Forty marriage counselors brought their patients to watch a 2015 Broadway revival of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Booth Theater. The group was organized by psychologist and psychoanalyst Jean Petrucelli, who told The New York Times that George and Martha’s marriage “could drive any therapist toward an ‘early grave,’ but that they were certainly treatable” (Schuessler). More specifically, Petrucelli writes, “starting the process of change within a couple’s interpersonal style involves first identifying the ‘dance’ between partners, understanding the co-constructed cycle of shame and anger, and uncovering what’s really going on” (qtd. in Schuessler). Petrucelli, who, in addition to being a clinical professor of psychology at New York University’s postdoctoral program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, is also the associate editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, is certainly not the only psychologist who uses Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to assist both patients and psychologists in training. Bill Doherty, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota and director of the Minnesota Couples on the Brink Project, uses Albee’s play as a teaching tool, saying “couples like George and Martha are actually good candidates for therapy” (Schuessler). Doherty writes, “These people [George and Martha] are actually easier to treat than people who are dead to each other. These are couples who often have great sex and great fights. There’s spark and energy for a therapist to deal with. You have to learn to pry them apart, so they are separate people and less reactive” (qtd. in Schuessler). Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, according to Doherty, is especially notable because it premiered on Broadway in 1962 before most people were aware of the psychological vernacular that has permeated popular culture: attachment, codependency, gaslighting, etc. Doherty, who also uses Death of a Salesman to teach family dynamics, writes, “The thing I love about using older things is that playwrights and screenwriters discovered some family systems before any of the family therapists came on the scene. They were ahead of the culture” (qtd. in Schuessler).

Marriages simply do not fall apart; they unravel. My marriage began to unravel long before my wife left on the second of September at the beginning of my second year of my PhD program. Four weeks after my wife left—and while I was in the middle of my best Richard Burton impersonation —I was tasked by Dr. Matthew Roudané to read Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for his 20th Century American Playwrights course, and because I am an insular medievalist, I had admittedly never read the play nor seen the Academy Award nominated film. However, after both reading the play and watching the movie, I decided to call my wife, who was now living six-hundred miles away in a different state, and I asked her to read the play, which she agreed to do. It was the first time that we really communicated since she had left to our familial state. Prior to researching why and how psychiatrists and therapists use Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and prior to Dr. Roudané explaining that it is used by couple’s therapists, I suspected that there was something within the play—something inside the bone—that could begin to mend my marriage, and if it could not mend my marriage, then maybe it could keep me from falling apart. 

Perhaps the most obvious question a reader may ask when picking up the play—me included—is what it has to do with Virginia Woolf.  In the play, Virginia Woolf becomes the basis of an academic joke repeated by Martha: 

MARTHA: (Sings, conducts with her drink in her hand. HONEY joins in toward the end) 

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf,  

Virginia Woolf, 

Virginia Woolf, 

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf… 

(MARTHA and HONEY laugh; NICK smiles) HONEY: Oh wasn’t that funny? That was so funny… 

Nick: (snapping to) Yes…yes, it was.  

MARTHA: I thought I’d bust a gut; I really did…I really thought I’d bust a gut laughing. 

George didn’t like it…George didn’t think it was funny at all. (24-5) 

As Jennifer Gilchrist acknowledges in “’Right at the Meat of Things’,” “the women very much enjoy the academic joke that comes to be associated with Martha, Nick responds politely, and George resists it” (853). The song, which is a supposed to be a parody of the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?,” is the crux of this sort of sex-battle between the men and the women of the play. More than the song itself, Virginia Woolf’s work is very much a part of the play, primarily her posthumous published short story “Lappin and Lapinova.” Essentially, “Lappin and Lapinova” features a newlywedded couple, and on their honeymoon, Rosalind creates a fantasy world where her husband Ernest can be the strong King of the Rabbit Kingdom, Lappin, and Rosalind can be the caring Queen of the Rabbit Kingdom, Lapinova (Woolf). Unfortunately, as their marriage goes on, and their mundane life begins to take over, the fantasy begins fade. The story ends with Ernest’s declaration that “Poor Lapinova…caught in a trap…killed” to which Woolf ends the story with, “so that was the end of that marriage” (Woolf). 

Given the ending of “Lappin and Lapinova,” both Martha and George have a very good reason to fear Virginia Woolf; the death of their fantasy becomes the death of their marriage. Martha and George’s son, which is the basis of their fantasy, was created twenty-one years prior to the events of the play, and whereas Rosalind created the rabbit fantasy to protect their marriage, “both Martha and George use their imaginary son as a weapon against each other” (Gilchrest 859).  For example, George tells Martha that their imaginary son would come “to him for advice, for information, for love that wasn’t mixed with sickness—and you know what I mean Martha!—who could not tolerate the slashing, braying residue that called itself his mother” (225). Martha replies to George, “A son who was so ashamed of his father he asked me once if it—possibly—wasn’t true, as he heard…maybe, that he was not our child” (225). George, much like Ernest, kills the fantasy. However, unlike Woolf’s “Lappin and Lapinova,” when George kills the fantasy, it is an exorcism, hence the title of act three: “The Exorcism.” George pretends to receive a telegram from Western Union stating that their imaginary son died in a car accident, but Martha insists that George does not have the power to kill their son (231-5). Only after their guests, Nick and Honey, leave, and George and Martha are alone, can the façade begin to fade, and Martha can begin to accept the death—or perhaps murder—of the fantasy:

MARTHA: It was…? You had to? 

GEORGE: (Pause) Yes. 

[…] 

GEORGE: (Long silence): It will be better. 

MARTHA: (Long silence) I don’t…know. 

GEORGE: It will be…maybe.  

[…] 

MARTHA: Just…us? 

GEORGE: Yes. 

[…] 

GEORGE: Are you alright? 

MARTHA: Yes. No. 

GEORGE: (Puts his hand gently on her shoulder; she puts her head back and he sings to her, very softly) Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf,  

Virginia Woolf, 

Virginia Woolf,  

MARTHA: I…am…George….  

GEORGE: Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf…. 

MARTHA: I…am…George….I…am… 

(GEORGE nods, slowly) 

(Silence, tableau) (240-2)

Martha has every reason to be afraid of Virginia Woolf. However, if they want to get to “the marrow” “inside the bone,” then they must shed the illusion and live within the truth (213). 

 Truth and illusion serve as the foundation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and much of Albee’s work. As Gilchrist points out, “This question, of what is truth and what is illusion, is repeated in Virginia Woolf” (862). Emil Roy, in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And the Tradition,” calls figuring out “the difference between truth and reality” “the crucial central game” of the play (33). In reference to whether he killed his parents, George says to Nick, “Truth and illusion. Who knows the difference, eh, toots? Eh?” (202). Shortly afterwards, when George is questioning Martha about her sexual activities with Nick, Martha responds, “Truth and illusion, George; you don’t know the difference” (202). When George continues to pressure Martha for the answer to his question, she again responds, “Truth or illusion, George. Doesn’t it matter to you…at all?” (204). According to Gilchrist, “the irony, of course, is that while Martha begs George to distinguish truth from illusion in terms of her extramarital sexual activity, George is planning to kill off their mutual fantasy of a son” (862). The truth, however, is that George did not kill his parents, Martha did not have sex with Nick, and Martha and George do not have any children.

 Lawrence Kingsley writes in “Reality and Illusion” that when most of Albee’s characters are “left to their own resources, they construct themselves a world of illusion which affords escape from their recurring sense of personal inadequacy. Illusion works for a time, but soon brings complications which want redress” (72). In other words, Albee introduces illusion—in this case, it is the imaginary son—only so that his characters can rid themselves of the illusion and return to the truth (or, reality). The truth, however, especially in the case of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is so debilitating to the characters, more so Martha, that living within the illusion is akin to surviving. Without the illusion, one may ask, how can we hope to live at all? Martha says as much:

I have tried, oh God I have tried; the one thing I’ve tried to carry pure and unscathed through the sewer of this marriage; through the sick nights, and the pathetic, stupid days, through the derision and the laughter…through one failure compounding another failure, each attempt more sickening, more numbing than the one before; the one thing, the one person I have tried to protect, to raise above the mire of this vile, crushing marriage; the one light in all this hopeless…darkness…our SON. (277) 

Martha never had children, and at fifty-two, she will likely never have children of her own. She is stuck in a college town, and she likes to drink. Her father, who she feels does not love her, hoped that George would one day take over as the president of the college. However, George has not even amounted to much in his own department let alone the college. The only thing that Martha has is their imaginary son, and the same is true for George. George calmly says to Martha: 

I’m numbed enough…and I don’t mean by liquor, though maybe that’s been part of the process—a gradual, over-the-years going to sleep of the brain cells—I’m numbed enough, now, to be able to take you when we’re alone. I don’t listen to you…or when I do listen to you, I sift everything. I bring everything down to reflex response, so I don’t really hear you, which is the only way to manage it. (155) 

Of course, George’s reflex is to create their imaginary son, or as Kingsley writes, “what has happened plainly is that George and Martha have evaded the ugliness of their marriage by taking refuge in illusion” (74). Though they both believe in the illusion, and they are both using it to mask their wretched marriage, Martha, much like Rosalind in “Lappin and Lapinova,” seems addicted to it.  

 The second act of the play is titled Walpurgisnacht, which can be translated as Walpurgis Night or Saint Walpurgis Night. Walpurgisnacht is celebrated on April 30th, and Christians, primarily in Germany, celebrate Walpurgisnacht by commemorating Saint Walpurgis, who was an Anglo-Saxon missionary to modern day Germany, for converting the local peoples and ridding them of witchcraft. However, Albee is undoubtedly asking us, his audience, to consider Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s tragedy Faust (1831), particularly “Walpurgis Night” in part one of the play. In “Walpurgis Night,” Faust is taken by Mephistopheles to the annual gathering of witches, which includes a satanic orgy. Mephistopheles invites Faust to participate, and at first, Faust seems more than happy to join saying, “I hope my mind remains intact! I’ve never seen a carnival so lively!” (Ln. 4114-5). Faust begins to dance with a “pretty Young Witch” (Ln. 4127).  However, when dancing with the witch, “a small red mouse leaped from her mouth,” and Faust is reminded of Gretchen, tearing him away from the satanic illusion, which Mephistopheles attempts to reintroduce (Ln. 4179).

The second act of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Walpurgisnacht, is named so because of Martha’s addiction to her illusion, an illusion that is shared by her husband to a lesser extent. Therefore, according to Kingsley, “George is…indulging [Martha] in her Walpurgisnacht or ‘witch’s sabbath’” (75). George says as much to her: “you’ve moved bag and baggage into your own fantasy world now, and you’ve started playing variations on your own distortions” (155). Simultaneously, George admits that he is responsible for this illusion: “but one thing in this whole sinking world that I am sure of is my partnership, my chromosomological partnership in the…creation of our…blond-eyed, blue-haired…son” (72). To remove Martha from her very own Walpurgisnacht, which, once again, is a demonic orgy in Faust, George needs to have an exorcism. If the second act is where Martha is completely within her illusion, then the third act is where the illusion is purged. 

  Albee is certainly not the only playwright whose work is based on the dichotomy of truth and illusion. Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (1946) asks what happens when one must face the choice of living between in truth or illusion. Larry, and, in turn, O’Neill, gives us his thesis statement on truth and illusion in the beginning of act one of The Iceman Cometh: “To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial…The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober” (12). The whole lot of men drunkenly sit around Harry Hope’s saloon living within their pipe dreams. For instance, Larry says of Captain Lewis, a “once-hero of the British army,” and General Wetjoen, a “commando in the War,” that “they dream the hours away in happy dispute over the brave days in South Africa when they tried to murder each other” (34). When Hope dreams of his late wife, Larry whispers, “Isn’t a pipe dream of yesterday a touching thing?” (46). Though most of the men are drunk, or in the process of becoming drunk— the play is set in a saloon after all—General Wetjoan makes clear that “you don’t need booze to be drunk!” (49). In other words, liquor or not, no one in Harry Hope’s saloon typically lives within truth. That is, however, until Hickey enters the scene. Hickey says to everyone at the saloon:  

The only reason I’ve quit [drinking] is—well, I finally had the guts to face myself and throw overboard the damned lying pipe dream that’d been making me miserable….and then all at once I found I was at peace with myself and I didn’t need booze any more…I meant to save you from pipe dreams. I know now, from my experience, they’re the things that really poison and ruins a guy’s life and keep him from finding any peace. If you knew how free and contented I feel now. I’m like a new man. And the cure…is so damn simple, once you have the nerve. Just the old dope of honesty is the best policy. (71; 73) In other words, Hickey has learned to shed the illusion, or pipe dreams, and live, and he wants to share it with the others in the saloon that are still living within their illusion. After Hickey reveals his wife has died, he attempts to convert the others to the truth. However, later, Hickey reveals that he has actually killed his wife, and he killed her because he had “always known that was the only possible way to give her peace and free her” (203). By Hickey admitting to his murder, and his reasoning behind it, Hickey admits that his peace and salvation is, in fact, just a pipe dream. When he sheds his final illusion while being arrested, which was a façade of truth, he cannot come to terms with reality. In the exact opposing view of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, O’Neill believes we must live somewhere between truth and illusion.  

 Of course, The Iceman Cometh premiered sixteen years before Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. However, The Iceman Cometh’s first revival was only ten years after its premier in 1956, and Albee went to see the play at the Masque Theatre in New York (O’Neill I; Baxandall 33). Shortly after the play opened, Albee was asked about the message of The Iceman Cometh, specifically whether illusion was necessary for life. Albee responded, O’Neill “made a very strong case, but…perhaps in the long run it [is] best for people to try and live with the truth” (qtd. in Baxandall 33). In this way, Albee’s play is undoubtedly a response, if not a direct response, to O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. However, getting to the truth, living with the truth, is not easily done, and for some—like Hickey—it is nearly impossible. When one gets to the bone, perhaps when one thinks they have gone all the way, they must keep going. George says as much in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: 

GEORGE: We all peel labels, sweetie; and when you get through the skin, all three layers, through the muscle, slosh aside the organs…them which is still sloshable—…and get down to the bone…you know what you do then? 

HONEY: (Terribly interested) No! 

GEORGE: When you get down to bone, you haven’t got all the way, yet. There’s something inside the bone…the marrow…and that’s what you gotta get at. (A strange smile at MARTHA). 

HONEY: Oh! I see.  

GEORGE: The marrow. But bones are pretty resilient… (212-3)

As George says, when one gets beneath the skin to the bone, they have not gone far enough yet. However, bones are resilient; it is not easy to get past the bone. For George and Martha to live within reality, completely outside of illusion, they must work to get past the bone, which, for them, is the death of their twenty-one-year-old illusion: their imaginary son. However, if they are truly able to kill their illusion and begin to live within reality, there is no telling whether their marriage will survive.  

Samira Sasani, in her article “Pathological Interaction in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” calls George and Martha’s son “the game of deceit” “from which there is no vent out” (1484). In fact, Sasani furthers her characterization by writing, “the pathological interactions these people [George and Martha] are entrapped in lead them to badness or madness. A person caught in paradoxical injunction or double bind is in an untenable position from which his chance of stepping outside is very slim” (1486). In other words, George and Martha are trapped inside of this pathological game, and their chance of leaving, or even simply existing outside of it, is extraordinarily low. In fact, Sasani goes even further to say that “the only remedy is death,” which is certainly why they would be afraid of Virginia Woolf (1486). However, George and Martha’s pathological relationship goes beyond their illusion. George and Martha, according to Sasani, simply live within a true love-hate relationship. For instance, while Nick is struggling to figure out what is happening, George and Martha have the following interaction:

MARTHA: Very good, George.  

GEORGE: Thank you, Martha.  

MARTHA: Really good.  

GEORGE: I’m glad you liked it. 

[…] 

MARTHA: You’re really a bastard. 

GEORGE: I? I? 

MARTHA: Yeah…you. (150-1)

Martha continues to say that George makes her sick and so on, which all occurs right after her admiration for him. Moreover, more than a true love-hate relationship, George and Martha’s pathological relationship is cyclical. As Sasani points out, “they both desire to stop it, to get rid of it, but there is not a way out of it” (1488). Much like Jake Barnes from The Sun Also Rises, who at the beginning of the novel thinks to himself: “I had the feeling as in a nightmare of it all being something repeated, something I had been through and that now I must go through again,” George and Martha are bound to live within their pathological relationship (Hemingway).

However, they have no desire to live within their cyclical mess of a marriage:  

MARTHA: My arm has gotten tired whipping you.  

GEORGE: (Stares at her in disbelief) You’re mad.  

MARTHA: For twenty-three years! 

GEORGE: You’re deluded…Martha, you’re deluded.  

MARTHA: IT’S NOT WHAT I’VE WANTED! 

GEORGE: I thought at least you were…on to yourself. I didn’t know. I…didn’t know.  

MARTHA: (Anger taking over) I’m on to myself.  

GEORGE: (As if she were some sort of bug) No…no…you’re sick. 

MARTHA: (Rises-screams) I’LL SHOW YOU WHO’S SICK! 

[…] 

GEORGE: (He shakes her) Stop it! (Pushes her back in her chair) Now, stop it! 

[…] 

GEORGE: (Emphasizing with his forefinger) And you’ll wish you’d never mentioned our son! 

MARTHA: (Dripping contempt) You… 

GEORGE: Now, I said I warned you.  

MARTHA: I’m impressed.  

GEORGE: I warned you not to go too far.  

MARTRHA: I’m just beginning. (153-5)

Though they are deep within their game, Martha is “just beginning” to which George replies, “you try it and I’ll beat you at your own game” (158). Despite being halfway through the play, and George and Martha are twenty-three years into their marriage (and their son was created twenty-one years ago), the game is just getting started, and there is no foreseeable end. 

George and Martha get another couple, Nick and Honey, entangled within their game. However, Nick and Honey are able free themselves from the game, and, in fact, Honey decides that she wants a child, a real child, and her husband agrees with (or at least acknowledges) her request (222-3). Nick asks, “Is this game over?” to which Honey answers, “Yes! Yes, it is” (228). After ending their entanglement with the game, which has lasted only an evening, Nick and Honey leave. However, when they leave, George and Martha remain entangled within the game, which Martha loses. Rather than begin to live in reality, as opposed to illusion, Ruby Cohn suggests in “The Verbal Murders of Edward Albee” that when Martha admits that she is afraid of Virginia Woolf at the end of play, she means the actual Virginia Woolf: “a women afflicted with a madness that drove her to suicide” (94). Therefore, if their pathological game, which is simply about hurting each other, is truly cyclical, then, at some point, rather than live in reality, it will drive Martha to suicide. Sasani similarly concludes that “the only remedy for stopping the game and the pathological quarrel between them is the death of one of the partners, George of Martha, otherwise even by the death of their son…the game of power, the love-hate interaction pathologically continues” (1491). Perhaps there is no true escape from their illusion if their marriage remains.

Some critics, however, doubt that Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is about marriage at all. Michael Billington, who has written about theatre for The Guardian since 1971, suggests in his article “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a misunderstood masterpiece” that most critics do not truly understand the play. As Billington notes, despite exercising “fierce control over all productions,” Albee’s play “has hung around [his] neck like a shining medal of some sort” (qtd. in Billington). Billington suggests that Albee’s protectiveness of his play suggests “that it is widely misunderstood” (Billington). Really, Billington writes, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is about the United States—after all, George and Martha are named after the Washingtons. George, of course, is a history teacher, Nick is a biologist, who may be working on eugenics, and Honey’s father is a preacher, who, according to George, when he died “all sorts of money fell out…Jesus money, Mary money…LOOT!” (64). With the combination of history, science, and religion, according to Billington, the play is about “the stock American theme of truth and illusion,” and he suggests that “with America currently engaged in its own form of post-truth politics, now seems the perfect time to revive Albee’s enduring masterpiece about the dangers of living in a world of illusions” (Billington). Though the play can be seen, at least partly, as a critique of American illusion, it certainly is based on his experience with his own family.  

Albee was given up for adoption shortly after his birth, and he was adopted by Reed and Frances Albee at 18 days old.  Reed, who was wealthy by way of inheritance, married Frances 

“in 1925, a year after his first marriage of ten years ended in divorce” (Konkle). As Lincoln Konkle notes in his biography for the Edward Albee Society, “[Edward’s] mother was emotionally cold and domineering; his father was distant and uninvolved in his son’s rearing” (Konkle). Albee rejected his parent’s wealth and lifestyle, and he began acting out early. He was expelled from several private preparatory schools, and when he finally graduated high school “he left home (or was thrown out) after a fight over his late-night drinking, which ceased all contact between him and his adoptive parents for twenty years” (Konkle). Witnessing his adoptive parent’s relationship and living his own relationship with them, undoubtedly influenced Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’s Martha and George, or, as Author Scott Bradfield writes, “Albee’s upbringing made him the perfect person to write about the deep pathological weirdness of 

American family relationships” (Bradfield). Moreover, it is not Albee’s only play about marriage. 

