An uncanny valley in the Rue Morgue?

Readers unfamiliar with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story

Illustrators of Poe's 1841 story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" usually take as their subject the Ourang-Outang's rampage through the locked rooms shared by Madame L’Espanaye and her adult daughter. Readers of the story know the appalling carnage that results.

Beardsley gives the scene a stately, processional balance:

Harry Clarke's black and white illustration gives the Ourang-Outang a physicality, a density of muscular suggestion, far from Beardsley's hieratic schema:

Berni Wrightson, on entirely another level above Beardsley and Clark, gives us something akin to Jack Asher's saturated Eastmancolor pallet:

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For me the truly uncanny moment comes before the Ourang-Outang's escape from his owner, the French merchant seaman later lured by Dupin into telling his side of the murders:

     What he stated was, in substance, this. He had lately made a voyage to the Indian Archipelago. A party, of which he formed one, landed at Borneo, and passed into the interior on an excursion of pleasure. Himself and a companion had captured the Ourang-Outang. This companion dying, the animal fell into his own exclusive possession. After great trouble, occasioned by the intractable ferocity of his captive during the home voyage, he at length succeeded in lodging it safely at his own residence in Paris, where, not to attract toward himself the unpleasant curiosity of his neighbors, he kept it carefully secluded, until such time as it should recover from a wound in the foot, received from a splinter on board ship. His ultimate design was to sell it.

     Returning home from some sailors’ frolic the night, or rather in the morning of the murder, he found the beast occupying his own bed-room, into which it had broken from a closet adjoining, where it had been, as was thought, securely confined. Razor in hand, and fully lathered, it was sitting before a looking-glass, attempting the operation of shaving, in which it had no doubt previously watched its master through the key-hole of the closet. Terrified at the sight of so dangerous a weapon in the possession of an animal so ferocious, and so well able to use it, the man, for some moments, was at a loss what to do. He had been accustomed, however, to quiet the creature, even in its fiercest moods, by the use of a whip, and to this he now resorted. Upon sight of it, the Ourang-Outang sprang at once through the door of the chamber, down the stairs, and thence, through a window, unfortunately open, into the street.

It's owner has observed the Ourang-Outang in an unguarded moment of performance, aping an everyday human activity it previously observed: "Razor in hand, and fully lathered, it was sitting before a looking-glass, attempting the operation of shaving, in which it had no doubt previously watched its master through the key-hole of the closet."

The sailor tells Dupin and the narrator he tried to catch and restrain the Ourang-Outang at that moment because its handling of the razor was a danger.

Or was the danger, and the alarm felt by the sailor, in witnessing uncanny play of the beast at the vanity mirror, cheeks already lathered? Later that night at Madame L’Espanaye's residence, the Ourang-Outang will play dual human parrts: criminal marauder and visiting lover/suitor. 

Clearly, the beast has studied, internalized, and is ready to play the male adult human role. It's activity is certainly comprehensible: in Dupin's insight the murders are akin to an anarchic and irrational crime passionnel.

It's too bad we have no illustrations of the Ourang-Outang preparing for his shave, an inadvertent prelude to his night on the town.

Jay

8 October 2022