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28 THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
his 1873 article by commenting that ‘[t]here is no more important
duty for our reformers than to take care that vice and ignorance do
not produce those were-wolves of modern civilization who gnash their
teeth and glare at us from behind prison-bars or the grated windows
of lunatic asylums.’ 53
The language of reason and morality, however, often contrasted glaringly
with the same writers’ apparent relish for sensational material.
Charles Dickens gave characteristically perceptive expression to these
contradictions in a letter to his partner regarding the editorial policy
of Household Words, writing that the material they printed should
be ‘“extraordinary”, “romantic”, or “remarkable”, a guide to public
opinion and “as amusing as possible, but all distinctly and boldly going
to what in one’s own view ought to be the spirit of the people and
the time”.’ 54 Just as Dickens seemed to propose, sage cautions about
corporeal indulgence or emotional excess were frequently intermingled
with lavish descriptions of melodramatic deeds or murderous atrocities.
Young’s moralizing conclusion to his article, for example, concludes
several columns of explicitly described abominations, couched in the
most colourful and emotive language. 55
Other moralists were more doggedly opposed to the circulation of
sensation literature, but even they found themselves resorting to the
very tropes they sought to discredit. As Ann Cvetkovich notes, use
of the metaphor of ‘appetite’ for the attraction to sensation was not
uncommon amongst its critics, a representation which suggested that
‘the sensation novel is deplorable because it reduces its readers to the
condition of animals who are driven by instincts.’ 56 Echoes of the type
of monstrosity embodied by the werewolf consequently found their way
into characterizations of the readers of sensation literature, as in H.L.
Mansel’s ‘Sensation Novels’ (1863), published in Quarterly Review,
which argued that ‘[t]here is something unspeakably disgusting in this
ravenous appetite for carrion, this vulture-like instinct which smells
out the newest mass of social corruption, and hurries to devour the
loathsome dainty before the scent has evaporated.’ 57 Imagery of the
werewolf was even more pronounced in J. Greenwood’s characterization
of the writer or publisher of sensation literature.