 Albee premiered Marriage Play at Vienna’s English Theatre in 1987. Unlike Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Marriage Play features only two actors: Jack, the husband, and 

Gillian, the wife. Jack comes home from work one day and tells his wife, “I’m leaving you,” and his wife responds, “Of course” (5). Rather than simply leave, because they start to argue, Jack leaves and enters again saying, “Hello; I am leaving you” (9). However, this time, Gillian pretends not to hear him. Once again, Jack leaves and comes back, and he says, “Hello. (Pause.) I’m leaving you” (10). Gillian sarcastically responds, “Darn! Ya know, I knew it!? I had a feeling!” (10). Jack finally gives up and asks Gillian what she is reading, Gillian responds, “It’s a set of notations…of our making love…Every time we have had made love I have notated it here; I have commented it—duration, positions, time of day, necessity, degrees of enjoyability, snatches of conversation, the weather. You know…a record” (12). The conversation temporarily switches to Gillian’s The Book of Days, which is what she calls her record, but Jack is insistent that he is leaving her (14). However, Gillian does not let Jack leave, and the two begin to brutally fight each other, which seems to calm them down. After the couple calms down, they begin to argue while reminiscing about their thirty years of marriage. They both have also been unfaithful to each other. Despite the play ending with Jack saying, “I am leaving you,” and Gillian responding with “Yes. I know,” it is not clear if their marriage is over or if it is part of a game (40). Prior to Jack’s final declaration, Gillian says, “Go dig the garden; put the garden in…you put in a garden every year; you always have” (40). 

Robert L. Pela, in his review of Marriage Play, calls the play “essentially a far less sophisticated update on Albee’s George and Martha” (Pela). However, more than a “less sophisticated” Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the play makes clear Albee’s fascination with marriages, particularly troubled ones. Much like George and Martha, Jack and Gillian do not speak to each other; instead, they theatrically yell. Moreover, there is no grand search for truth, and if any illusions were to exists, it would be their marriage in which they admit—but only amid their argument—is mediocre. Gillian, much like Martha and Albee’s adoptive mother Frances, is formidable, especially in the couple’s physical fight. She is not willing to let her husband leave without both an explanation and a confession of her own. Marriage Play is much more about the couple’s relationship coming to an inevitable end. Martha attempts to have sex with Nick to humiliate George, but in Marriage Play, Jack and Gillian are having affairs in secrecy.  Even at their worst, and even through their impassioned hatred, Martha’s infidelity is for George and is no secret. Jack and Gillian are passionate people, but George and Martha are passionate—however toxic—for each other.

The passion of the play is ever apparent in its film adaptation. The film starred Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis, and it was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.  James Power wrote in his 1966 review of the film for The Hollywood Reporter, “the screen has never held a more shattering and indelible drama than Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee’s stage play was a masterpiece. The makers of this film have created a motion picture masterpiece…[it] is an instant film classic, and Warner Bros. deserves the highest credit for making it a movie without compromise” (Power). Power writes that Elizabeth Taylor “reaches the fullest of her powers as Martha,” and Richard Burton delivers a “rending performance” (Power). It is perhaps one of the most glowing reviews ever written for a film, and it includes high praise for the play itself. Moreover, Elizabeth Taylor, who plays Martha, was married to Richard Burton, who plays George, for two years at the time of the film’s release (though it would not be indictive of their marriage for at least another eight years). The film is relatively faithful to play with only a few minor deviations, including some language censorship.  In 1932 there were three marriage counseling centers in the United States, and by 1968, there were 1,800 (Gefter 147). As Philip Gefter writes in Cocktails with George and Martha (2024), “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? provided, among other things, cold comfort to audiences who could watch George and Martha’s marriage-in-distress on the big screen and recognize areas of turbulence in their own relationships” (147). The film, because it could reach a wider audience than the play, did not simply tell the story of one marriage; it is a film about marriage. 

Philip Gefter begins his conclusion of Cocktails with George and Martha by writing, “marriages tend to straddle a common paradoxical line. In public, couples by and large conform to a standard social etiquette, where bickering, say, is to be avoided. At home, though, behind closed doors, the private, truer reality of marital coalescence is lived out at the deeper, more intimate and murkier foundation of emotional attachment” (147). George and Martha’s game begins before Nick and Honey arrive and continues while they are there, but they can, only when they are alone, reconcile their illusion. Still, Joel Brown writes for Boston University Today, “Most people who see Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? either on stage or in its iconic screen version, come away thinking: These people need therapy” (Brown). Wendy Lippe, who is a clinical psychologist and Producing Artistic Director of The Psych Drama Theatre, is attempting to do just that.  Lippe writes, “It’s the interest in getting into the mind of somebody else and exploring their anxieties and their pain and their confusion and their ways of coping and in their relationships. I’m doing that with my patients, and I’m doing that with my characters” (qtd. in Brown). The goal of Lippe’s production of Albee’s play is to have audiences “start to talk about the characters, because that’s safer, and slowly but surely begin to talk about themselves” (qtd. in Brown). However, even for Lippe, after productions of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, she writes, “some nights I go home and I feel really sad, but I think that there’s a zone I get into with my patients. You learn that whatever the drama is on stage or in your life, you have a muscle that shifts you back into the space with your patient” (qtd. in Brown). Virginia Woolf is certainly not part of the theater of the absurd, but there are elements of the play that are very close to absurdism; elements which would be more fully explored by Albee in later plays. Moreover, nearly almost all the characters within the play have moments of madness. Yet, despite absurd moments and boisterous dialogue, the play touches on something extraordinarily human. Lippe concludes, “can we find a way to be intimate, or do we throw our hands up and walk away? In this day and age, walking away is easier” (qtd. in Brown). 

George and Martha do not walk away from each other; instead, it seems as though they are closest at the end of the play when their illusion has died, and they can finally be truly alone. I believe in George and Martha, but it is easier to walk away. It is impossible to live within our pipe dreams or illusions. For one to live, to truly experience life, we must find ourselves living in truth. I do not believe in that green light or hope for an orgastic future. Tomorrow we will not run faster or stretch out our arms further….and one terrible morning—to answer the question: can Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? save my marriage? The answer is no, and that is the risk of peeling back all the layers of skin to the bone and then continuing to the marrow. Despite my best efforts, it did not save my marriage,  and I cannot answer if it will keep me from unraveling. What Edward Albee’s play did, however, is allow us to, at least for a moment, bask in reality without the impediment of illusion. 

Works Cited 

Albee, Edward. “The Art of Theater No. 4: Edward Albee.” The Paris Review, 2004. 

---. Marriage Play. Dramatists Play Service, 1997.  

---. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Pocket Books, 1962.   

Baxandall, Lee. “The Theatre of Edward Albee.” The Tulane Drama Review, vol. 9, no. 4, 1965, pp. 19–40. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.2307/1125030. 

Billington, Michael. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a misunderstood masterpiece.” The Guardian, 18 Sep 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/18/whos-afraid-ofvirginia-woolf-edward-albee. Accessed 2 Dec 2024.  

Bradfield, Scott. “The Drama of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Spilled Into Real Life.” Culture, 13 Feb 2024, https://newrepublic.com/article/178149/messy-making-whosafraid-virginia-woolf-edward-albee. Accessed 3 Dec 2024.  

Brown, Joel. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Therapy Included.” Boston University Today, 8 Dec 2016, https://www.bu.edu/articles/2016/whos-afraid-of-virginia-woolf/. Accessed 3 

Dec 2024.  

Cohn, Ruby. “The Verbal Murders of Edward Albee.” Twentieth Century American Drama, 

Routledge, 2006.  

Gefter, Philip. Cocktails with George and Martha. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024.  

Gilchrist, Jennifer. “‘Right at the Meat of Things’: Virginia Woolf in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Women’s Studies, vol. 40, no. 7, Oct. 2011, pp. 853–72. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2011.603609. 

Goethe, Johan Wolfgang von. Faust I & II. Edited and translated by Stuart Atkins, Princeton UP, 

1994.  

Hemingway, Ernest. “The Sun Also Rises.” Project Gutenberg, 10 Jan 2022, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/67138/pg67138-images.html. Accessed 4 Dec 2024.  

Kingsley, Lawrence. “Reality and Illusion: Continuity of a Theme in Albee.” Educational Theatre Journal, vol. 25, no. 1, Mar. 1973, p. 71. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.2307/3205837. 

Konkle, Lincoln. “Biography: Learn the History of Edward Albee.” Edward Albee Society, https://edwardalbeesociety.org/biography/. Accessed 2 Dec 2024.  

O’Neill, Eugene. The Iceman Cometh. Edited by William Davies King, Yale UP, 2020.  

Pela, Robert L. “Marriage Play Spices Up a Worn-Out Relationship with Battle Sequences and Admissions of Infidelity.” Phoenix New Times, 23 Oct 2008, https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arts/marriage-play-spices-up-a-worn-outrelationship-with-battle-sequences-and-admissions-of-infidelity-6393516. Accessed 3 Dec 2024.  

Power, James. “‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’: THR’s 1966 Review.” The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Nov 2014, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/whosafraid-virginia-woolf-read-750750/. Accessed 3 Dec 2024.  

Roy, Emil. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the Tradition.” The Bucknell Review, vol. 13, no. 1, 1965, pp. 27-36. 

Sasani, Samira. “Pathological Interaction in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 4, no. 7, July 2014, pp. 1483–91. DOI.org 

(Crossref), https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.4.7.1483-1491. 

Schuessler, Jennifer. “Couples Counseling for Virginia Woolf’s George and Martha.” The New York Times, 14 Nov 2012,  https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/ couples-counseling-for-virginia-woolfs-george-and-martha/. Accessed 24 Nov 2024.  

Woolf, Virginia. “Lappin and Lapinova.” Virginia Woolf, https://virginiawoolf.ca/lappin-andlapinova/. Accessed 26 Nov 2024.  

England established its first official American colony in 1606, and shortly after Jamestown was established, England “became the major importers of African slaves to North America” (Hall).  However, England’s role in the slave trade did not start in the Americas; England had taken African slaves since the mid sixteenth century. Shakespeare wrote The Tempest shortly after the founding of Jamestown in 1607 and right before the Portuguese galleon, São João Baptista, brought the first twenty African slaves to British America in 1619 (Painter 24).  Before the slave trade official began in British America, Shakespeare created his own hermeneutical African slave in Caliban, and though Shakespeare never visited the Americas (or Italy or Greece), his hermeneutical slave encapsulates African American identity in American life.

Caliban’s African identity has been erased in many productions and renditions of The Tempest. For example, in Johann Heinrich Ramberg’s nineteenth century painting of Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo on the seashore, Ramberg features Caliban as a small, naked, and green fish-like creature while both Stephano and Trinculo are painted as white men (see fig. 1). Moreover, since 1960, Caliban has been portrayed by several notable white actors in Royal Shakespeare Productions of The Tempest: Roy Dotrice, David Suchet, Bob Peck, David Troughton, and Robert Glenister. Hugh Griffith, who the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his Role in Ben-Hur (1959), portrayed Caliban on recording for the Shakespeare Recording Society, and Patrick Stewart played Caliban for an audio production of The Tempest for BBC Radio in 1974 (“The Tempest [BBC Radio 1974]”). Caliban, of course, has been portrayed by black men, yet despite being played by black men, Caliban is still sometimes shown as having gills and monstrous deformities. Most telling, however, Caliban, as in the case of Frank Benson’s late nineteenth century into twentieth century portrayal, has been played by white men in black face (Smith).

There is no question, however, that Caliban is both black and African.  His mother, Sycorax, is “from Argier [Algeria]” (1.2.318), and “Caliban’s very name has significant early modern European geographical resonances with Africa, the Caribbean, and Blackness” (Hilb 150). Hilb notes in “In Defense of Caliban” that Caliban’s name could be anagram for can[n]ibal, or, possibly, a “variation of the African coastal town Calibia or the Romany word for Blackness, caulibon” (150). However, the other characters in The Tempest refer to Caliban by an assortment of curses and slurs rather than his actual name. For instance, Miranda calls him “A thing most brutish” (1.2.429), and Prospero refers to him as a “beast” (4.1.156). Similarly, like the Romany word caulibon, Michela Compagnoni suggests in “Steel Caliban: A New Etymological and Alchemical Inquiry into The Tempest” that Caliban comes from the Arabic Kalebon, which means vile dog. Slurs like beast or thing most brutish or vile dog are indictive of the early modern English view of Africans. Winthrop D. Jordan notes in his White Over Black that “English observers in West Africa were sometimes so profoundly impressed by the Negro’s deviant behavior that they resorted to a powerful metaphor with which to express their own sense of difference from him. They knew perfectly well that Negroes were men, yet they frequently described the Africans as ‘brutish’ or ‘bestial’ or ‘beastly’” (28). In an early modern example, Joannes Leo Africanus wrote A geographical historie of Africa in the first half of the sixteenth century, and Africanus’ text was translated into English in 1600 by George Bishop, who, as Burton and Loomba note in Race in Modern England, added “his own commentaries and fabulous accounts of African monstrosity” (153). Africanus writes in his history, “Likewise the inhabitants of Libya live a brutish kind of life; who neglecting all kinds of good arts and sciences, do wholly apply their minds unto theft and violence” (155). As Hilb notes, the dehumanizing language that Shakespeare uses in The Tempest to describe Caliban would have “intimately (though not exclusively) linked [him] to Africa” for Shakespeare’s English audience (151).

In addition to dehumanizing Caliban, the characters in The Tempest demonize him. Prospero calls Caliban a “thing of darkness” (5.1.330) and “A devil, a born devil” (4.1.211). Moreover, Prospero claims that Caliban was “got by the devil himself / Upon [his] wicked dam,” his mother Sycorax (1.2.384-5). Prospero refers to Caliban’s mother, Sycorax, as a witch three times within The Tempest: “The foul witch Sycorax” (1.2.309); “This damned witch Sycorax” (1.2.316); “His mother was a witch, and a strong one” (5.1.324).  As Jordan points out in White Over Black, Protestantism, particularly during England’s commencement into the slave trade, was a source of English patriotism (24).  For the sixteenth century English, “being a Christian was not merely a matter of subscribing to certain doctrines; it was a quality inherent in oneself and society” (Jordan 24). For example, Sir Thomas Herbert writes in his mid-seventeenth century travel text Some Years Travels, “the Devil has infused prodigious Idolatry into their hearts, enough to relish his pallet and aggrandize their torturers when he gets power to fry their souls, as the raging Sun has already scorched their cole-black carcasses” (7). Later, when Herbert is describing the people of Congo, he writes, “the people as in color so in condition are little other than Devils incarnate” (10). Similarly, nearly two-hundred years later in 1838 at a rape trial of a black man, a “white observer” called “the defendant a ‘monster in the shape of a black negro’ and a ‘vile devil’” (qtd. in Hilb 152). Much of characterization of Caliban—and black and African slaves—was brough to colonial American and became fundamental to the founding of the United States of America. 

The language used in Shakespeare’s play and early modern English texts would also intimately link Caliban to Africa and blackness for an (early) American audience. British audiences and critics even suggested that Caliban belonged in America. For example, an 1863 issue of Punch, or The London Charivari, a British weekly magazine featured in image titled Scene from the American “Tempest” (See Fig. 2). The image “depicts Caliban as a black ‘Sambo,’” and it contains the caption, “Caliban (Sambo). ‘You beat him ‘nough massa’ berry little time, I’ll beat him too.” – Shakespeare. (Nigger Translation.)” (qtd. in Hilb 152; see Fig 2).  Like Africanus’ statement that Africans “wholly apply their mind unto theft and violence,” Khalil Gibran Muhammad writes in his introduction to The Condemnation of Blackness, “violent crime rates in the nation’s [America’s] biggest cities are generally understood as a reflection of the presence and behavior of the black men, women, and children who live there” (1). Yet, as is in the case of The Tempest—and criticism of The Tempest—social scientists in the United States present “new crime data as objective, color-blind, and incontrovertible” (Muhammad 4). Therefore, “African American criminality became one of the most widely accepted bases for justifying prejudicial thinking” (Muhammad 4). Caliban, of course, is accused of a crime; a crime that carries with it a title. The same crime that the “monster in the shape of a black negro” and “vile devil” was accused of in 1838 North Carolina. Caliban is accused of being a rapist. 

The myth of the black rapist is uniquely American. As Sharon Block writes in Rape and Sexuality in Early America, in the United States, “early images of enslaved black rapists grew into a long-lasting myth of black men’s hypersexuality” (212). For example, “The index to a 1765 publication of the Laws of Maryland contained the following entry: ‘RAPE: See Negroes.’ Although the volume’s editor probably did not intend that directive literally, it encapsulates the end product of a legal system where racial ideologies structured every stage of the criminal process: when early Americans though about rape, they saw ‘Negroes’” (Block 207). However, as Sharon Block notes, “early Americans did not yet have the vocabulary of Foucaultian identities to label anyone a ‘rapist’” (244). Still, in the nineteenth century, the word rapist itself was born in America. The first use of the word rapist comes from an 1869 American newspaper, the Dallas Weekly Herald, where the authors of the newspaper claimed that Charles Bryant, a black delegate at the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1868-9, was a rapist. The authors of the Dallas Weekly Herald write, “Our Texas Convention had a while raft of such lumber, including Bryant, the rapist” (“Rapist, N.”). The second and third use of the word rapist come from an 1883 issue of the National Police Gazette where a story accuses a black man of being a rapist titled, “Fighting for Her Virtue: The Stalwart Resistance a Married Woman Offered a Would-be ‘Nigger’ Rapist” (“Fighting for Her Virtue”). Later in the newspaper, an image of the accused “rapist,” Henry William, is included with the caption, “The brutal colored rapist of Johnston, Rhode Island” (“Fighting for Her Virtue”). Hilb writes, “in the English language, the very origins of the designation rapist are patently racist,” and not only is rapist patently racist, but it is also patently American (156). 

If Caliban is accused of being a rapist, then, as Hilb asks in “In Defense of Caliban,” how “might one reread The Tempest in light of history?” (156). Prospero certainly accuses Caliban of attempting to rape his daughter, Miranda. Prospero says to Caliban, “thou didst seek to violate / The honor of my child” (1.2.416-17), and Caliban responds, “Oh ho, oh ho! Woud’t had been done! Thou didst prevent me” (1.2.419-20). It is precisely because of Caliban’s response that most readers assume that Caliban did try and rape Miranda. For example, Constance Grady, in a review Miranda and Caliban (2017), a retelling of The Tempest, writes that in the original play, “Caliban is a monster who tried to rape Prospero’s daughter Miranda before the play began…[Caliban] abuses Prospero…and plots to kill him, but Prospero took over Caliban’s island and enslaved him” (Grady). Most scholars also assume that Caliban tried to rape Miranda. For instance, Tom Lindsay concludes his article “’Which first was mine own king’: Caliban and the Politics of Service and Education in ‘The Tempest’” (2016) by writing, “the rape attempt is a central even in islander’s backstory and a crux of the play,” and postcolonial critics are guilty of “ignoring reality of the attempt and downplaying its importance (421). Similarly, Duke Pesta writes in his article “’Thou Dost Here Usurp the Name Thou Ow’st Not’: The Tempest and Intercultural Exchange” that the attempted rape did happen, and critics are attempting to “shift the responsibility for the attempted rape away from Caliban and onto colonialism itself” (139). However, Hilb, in his article “In Defense of Caliban,” ultimately argues that there is enough evidence to inject reasonable doubt in the accusations against Caliban. Like the black Americans who have been accused of rape—so much so that the term rapist was made to personify this myth—Caliban did not attempt to rape Miranda. In fact, Prospero, Miranda’s father is a far more likely culprit. 

Prospero, rather than use the term rape, says to Caliban, “thou didst seek to violate / The honor of my child” (1.2.417).  However, Prospero’s allegation is broad, and “Southern courts seemed willing to charge—if not convict—enslaved men who breached white women’s domestic space with rape” (Block 175). Therefore, it is possible that Caliban simply got too close to Miranda. Shakespeare uses honor in this sense in other plays, for example: 

Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain

If with too credent ear you list his songs

Or lose your heart or chaste treasure open

To his unmastered importunity. 

Fear it, Ophelia; fear it, my dear sister, (1.3.33-7)

In Hamlet, Laertes warns his siter Ophelia that simply listening to Hamlet’s songs could violate her honor, and by listening to his songs, she would be inclined to “open” her “chaste treasure” for Hamlet. Caliban sings within The Tempest, and when he does sing, it is for his freedom (2.2.183-93).  Perhaps Miranda simply heard one of Caliban’s songs. In fact, there is music all around Caliban’s island: “Be not afeard. The isle is full noises, / Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not” (3.2.148-9). It is possible that Prospero is accusing Caliban of having a mundane interaction with Miranda, and because of Caliban’s status as an African Slave, Prospero, as was the case for many enslaved and free black persons, is accusing a black man of getting too close to a white woman, a crime that is synonymous with rape in both early modern England and colonial America.

