to display the beauty of her pregnant stomach. Even more, it was a uniquely feminine position that displayed the deeper meaning and entire point behind this particular body— a woman who had the ability to create and sustain the life of a child.

Dr. Gunther von Hagens is not only a scientific pioneer, but also a very talented and groundbreaking artist. I have sat in many Art History classes and walked through hallways filled with artwork in all kinds of museums of all kinds of genres, and this exhibit was unlike anything I had ever seen. Because of “Body Worlds” I got the chance to experience a new style of Anatomical Realism that enriched my mind and helped me experience a style of art in a brand new and exciting way. Von Hagens’ exhibit should not only be celebrated for its scientific advancements but also for its undeniable artistic value.
fig. 1 fig. 2

Copyright Megan Tharpe 2005