The Curse of the Wer.. - Site de Thomas - Free

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large.’ 1 Certainly, in the nineteenth century, the creative practices that
generated monsters were closely related to the imaginative processes
that located corruption in certain parts of the community, and the
description of marginalized groups often employed the language of
monstrosity.
For example, lycanthropy was often presented as a threat emanating
from the underclasses. The depiction of these classes in terms of
an animal physiognomy was not uncommon in nineteenth-century
discourse; Henry Mayhew, for instance, asserted that street people
were notable for a ‘greater development of the animal than of the
intellectual or moral nature of man … for their high cheeks and protruding
jaws’. 2 Representations of the werewolf drew from a similar
descriptive vocabulary. In his 1865 monograph on the werewolf, Sabine
Baring-Gould characterized Gilles Garnier, a peasant accused of lycanthropy
in the sixteenth century, as ‘a sombre, ill-looking fellow, who
walked in a stooping attitude, and whose pale face, livid complexion,
and deep-set eyes under a pair of coarse and bushy brows, which
met across the forehead, were sufficient to repel anyone from seeking
his acquaintance.’ 3 The journalist and essayist Andrew Wynter
paraphrased Baring-Gould’s account in an 1875 article on lycanthropy,
adding ‘the story affords a good example of the class of people who
were seized with this horrible epidemic’, to ensure that no one missed
the point. 4 Representations of lycanthropy were not, however, confined
to visualizations of lower-class werewolves in the nineteenth century.
Depictions of aristocratic lycanthropy drew upon middle-class narratives
about the decay of the nobility in contrast to bourgeois vitality,
as a passage from a novella by M.M. Erckmann-Chatrian illustrates.
Narrated by a middle-class interloper, the tale relates the tragic curse
of a noble family.
[T]he sight that met my eyes made the blood run chill as snow in my veins.
The lord of Nideck, crouching on all fours upon his bed, with his arms
bending forward, his head carried low, his eyes glaring with fierce fires,
was uttering loud, protracted howlings!
He was the wolf!
That low receding forehead, that sharp-pointed face, that foxy-looking
beard, bristling off both cheeks; the long meagre figure, the sinewy
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