However, the crux of the accusations against Caliban come mostly from his response: “O ho, o ho! Would’t had been done! / Thou didst prevent me; I had people else / This isle with Calibans” (1.2.419-421). Caliban’s response is seen as an admission of his attempted rape. However, O ho, according to the OED, is an interjection “expressing surprise, mockery, exultation, etc. Also formerly used to attract attention” (“Oho, Int”). Therefore, Caliban is expressing surprise—and perhaps even mockery—at Prospero’s accusation. Caliban’s “O ho” is not the only time it is used The Tempest expressing both surprise and mockery. Trinculo, after seeing clothing, says, “O king Stephano, O peer, O worthy Stephano, look what a wardrobe here is for thee!” Caliban responds to Trinculo, “Let it alone, thou fool. It is but trash.” Trinculo jeers at Caliban’s response, “O ho, monster, we know what belongs to a frippery. O king Stephano!” (4.1.247-253). Trinculo’s O ho is clearly meant to mock Caliban’s response. Trinculo does not believe that the clothing he found is the trash that Caliban claimed; in other words, Trinculo is sarcastically saying Caliban, you are wrong. Then, Caliban’s response to Prospero’s accusation should be afforded the same sense that we give to Trinculo’s jeer.

However, still, Caliban clearly says that Prospero prevented him from doing something. However, much like O ho, the meaning of prevent seems to have been lost to time (or criticism or perhaps a desire to see Caliban as guilty). Most readers and scholars believe that Caliban’s prevent means, according to the OED, “to stop, keep, or hinder (a person or thing) from doing something” (“Prevent, V”). However, there is another sense of the word prevent, a sense that Shakespeare uses in Twelfth Night and Pericles: “In an etymology sense…rather than a negative and reactive emphasis on the direct object of the verb, we get a positive and proactive emphasis on the subject of the verb” (Fleming 459). In other words, in the etymological sense, as Hilb writes, “If I prevent you from doing something…then I do it before you, ‘in your despite” (Hilb 164; Fleming 459). As Fleming notes, “This reading is totally opposed to modern expectations…but early-modern audiences simply heard this etymological meaning, will-nilly” (459). Therefore, Caliban’s response “thou didst prevent me” really means you [Prospero] got there first; Caliban is accusing Prospero of incest. 

Prospero certainly has the power to commit such an act, and Prospero regularly uses his power in nefarious ways, particularly on his daughter. For example, Prospero grows angry at his daughter for asking too many questions, and he says to her, “Here cease more questions. / Thou are inclined to sleep. ‘Tis a good dullness, / And give it way. I know thou canst not choose / [Miranda falls asleep. Prospero puts on his cloak]” (1.2.219-23). Hilb’s diatribe against Prospero’s abuse of power on his daughter encapsulates the issue: 

In an effort to control her knowledge and perception, Prospero literally forces Miranda to pass out. Is he to be trusted as a parent? Whatever one thinks of him, is it not pertinent, in a play whose character dynamics turn crucially on Prospero’s accusation of attempted rape, that compelling someone to sleep is itself in many cases connected with the crime of rape? (164)

Moreover, in addition to Hilb’s response, to then say to his daughter that she “canst choose,” especially given contemporary events, is it not itself an admission of rape or, at the very least, an abuse of power so close to rape that it cannot help but provoke the reader to consider the possibility of rape? 

Despite context, there is “tension between racial studies of Caliban and feminist studies of Miranda” (Hilb 167). For example, in a blog for the English Department of SUNY Geneseo, Spencer Iovoli concludes, “Today’s world is not forgiving to sexual predators, nor should it be. There is little difference between slavery and imprisonment, so it can be argued that Caliban’s punishment is justifiable. Making it indefinite may seem cruel, but…necessary for the safety of Miranda” (Iovoli). However, Miranda herself never accuses Caliban of violating her or her honor. She says to Caliban: 

vile race, 

Though didst learn, had that in’t which good natures

Could not abide to be with. Therefore wast thou 

Deservedly confined into this rock, 

Who hadst deserved more than a prison. (1.2.430-6)

Miranda is undoubtedly insulting Caliban, but as Hilb points out, “it does not clearly record Miranda’s stance on her father’s allegation” (169). That is not to say that we should not believe Miranda. However, just as Prospero directly benefits from Caliban’s enslavement so does Miranda, and, moreover, Prospero, as we have seen, holds great power over Miranda—though in a different context to Caliban—therefore it does nothing for Miranda to argue with her father’s accusation and insults towards Caliban, who, once again, Prospero repeatedly calls his slave. 

Hilb concludes his article “In Defense of Caliban” by writing, “the final three words of The Tempest are Prospero’s entreaty to us, readers and audiences to ‘set me free,’…I entreat us rather to set Caliban free, for he has long been and continues to be wrongfully convicted” (170). I concur with Hilb’s plea for Caliban. Caliban, much like Jews of European Medieval theology, functioned as a hermeneutical African for Shakespeare, and Caliban, and the accusations against him, served a particular functioned that Europeans and then American colonist could only perceive as to be enacted by a heathen African. Moreover, the language used by Shakespeare assists in providing a defense for Caliban, a defense that has gone over many reader’s heads. Caliban was not made for America, and yet he fits so perfectly within our turbulent history. 

Works Cited

Burton, Jonathan and Ania Loomba. Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary Companion. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 

“Fighting for Her Virtue.” The National Police Gazette: New York. 5 May 1883. 

Grady, Constance. “Miranda and Caliban is a lyrical, tender revisionist adaptation of The Tempest.” Vox, 21 Feb 2017, www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/28/14702152/miranda-and-caliban-jacqueline-carey-review. Accessed 28 Jul 2024. 

Herbert, Thomas. Some Years Travels into Divers Parts of Africa and Asia the Great. Everingham, 1677. 

Hilb, Benjamin. “In Defense of Caliban: The Tempest and the Myth of the Black Rapist.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 3-4, 2020, pp. 143-170. 

Iovoli, Spencer. “The Continued Conversation on Caliban and The Tempest.” (Im)possibilities: A blog for SUNY Geneseo students and faculty interested in American Studies, 2 May 2018, morrison.sunygeneseoenglish.org/2018/05/02/the-continued-conversation-on-caliban/. Accessed 28 Jul 2024. 

Jordan, Winthrop D. White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812. U of North Carolina P, 2012. 

Lindsay, Tom. “’Which came first was mine own king’: Caliban and the Politics of Service and Education in ‘The Tempest.’” Studies in Philology, vol. 113, no. 2, 2016, pp. 397-423. 

Painter, Irvin Nell. Creating Black Americans. Oxford UP, 2005. 

Pesta, Duke. “‘Thou Dost Here Usurp the Name Thou Ow’St Not’: The Tempest and Intercultural Exchange.” Renascence, vol. 67, no. 2, Jan. 2015, pp. 127–46. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=0814a568-96de-3b7e-97ae-b6755439484e.

“Prevent, V.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/4307606803.

“Oho, Int.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, March 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7375358165.

Ramberg, Johann Heinrich. The tempest, II, 2, Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo on seashore. 1800, Cornell University Library, Ithaca.

“Rapist, N.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7672925589.

Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” Folger Shakespeare Library, www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read. Accessed 28 Jul. 2024. 

---. The Tempest. Simon & Schuster, 2004. 

---. “The Tempest (BBC Radio – 1974).” Internet Archive, 24 Mar 1974, archive.org/details/the-tempest-1974. Accessed 26 Jul 2024. 

Smith, Lizzie Caswell. Mr. F.R. Benson. 1910, Folger Shakespeare Library, London. 

Some of our earliest surviving texts contain ghosts’ stories, and even the Hebrew and Greek Bible contain its share of ghosts; not demons, but ghosts. For example, after Samuel dies, Saul attempts to speak to the Samuel’s ghost. Saul finds a medium and asks her to “consult a spirit for me” (1 Sam. 28:8). The medium is not immediately taken aback, which implies to the reader—or at least the writer—that requesting mediumship was not uncommon. The medium summons Samuel’s ghosts, which Saul identifies as Samuel, and Samuel asks, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” (1 Sam. 28:15). Samuel, though a ghost, is truly Samuel, and moreover, he is still able to communicate with the living. In the Greek Bible, when the disciples see Jesus walking on water, they are terrified and cry out, “It’s a ghost” (Mat. 14:22). The disciples, rather than believe a man—even though that man is Jesus—can walk on water, they believe they are witnessing a ghost. Like the Hebrew writer of Samuel, the Greek writer of Matthew, at the very least, is willing to entertain the idea of ghosts. The writer of Matthew also differentiates ghosts and demons. Earlier in Matthew, Jesus speaks to demons, and Jesus drives the demons into a herd of pigs (Mat. 8:28-32). For the writer of Matthew, there is a difference between ghosts, who are human spirits, and demons, who are supernatural entities. Though ghosts are not a uniquely Christian invention, England adopted Christianity at the end of the sixth century, and with the adoption of Christianity and written and shared language, came documented ghost stories.

Ghost stories presumably existed prior to the Germanic invasion of England, and, once again presumably, the Germanic people brought their own tales of ghosts to England. The Romans certainly had their share of ghost stories, and though there is no evidence that Romans wrote about ghosts in England after their invasion of Britain in 43 CE, there were ghost stories written in Rome during the same period. For example, Pliny the Younger wrote in a letter to Sura in 50 CE: 

Erat Athenis spatiosa et capax domus sed infamis et pestilens. Per silentium noctis sonus ferri, et si attenderes acrius, strepitus vinculorum longius primo, deinde e proximo reddebatur: mox apparebat idolon, senex macie et squalore confectus, promissa barba horrenti capillo; cruribus compedes, manibus catenas gerebat quatiebatque. Inde inhabitantibus tristes diraeque noctes per metum vigilabantur; vigiliam morbus et crescente formidine mors sequebatur. Nam interdiu quoque, quamquam abscesserat imago, memoria imaginis oculis inerrabat, longiorque causis timoris timor erat. Deserta inde et damnata solitudine domus totaque illi monstro relicta.

[In Athens there was a spacious and capacious house, but infamous and pestilential. Through the silence of the night, the sound of a carriage was heard, and if you paid more attention, the noise of chains was heard first from afar, then from near. Suddenly, a phantom would appear, an old man dressed in gauntness and squalor, with a promiscuous beard and horrid hair; he wore shackles on his legs and chains on his hands and would shake. The inhabitants of the house were kept awake through sad and terrible nights by fear; the vigil was followed by disease and the growing fear of death. For even during the day, although the phantom had departed, the memory of the phantom lingered in the inhabitant’s eyes. Thence deserted and damned, the house and everyone who lived there abandoned the house to that phantom. (my trans. “Plin. Ep. 7.27”)] 

Pliny’s ghost story is eerily familiar even to modern readers, and ghosts of old and spectral men covered in chains has become a staple motif of ghost stories. We do not know a lot about the ghost in Pliny’s letter, but a play was written in the third century BCE by playwright Plautus titled Mostellaria (translated as The Ghost), which has been colloquially titled The Haunted House. Like Pliny’s letter, Mostellaria takes place in Athens, and though there is mention of a haunted house allegedly haunted by a murdered man, a ghost is not actually featured in the play. Mostellaria was written and performed nearly 250 years before Pliny wrote his letter to Sura, and it is unlikely that Pliny would have known about Mostellaria. However, because they both feature haunted dwellings in Athens, perhaps Mostellaria had unknowingly become part an oral folk tradition in the centuries after its release, and perhaps that oral folk story made its way to Pliny.

The Middle Ages encompasses nearly a thousand years of history, and the English language, both written and spoken, dramatically changed throughout the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages are subdivided between the Early, High, and Late Middle ages, and very few English texts exist from the Early Middle Ages. The texts that do exists from the Early Middle Ages in England are typically religious or written in Latin, and even popular texts from the Early Middle Ages like Beowulf were written on the cusp of the High Middle Ages. There are several reasons and theories as to why there is a massive shortage of English texts from the Early Middle Ages. First, English was not standardized during the Early Middle Ages, and if one were to be literate, then they were almost certainly literate in Latin and therefore wrote in a semi-standardized Latin, which became even more prevalent after the Christianization of England. Second, Old English speakers of England were dealing with a constant stream of raiders and colonizers from Scandinavia for nearly three hundred years. Third, England was split into different empires until Alfred the Great unified England for the first time at the end of the ninth century, and each empire was not only culturally different, but they spoke and wrote in different vernaculars of Old English. All these factors hindered the creation and dissemination of Early Old English and Latin texts in England, and more importantly, the process of creating these Early Middle Ages texts was incredibly slow.

Manuscript makers, which were usually monks—and only monks during the Early Middle Ages—created every part of the text themselves from the ink to the vellum. For example, an anonymous writer from around the beginning of the fifteenth century wrote in a small notebook a recipe for black ink: 

to make gode blak yngk as ony ys in ynglond take an vnce of gallys an unce of gumme and an unce of grene coperose brose all thyse togeder al most to pouder and put hit in a pott of erth þat ys ledyd wiþ in than put therto a pynte of reyne water or of stondyng water.

[To make good black ink as any is in England, take an ounce of galls, an ounce of gum, and an ounce of green coppers. Crush all these together almost to powder and put it in a pot of earth that is lined within. Then add thereto a pint of rainwater or standing water. (my trans; Connolly 103-4)]

Despite this recipe coming from the end of the Middle Ages, this recipe of gall ink, or common ink, was in use since the fifth century, and this traditional ink is still made today for mass consumption by ink manufacturers today. However, ink is only as good as the paper that it is being written on. Medieval manuscripts and texts were written on vellum, and though we have synthetic plant-based vellum today, vellum was typically made from calfskin during the Middle Ages. The skin had to come from a young animal, and after removal, it was first soaked in lime for several days. After being washed, the skin would be shaved of any hair. After the skin was washed, shaved, and dried, makers would cut the skin into a leaf (or two pages). The entire process took days, and because of the time commitment and work required to create vellum, ink, and quills, medieval writers, when finally sitting down to write, were encouraged to focus on priority texts.

Priority texts for medieval writers were typically religious texts and texts for the wealthy and elite. Monks and the elite of medieval England were the only ones who could both read and afford the production of texts; the democratization of texts in England did not happen until the introduction of the printing press by William Caxton in the latter half of the fifteenth century. For example, one of our earliest examples of the word ghost (spelled gast in OE) comes from an English translation of Pope Gregory I’s Dialogues by Wærferð sometime in the ninth century. Even though many Old English texts that still exists were priority texts, there exists a few manuscripts outside of priority texts. For example, the Exeter Book of riddles was written in the latter half of the tenth century, and though it was most likely written in a religious scriptorium, the Exeter Book contains semi-secularly themed riddles. For instance, “Riddle 3” while being secularly themes also features ghosts: 

Famig winneð

20 wæg wið wealle,      wonn ariseð

dun ofer dype;      hyre deorc on last,

eare geblonden,      oþer fereð,

þæt hy gemittað      mearclonde neah

hea hlincas.      Þær bið hlud wudu,

25 brimgiesta breahtm,      bidað stille

stealc stanhleoþu      streamgewinnes,

hopgehnastes,      þonne heah geþring

on cleofu crydeþ.      Þær bið ceole wen

sliþre sæcce,      gif hine sæ byreð

30 on þa grimman tid,      gæsta fulne,

þæt he scyle rice      birofen weorþan,

feore bifohten      fæmig ridan

yþa hrycgum.

[The foamy water

20 struggles against the wall, a dark mountain

rises over the deep, dark in its track,

another goes, mixed with the sea,

so that they meet near the borderland,

the high banks. There is loud wood,

25 the breath of the sea-guests, the steep stone-cliffs

quietly await the watery war,

the wet conflict when the lofty tumult

crowds onto the cliffs. There the ship is in expectation

of a fierce fight, if the sea bears it

30 on that grim tide, full of ghosts,

so that it must be deprived of control

robbed of life, the foamy one ride

the backs of the waves. (Williamson 69)]

Despite mentioning ghosts, or spirits, “Riddle 3” is not about ghosts, and it certainly is not about the ghost, or spirit, of a particular deceased human. Also, despite appearing secular—and the content of the poem would lead the reader to believe that it is secular—the following riddles, and perhaps even the answer to “Riddle 3,” are based in Christian theology.

Medieval Christian theology is perhaps the greatest reason why ghosts, as specifically the earthbound spirit of a deceased human, do not appear in early medieval texts. Despite the Bible mentioning ghosts and the Christian recognition of the human spirit, medieval Christian theology makes it clear that when one dies, their spirit went to one of three places: heaven, hell, or purgatory. If a spirit were to be stuck on earth, then it would lead to questions of Christian theology. Moreover, pagans, including pre-Christian Romans and Celtic Britons, undoubtedly believed in ghosts and earthbound spirits, and therefore, desiring to separate itself from paganism, the church refused to give credence to the existence of ghosts. Yet, despite the Church’s theological stance, Augustine of Hippo, the most influential theologian of the Middle Ages , writes in “On the Care of the Dead”: 

Stories are told of certain appearances or visions, which may seem to bring into this discussion a question which should not be slighted. It is said, namely, that dead men have at times either in dreams or in some other way appeared to the living who knew not where their bodies lay unburied and have pointed out to them the place and admonished that the sepulture which was lacking should be afforded. (12) 

Simultaneously, however, Augustine makes it clear that because the living also appear in dreams, it is not necessarily the ghost that is consciously making itself known through dreams (12). In fact, though Augustine writes that it is a nice gesture to care for the dead, what a person does in life is of sole importance (1). Saints, however, at least for Augustine, were different from the ordinary folk, and though Augustine does not claim in this instance that the human spirit of a saint can visit ordinary people, he does write that we should bury saints at memorial locations so that we can visit their graves (10). Additionally, most early theologians, including Augustine, interpreted 1 John 4:1 literally: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 Joh. 4:1). Spirits, in other words, were not guaranteed to be from God, and if they were not from God, then they were demons. Demons, unlike ghosts, according to Christian theology, were not the spirits of people, and they should be avoided by common folk. 

It is not until after the Norman Conquest in 1066 that ghost stories—and folk stories more generally—begin to be recorded across Britain. William of Newburgh, during the latter half of the twelfth century, set out to write his own history of England from 1066 to 1198 titled Historia rerum Anglicarum (History of English Affairs). William, in his introduction, laments England’s previous histories written by Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth because he views them as inaccurate, unrealistic, and unfair to actual English people (“The Preface”). Instead, William, like modern day folklorists, embarked across England to speak to ordinary people about English stories and their view of English history. Despite desiring to create an accurate history of England, William was more interested in the Wonder Tales told in the various villages around England. For example, in a tale called “Of the Green Children,” William writes precisely like he is collecting folk tradition: “In East Anglia is a village…during harvest…two children, a boy and a girl, completely green in their persons, and clad in garments of strange color, and unknown material, emerged” (“Of the Green Children”). The villagers bring the green children to their village, and through feeding them everyday food, the children begin to look like the villagers. The children eventually learn English and are even baptized. William attempts to question the villagers about the stories, but the villagers have nothing more to tell him. More importantly, William writes, “These, and many other matters, are too numerous to particularize, they are said to have recounted to curious inquirers. Let everyone say as he pleases, and reason on such matters according to his abilities; I feel no regret having recorded an event so prodigious and miraculous” (“Of the Green Children”). In other words, the villagers tell this tale to a lot of people, and William could see how his readers might find the story implausible. However, William desires to record them anyway. William did not, and could not, know that he was collecting folktales.

William’s Historia rerum Anglicarum was written throughout five books, and though most of his books focus on twelfth century current events, he intersplices a few paranormal folk stories—like “Of the Green Children”—throughout. However, William admits that these stories are extremely common amongst ordinary folk, and one could write an entire book simply around these local folk tales. William, however, seems to be most curious about ghosts or the living dead, and because these stories were extremely rare in England for both religious and practical reasons (and quite popular in other parts of the world), William took it upon himself to record paranormal folk stories. For instance, while traveling in the county of Buckingham, William overheard a story that he later confirmed as true from an archdeacon. In the story, a man dies, and he is buried by his family. The very next night, however, while the man’s wife is sleeping, the man rises from the grave and walks into their bedroom and lays on his wife. The man comes back the following night, and on the third night, the wife decides to stay awake. Still, the man comes, and she yells at him to leave. The entire county witnesses the man wandering around. At first, he would only wander the county at night, but he later started wandering during the day. Eventually, the town contacted the local bishop, and the bishop went to the man’s tomb where he was lying peacefully. The bishop wrote a letter of absolution, and he placed it on the man’s body. After the bishop’s letter, “he was thenceforth never more seen to wander, nor permitted to inflict annoyance or terror upon anyone” (“Of the prodigy of the dead man”). Despite being solidly about ghosts, William writes that he verified this tale with an archdeacon, and, more importantly, William writes—or reports—that a bishop rescues Buckingham from the ghostly apparition. William, rather than separate ghosts from Catholic Christianity, instead ties them together, and though William does not give us a theological reason for the existence of ghosts, William’s “Of the prodigy of the dead man” suggests that these stories, of both Christian miracles and paranormal encounters, were popular amongst the ordinary folk of England and Scotland. 

William, while traveling in northern England in a city called Berwick, located near the border between England and Scotland, heard a story about the death of a wealthy man.  The wealthy man, though well-liked during his life, was secretly an evil man, and, therefore, the devil, according to William, would make him rise out of his grave at night. The corpse would be chased all through Berwick by a pack of barking dogs, striking fear into all the people of the city. The corpse would return to his grave when the sun rose. The upper- and middle-class folk of Berwick gathered to figure out how to stop the corpse from rising from the grave. Not only was the corpse striking fear into whoever saw him, but they were concerned about the spread of disease. According to William, the corpse would tell passerby that, “while being born about by Satan…as long as it remained unburned, the people should have no peace” (“Of a similar occurrence”). The people of Berwick, went to the corpse’s grave during the day, removed the body, cut it into pieces, and burned the pieces. The corpse never returned. However, a pestilence, which was caused from burning the corpse, killed off a portion of the Berwick population. William’s folktale of the wealthy man shares parallels with his “Of the prodigy of the dead man.” For instance, both stories are theologically based. Because the wealthy man was evil, the devil used his corpse after his death to torment the people of Berwick. However, that is still a far cry from the traditional theological tradition of heaven, hell, or purgatory. Still, because the people took it upon themselves to destroy the body of the wealthy man, they are punished with a pestilence that kills several people from Berwick. In “Of the prodigy of the dead man,” the local townspeople, who are not people of the upper- and middle-class, ask for the religious help of a bishop and are able to avoid the pestilence.

William is well aware that, because these stories are rare amongst the upper- and middle-class people of England and Scotland, his readers might have trouble accepting these paranormal folk tales, and he writes, “it would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally from their graves” (“Of certain prodigies”). However, William argues that “there is abundant testimony” (“Of certain prodigies”). Moreover, William writes that these things must not have happened previously because “we can find no evidence of them in the works of ancient authors” (“Of certain prodigies”). Despite hearing dozens of these stories, William believes that these stories deserve to a part of his history of England. 

In the first of his final set of three paranormal folktales, while visiting Melrose Abbey in Scotland, William heard the story of a priest who had “little respect for the sacred order to which he belonged” (“Of certain prodigies”). In fact, some people called this priest “hundeprest” (dog-priest). After the priest died, he was still seen hovering around Melrose Abbey, groaning and murmuring around the bedchamber of his mistress. The mistress, scared, told a friar of Melrose of their cursed relationship, and eventually, she repented. William claims, that by God’s mercy, she was relieved of the haunting. The Melrose friar, who helped relieve the mistress of her curse, gathered a group of fellow friars to patrol the graveyard where the hundeprest was buried. However, after midnight, when no ghosts were seen, the friars left the Melrose friar alone in the graveyard. Once he was alone, the devil summoned the spirit of the hundeprest, and at first, the Melrose friar was scared. However, the Melrose friar stood his ground, and the spirit of the hundeprest charged the friar. The Melrose friar struck the hundeprest with an axe, causing the hundeprest to return to his grave. The next morning, the friars open the tomb of the hundeprest and witnessed the axe wound on the hundeprest’s chest. The friars removed the hundeprest from the graveyard of the monastery, burned his body, and threw the ashes into wind. William ends this tale by writing, “I myself heard [the story] recounted by religious men” (“Of certain prodigies”).

Similarly, William writes that he met with an aged monk who lived at the Anantis Castle, and, according to William, the monk personally witnessed the following events.  An evil man from York came to Anantis Castle and was able to befriend the local lord. The Yorkshire man met and married a local woman, but after their marriage, he started to hear rumors that his wife was being unfaithful. The Yorkshire man pretended to leave on trip, but instead he stayed and hid in the rafters of his bedroom. Unfortunately, while hidden, he witnessed his wife invite a young man into their bedroom and start to bed him. The Yorkshire man jumped down from the rafter and accidently dazzed himself. The young man fled the room, and the wife helped the Yorkshire man to their bed. Once he awakened from his daze, he accused his wife of adultery, but his wife convinced him that he must be mistaken. The fall from the rafters mortally wounded the man, and the local bishop suggested that he do his last confession and “receive the Christian Eucharist in proper form” (“Of certain prodigies”). However, because the Yorkshire man was distressed, he decided to hold off his confession and eucharist until the next day. Unfortunately, he succumbed to his wounds during the night, and even though he was not able to receive last rites, the Yorkshire man was still given a Christian burial. The devil, according to William, forced the Yorkshire man to raise from his grave at night and torment Anantis castle and its surrounding villages. According to the aged monk who William received the story from, the constant torment from the ghost caused most of the citizens to flee. However, a few families stayed, and the children of the remaining families met at the local parish and planned to dig up the Yorkshire man and destroy his body. The children dug up the Yorkshire man, and despite being dead for an entire generation, when they started to stab his body, he began to bleed. William writes that the blood “flowed such a stream of blood that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons” (“Of certain prodigies”). Despite all the blood, the children cut the Yorkshire man’s body into pieces and burned them, and according to William, the burning of the man caused Anantis Castle and the surrounding villages to be cleansed. 

William’s Anantis Castle tale is a unique legend, especially in British folklore. Because of the description of blood, especially in reference to a “leech filled with the blood of many persons,” William’s Anantis Castle tale is essentially a vampire legend. Vampire legends have existed in eastern Europe, especially in modern day Romania, since the early Middle Ages (Jones 121). “A typical Wallachian belief,” writes Ernest Jones in On the Nightmare, is “that red-haired men appear after death in the form of frogs, beetles, etc., and drink the blood of beautiful girls” (121). Jones only writes of William, however, “in England we have several complete and typical accounts related by William of Newburgh in the twelfth century, but since that date hardly a trace of the belief is believed to be found” (121). In Ireland, there is the legend of the Dearg-due, or Red Blood Sucker, which features a woman who is forced into an arranged marriage, and after her marriage, she commits suicide. The Dearg-due rises from the grave, blood-thirsty, to take vengeance on those who wronged her (Griffiths 10). However, like William’s vampire legend, the Dearg-due “seems to have vanished at an early date” (Jones 121). England, because of centuries of Scandinavian invasions and Norman conquests, seemed to have experienced a plethora of Scandinavian folkloric influences.  The primary concern, however, is that the Vikings did not write their tales or histories in prose or verse until after they were Christianized, and therefore, it is nearly impossible to verify the influence of Scandinavian folklore on British ghosts and legends with complete certainty. However, Scandinavian sagas and folktales feature a type of ghost colloquially known as a draugr. Draugr are commonly described as a vampire—without the blood-sucking—or as a revenant, which are most common motif of ghosts featured in English ghost stories. 

For example, draugr, or vampires, are featured in the Icelandic saga Eyrbyggja Saga. The saga was written sometime in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, which is at least two centuries after William of Newburgh’s Historia rerum Anglicarum. However, the saga allegedly contains stories from ninth, tenth, and eleventh century Scandinavia folktales. Moreover, the Eyrbyggja Saga contains direct references to earlier sagas, written in the early part of the thirteenth century.  There is a story within the saga that begins with a shepherd in the town of Frodriver. Thorir, a local man, saw the shepherd blocking a door to a dwelling that he wished to enter. However, the shepherd would not let Thorir pass, and not wanting to cause problems, Thorir decided to leave. However, when Thorir’s back was turned, the shepherd charged and killed him. Later, the townspeople witnessed the shepherd and Thorir together. Townsfolk from across Frodriver started to fall ill, and when they would die, their ghosts would join the shepherd and Thorir. As people died, their band of ghosts grew and they would roam the town at night, tormenting the living. Eventually, a “priest carried holy water and sacred relics to every corner…and there were no more dead men haunting Frodriver after that” (Edwards 141). Despite the ghosts in the Eyrbyggja Saga avoiding blood, Armann Jakobsson writes, “the person that the ghost kills becomes a ghost himself, which may also happen with vampires” (310). Unlike contemporary ghost stories and legends, but very much like William of Newburgh’s legends, the ghosts in the Eyrbyggja Saga are physical beings. Though the Eyrbyggja Saga shares motifs with the stories in William’s Historia rerum Anglicarum—and the stories in Eyrbyggja Saga may share motifs with earlier Scandinavian folk stories—it is unclear whether the people of Northern England, who were certainly influenced by Scandinavian language, culture, and tradition, were aware of the Scandinavian stories that they seem to be sharing with William. 

Despite William of Newburgh’s vampire not being especially influential, there is a direct lineage to ghost legends and folklore in England dating back to William. William, while writing his Historia rerum Anglicarum, dedicates an entire chapter of his first book to the foundation of Byland Abbey. The chapter on the Byland Abbey does not contain any paranormal folktales or legends; this chapter, according to William, is a “return to the regular thread of history” (“Of certain prodigies”). The Byland Abbey, which William writes is “a mile distant from the church of Newburgh, where I was educated in Christ from a boy,” was especially interesting because it was dedicated to both men and women during its founding in the twelfth century (“Of the foundation of Byland”). William, in fact, praises the church and other churches like it that were created by King Stephen “for both sexes” (“Of the foundation of Byland”). Most importantly, it was located only a mile from the town that gives him his namesake. 

The Byland Abbey was in regular use until the sixteenth century. However, near the end of the Middle Ages, twelve stories “were written in the early fifteenth century on the blank pages of a manuscript containing a collection of rhetorical and theological works” about ghosts in or near the Byland Abbey (Jackson). Though we do not know the writer of the Byland ghost stories, it reads as the natural extension of William of Newburgh’s interspliced ghost folktales within his histories. For example, the first story was allegedly told to the writer by a servant from North Yorkshire. In the story, a man is walking on the road carrying a bag of beans when he sees a horse walking upright. The man rebukes the horse, and the horse follows him while walking as a normal horse. Later, the horse transforms into a “revolving bale of hay” with a “light in the middle” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 140 b”). Once again, the man rebukes it, and the hay transforms into a ghostly man. The ghost offers to help the man carry his beans, and the man accepts. However, the ghost cannot cross a river, and without the man knowing how, the beans are placed on his back. The man later goes to church and has the ghost absolved as a token of appreciation. 

Like William of Newburgh mentioned the Byland Abbey, a story within the Byland ghost stories mentions Newburgh. Interestingly, the name of the subject of the story was purposefully left blank from the manuscript because, according to the story, he was excommunicated from the church. As a man and his friend were walking in a field, his friend became terrified and ran away.  The man was then attacked by a ghost, and they began to wrestle. The ghost tore the clothes from the man’s body, but the man was able to “conjure” the spirit. The spirit admitted to the priest that he was excommunicated from the church because “of certain silver spoons which he hid in a certain place” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 140 b”). The ghost begged the man to find the spoons and bring them to his prior so that he could be absolved. The man did this for the excommunicated ghost, and the ghost was absolved. However, the man was sick for days because of the encounter.

Unlike William of Newburgh in his Historia rerum Anglicarum, the writer of the Bayland ghost stories creates—or adopts—a shapeshifting motif as in the horse and beans story. For example, in the writer’s eighth story, a man named William from Bradeforth heard something yelling outside of his window for three nights. On the fourth night, while walking outside, he heard the yelling again. After looking around, William saw a pale horse, which he immediately rebuked. The ghost, thankful for being conjured by William, turned into a canvas “with four corners and rolled away” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 143 a”). Despite never becoming humanoid, the writer of the story implies that human spirits, after death, can shapeshift. Moreover, the goal, and outcome, of several of the ghost stories in the Byland manuscript seems to be to conjure the ghosts, especially through Christian instruction. 

For example, in the ninth story of the manuscript, the ghost of man from Ayton in Cleveland once followed a man eighty miles so that the man would conjure him. Like the ghost from Newburgh, this ghost from Ayton claimed that he was excommunicated. However, the ghost from Ayton, after following the man for eighty miles, attacked the man by throwing “the living man on the other side of the fence” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 143 a”). The ghost, after harming the living man, said to him, “If you would have done thus [conjure me] in the first place, I would not have harmed you” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 143 a”). 

Christianity dominated the Middle Ages, and because the Byland ghost stories were written by monks, many of their ghost stories concern Christian exempla for a possible sermon. For example, in the eleventh of twelve stories written by the Byland monks, Richard Rowntree, a man from Cleveland, left behind his pregnant wife to go on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint James with a group of people. Each night they were away, one member would stay awake to keep watch. When it was Richard Rowntree’s turn to stay awake, he heard a loud noise, and then saw a very small ghost. Rowntree conjured the ghost. However, this particular ghost did not want to be conjured by Rowntree because it was Rowntree’s miscarried son, and the son was buried unbaptized and without a name. Additionally, the small ghost was inside of a sock. Rowntree removed the spirit of his miscarried son from the sock, and placed his own shirt onto his son and gave him a name. The ghost of the miscarried son jumped with happiness. Rowntree returned home to his wife, and he was very angry that his son was buried unbaptized and in a sock. He was so angry that he divorced his wife, which, the Byland monk writes, “this divorce was strongly displeasing to God” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 163 b - 164 a”). The divorce may seem odd to modern readers. However, burying a child before baptism was a great offense to both the child and to Richard Rowntree. Still, it was the opinion of the church that divorce was off limits unless Rowntree’s wife was a heretic, which, according to the Byland Abbey monks, she was not. 

Similarly, in the Byland manuscript’s final story, the sister of Adam de Lond died, and shortly after her death, she came back as a ghost. She was quickly caught by elder William Trower and conjured, and she admitted to the elder that she traveled as a ghost by night on account of property deeds that she gave to her brother Adam. After her death, her brother expelled her husband from his home, and so after William conjured her, she asked him if he could go speak to her brother. If elder William was unable to fix this, then she would not be able to rest before the day of Judgment. Elder William went to Adam to convince him to make it right, but Adam did not want to give the land back to his brother-in-law. The following night, however, elder William capture the ghost of Adam’s sister and brought her to Adam. Still, Adam did not want to give the land back to her husband. Adam’s sister was forced to roam the city tormenting its citizens until Adam’s son “made reparation of the inherited property after the death of Adam Senior” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 164 b”). 

The Byland manuscript created several motifs that still exists in folk ghost stories to this day, and variations of several of these stories are still told today in England. As Eleanor Jackson, curator of the Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library, writes, “their clear local roots and lack of narrative structure gives them the feeling of folktales and hearsay” (Jackson). The ghosts within the Byland stories are not necessarily evil, though they have the propensity to harm people, and, for the vast majority, they are simply about people who have unfinished business. In other words, they did not die a “good death.” Figure 1, for example, features a medieval “good death.” In the manuscript image, death has come for a dying man, and the priest is asking God to save the dying’s soul. Meanwhile, Christ is promising to give him mercy. Many of these tales feature evil men, as is in the case of several of William of Newburgh’s stories, who have not repented or have not had the ability to receive last rites. Therefore, when they die, the devil can force these people to return to the living. However, in many of the Byland stories, many of the ghosts were those who did wrong, and through human communication, can repair the wrongs that they have committed in life. 

The Byland manuscript has become quite popular, and it is still studied contemporaneously. However, William of Newburgh’s Historia rerum Anglicarum might be the first documentation of English folktales from ordinary citizens. Many of the motifs featured in William’s text certainly influenced the writers of the Byland manuscript, and, moreover, the motifs that William documented (or created) are still in use over eight hundred year later by ordinary people and popular culture. Stories from the early Middle Ages, and therefore William of Newburgh, might have received influence from their Scandinavian invaders, but it is impossible to say how much the Vikings influenced the legends and folktales of England. Because writing required literacy and technology and money, which many early medieval English folk did not have, we simply do not have access to the lives of everyday citizen of the Early or even High Middle Ages. William of Newburgh, in many ways, was the first writer to democratize the importance of information in England. Not only did he create several English ghost motifs, but he knowingly created a text where the goal was documenting the lives of real, ordinary folk. 

[Image removed for formatting]

Figure 1: Source: The Carthusian Miscellany, England (Yorkshire or Lincolnshire) MS 37049, f. 38v

Works Cited

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The history of the word hell is more complex than its length suggests, and there are several folk etymological theories that have explained hell for centuries. Most common amongst folk etymologists is the idea that hell comes from the Hebrew שְׁאוֹל‎ (Sheol). Hell, or the biblical idea of hell, that exists in the Greek Bible does not exist in the Hebrew Bible. However, the Hebrew Bible mentions Sheol over sixty time. The first mention of Sheol in the Hebrew Bible is in Gen. 37:35 when Jacob says, “I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning” (NRSVUE). Outside of a place for the dead, the Hebrew Bible’s definition of Sheol has very little to do with modern Christian concepts of hell, and early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible translated Sheol as ᾍδης (Hades). Desiring to connect the Hebrew Bible to the Greek Bible, Christian translators began to translate Sheol as hell, and the King James Version of the Bible translates Sheol as hell thirty-one times. The remaining thirty times are translated to grave or variations of  grave. For example, the KJV translation of Gen. 37:35 reads, “I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning” (KJV). For obvious reasons, the KJV translators could not write that Jacob went to hell to mourn his son Joseph. Hell existed prior the King James Version of the Bible, and English speakers have used hell since at least the eighth century. Hell has gone under minor phonological and morphological changes throughout its history in the English language. However, hell has semantically changed several times since the eighth century while retaining its original English meaning. 

Though our earliest recorded use of hell in English is in the eighth century, the word existed prior to the Christianization of England. For instance, Christianized Scandinavians who, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD) claims, “preserved a good deal of pagan poetry revealing the ancient Scandinavian vision of the afterworld” describe the pagan Scandinavian hel throughout several texts (“Hell, n.”). The Scandinavian hel, unlike the Christian English hell, is cold. However, like hell, it is a placed reserved for evil people, and it is meant to serve as a stark contrast to Valhalla. Several modern Germanic languages share similarities to the Scandinavian and English version of hell. The German Hölle (hell), the Afrikaans hel, the Yiddish hel, and the Scottish Gaelic hel are clearly similar, and according to the AHD, they share the Indo-European root of *kel- (“Hell, n.”). 

The definition (or description) of the Indo-European root of kel- is “to cover, conceal, save,” and the oldest form of *k̑el‑ becomes *kel- in centum (or Western) languages (“Indo-European Roots Appendix”). Several modern words are derived from kel- including hall, hull (and hold ), hole, hollow, holster, helm (and helmet), housing, and, of course, hell. Nearly all these derivatives could be defined, at least partly, by their Indo-European definition. However, the Indo-European root definition of *kel- seems reductive for the rich existential and religious history associated with hell. 

The shift from Indo-European to Germanic saw the creation of the word Halja, which is “one who covers up or hides something” (Barnhart 474). A similar word exists in Old English (OE), helian, which means “to hide or conceal.” However, later, Halja saw cognates that exists not only in the OE helle (which is a separate word from helian though they are both rooted in the Germanic Halja) but also “in Old Frisian hele, hille, Old Saxon hellja, Middle Dutch helle, Old High German hella, and Gothic halja” (Barnhart 474). Robert K. Barnhart suggests, like the AHD, that hell and its cognates are “possibly borrowed, in part, from Old Icelandic Hel goddess of death and the underworld, as a transfer of a pagan concept to Christian theology and its vocabulary” (474). However, Winifred Philipp Lehmann’s A Gothic Etymological Dictionary complicates the Gothic halja as a cognate of Germanic Halja (and derivative of hell) when defined as the “nether world of the dead, infernal regions” (Barnhart 474). Gothic halja, according to Lehmann, simply means “hell” (174). However, the Gothic conjunction haliurunnas (previously written as haljos-runas) despite interpreting—Lehmann’s word—to hell-runners, means “sorceresses” or “female shamans” (174). Therefore, it is nearly impossible to tell how hell or its antecedents were used prior to the eighth-century. However, shift undoubtedly occurred, and prior to the shift, hell was certainly not created out of Christian theological needs. 

Despite hell not being created out of a theological need, Christianity dominated the West during the Middle Ages, and our first written record of hell comes from the Vespasian Psalter (c. 820-850), an Anglo-Saxon psalter, from the first half of the eighth century. The Vespasian Psalter contains the Book of Psalms with letters from Jerome, and it is written in both Latin and a Mercian dialect of OE (Kolasinska 36). The first appearance of hell in the Vespasian Psalter reads, “Veniat mors super illos et descendant in infernum uiuentes: cyme deað ofer hie & astigen hie in helle lifgende” (“[Latin] Let death come upon them and the living descend to hell: [OE] Let death come over them and let the living descend into hell”; Kuhn 51). This passage from the psalter is the same Bible verse (Psa. 55:15) in both Latin and Old English. The Latin translation, because it is from an earlier translation—that many, including Paulina Kolasinska, have called “the Latin original”—is of less note than the OE, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first extended translation of Psalms into English (36). Contemporary translations of the same verse are strikingly similar, except one significant change, “Let death come upon them; let them go down alive to Sheol” (NRSVUE). Sheol, which was translated as infernum in Latin and then helle in OE, has reverted to a form that better represents the biblical description of the underworld or afterlife in the Hebrew Bible. However, there is little difference between infernum and helle. 

Helle’s pronunciation is similar to contemporary pronunciations of hell with an additional pronunciation of both L’s and a shwa at the end of the word (/hɛllə/), and there has not been very many phonological changes to the word hell throughout history, especially to the root of hel. Like its phonological changes, there has been very little morphological changes to hell throughout history and between OE and Middle English (ME) writers. Because there was no popular standardization of English during the Middle Ages, hell throughout its history, has been spelled as helle, hel, hellen, and hell. Moreover, writers continued to use both helle and hell well into the seventeenth century. Though not completely uncommon, several English words were standardized prior to the seventeenth century. For example, the earliest written record of the word king in English from 858 reads, “Se cyning sealde & gebocade Wullafe fif sulung landes” (“The king gave and booked Wullafe five sulungs of land”; Sweet 438). Cyning would have likely been pronounced as /kyniŋ/ during the ninth century. However, near the middle of the thirteenth century, writers began adopting modern spellings of king. For example, Robert of Gloucester writes in his metrical chronical (1260), “Hennin & Morgan…adde despit þat womman king ssolde alonde beo” (“Hennin and Morgan…had contempt that a woman should be alone as king”; Robert 64). Morphologically, ME writers would occasionally write king as kyng, but phonologically (/kɪŋ/), king and kyng are virtually identical to the modern pronunciations of king. Hell, on the other hand, had no morphological standard (or close standard) until nearly four hundred years after The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester. Furthermore, unlike king, hell constantly gained semantics throughout history. 

Vespasian Psalter’s hell is a translation (of a translation) of Psalms, and therefore its semantics reflects a Christian theological place for the dead. Moreover, it is not a completely original use of hell. Later in the Middle Ages, within the Cleopatra Glossaries (c. 930s), under the section hound is, “Ex herebo, of helle” (“[Latin] from their heir, [OE] of hell”; Rusche 271). Like the Vespasian Psalter, the Cleopatra Glossaries is written in both Latin and OE, and despite being written nearly a century apart, they were both most likely composed in St. Augustine’s Abbey. The glossary is giving an example of a hound that is from hell, and because it is a glossary, it is simply an alphabetical list of terms. However, we can view this version of hell in use in The Old English Boethius (c. 880-950) that has been historically tied to King Alfred the Great, “Þa sceolde cuman þære helle hund, þæs nama…wæs Ceruerus” (“When he came thither, the hound of hell, men say, came towards him, whose name was Cerberus”; Alfred the Great's Boethius: Sedgefield's Modern English Translation). The Old English Boethius gives an example of a hell that has superficially very little to do with Christian theology (Godden 1). Cerberus is three-headed dog from Greek mythology that guards the gates to the underworld, and Cerberus is typically known for his capture by Heracles. However, from a Christian theological perspective, the Greek underworld, or Hades, would essentially be the Christian hell. Therefore, semantically, hell represents all afterlife, especially for a medieval Christian king (or monk or scribe). 

The first interpretive use of hell appears sometime in the ninth or tenth century in the Blickling Homilies, and though no author can be attached to the homilies, a homily is essentially a commentary that follows scripture readings. Homilies are especially common during sermons, making the Blickling Homilies one of the earliest surviving manuscripts of English sermons. Additionally, the Blickling Homilies are especially of note because of their potential ties to Beowulf. As Matthew Hussey notes in “The Possible Relationship of the Beowulf and the Blickling Homilies Manuscripts,” there is a “possibility that the two manuscripts were copies at different times in the same scriptorium” (2). The writers of the homilies mention hell several times throughout, and the text reads in hell’s first instance, “Se gifra helle bið a open deoflum & þæm mannum þe nu be his larum lifiaþ” (“The greedy hell is always open to Satan and the men who now live by his teaching”; Blickling Homilies). The hell featured in the homilies is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as “The infernal regions regarded in various religions as a place of suffering and evil; the dwelling place of devils and condemned spirits; the place or state of punishment of the wicked after death” (“hell, n. & int.”). Semantically, this is amongst the earliest forms of hell in English that describe hell as a place where the devil lives and the condemned can be potentially punished to. This semantic of hell was widely used throughout history, and it is still used in this context today. For instance, it is written in the Old English Homilies (c. 1225), “From hwonne þe engles adun follon in to þe þosternesse hellen” (“From whence the angels fell down in the darkness of hell”; Morris 61). Like in the Blickling Homilies, hell in the Old English Homilies is a place where the condemned are sent. Similarly, and later, John Milton writes in Paradise Lost (1667), “Within the Gates of Hell sate Sin and Death” (230). Though this is perhaps the most widely used semantic of hell, especially in the context of Christian theology, hell is used several different contexts even today. 

Though hell’s semantic definition as an afterlife for condemned souls permeated the ninth century, hell first began to develop polysemous semantics in English within the tenth century. Paintings of hell in as early as the ninth century began to depict the Christian hell as beast unto itself, and by the tenth century, writers and theologians started to describe a motif known as the hellmouth. Ælfric of Eynsham was the first English writer to describe the hellmouth and to translate the Hebrew Bible into English. Ælfric writes in his Catholic Homilies (written in the latter half of the tenth century), “[Witodlice seo swearte nywelnyss þe ðu gesawe mid þam ormætum þeostrum and fulum] stence, seo is helle muð” (Truly, the dark depths that you saw amid the immense darkness and foul stench, that is the hell mouth”; 201-2). Hell, for Ælfric, was not simply in intangible or metaphorical punishment for the afterlife, instead he made hell palpable. Ælfric’s hellmouth lasted well into the fourteenth century. Early translation of the Bible into English featured the hellmouth motif. For example, in an early Wycliffite translation of Isaiah (1382), it is written, “Helle sprade abrod his soule & openede his mouþ withoute any terme” (Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 959). Similarly, it is written in a poem about St. Balaam in the Altenglische Legend (1450), “þe ferful Dragun. is þe Mouþ of helle þat coueyteþ. men to deuoure” (“The fearsome dragon is the mouth of hell that desires to devour men”; Altenglische Legend). The hellmouth motif, though not as popular of a semantic definition in the twenty-first century, lasted well into the nineteenth century. For example, Rudyard Kipling writes in his poem “Tomlinson” (1892), “Till they came to the belt of Naughty Stars that rim the mouth of Hell” (“Tomlinson”). Kipling mentions the hellmouth another three times in “Tomlinson,” but Kipling uses the motif for a different semantical reasoning. Kipling’s hellmouth is signifier of physical danger, and though Ælfric describes the mouth of hell as being palpable, Ælfric’s hellmouth is still a punishment for sin. As secularism rose in the West, the semantics of hell changed, and the shift began after the Norman Conquest of 1066. 

The introduction of the Norman monarchy fundamentally changed the English language, and the shift from OE to ME began in the beginning of the twelfth century. The OED writes that ME is “characterized particularly by a reduced system of grammatical inflection, an increased lexical borrowing from other languages, especially French and Latin, and great dialectical diversity in writing” (“Middle English, n.”). However, the rise of Middle English did not include a standardization of English, and English writing still varied widely throughout England. Typically, the English featured in ME texts is much more readable for a modern English-speaking audience. For example, Geoffrey Chaucer writes in Anelida & Arcite (c. 1375), “The helle that suffereth fayre Annelida” (166). Chaucer is not only more readable than some of our OE examples, but he introduces a new form of hell. The rise of ME and print capitalism saw a new literary, or hyperbolic, form of hell that had very little to do with religion. This new version of hell became even more popular with the introduction of the printing press, and, for example, John Foxe writes in his protestant martyrology Acts and Monuments (1563): 

And this minister (at my comminge) desired to speake with me, and did greatly lament his owne infirmity, for that through extremity of imprisonment, he was constrayned by wryting to yelde to the byshop of London, wherupon he was once set at libertie, and afterward felte such a hel in his conscience, that he could scarse refrayne from destroying himselfe, and neuer could be at quiet, vntil he had gone to the byshops Register, desiring to se hys byl agayne, the which assone as hee had receyued, he tare it in peces. (Foxe)

Foxe’s hel is two-fold. Foxe certainly means for hel to have a religious undertone. However, Foxe’s hel can easily be changed to torment, affliction, or anguish without losing its syntaxial meaning. In other words, hell no longer is a physical place for the devil or condemned souls by the sixteenth century, even for Christian theologians. The OED defines Chaucer and Foxe’s use of hell as “a place, state, or situation of wickedness, suffering, or misery. In later use frequently hyperbolic” (“hell, n. & int.”). Shortly after Foxe’s Acts and Monuments—and the advent of the printing press—the spelling of hell began to become more standardized amongst predominantly literary writers, and by the seventeenth century, not only was the spelling of hell solidified amongst writers, but hell was no longer used for religious purposes. For example, Shakespeare writes in his “Sonnet CXX” (1609), “For if you were by unkindness shaken, / As I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time, / And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken to weigh how once I suffer’d in your crime” (l. 5-8). In other words, if Shakespeare’s fictional reader suffered like the writer, then they would have had a “hell of [a] time.” Like the example from Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, Shakespeare’s “hell of a time” could easily be replaced with “a really bad time.” Similarly, Milton writes in Paradise Lost (1667), “…a lower deep still threatening to devour me opens wide, to which the hell I suffer seems Heaven” (iv. 78). Once again, Milton uses hell as a synonym for a suffering, and this hyperbolic form of hell is quite common even throughout the twentieth century. For example, Rudyard Kipling writes in his cheeky poem “The Old Men” (1903), “Yes, we shall be perfectly pleased with our work, and that is the Perfectest Hell of it!” (l. 22). As Mary Hamer of the Kipling Society notes, “Kipling was still not yet forty” when he composed “The Old Men,” and “the speakers are presumably those officials in the War Office home…whom he blamed for the mismanagement of the Anglo-Boer war” (Hamer). Therefore, in Kipling’s “The Old Men,” the speakers are creating torment—or metaphorical hell—for others. 

Not only did hell become part of the literary and the metaphorical, hell became part of the everyday English-speaking lexicon in the sixteenth century. Hell became part of phrases, and therefore, lost much of its original semantics. For instance, in the anonymous sixteenth century comedy Misogonus (1577), Philogonus says to Eupelus, “Stay a while Eupelas I knowe our laboure we shall lose / but yet Ile tell the vnthrift of his detestable dealing / Calsta this honest company or is this an honest sporte / to be revelinge and bousinge after such a lewde fashion / I think hell breake louse when thou gatst ye this porte / foure such thou coudst scase fynde in a whole nashion” (Bond 215). Hell breaks loose’s phrasal semantic is based solely around hell’s earliest definitions as a place meant for the devil, demons, and condemned souls, and if hell were to break loose, then events would become chaotic. However, hell breaks loose is rarely—if ever—used to describe religious or existential events. Instead, it used as a synonym of chaotic. Lord Byron makes note of the phrase hell breaks loose in “The Vision of Judgment” (1821) by writing, “And varies cries were like those of wild geese, / (If nations may be likened to a goose), / And realised the phrase of ‘Hell broke loose’” (506). By the early nineteenth century, hell breaks loose had become such a part of the English-speaking lexicon that Lord Byron refers to it as a phrase, and moreover, he is essentially writing that “nations” will learn the true meaning of the phrase. Therefore, hell breaks loose had lost its semantic meaning for most English speakers and only an existential event would remind them of its true, original semantics.

Hell breaks loose implies that hell is place full of beings that we would like to avoid, but phrases like hell hath no fury like a woman scorned imply that hell is a being unto itself, much like the hellmouth motif. William Congreve, for example, writes in his late seventeenth century tragedy The Mourning Bride (1697), “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d / Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d” (39). To compare hell to an angry woman implies that some sort of semantical bleaching occurred for the word hell in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Moreover, in some instances in the early seventeenth century, hell went through complete grammaticalization. For instance, Ben Johnson writes in his comedy Poetaster (1601), “The hell thou wilt! What! Turn law into verse / Thy father has school’d thee…” (Johnson). The implication from Johnson seems to be that the speaker is metaphorically sending someone to hell for their actions. However, it is used in Poetaster as more of an exclamation, and we see this semantic phrase of hell still used in the twentieth century. 

Similarly, in the eighteenth century, hell underwent another semantic shift. For instance, John Leacock writes in The Fall of British Tyranny (1776), “Damn it, don’t let us kick up a dust among ourselves, to be laugh’d at fore and aft—this is a hell of a council of war—though I believe it will turn out one before we’ve done” (337). Though at first glance Leacock’s use of hell seems positive—as in this is a great council of war—contextually, The Fall of British Tyranny is a parody, and this instance of hell is coming from the enemies of the novel (the British). An early nineteenth century article from the Morning Post (1810) illustrates the early negative use of the original use of hell of a --: “They all knew what a hell of a row had been kicked up at the committal of their friend, because two or three fellows got killed” (Jones 274). Similarly, Mark Twain writes at the end of the nineteenth century in Following the Equator (1897), “It’s a charming town, with a hell of a hotel…it’s the worst hotel in Australia. Well, one may go further, and say in Australasia” (Twain). A hell of a -- was used to denote something as being terrible, perhaps a lingering lineage from the original ninth century sense of hell, however, a complete grammaticalization occurs near the end of the twentieth century: a hell of a -- is used to describe something very good. For example, Kurt Vonnegut writes in Bluebeard (1988), “If I do say so myself, I had become one hell of a good artist for a kid in any case. I was so conceited about my prospects” (82). In the twenty-first century, we are more likely to use a hell of -- in the Vonnegut context rather than previous contexts. 

However, prior to Vonnegut’s Bluebeard, a hell of a -- featured a phonetic erosion. Just as going to became gonna for some English speakers, a hell of a -- became helluva in the early part of the twentieth century. Unlike a hell of a --, helluva became a positive colloquialism shortly after its inception. For example, Clarence E. Mulford writes in his popular Western Hopalong Cassidy (1910), “I got money—helluva lot of money—an’ thersh more where it came from, ain’t that so, boys?” (272). Contextually, Mulford is writing a Western dialect that might include phonetic erosions like helluva to describe his cowboy as uneducated drunk. Still, helluva is meant to describe that Mulford’s character has a lot of money and has nearly nothing to do with hell’s original semantics. Similarly, and to avoid literary dialects, Ezra Pound writes in his “Canto XXXV” (1934), “as they hung their old huntsman friend to his chandelier / in his dining hall after the usual feasting and flagons / VIRTUSCH!!! It must be one helluva country” (l. 91-3). Helluva serves simply as an intensifier and a purposeful phonetic erosion without any singular meaning, and by the end of the nineteenth century, hell, in many contexts eroded meaning all together. 

Today, we often say hell without any meaning at all, and many times we use an intensifier like bloody hell or fucking hell. Hell in these instances serves as nothing more than an interjection or exclamation. For example, in The West Somerset Word-Book (1886) the editors, under the examples of “Oaths, Imprecations, and Exclamations,” write, “Nearly all the imprecatory verbs are, at times, used in conjunctions with exclamations such as— …‘Hell! Bloody hell!’…After any profane exclamation or oath…it is very common to add, by way of half apology…‘You’d let out too, nif you was me’” (529-30). To put The West Somerset Word-Book into perspective, Ian Wedde writes in his Symmes Hole (1986) nearly a hundred years later, “Fuckin’ hell Harry it’s the cops!’ (75), and he writes later in the same novel, “Oh fucking hell – just had to look over your shoulder didn’t you?…What a-bout, the immediate vicinity, bloody hell, can you see, any-one, any-where, near you?” (116). Hell serves nearly no syntactical function in Wedde’s examples, and they are nearly impossible to define outside of being exclamatory phrase. 

Like hell as exclamation or interjection, we often use hell as an intensifier. We say things are “good as hell” or we’re “sure as hell” or my ankle “hurts like hell” or we ask, “how the hell are you?” Hell as an intensifier is undoubtedly the most popular form of hell in our current lexicon, and outside of acting as an intensifier, hell has little to no actual semantics. Hell as an intensifier is older than our current use suggests, and, for example, according to the OED, the first use hell as an intensifier was sometime at the end the eighteenth century in a Sea Shanty (1768-70): “Got Drunk as all Hell” (“as all hell’ in hell”). Shortly after the Sea Shanty, in 1776, H. H. Brackenridge writes in his performance piece Battle of Bunkers-Hill, “With these rude Britons, wage life-scorning war, / Till they admit it, and like hell fall off” (261). We continue to use hell as an intensifier in the twentieth century. Just as the eighteenth-century Sea Shanty, Ice Cube raps in his “It Was a Good Day” (1992), “Drunk as hell, but no throwin’ up / Halfway home and my pager still / blowin’ up” (Ice Cube). Similarly, Fetty Wap raps in his three-time Platinum single “My Way” (2014), “The last single he put out / Didn’t even make it out / And he dumb as hell and I swear / his ass don’t think” (Fetty Wap). In her 2023 single “love is embarrassing” three-time Grammy Award winner Olivia Rodrigo sings, “My God, love’s embarrassing as hell” (Rodrigo). Contextually, hell as an intensifier seems synonymous with really: “Really drunk,” “he really dumb,” and “love’s really embarrassing.” However, hell, as word itself, seems semantic-less. Moreover, hell does not always denote a negative intensifier. Ice Cube, for example, does not seem particularly upset being “drunk as hell,” and Taylor Swift sings in “Wildest Dreams” (2014), “He’s so tall and handsome as hell” (Swift).

Although English speakers use hell as a simple intensifier, hell has not gone through a complete semantic bleaching or desemanticization. Hell, in certain contexts, still maintains its eighth century semantics, and certain modern phrases partially combine the original English semantics of hell with modern phrasal, or proverbial, tradition. For example, Agnes Newton Keith writes in Land Below the Wind (1939), “Too puny a voice mine to say, like Queen Victoria, ‘Let empires be built!’—and, come hell or high water, they build ‘em” (18). Despite phrases and interjections creating a sort of societal semantic satiation—where hell loses all meaning through repetition—hell or high water implies that hell is something to be overcome, and, therefore, hell, much like high waters, is an obstacle to be conquered. High waters certainly does not imply the same existential dread or sinful punishment that Ælfric writes about hell in his Catholic Homilies, however, hell—in the twentieth century—still has a general meaning of, at the very least, a life-threatening hurdle. 

Throughout its history hell has been mostly used as a noun and, by the end of the of the eighteenth century, an interjection as well. In addition to a noun and an interjection, hell has also been used as a transitive and intransitive verb since the middle of the fourteenth century. Richard Oliver Heslop writes in his dictionary Northumberland Words (1892) that hell and helle mean “to pour out in a rapid manner” (370). Hell and helle are both different spellings of hell in OE and ME. Though rare, Heslop’s sole definition of hell and helle is “to pour.” Hell has a complicated history as a verb beginning in the fourteenth century. Richard Rolle writes in the Psalter, or Psalms of David (c. 1340), “Grete haboundance of gastly comfort and ioy in god comes in the hertes of thaim at says or synges deuotly the psalmes in louynge of ihū crist. thai drope swetnes in mannys saule and hellis delite in thaire thoghtis and kyndils thaire willes with the fyre of luf” (“Great abundance of spiritual comfort and joy in God comes into hearts of those who say or devoutly sing the psalms in praise of Jesus Christ. They drip sweetness into many souls and pour delight in their thoughts and kindle their wills with the fire of love”; 3). Rolle’s spelling of hell as hellis is not indictive of the era, and it is the only instance of hellis in his psalter. Through his psalter, Rolle uses both hell and helle interchangeably, which is more suggestive of the ME period. For instance, he later writes, “we go not to gedir in to helle” (92), and shortly after that instance of helle, he writes, “suffire me noght forto fall swa that thou punyes me in hell” (97). Similarly, in a translation of Leo the Archpriest’s tenth century The Wars of Alexander (c. 1450), the translator writes, “Þan slike a comfurth þam enclosed for his kynd wordis, / As all þe watir of þe werd ware in þaire wambs hellid” (“Then such a comfort enclosed them for his kind words, / as if all the water of the world were in their bellies poured”; 217). Like Rolle, the translator of The Wars of Alexander uses hell as a noun in two other instances, but only uses hellid in this one instance (and they do not use helle). These writers were not using hell and helle interchangeably with hellis and hellid; hellis and hellid meant something completely different for them. It is possible that the -is or the -id acted as inflectional endings for hell or helle for the writers. However, pour was already part of the lexicon of ME speakers. For example, Chaucer writes in “Pardoner’s Tale” (c. 1390), “And borwed [of] hym large botelles thre, / And in the two his poysen poured he;” (l. 871-2). Moreover, it is not linguistic holdover from OE (geotan or feallan). Still, hell was used as a verb, but much later and much more obviously. 

Thomas Adams writes in The Diulls Banket (1614), “The dead to sinne are heaven’d in this world: the dead in sinne are hell’d here, by the tormenting anguish of an unappeasable conscience” (171). Adams, as a temporary anthimeria, uses both heaven and hell as a verb to mean go to heaven or go to hell. However, it is not a permanent transitive verb shift, and Adams uses both heaven and hell as nouns in his text. Moreover, though it is changed to a verb in this instance, it is not a semantic shift, and in order to understand what Adam is writing, one must have a general understanding of hell’s semantic noun meaning. Hell as an intransitive verb was not used until the end of the nineteenth century and in rare occurrences. For example, John Clare writes in his poem “Button Cap” (1864), “Theyd won the game—& then pell melling / As safes a button sent thee helling” (504). Like Adam’s example, Clare’s use of helling requires preexisting knowledge of the semantics of hell. Moreover, “Button Cap” is using poetic language, and helling did not become part of popular English lexicon, though it has occasionally appeared in literature after Clare. 

Hell is certainly not used as a verb with nearly as much frequency as the noun hell. However, hell has a history of being linguistically adaptable. While mostly known as signifier for the Christian afterlife, hell has a history of being used as an adjective, adverb, and interjection, which is a history unto itself. Today, for example, hell is used in our everyday lexicon as an intensifier meaning really, and we see examples of as hell in everyday speech, movies, books, and popular music. While hell’s meaning has evolved over time—never losing its original English semantics—the orthographic representation of hell has only slightly altered over the course of a millennia as hel, helle, and hellen in OE and ME texts. The precise etymological roots of hell are vague, and though we can trace hell to its Indo-European and Germanic roots, the original semantics of hell—as perhaps a pagan afterlife—are unknown to modern linguists and historians. Since its textual inception into English in the eighth century, hell has been used in its Christian sense in both biblical translations and homilies, but hell’s popular use was not revealed until the creation of the printing press when texts could be mass produced. Hell has undergone minor morphological and phonological changes throughout its long history, but the word has always been more complex than its length suggests.  

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James Holt McGavran argues in his 1996 essay “Defusing the Discharged Soldier” that William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are “affected by repressed but powerful homoerotic tensions” (147). McGavran points out that The Prelude (1805) contains “thousands of lines of discourse in order to become a strong, independent, masculine, heterosexual, but continually self-questioning male romantic poet” (163).  However, Coleridge’s response “To William Wordsworth” is “both masochistic and, in its very exaggeration of admiration, perversely resistant” (McGavran 163). In the twenty years since McGavran’s essay, scholars have noted the importance of Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s friendship and professional collaboration, but none seem to connect them as intimately as McGavran does. For example, Keith G. Thomas historicizes the poets and their relationship by arguing that “to omit Coleridge [from Wordsworth] amounts in the end to telling half of Wordsworth’s story” (82). Thomas admits that there is a “recognizable Coleridgean context” to Wordsworth’s poetry, but he does not focus on the intimacy of their work or their friendship (82). Similarly, Lucy Newlyn analyzes Coleridge inside of Wordsworth’s poetry, and she argues that there are “two Coleridges in The Prelude: one mythologized beyond recognition … the other flawed and human” (166). However, Newlyn concludes “that The Prelude – is in fact a solitary quest, to which friendship itself is finally irrelevant,” and she does not argue for the intimate significance of Wordsworth’s mythologizing of Coleridge (166). 

Other scholars have analyzed intimate aspects of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s work and friendship. For example, Julia S. Carlson argues that “the story of the composition of The Prelude cannot be told without reference to Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s new-found absence from one another” (1). According to Carlson, The Prelude and “To William Wordsworth” is the result of “a history of intimate textual exchange[s] across significant geographical distance” (26). Though Carlson intimately links Wordsworth and Coleridge, she does not go as far as McGavran, and she primarily focuses on the poets’ new-found distance from each other as the catalyst for their intimate exchanges. Scholars have attempted to explain Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s collaboration as uniquely intimate, but they avoid connecting their relationship and work to a homosocial bond or homoeroticism. Instead, for example, Jasmine Jagger writes that there is a “medical link between Wordsworth and Coleridge during the composition of The Prelude,” and Wordsworth plays the role of “benign physician” while Coleridge plays the role of “wondering patient” (33). In a similar hierarchical structure, Rei Terada writes that, in “To William Wordsworth,” “Coleridge portrays himself in infantine thrall to absorptive pleasure at Wordsworth’s reading of The Prelude” (43). However, Terada concludes that, not unlike Jagger’s argument, “Coleridge subsumes Wordsworth’s influence into a world of his own vivification” (43). 

There is an abundance of scholarship on Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s work, friendship, and exchanges, and, though scholars have noted the intimate work between the poets, research into the homosocial bond between them is lacking. Though McGavran’s essay is formative for this research, by taking a cue from Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, it is impossible to conclude that Wordsworth nor Coleridge were homosexual, as homosexuality was not defined as a “sexual sensibility” until 1870 (43). Furthermore, the rhetoric and language of queer studies has progressed over the past two decades, and, therefore, renders sections of McGavran’s essay outmoded. Ultimately, I argue, as did Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in her seminal Between Men, that Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s homosocial bond resulted in exclusionary powers over the feminine Other. Though the feminine Other included fellow poets and wives, their homosocial desire—and need to prove their masculinity—resulted into the exclusion of the feminine Other within the self and each other. 

Outside of Wordsworth and Coleridge, an exterior analysis of Romantic Studies leads to homosocial results. For example, Harriet Kramer Linkin’s 1991 essay “The Current Canon in British Romantic Studies” lists the canonical powerhouses of Romanticism as William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats (548). However, she concludes that the canon “we invoke with a capital ‘C’ is no monolithic structure or commandment carved in stone but a shifting set of ideals that correspond to a culture’s Zeitgeist” (548). However, according to the more recent The Cambridge Introduction to British Romantic Poetry by Michael Ferber, the canonical powerhouses of Romanticism have not changed since Linkin’s essay. In addition to the same canonical lists, he writes that feminist scholars have “brought to light” a number of women poets who “were well known and much admired in their time” (6). Many of the women poets he mentions—such as Charlotte Smith—were well known, even to those men on the canonical list of British Romantic poets.

Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets were influential and inspired several imitations and responses. Wordsworth and Coleridge were among those influenced by Smith’s sonnets, particularly by “Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex.” Wordsworth owned the fifth, expanded edition of Elegiac Sonnets (1789), and he regularly annotated her published poems (Nagle 51). This, for example, is a copy of “Written in the Church Yard at Middleton in Sussex” with Wordsworth’s annotations: 

Press’d by the Moon, mute arbitress of tides, 

While the loud equinox its power combines, 

The sea no more its swelling surge confines, 

But o’er the shrinking land sublimely rides. 

The wild blast, rising from the Western cave, 

Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed; 

Tears from the grassy tombs the village dead, 

And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave! 

With shells and sea-weed mingled, on the shore

Lo! their bones whiten in the frequent wave;

[But In] vain to them the winds and waters rave[;][—]

They hear the warring elements no more:

While I am doom’d—by life’s long storm opprest, 

To [gaze with envy on their gloomy rest. envy their

insensible unrest.] (qtd. in Nagle 51-2)

Wordsworth does not make any changes until line 11, and he simply changes Smith’s “But” to “In” and he removes her semicolon in favor of a dash. However, Wordsworth changes the final line of the ending couplet, and is attempting to improve the poem. In the literal sense of the poem, “unrest” is arguably an improvement. However, as Christopher C. Nagle writes, “it comes at a cost, sacrificing a significant mode of indirection and rich irony in which Smith indulges” (54). In other words—as Nagle leaves out—it removes Smith from her own poem in several ways. Smith’s poetic persona—or speaker—is removed from “gazing” in the poem, and she is placed deeper within the context of the poem. This act is simply Wordsworth’s preference, which was later made evident through his body of work. However, more importantly, it illustrates Wordsworth’s privilege of being a part of a scene rather than gazing from a distance—a masculine entitlement that Smith (or her poetic person) is not afforded. Regardless of Wordsworth’s intention of his annotation, Smith’s poem served and helped develop young Wordsworth’s poetic style: a “full absorption of the poetic persona” (Nagle 54). 

Smith’s poetry was formative for young Wordsworth, but he did not recognize her before her death in 1806, instead it was “from the comfortable position of an established poet in the 1830s” (Nagle 54). Later, Nagle writes, “Wordsworth’s amnesia returns in the final, 1849 edition of ‘An Evening Walk,’ which removes the quotes that had previously identified his line from Smith’s ‘To the South Downs’” (54). It was only in a position of authority that Wordsworth would recognize Smith, and, even at the end of his life, disavowed any direct references to Smith in his own poetry. This act is a systematic attempt to rewrite the canon of poetry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century where Smith’s work—along with other woman poets like Mary Robinson and Helen Maria Williams—is a threat even by association. The reality of Wordsworth writing poetry out of tradition—a tradition that included Smith—is enough to push her to the side as the feminine Other. Arguably, Wordsworth was successful, as even today Smith is relegated not to the canon of British Romanticism but to the footnotes of that same canon. 

Wordsworth and Coleridge, I argue, have committed a similar act on themselves—their own feminine Other—and, in certain circumstances, Wordsworth defines Coleridge as his Other. First, it is imperative we define our terms: homosocial desire and homosexual panic. Simply put, male homosocial desire is a “structure of men’s relations with other men” (Sedgwick 2). However, there are more societal implications. The structure in which men build relations with other men depend on and impact power relationships. In other words, patriarchal systems of male homosocial relationships define sexuality and gender structures. Male homosocial desire, however, is not paradoxically opposed to homosexuality. As Sedgwick points out for the ancient Greeks, “’men loving men’ and ‘men promoting the interest of men’ appears to have been quite seamless” (4). On the other hand, homosexual panic is simply the private and psychologized pressure of homophobic blackmail, or, in more clinical terms, it is a panic due to the pressure of nonnormative sexual yearnings (Sedgwick 89). However, for this research—before homosexuality was defined as a sexuality sensibility—homosexual panic is more akin feminine panic, where there is panic due to the pressure of feminine yearnings. Our analytical focus will begin with Wordsworth’s independent “The Discharged Soldier” in 1798. At this point Coleridge is still in the process of writing The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (1789), and it is shortly before Wordsworth began revising “Book IV” of The Prelude (1805). 

Toby R. Benis calls “The Discharged Soldier” an “episode” in the anthology William Wordsworth in Context (186). Within the same anthology, Simon Bainbridge calls the poem a “poetic fragment” (200). Paul Magnuson writes that “Wordsworth’s opinion of ‘The Discharged Soldier’ is difficult to determine,” as he did not publish it outside of The Prelude (94). Whether we want to call it an episode, a poetic fragment, or an incomplete singular piece, Wordsworth eventually incorporated “The Discharged Soldier” into “Book IV” of The Prelude. However, Wordsworth, when assimilating “The Discharged Soldier” into The Prelude, removed two distinct sections (among other changes). Interestingly, both sections seem to conceal sensual suggestions, and, moreover, their absence in The Prelude conceal a homosexual panic:

There was in his form

A meagre stiffness. You might almost think

That his bones wounded him. His legs were long,

So long and shapeless that I looked at them

Forgetful of the body they sustained. (43-47)

His face was turned

Toward the road, yet not as if he sought

For any living thing. He appeared

Forlorn and desolate, a man cut off 

From, all his kind, and more than half detached

From his own nature. (55-60) 

A shallow analyzation of the two segments reveal a descriptive excerpt of the Soldier—an excerpt nor description that was included in The Prelude. Though this passage is not featured in The Prelude, a similar reference to “forms” exists in “Book I”: “But huge and mighty Forms do not live / Like living men moved slowly through my mind” (425-6). Like the Forms in “Book I,” the Soldier is “in stature tall / A foot above man’s common measure tall” (“The Discharged Soldier” 41-2). It is also important to note that out of the thirty-seven references to “forms” within The Prelude (1805), this reference in “Book I” is the only one with a capital “F.” The two omitted sections are oddly connected and play off Wordsworth’s repressed poetic persona. Wordsworth is attracted to the Soldier’s damaged but stunning body in the first section, and in the second section we find that the soldier is separated from “his kind” and “his own nature.” Ironically, this separation from his kind—this reclusion—is what homosocially bonds the Soldier to Wordsworth. Some scholars have taken the bond further, and, for example, Jonathan Wordsworth argues that when Wordsworth sees the Soldier, he “comes upon a curious version of himself” (11). Similarly, Paul Magnuson argues, “when the figure appears by Wordsworth’s side, it becomes Wordsworth as well” (91). However, this attachment to the Soldier proves problematic for Wordsworth, and, in a moment of homosexual panic, McGavran asserts, Wordsworth “metaphorically emasculat[es] the veteran” (151).  I argue, however, that Wordsworth cuts off parts of the Soldier from The Prelude in a homosexual panic—metaphorically castrating the Soldier—and if we take J. Wordsworth’s and Magnuson’s analysis to be accurate, Wordsworth is, in turn, also ironically castrating himself in the process.

Magnuson calls “The Discharged Soldier” a response to Coleridge’s The Ancyent Marinere, and, because of its “responsive nature, it is “one of the most important things he ever wrote in the quest for his own voice” (93). However, unlike Wordsworth’s annotations of Smith’s poetry, Wordsworth is not challenging Coleridge’s proficiency as a writer, nor is he attempting to parody Coleridge’s The Ancyent Marinere. Instead, Wordsworth is creating a dialogue by feminizing or masculinizing the characters of the Soldier and the Marinere and, more importantly, their respective poetic personas. The homosexual panic in “The Discharged Soldier” is made even more apparent when we situate it in reference to the Coleridge’s The Ancyent Marinere. McGavran argues that if we are to situate these poems in reference to each other, then it proves that “Coleridge was unconsciously in love with Wordsworth … and Wordsworth was unconsciously disturbed by this” (152). Though there are curious and enlightening revelations, we cannot stretch the text to the emotion of “love,” instead “Desire” (or “bond”) is more appropriate. A Wordsworthian character appears in The Ancyent Marinere as the Wedding-Guest—a character who absorbs information rather than initiating interaction. The Wedding-Guest who is forced to listen to the Marinere’s story is arguably that same poetic persona as the narrator of “The Discharged Soldier.” However, the poetic persona in “The Discharged Soldier” does not care much for the Soldier’s story:

He told a simple fact: that he had been

A Soldier, to the tropic isles had gone,

Whence he had landed now some ten days past;

That on his landing he had been dismissed, 

And with the little strength he yet had left

Was travelling to regain his native home. (99-104) 

We—the readers—learn nothing of the Soldier from the speaker. The speaker has heard the story, but he refuses to tell the entirety of it. In other words, he is refusing to be a speaker for the Soldier, and thus the Soldier has little power over the speaker. However, the Marinere has complete control over the Wedding-Guest and, therefore, Wordsworth’s speaker displays a masculinity that the Wedding-Guest does not. At first Wordsworth’s speaker hides from the Soldier with “specious cowardice” (85). Once the speaker sees the Soldier, he “left the shady nook … and hailed the Stranger” (86-7). The speaker overcomes this moment of terror to confront the Soldier. The Marinere, on the other hand, can dominate the Wedding-Guest. Interestingly, Wordsworth momentarily concedes to Coleridge’s description of homosocial bond within The Ancyent Marinere. The Soldier’s final words of the poem read,” My trust in God of heaven, / And in the eye of him that passes me” (164-5), and the Marinere holds the Wedding-Guest with “his glittering eye” (17). Later, in “Book XIII,” Wordsworth refers to Coleridge’s Marinere as “the bright-eyed Mariner” (399). Wordsworth confirms the power of Coleridge’s bond, which Wordsworth had spent much of “The Discharged Soldier” in panic of. It is through the power of the gaze of men that a male bond is made. The same gaze, ironically, that Wordsworth tries to remove from Smith’s “Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex.” 

Wordsworth, however, seems to require a homosocial bond in order to function as a poet once he transplants “The Discharged Soldier” into “Book IV” of The Prelude. Wordsworth addresses Coleridge throughout the entirety of The Prelude, and Coleridge’s address is particularly insightful in “Book IV.” Wordsworth addresses Coleridge twenty lines prior to meeting the Soldier and directly after what McGavran calls “the most overtly heterosexual passage in the entire poem” (156):

In a throng, 

A festal company of maids and youths, 

Old men and matrons, staid, promiscuous rout,

A medley of all tempers, I had passed

The night in dancing, gaiety and mirth— (316-20)

………………………………………

That mounted up like joy in the head, 

And tingled through the veins. (326-7)

Wordsworth then writes to Coleridge:

Ah, need I say, dear friend, that to the brim 

My heart was full? I made no vows, but vows

Were then made for me; bond unknown to me

Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,

A dedicated Spirit. On I walked

In blessedness, which even yet remains. (340-5)

Therefore, before the passage of “Book IV” where Wordsworth plants the Soldier, he momentarily introduces a heterosexual scene of dancing with women. However, he introduces it as a temptation just to ignore it as “dedicated spirit.” Wordsworth ignores “feast and dance and public revelry / And sports and games” because they were “less pleasing in themselves / Than a badge …  / Of Manliness and freedom” (274-7). Wordsworth refers to this temptation as “an inner falling-off” (270). Therefore, this introduction of heterosexuality (where “Manliness” is perhaps the reward) is, ironically, an “inner falling off” from his own self-dedication (which is finding poetic inspiration). Wordsworth continues by writing that “these did now / Seduce me from the habitual quest / Of feeding pleasures” (277-9). The seduction is of both sport and women—both which would further his heterosexuality. McGavran argues that these feelings “are not atypical for male adolescents in a patriarchy” on a summer vacation (157). However, the introduction of the Soldier shortly after this momentary lapse of dedication seems even more revealing. If “dancing maids” and “sport” are enough to seduce Wordsworth from his “habitual quest of feeding pleasures,” then the Soldier, in turn, seems to be a cure. The Soldier, with a “tone of weakness (476-7),” drives Wordsworth back to “feeding pleasures” with “a dedicated spirit” away from the seduction of heterosexual sport and dance, and, in turn, Wordsworth requires the recluse homosocial bond with the soldier where men can simply promote men. Or, as Monique R. Morgan argues in “Narrative Means to Lyric Ends in Wordsworth’s Prelude,” “the goal of the poem is to demonstrate his fitness to produce great poetry,” and not, ironically, to partake in heterosexual activities (298).

The most rejected male in The Prelude is not Wordsworth but Coleridge. Wordsworth addresses Coleridge throughout The Prelude, and Wordsworth seems to be striving for Coleridge’s recognition. However, at the same time, Wordsworth curtails Coleridge’s The Ancyent Marinere and Christabel in their sole direct reference: 

That summer when on Quantock’s grassy hills

Far ranging, and among the sylvan coombs,

Thou in delicious words, with happy heart,

Didst speak the vision of that ancient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes

Didst utter of the Lady Christabel; (“Book XIII” 395-9) 

In 1806 Wordsworth “overwhelms Coleridge … with thousands of lines of discourse” of The Prelude (McGavran 163). The discourse includes a rejection to Coleridge’s feminine Other, but it also includes a recognition of his feminine-self. A self, I’ve argued, he is in constant panic (or anxiety) of, and, in turn, becomes more exaggeratively dismissive towards. Coleridge composes “To William Wordsworth,” and takes part in the “conversational genre of The Prelude” (Rajan 64). According to Tillotama Rajan, when composing “To William Wordsworth,” Coleridge “had begun to embrace masochistically the place assigned to him, in what seems a curious mimicking of and thus resistance to the joint narrative” (64). Whereas Rajan and McGavran argue that Coleridge began this resistance to the joint narrative with “To William Wordsworth,” I assert, like Newlyn, that The Prelude is a solitary quest in which Coleridge is mentioned to only be Othered. Sequentially, Wordsworth is attempting to Other his feminine-self, and, therefore, metaphorically—and ironically—castrating himself in the process. 

To an outsider, Romantic studies seems male-dominated. In fact, this particular research is of two men. However, by continuing this research there can be appeal towards the feminine, and, more importantly, a recognition of how male homosocial relationships and patriarchal powers have shaped British Romantic canon. Additionally, Romantic studies seems to have an aversion towards queer studies. As mentioned in the brief literature review, scholars have only touched on queer studies and Wordsworth (who is mentioned to be a hallmark of Romantic canon), and I have only briefly touched upon the subject within this research. More specifically, I have only touched and reported the tip of the iceberg of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge. I have not included personal letters or any poetry outside of The Prelude (1805), “The Discharged Soldier,” The Ancyent Marinere, and, less so, “To William Wordsworth.” There is a wealth of analysis to be done on changes, omissions, and revisions between version Wordsworth’s The Prelude, references to Coleridge’s Christabel in The Prelude, and personal letters between Wordsworth and Coleridge outside of their work as poets. Moreover, there is perhaps work to be done on Wordsworth and Coleridge outside of each other. As I have, once again, briefly mentioned, Wordsworth owned and annotated poems by Charlotte Smith. I have only made a tertiary analysis of this in support of equating Gaze to the feminine and Wordsworth’s complex aversion to it. However, there is undoubtedly more beneath the surface. 

Works Cited

Bennett, Andrew, editor. William Wordsworth in Context. Cambridge UP, 2015. 

Carlson, Julia S. “Measuring Distance, Pointing Address: The Textual Geography of the 'Poem 

to Coleridge' and 'To W. Wordsworth'.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, no. 61, 2012, pp. 1-26.

Ferber, Michael. The Cambridge Introduction to British Romantic Poetry. Cambridge UP, 2012. 

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Vintage, 1990.

Jagger, Jasmine. “Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Healing Powers of the Imagination.” 

Romanticism, vol. 22, no. 1, 2016, pp. 33-47.

Linkin, Harriet Kramer. “The Current Canon in British Romantic Studies.” College English, vol. 

53, no. 5, 1991, pp. 548-570.  

Magnuson, Paul. Coleridge and Wordsworth: A Lyrical Dialogue. Princeton Legacy Library, 

2016. 

McGavran, James Holt. “Defusing the discharged soldier: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 

homosexual panic.” Papers on Language & Literature, vol. 32, no. 2, 1996, pp. 147-65. 

Morgan, Monique R. “Narrative Means to Lyrics Ends in Wordsworth’s Prelude.” Narrative, 

vol. 16, no. 3, 2008, pp. 298-300. ProjectMUSE, doi:10.1353/nar.0.0009. 

Nagle, Christopher C. Sexuality and the Culture of Sensibility in the British Romantic Era. 

Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Newlyn, Lucy. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Language of Allusion. Oxford UP, 1986. 

Rajan, Tillotama. “Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Textual Abject.” The Wordsworth Circle, 

vol. 24, no. 2, 1993, pp. 61-68. 

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. 

Columbia UP, 1985.

Terada, Rei. Looking Away: Phenomenality and Dissatisfaction, Kant to Adorno. Harvard UP, 

2009.

Thomas, Keith G. “Coleridge, Wordsworth and the New Historicism: ‘Chamouny; The Hour 

before Sun-Rise. A Hymn’ and Book 6 of ‘The Prelude’.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 22, no. 1, 1994, pp. 81-117.

Wordsworth, Jonathan. William Wordsworth: The Borders of Vision. Oxford UP, 1983. 

Wordsworth, William. The Major Poetic Works. Oxford UP, 2008. 

--- and Samuel Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads: 1798 and 1800. Broadview, 2008. 

Alcoholism runs rampant in twentieth century literature, and no writer seems to portray alcoholism quite as eagerly as Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises explores the devastating impact of alcoholism and alcohol misuse on people and their relationships post-World War I. Similarly, prior to the publishing of The Sun Also Rises, T. S. Eliot described how World War I left the land and people spiritually malnourished with little hope for recuperation in The Waste Land. According to the guidelines of the American Psychological Association, every primary character in The Sun Also Rises displays symptoms of alcohol use disorder (AUD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Even The Sun Also Rises’ Robert Cohn, who is never drunk, displays symptoms of AUD. Jake Barnes, the novel’s leading figure, describes members of his group in The Sun Also Rises by their drinking typology, “Mike was a bad drunk. Brett was a good drunk. Bill was a good drunk. Cohn was never drunk” (The Sun Also Rises 153). Though Jake does not place himself within his drunk typology, his lack of confession seems even more apt to hide the secret of his alcohol misuse. Other than Robert Cohn, the primary characters are veterans of World War I, and, according to the Society for the Study of Addiction, alcohol consumption is increased amongst post-deployment veterans (Krieger 112). The primary characters in The Sun Also Rises misuse alcohol, and their consumption of alcohol and lack of nourishment show the physical, mental, and relationship destruction of alcohol use disorder while metaphorically creating a post-war wasteland.

Alcoholism was mostly romanticized by writers in the early twentieth century. In a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway wrote, “Of course you’re a rummy. But you’re no more of a rummy than Joyce is and most good writers are” (Goodwin 422). For American writers who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, more than 70 percent suffer from AUD (Goodwin 423). Hemingway, winning the Nobel Prize in literature in 1954 for the Old Man and the Sea, was one of those American writers. Psychiatrist Dr. Donald W. Goodwin suspects the cause of alcoholism in writers is because:

Writing is a form of exhibitionism; alcohol lowers inhibitions and prompts exhibitions in many people. Writing requires an interest in people; alcohol increases sociability and makes people more interesting. Writing involves fantasy; alcohol promotes fantasy. Writing is lonely work; alcohol assuages loneliness. (425)

A writer’s reliance on alcoholism can also be explained by their desire for discomfort. For example, T. S. Eliot claimed he wrote best when he was anemic, writing, “I know, for instance, that some forms of ill-health, debility or anaemia [sic], may produce an efflux in poetry” (Eliot 137). Freud also claimed he could not be “industrious in good health” (Goodwin 429). “The Creative person,” Dr. Goodwin writes, “is a sensitive person” (432). The fragility of the writer, the poet, and the artist can be, at least in part, a reason for the increased use of alcohol amongst the creative person. Hemingway being both creative and sensitive was reliant on alcohol. For example, Hemingway wrote in a letter to a friend, “Also have cut out heavy drinking to make that a present to Mary when she comes and since Liquor is my best friend and severest critic I miss it” (Selected Letters 580). No other novel characterizes the fragility and the encompassing alcoholism in the post-World War I’s lost generation quite like Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism uses the DSM-5 to categorize AUD into mild, moderate, and severe sub-classifications (1). The DSM-5 bases AUD on eleven different symptoms (see fig. 1). Mild AUD is the presence of two to three symptoms, moderate is the presence of four to five symptoms, and severe is the presence of six or more symptoms (see fig. 1). Like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), AUD was not considered a part of treatable psychology at the time The Sun Also Rises was published. Instead, veterans of World War I suffered from shell-shock, and alcoholism was not treated as AUD would be treated later and today.

Considering the The Sun Also Rises takes place over a short period of time during the early twentieth century, diagnosing the fictional cast with modernly interpreted symptoms of AUD can present complications. However, alcohol misuse has not changed. Instead, modern psychoanalysis has progressed in symptomizing alcohol misuse. For example, the second symptom of AUD— attempting to quit but being unable to (see fig. 1)—is the driving force behind Jake’s narrative in The Sun Also Rises. While in Paris, at the beginning of the novel, Jake can turn down a drink, and he is aware when he is drunk. For example, after a couple drinks, Jake thinks to himself, “I was a little drunk. Not drunk in any positive sense but just drunk enough to be careless” (29). Not long afterwards, Jake is offered a glass a wine, and he responds, “No. Thanks awfully. I have to go” (37). Jake uses and misuses alcohol for the entirety of the novel. However, at the beginning of the novel, he is aware of how much alcohol he consumes, and he demonstrates self-control. Later, Jake returns home, and Brett, a fellow veteran and Jake’s love interest, shows up in the middle of the night. Jake makes soda and brandy for them, and Brett finishes her drink and Jake merely sips his drink. After she leaves, Jake narrates, “On the table was an empty glass and a glass half-full of brandy and soda. I took them both out to the kitchen and poured the half-full glass down the sink” (42). Once again, Jake proves he is capable of alcohol-control: he does not finish his drink, and he does not attempt to save his drink. Instead, he pours it down the sink. Brett, however, arrives at Jake’s home intoxicated and still finishes the drink that Jake made for her. Jake’s self-control and alcohol restraint is short lived. Though The Sun Also Rises does not give much background on Jake, Hemingway heavily implies that Jake is constantly in relapse. Near the end of “Book I” of The Sun Also Rises, Jake’s control over alcohol is fading away, and Jake thinks, “I had the feeling as in a nightmare of it all being something repeated, something I had been through and that now I must go through again” (70).

After Jake relapses into AUD, he and his friends are mostly drunk. However, Jake does not spend a lot of time recovering from hangovers and sicknesses due to alcohol. Instead, Jake does not stop drinking. Psychiatrist Dr. Stephen T. Moran believes that Jake is Hemingway’s alter ego, writing, “He is—as Hemingway himself was—the sort of alcoholic who can drink all day and never get drunk. This perpetual clear-sightedness…is what makes [Jake] the most heroic character in this ‘story about a couple of drunks,’ as Hemingway called it” (82). The third symptom of AUD (see fig. 1)—spending a lot of time drinking or recovering from drinking—only half applies to Jake. Jake, as Dr. Moran describes, is perpetually clear-sighted despite his constant use of alcohol. Therefore, he rarely suffers from the symptoms of alcoholism. Hemingway, however, is not a stranger to the health risks of alcohol. For example, his character Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms suffers jaundice due to his alcoholism. Jake, on the other hand, continues to drink without non-emotional repercussions. Despite not spending a lot of time recovering from alcohol, Jake and company spend a lot of time drinking or talking about drinking. The Sun Also Rises takes place over two weeks, and within that time Dr. Matts Djos argues in Writing Under the Influence, “Jake gets drunk at least three times; Brett is known to get drunk twice; Mike is drunk every time we see him; Bill is rarely sober; even Cohn spends a great deal of time within cups” (66).

Much of the novel is not only spent drinking, but it is spent thinking about their next drink—the fourth symptom of AUD (see fig. 1). Jake and Bill are planning to stop for a fishing expedition before continuing to meet the rest of their group. Before even leaving, Bill explains, “We’re going trout-fishing in the Irati River, and we’re going to get tight now at lunch on the wine of the country, and then take a swell bus ride” (108). Bill’s plan starts with drinking, and they do just that. They take a bus to a hotel near the Irati River, and Jake asks the owner how much it was for a night, and she tells them, “twelve pesetas.” Jake responds, “Why, we only paid that in Pamplona…That’s too much” (115). After not backing down on the price, Jake then asks, “Is the wine included?” The owner says yes, and Jake responds, “Well, it’s all right” (116). Jake and Bill are willing to spend the extra money if the hotel can supply their next drinks. Shortly after the exchange, Bill and Jake are complaining of the cold and order a pitcher of hot rum punch to warm themselves. However, once they receive their drinks, they realize there is not enough alcohol. Jake, “went over to the cupboard and brought the rum bottle and poured a half-tumblerful into the pitcher” (116). Their explanation for the drink—to warm themselves—is not true. They primarily want to drink. Jake and Bill make sure they take advantage of the wine that was included in the price, and Jake thinks, “we did not lose money on the wine, and the girl was shy but nice about bringing it. The [owner] looked in once and counted the empty bottles” (116). Jake and Bill are constantly thinking and planning for their next drink, and simply knowing how and when they will receive their next drink gives them solace.

Jake, Bill, and Cohn’s entire trip and settlement in Paris could be seen as giving thought to alcohol. Jake and Cohn are American expatriates living in Paris. Bill, on the other hand, is just visiting. Brett is an expatriate, but her homeland is England. Mike is a Scottish citizen who, like Bill, is visiting. America, during the 1920’s, was going through the prohibition of alcohol, and Jake and Bill are aware of the prohibition. After realizing that Jake has only brought two bottles of wine for their fishing trip, Bill says, “You’re in the pay of the Anti-Saloon League.” Jake jokingly responds, “I went to Notre Dame with Wayne B. Wheeler.” Finally, the both say, “The saloon must go” (127-128). Jeffrey A. Schwarz argues, “…that the type of American nationalism created and spread through prohibition by such groups as the Anti-Saloon League became yet another oppressor in America at this time and influenced these artists’ decisions to leave America, while simultaneously influencing their behavior and attitudes while living as expatriates in Europe” (181). For example, Wayne B. Wheeler, who Jake jokingly says he went to Notre Dame with, is titled by the Smithsonian as the “man who turned off the taps” (Okrent). Prohibition was also an insult to World War I veterans. Jake and Hemingway himself were both veterans of the war. During their fishing trip, Bill says, “First the egg, then the chicken. Even Bryan could see that.” Jake responds, “He’s dead. I read it in the paper yesterday.” Jokingly, Bill says, “I reverse the order for Bryan’s sake. As a tribute to the great commoner. First the chicken; then the egg” (126). Bryan, who Jake and Bill jokingly refer to, is William Jennings Bryan, a staunch creationist and prohibitionist. Bryan claimed that prohibition, at least in part, lead to ending World War I and worldly evil. In a speech Bryan said:

We must turn our energies to other countries until the whole world is brought to understand that alcohol is man’s greatest enemy. Thus it is a fortunate thing that the abdication of the Kaiser and the fall of arbitrary power came in the same year as does the fall of the brewery autocracy and that these two evils came down together…Now we can go out for the evangelization of the world on the subject of intoxicating liquor. (Schwarz 184)

Jake and Bill are the only primary characters who could have this conversation: they have both been affected by the war, they are both Americans, and they both drink in abundance. Drinking, however, could not take place in the United States without committing several crimes. Their solution to continue drinking was to go to Europe. With prohibitionist groups stifling creativity and politicians who fail to understand the extent of prohibition, Americans are forced to go elsewhere. Jake, who is constantly misusing alcohol and suffering from the symptoms of AUD, gave thought to alcohol in his decision to live in Paris.

Jake’s status as a wounded veteran factor into his alcohol use. PTSD (or shell-shock) is a contributing factor in AUD. According to psychologist Dr. Chelsie M. Young, “In addition to AUDs being the most common substance use disorder among veterans, AUD and alcohol misuse largely go untreated, with some estimates indicating over 80% of veterans who reported an AUD do not receive treatment” (213). Drinking also presents rewards for veterans. For one, it presents a social reward. Typically, drinking in groups is a way to be accepted and cope. For Jake and his group that is certainly the case. Alcohol use is especially elevated within veterans who suffer from PTSD. It is impossible to diagnose Jake with PTSD within in the context of such a short period of time. However, Dr. Young writes, “High risk drinking is a problem among military veterans, particularly during the postdeployment period. Such drinking patterns are highly correlated with posttraumatic stress disorder and other negative health and behavioral outcomes such as aggression, poor quality sleep, suicidal ideation, anxiety disorders, and depression” (213). Jake certainly suffers from many of these symptoms. Jake swings on Cohn when questioned as to the whereabouts of Brett. Even after Cohn knocks Jake down, Jake thinks to himself, “I felt I must get on my feet and try and hit him” (194). Jake has trouble sleeping especially when he is not drunk. Near the beginning of the novel Jake goes home and tries to go to sleep, but he cannot. Instead, Jake narrates, “I lay awake thinking and my mind jumping around. Then I couldn’t keep away from it…then all of a sudden I started to cry” (39). Jake never voices his concern of suicidal thoughts. However, he is constantly depressed even when he is drunk. Jake tells Bill, “I feel like hell.” Bill suggest drinking more, and Jake drinks. Shortly after, Jake thinks to himself, “It was beginning to get dark. The fiesta was going on. I began to feel drunk but I did not feel any better” (225). Jake suffers from many of the symptoms that Dr. Young cites for veterans suffering from high risk drinking and AUD. More than mental symptoms, however, Jake suffers from a physical wound that he keeps secret and can be possibly linked to PTSD.

Jake is very secretive of his wound. Jake, through repeated circumstance, reveals that his wound does not allow him to be intimate with women. For example, near the beginning of the novel, Jake picks up a woman. She puts her face up to kiss him, but he pushes her away. She asks him, “What’s the matter? You sick?” Jake responds, “Yes.” She finally says, “Everybody’s sick. I’m sick, too” (23). Later, after they share a bottle of wine, she asks Jake, “You’re not a bad type. It’s a shame you’re sick. We get on well. What’s the matter with you, anyway?” Jake responds, “I got hurt in the war” (24). Jake never shares the nature of his wound, though it is heavily implied. After returning home Jake changes clothes in front of a mirror, and he thinks to himself, “Of all the ways to be wounded. I suppose it was funny…My head started to work. The old grievance. Well, it was a rotten way to be wounded…” (38). Jake is attempting to come to terms with his wound. He finds his wound funny, but then almost immediately finds it rotten. What is revealed to the reader, however, is that his wound is hidden beneath clothes and is only visible to Jake when he looks at himself in a mirror. During Jake and Bill’s fishing trip, while they are talking in jest, Bill says to Jake, “You don’t work. One group claims women support you. Another group claims you’re impotent.” Jake thinks to himself, “I was afraid he thought he had hurt me with that crack about being impotent. I wanted him to start again” (120). Jake thinks about the impotence, but he does not think about women supporting him. Perhaps Jake wanting Bill to continue talking about his impotence is his way of coping considering he could not say it himself when he was with the woman. The secret, in other words, is out.

Narratively, Jake’s wound presents symbolism and conflict in The Sun Also Rises. Jake’s wound allows him to be an allusion to the Arthurian Fisher King who was made popular in the twentieth century by T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and Jake’s desire to be in a relationship with Brett is the leading conflict of the novel. Jake, like the Fisher King, was wounded in the war, and his own wound is a symbol of the impotent wasteland of a post-war world. Jake’s relationship with Brett is also contingent on how Jake copes with his wound after the war. Jake’s relationship with Brett is not troubled simply because his wound, but because of his reliance on alcohol in coping with his wound. As the sixth symptom of AUD states (see fig. 1)—continuing to drink even if it causes trouble with family or friends—they continue to drink even when it causes trouble between them. Jake and Brett’s relationship is suffering prior to the events of The Sun Also Rises, but their conflict is not fully revealed to the reader. Jake and Brett are taking a taxi together and Jake kisses Brett. Brett, however, moved:

“…as far away as she could get.”

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “Please don’t touch me.”

“What’s the matter?” 

[…]

“You mustn’t know. You mustn’t know. I can’t stand it that’s all. Oh, darling, please understand!”

“Don’t you love me?”

“Love you? I simply turn to jelly when you touch me.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do about it?”  

[…]

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t want to go through that hell again.”

“We’d better keep away from each other.” (33-34)

Jake’s impotence (or, sickness) has not discouraged him from pursuing women. However, as the extract implies, Jake and Brett cannot be together. Brett, though she claims that she is in love with Jake, does not want to “go through that hell again.” Brett and Jake’s hell, however, is vague within The Sun Also Rises. Everyone within the novel is living within their own fear of relapse: Jake feels as though he is in recurring nightmare, and Brett is dreading going through hell again. Jake and Brett’s taxi ride displays a vulnerable and fragile side to Jake. Jake’s vulnerabilities, however, are only mentioned when he is fighting sobriety. Step four in Alcoholics Anonymous’ Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions sums up Jake’s relationship with Brett:

But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most. We have been especially stubborn about them. The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insist on dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much. If we lean on people, they will sooner or later fail us…In this way our insecurity grows and festers. When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily. Then we develop hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a desire to retaliate. As we redouble our efforts at control, and continue to fail, our suffering becomes constant. (53)

The passage from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions fits Jake’s description, and the unlikelihood of having a relationship with Brett influences Jake’s alcohol use. Jake does not manipulate Brett. However, he continues to profess his love for her hoping that she reciprocates. Brett only reciprocates in the vaguest ways. Brett seems to desire Jake to cope with his wound and perhaps refrain from over indulging alcohol. One way in which Brett attempts to heal Jake is introduce him to the Count.

Jake describes the Count as a Buddha figure—a portly man who shares everything he has. The first time Jake meets the Count, he offers Jake a glass of wine that Jake turns down (36). Later, the Count offers Jake “a real American cigar” at his apartment (64). The Count has the upmost respect for everyone. He refers to Jake as “sir,” and complements Brett telling her, “you got class all over you” (64). However, Jake does not seem to understand the Count and he refers to the Count as “funny” (38). Jake, however, “rather liked the count” (40). The Count is certainly not a part of the lost generation. However, like Jake and Brett, he is also a war veteran, and Brett tells Jake, “He’s quite one of us” (40). However, that could not be further from the truth. The Count admits to Jake and Brett that he has taken part in seven wars and four revolutions, and he also quickly admits that he has been wounded:

“I have gotten arrow wounds. Have you seen arrow wounds?

“Let’s have a look at them.”

The count stood up, unbuttoned his vest, and opened his shirt. He pulled up his undershirt onto his chest and stood, his chest back, and big stomach muscles bulging under the light.

“You see them?”

Below the line where the ribs stopped were two raised white welts. “See on the back where they come out.” Above the small of the back were the same two scars, raised as thick as a finger.” […]

“I told you he was one of us. Didn’t I?” Brett turned to me. “I love you, count. You’re a darling.” […]

“You can see, Mr. Barnes, it is because I have lived very much that now I can enjoy everything so well. Don’t you find it like that?” (66-67)

The Count is quick to admit that he has been wounded. He does not attempt to cover his wound calling it a sickness. He proudly lifts his shirt and shows the wounds to Jake and Brett. The Count even makes sure that they see the exit wounds. The Count tells Jake he can enjoy his life because he has the wounds and experienced war. Jake, though he agrees with the count, feels the opposite. Jake’s wounds do not allow him to enjoy anything. Instead, Jake’s wound is a reminder that he cannot live his life as the Count lives. The Count is Jake’s foil when he should be Jake’s inspiration. As the Count proves, veterans like Jake, Brett, Bill, and Mike do not have to misuse alcohol and live in despair. However, Jake lives in hopelessness. 

The title of The Sun Also Rises is an allusion to Jake’s hopelessness. Ernest Hemingway begins the novel with two quotes: one from Gertrude Stein and the other from Ecclesiastes. The quote from Ecclesiastes reads, “One generation passeth away and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever…The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose…” (7). Everything in The Sun Also Rises is a relapse from Jake’s relationships to Jake’s drinking. Jake, for example, in less biblical terms thinks, “I had the feeling of going through something that has all happened before” (70). As Dr. Stephen Moran writes, “In Hemingway’s fiction, there is no help for pain, nothing to take on out of the sick-room—there are only experiences that can distract temporarily…” (82). Hemingway’s quote from Gertrude Stein simply reads, “You are all a lost generation” (7). Though not stated in The Sun Also Rises, Stein’s quote is about drunkenness. Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast gives greater insight into Stein’s quote:

“That’s what you are. That’s what you all are,” Miss Stein said. “All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.”

“Really?” I said.

“You are,” she insisted. “You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death….” […]

“Have you ever seen me drunk?”

“No. But your friends are drunk.”

“I’ve been drunk,” I said. “But I don’t come here drunk.” […]

“Don’t argue with me Hemingway,” Miss Stein said. “It does you no good at all. You’re all a lost generation.” (61)

The lost generation, according to Stein, was a group of young veterans who drink themselves to death without respect for anything. In other words, it is the plot to The Sun Also Rises. Moreover, as Stein put it, Hemingway’s characters do not drink because they are sick, they drink because “…they are more perceptive than most people regarding the tragic nature of the modern world” (Moran 85). A modern world T. S. Eliot calls a wasteland in which Jake cannot even enjoy fishing without drinking, or, as the DSM-5 states, giving up activities he once found enjoyable to drink (see fig. 1).

Jake’s role as The Sun Also Rises’ Fisher King cannot go understated. In Arthurian legend the Fisher King keeps the Holy Grail, but he is wounded in the groin during battle. To cope with his wound the Fisher King fishes because he is unable to protect his land. His land and his castle mimic his wound and become dilapidated. Similarly, Jake is wounded in the groin, and the post-war world mimics Jake’s lack of fertility. Repopularized in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, the Fisher King is the waste land’s symbol of hope. At the end of the poem, the rain comes to heal the impotent land and the Fisher King is “…sat upon the shore fishing, with the arid plain behind [him]” (424-425). T. S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land to critique the lack of morality and overconsumption in the post-war Western world. However, he wrote the poem with a sense of hope for the future. Hemingway, on the other hand, is much less hopeful. Jake, as the Fisher King, is quite hopeless. Hemingway romanticizes and ritualizes fishing. Jake, for example, must do part of it alone just as the Arthurian Fisher King. Jake narrates:

Bill was still sleeping, so I dressed, put on my shoes outside in the hall, and went down-stairs. No one was stirring down-stairs, so I unbolted the door and went out. It was cool outside in the early morning…I hunted around the shed behind the inn and found sort of a mattock, and went down the stream to try and dig some worms for bait. (117)

Jake returns to his room to find Bill awake, and Bill says to him, “Been working for the common good? Splendid. I want you to do that every morning” (118). They pack their fishing equipment and two bottles of wine and head to the river. Jake is a talented fisherman. Jake catches one fish, and he thinks after he catches his first fish, “While I had him on, several trout had jumped at the falls. As soon as I baited up and dropped in again I hooked another and brought him the same way. In a little while I had six” (124). After Bill catches four fish they rest for lunch, and Jake gets the two bottles of wine. After drinking wine and joking around with each other Bill says to Jake, “Let me tell you. We will say, and I for one am proud to say—and I want you to say it with me, on your knees, brother. Let no man be ashamed to kneel here in the great out-of-doors. Remember the woods were God’s first temples” (127). Bill, of course, is joking around with Jake. However, as Gertrude Stein pointed out and one of the reasons T. S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land, the lost generation has no respect for anything including religion. The Fisher King is supposed to be a symbol of hope. Bill and Jake easily drink the two bottles of wine and decide to take a nap. As they are falling asleep Bill asks Jake, “Are you really Catholic?” Jake responds, “Technically” (128). Once the drinking started, however, the fishing was over, and T. S. Eliot’s symbol of hope became Hemingway’s symbol of hopelessness.

Jake’s friends all suffer from a similar use of alcohol. One friend, however, sticks out more than the others—Robert Cohn. Cohn is an outsider of outsiders. Jake, Mike, and Brett are all veterans of World War I. Cohn, however, never served in the war. Cohn may not be as bibulous as the rest of the primary cast, but he certainly displays signs of alcohol misuse. Within his group Cohn is left out because everyone else can blame their shortcomings on alcohol. Cohn, however, is perceived as being in control, and his actions are perceived as personality and racial traits. Cohn is in a constant state of depression, and yet he is incredibly violent. A typical trait of alcohol use disorder is a destructive reliance on others, and when “…Cohn does get drunk, he behaves like a lap dog who is trapped in insecurity and loneliness” (Writing Under the Influence). After Cohn finds out that Brett has run away with a bullfighter, he goes to their room, and “he nearly killed the poor, bloody bull-fighter.” After Cohn beat the bull-fighter, he “broke down and cried, and wanted to shake hand with the bull-fighter fellow” (204). Of course, Cohn’s group is also to blame for the way they treat him, themselves, and others. Mike says to Cohn, “Why do you have to follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer? Don’t you know you’re not wanted? I know when I’m not wanted” (146). Later, Mike tells Jake, “Brett’s gone off with men. But they weren’t ever Jews, and they didn’t come and hang about afterward” (148). Jake, however, also follows Brett around, and he seems reliant on her even when it is detrimental for him. Mike, however, does not seem to have an issue with Jake. Mike, of course, blames his problem with Cohn on Cohn’s Judaism, a problem that others share with Mike. However, it is obviously much deeper as Cohn is not a veteran. Therefore, he does not have the same excuse to live within the wasteland or be a part of the lost generation. Cohn also does not drink as much as the rest of them, and he is criticized for it. Mike says to Cohn, “I am drunk. Why aren’t you drunk? Why don’t you ever get drunk. Robert?” (147). If Cohn drank as much as the rest of his group, then he would be criticized for getting too drunk all the time. The truth is, as psychologist Dr. Chelsie M. Young writes, veterans will often drink for social rewards amongst each other, and Cohn is not truly within their social structure. Jake, however, has “…given more than his life for his country,” and “…in Hemingway’s world of heavy-drinking depressives, the most masculine character is the one who can endure a depressed mood the longest” (Moran 82).

At the end of the novel it is revealed that Jake has learned nothing and he is continuing to misuse alcohol. Brett, however, has realized that alcohol is destroying Jake and any chance at a meaningful relationship between them. Jake drunkenly asks Brett twice if she would like a dessert. He then asks her if she wants more wine before realizing that she has barely touched the wine she already has. Jake still orders two bottles of wine, and he fills his glass up and only pours a little in Brett’s glass:

“Bung-o!” Brett said. I drank my glass and poured out another. Brett put her hand on my arm.

“Don’t get drunk, Jake,” she said, “You don’t have to.”

“How do you know?”

“Don’t,” she said. “You’ll be alright.”

“I’m not getting drunk,” I said. “I’m just drinking a little wine. I like to drink wine.”

“Don’t get drunk,” she said. “Jake, don’t get drunk.”

Brett pleads with Jake to stop drinking. However, he does not stop, and he is drunk before she can ask him to stop. Jake has completely lost control of his alcohol use, and he no longer listens to Brett when she has learned self-control. Within the last lines of the novel, it is revealed that the hell that Brett did not want to go through again was Jake’s alcoholism. Brett says to Jake, “we could have had such a damn good time,” and Jake responds, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” (250). Jake, however, did not want to stop drinking.

According to the DSM-5, “anyone meeting any two of the eleven criteria during the same 12-month period would receive a diagnosis of AUD” (Alcohol Use Disorder). The Sun Also Rises takes place over the course of two weeks. AUD is categorized into three subcategories: mild (2 to 3 symptoms), moderate (4 to 5 symptoms), and severe (6 or more symptoms). Because Jake is the protagonist and the narrator of The Sun Also Rises, the reader has the clearest view into his psyche. Jake drinks longer than he intends, he cannot stop drinking, he spends a lot of time drinking, his drinking causes trouble with friends, he gives up on activities to drink, he gets hurt while drinking, he keeps drinking even when he is depressed, and he must drink more and more to get his desired effect. According to the DSM-5 and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Jake suffers from severe alcohol use disorder. For Hemingway, as psychiatrist Dr. Moran points out, “while self-medicating a disorder mood with alcohol was acceptable, ultimately succumbing to depression is shameful” (84). Dr. Moran ultimately argues, “In Hemingway’s case, the use of these illnesses as a symbol of a generation’s outlook allowed him to avoid seeking treatment for the disease that would ultimately kill him” (85). Jake will not get help for his AUD, and he probably will not recognize he has a mental illness. Instead, as the title and Jake’s psyche imply, he will simply continue to live within the cyclical life of relapse and depression. In Hemingway’s view, and pointed out by Gertrude Stein, they are all a lost generation living in the wasteland caused by World War I.  

Alcoholism runs rampant in twentieth century literature, and no writer seems to portray alcoholism quite as earnestly as Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises, more than any other of Hemingway’s novels, describes the destructive nature of alcoholism for civilians and, more appropriately, for veterans. Jake, The Sun Also Rises’ protagonist, suffers from both mental and physical wounds from World War I, and he self-medicates under the veil of normalcy. However, not all veterans suffer from alcoholism and depression. The Count, for example, displays his wounds to Jake and Brett with pride. Still, veterans are far more likely to suffer from AUD. Hemingway used the fictional world of The Sun Also Rises to portray society’s lack of spiritual nourishment. Alcohol has no nourishment, however, many of the characters within the novel continue to drink without any thought of the damage they are doing. Similarly, T. S. Eliot pointed out the lack of spiritual nourishment in The Waste Land with the Fisher King being a symbol of hope. Jake, Hemingway’s Fisher King, cannot remove himself from the bottle long enough to be that spiritual hope. Instead, he is stuck within his own recurring nightmare. Jake does not place himself within the drunk typology, and he is not willing to consider it during the two weeks the novel takes place in. Even Cohn, who is not a veteran and does not drink as much as his friends, displays signs of alcohol misuse. Jake suffers from many of the symptoms of the DSM-5, and his consumption of alcohol and lack of spiritual nourishment show the destruction of the lost generation in Hemingway’s own take of the post-war wasteland.

Annotated Bibliography

Diagnostic And Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders : DSM-5. American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) is the continuing update to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders which is a diagnostic tool published and used by the American Psychiatric Association. The American Psychiatric Association updates the DSM regularly with the fourth edition coming out in 2000 and the DSM-5 released in 2013. Subsequent releases are usually incremental updates (e.g. DSM-5.1). Large changes, however, will be released as new editions (e.g. DSM-6). Although the American Psychiatric Association was formed in 1921, the first edition of the DSM was not published until 1952 primarily in support of World War II veterans.

Djos, Matts. “Alcoholism in Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises’: A wine and roses perspective on the lost generation.” The Hemingway Review, vol. 14, no. 2, 1995. Web.

Matts Djos argues that The Sun Also Rises is an extraordinary example of alcoholism. The Sun Also Rises portrays Jake and his friends drinking and talking about drinking. Even after their hectic trip to Pamplona they straggle back to Paris and they continue to drink. Matts Djos considers the rate at which the characters drink, and he identifies them by their drinking type. Jake, Brett, and Mike, for example, Djos calls heavy drinkers. Djos takes into account Ernest Hemingway’s own alcoholism when making parallels with The Sun Also Rises, and he concludes that Hemingway’s bases some of his alcoholic philosophy in Jake Barnes.

Djos, Matts. Writing Under the Influence: Alcoholism and the Alcoholic Perception from Hemingway to Berryman, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

In Writing Under the Influence Matts Djos critically analyzes writers’ perception of alcoholism through their poetry and novels. Matts Djos, for example, uses The Sun Also Rises to analyze Hemingway’s perception of alcohol. More than poetry and novels, Djos includes examples from personal letters and correspondences. Djos does not simply focus on literature about alcohol, he also focuses on some of the symptoms and indicators of alcohol addiction within the novels and poetry: fear, manipulation, anger, and loneliness. Djos focuses primarily on American writers: Hemingway, John Berryman, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner. Djos uses systematic psychology as criticism removing romantic notions of alcohol and alcoholism.

Eliot, T. S. The Use of Poetry and Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England, Harvard University Press, 1986.

The Use of Poetry and Use of Criticism is a collection of lectures by T. S. Eliot between 1932 and 1933. Most importantly, Eliot’s lectures cover literary self-consciousness. In other words, Eliot discusses how the writer writes and place themselves within their work. In Hemingway’s case, as Matts Djos argued, Hemingway may place himself within The Sun Also Rises. Another important facet of Eliot’s lectures is the discomfort of writing, and Eliot revels that his anemia may help him write. In other cases, however, perhaps alcohol can be the discomfort that helps writers write. Eliot concludes that poets—and perhaps himself—agree that writers are the “legislators of mankind.” Eliot’s The Waste Land is an example of this legislation. The Sun Also Rises can be seen as the novelization of The Waste Land. Perhaps The Sun Also Rises can be seen as another form of the same legislation.

Goodwin, Donald W. “Alcohol as Muse.” American Journal of Psychotherapy, vol. 56, no. 3, 1992, pp. 422-433.

Donald W. Goodwin, M.D. was a psychiatrist who spent his entire career researching alcoholism and addiction. In “Alcohol as a Muse” Dr. Goodwin argues that American writers, especially during the twentieth century, tended towards alcoholism. Dr. Goodwin, for example, cites that more than 70 percent of American writers who have won the Nobel Prize in Literature suffer from alcoholism. Dr. Goodwin tries his best to find a clinical correlation between alcoholism and writers, and he concludes that the pharmacological effects of alcohol make writers more confident and social. However, Dr. Goodwin, at least in part, addresses the metaphysical aspects of alcoholism. Alcohol, according to Dr. Goodwin, was a centering agent for writers who suffered from “sensory overload.”

Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. Scribner, 2010.

A Moveable Feast, published posthumously, is Hemingway’s memoir during his time in Paris during the 1920s. During this time Hemingway describes being a young struggling expatriate looking for work as a writer. The novel features a number of notable writers and artists including F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. Stein, though not a large part of A Moveable Feast, is the focus in this research primarily for her coining the generational title “the lost generation.” Stein describes the lost generation as veterans who drink themselves to death without respect for anything. At first, Hemingway does not believe that he is part of the lost generation. However, he, at least in part, accepted it as he includes Stein’s quote in the introduction to The Sun Also Rises.

Hemingway, Ernest. Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961. Edited by Carlos Baker, Scribner, 2003.

Carlos Baker, the editor for Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961, selected letters spanning the entirety of Ernest Hemingway’s adult life. Carlos Baker attempted to choose letter that pointed to major changes in Hemingway’s life. For example, there are a number of letters where Hemingway points out that he is attempting to stop heavy drinking later in his life. In essence, these letters read like an autobiography. Hemingway speaks about eating, drinking, and politics. Hemingway even speaks candidly about friends and enemies and other popular twentieth century authors. Most surprisingly, Hemingway is a surprisingly humorous person while his literature is nearly devoid of humor. Ultimately, Hemingway’s correspondence shows his own love for alcohol and perhaps where some of his alcoholic philosophy in The Sun Also Rises came from.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. Scribner, 2006.

The primary text for this research, The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926. The novel is a roman à clef as the characters in the novel are based on real people. The novel shows the struggle of the lost generation living in the post-war wasteland. The novel, amongst many moments, focuses on the cyclical nature of the post-war world. For example, the title is based on the Biblical thought: the sun goes down and then rises again—nothing is new nor does it ever change. Jake Barnes, the novel’s protagonist, agrees in thinking that he is in a recurring nightmare. The novels cast of primary characters struggle with overdrinking and spiritual malnourishment. At the end of the novel, Jake’s love interest pleads with him to stop drinking. However, he does not.

Krieger, Heather, Eric R. Pedersen, and Clayton Neighbors. “The Impact of Normative

Perceptions on Alcohol Consumption in Military Veterans.” Addiction, vol. 112, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1765-1772.

Dr. Heather Krieger, Eric R. Pedersen, and Clayton Neighbors collected data on drinking in both civilians and veterans to find what both groups consider descriptive and injunctive norms. Their study found that descriptive norms (prevalence of drinking) and injunctive norms (other’s approval of drinking) mediate each other in military personnel. In other words, veterans would drink as much as was consider normal by others. Dr. Heather Krieger, Eric R. Pedersen, and Clayton Neighbors interviewed 621 veterans between the ages of 18-34, and about 80% of them were men. Their sample age and sex distribution is equivalent to The Sun Also Rises’ Jake, Bill, Mike, Cohn, and Brett, and their findings are also equitable to how the primary cast consumes alcohol within their given normalcy.

Moran, Stephen T.  “Autopathography and Depression: Describing the ‘Despair Beyond Despair.’” Journal of Medical Humanities, vol. 2, no. 2, pp 79-91.

Dr. Stephen T. Moran is a practicing psychiatrist whose research in “Autopathography and Depression: Describing the ‘Despair Beyond Despair’” deals with suffering classified as Major Depression. Dr. Moran analyzes Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literature in order to find cases of unusually articulated depression. Dr. Moran calls Jake Barnes of The Sun Also Rises Hemingway’s alter-ego, and he concludes that the alcoholic depression Jake suffers from Hemingway also suffers from. Hemingway describes characters with no help for their pain. Instead, Hemingway’s characters only have experiences that temporarily distract from pain. Dr. Moran ponders whether Hemingway’s father’s occupation may have played a role in Hemingway’s view of depression. Ultimately, however, Dr. Moran finds that many Hemingway’s characters are in denial of their own depression just as Hemingway himself was.

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. “Alcohol Use Disorder: A Comparison Between DSM–IV and DSM–5.” NIH Publication, no. 12-78999, 2016, Web.

The National Institute on Alcohol and Abuse created the pamphlet “Alcohol Use Disorder: A Comparison Between DSM-IV and DSM-5” in order to show the primary changes between the different editions of the DSM. For example, the DSM-IV contained two distinct disorders for alcohol use (alcohol abuse and alcohol dependency), and the DSM-V integrated the two disorders into a single disorder called alcohol use disorder. In the DSM-IV only one symptom was needed in order to be classified into the alcohol abuse disorder. Alcohol use disorder, on the other hand, contains three sub-classifications: mild, moderate, and severe. The DSM-5 also removed legal problems as a criteria replacing it with a desire to drink.

Okrent, Daniel. “Wayne B. Wheeler: The Man Who Turned Off the Taps.” Smithsonian Magazine, 2010.

Daniel Okrent wrote “Wayne B. Wheeler: The Man Who Turned Off the Taps” for the Smithsonian Magazine. Wayne B. Wheeler was a staunch prohibitionist, and Jake and Bill joke about him in The Sun Also Rises. Wheeler founded the Anti-Saloon League, the same league in which Bill claims that Jake is a part of. Jake jokes that he went to Notre Dame with Wheeler. Wheeler gained national renown by appealing to Congress and the suffrage movement despite trying to operate in secrecy. Though Wheeler had successfully helped pass the 18th Amendment, he could not keep alcohol out of the general population. In other words, Wheeler’s prohibition backfired, and it, at least in part, helped create organized crime. Wheeler was popular enough for Hemingway to include in The Sun Also Rises, and prohibition was not repealed until 1933—seven years after The Sun Also Rises was published.

Schwarz, Jeffrey A. “’The saloon must go, and I will take it with me’: American Prohibition,

Nationalism, and Expatriation in The Sun Also Rises.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 33, no. 2, 2001, pp. 180-201.

Many scholars focus on the significance of alcohol and drinking alcohol in The Sun Also Rises, and how the excess of drinking is a result of the desolation of the post-war era. Jeffrey A. Schwarz, however, argues that prohibition, politics, and the social climate in United States affected Jake and Bill just as much as the war. Jake and Bill, for example, have multiple conversations about prohibition, prohibitionists, and prohibition movements. Other than prohibition, Jake and Bill also comment on American politics. For example, Bill jokingly brings up William Jennings Bryan. Though Bryan was a staunch prohibitionist, he was also on the prosecution of John Thomas Scopes in the Scopes Monkey Trial. Bill jokes with Jake about Bryan’s creationist views. There were more reasons than just alcohol for expatriates to leave the United States.

Wilson, Bill and Bob Smith. “Step 4.” Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, AA World Services, 2002, pp. 42-54.

Alcoholics Anonymous was started by Bill Wilson and Bob Smith in 1935. Bill Wilson started writing Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions in 1952 and finished a year later. The chapter chosen, “Step 4,” is about finding one’s fearless moral inventory. Though Alcoholics Anonymous is seen as a religious organization, it is perhaps the most popular group for those wanting to rid themselves of alcoholism (and now drugs as well). “Step 4” also focuses on interpersonal relationships and how addictions and our desire for control drive away those closes to us. Those who are “power-mad” will devote themselves to rule over others. However, they sacrifice a happy family life. Within this research this is most heavily applied to Jake and Brett’s relationship and unhealthy reliance on each other.  

Young, Chelsie M., Eric R. Pederson, Andrew Pearson, and Clayton Neighbors. “Drinking toCope Moderates the Efficacy of Changing Veteran Drinking Norms as a Strategy for Reducing Drinking and Alcohol-Related Problems Among U.S. Veterans.” Psychology of Addictive Behavior, vol. 32, no. 2, 2018, pp. 213-223.

Dr. Chelsie M. Young, Eric R. Pedersen, Andrew D. Pearson, and Clayton Neighbors wrote “Drinking to Cope Moderates the Efficacy of Changing Veteran Drinking Norms as a Strategy for Reducing Drinking and Alcohol-Related Problems Among U.S. Veterans” in order to research heavy and problematic drinking in military veterans. Heavy drinking, according to the researchers, is highly correlated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and negative behaviors: aggression, poor sleep, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and depression. The researchers found that young veterans will drink and misuse alcohol to cope with underlying behavior health concerns and PTSD. Interestingly, when veterans see other veterans drinking the overwhelming majority believe that they are drinking for the same reasons. Therefore, veterans are typically unaware of actual drinking norms. Similarly, in this research, most of the primary cast of The Sun Also Rises are World War I veterans, and they drink excessively. It seems as though they are unaware of typical drinking norms just as in the researchers’ study.