In my first semester at UM, I took an Intro to Lit course in which I wrote this literary analysis. It's still one of the essays I'm most proud of, even as my third semester draws to a close, and I wanted to share it with a wider audience.
"Beasts" is a gothic novella. Multiple difficult topics arise in this work and I mention some of them in this analysis. More information can be found in a plot synopsis of "Beasts." I believe this counts as a sufficient spoiler alert for the events of this novella, as well. Read on for the essay:
Andre Harrow, with his wife, created a system. Together, they lure the young women of Catamount College into sexual affairs, where they commit sexual acts and create home pornography to sell to adult magazines. The consent of the young women who participate seems questionable at best, at worst, nonexistent. Gillian, the protagonist, a young woman of 20, suffering from a schoolgirl crush, enters this system. Gillian ends the cycle of abuse by setting a fire on the first floor of Andre and Dorcas’s house at 99 Brierly Lane, which kills Andre and Dorcas. While Andre has been seducing the other women of Catamount College with the exciting, hypersexual works of D.H. Lawrence, along with the tantalizing offers of validating desire and sexual freedom, Gillian seeks something else. Instead, she wants for Andre Harrow to love her, to fill the emptiness left by her distant father. Andre introduces D.H. Lawrence to his students with a recitation the poem, “Peach” (28). Gillian has read the poem more than once before, but only now notices the sexual undercurrent, as she hears it read aloud by her professor.
This leads Gillian to feel as though she ‘loves’ Andre Harrow. During that same lecture, Andre speaks of D.H. Lawrence’s denouncement of ‘boundless love (30).’
Lawrence teaches us that love–sensual, sexual, physical love–is the reason we exist. He detested “dutiful” love–for parents, family, country, God. He was in fact a deeply religious man but he celebrated, not a dead God, but a living Eros. He tells us that “Love should be intense, individual,/ Not boundless./ This boundless love is like a bad smell.” (30-31)
The “sensual, sexual, physical love (30)” Andre Harrow and D.H. Lawrence refer to is lust, not love. Gillian takes only part of Andre’s message to heart. She hears “my favorite author says love is why we exist.” This starts a pattern, in which Gillian only hears what she wants to from Andre. This trend continues throughout, and leads to further unreliability in her narration. Gillian puts the man on pedestal. She even admits to herself more than once, “In love at a distance, so much has to be invented (59).”
Andre Harrow idealizes D.H. Lawrence’s rejection of the modern concept of civil humanity. Worshipping long-gone pagan gods such as Eros, to Harrow, is another way to give oneself permission to regress, farther back in time, to the days where man and beast were basically one and the same. By regressing so, and embracing the primordial beastlike nature of man, Andre can excuse his monstrous actions at Catamount College. This lens shifts the actions of he and Dorcas to something like perfection, an imitation of the ideal.
During the events of Chapter 10 that lead to the kiss, Andre again tries to tell her what he wants from her. He offers D.H. Lawrence’s opinion of the power of Eros:
The wisdom of Lawrence, as of the ancients, is simply this: you can’t deny Eros. You can’t resist Eros. Eros will strike, like lightning. Our human defenses are frail, ludicrous. Like plasterboard houses in a hurricane. Your triumph is in perfect submission. (61)
Gillian shows no evidence of seeing what Andre seems to be hinting at here, thinking of the boldness of her friend Dominique: “What would Dominique do? What were the things Dominique did, with Andre Harrow? (61)” She notices her relationship with Andre Harrow has ventured just beyond the realm of professor and student: “I understood that I’d crossed a line. I’d blundered over a line (61).” Another young woman, enamored with the exciting idea of the power of Eros just might be wishing for him to strike now. Gillian has different thoughts.
Andre’s kiss surprises Gillian: “There was a man looming over me, excited, impatient, forcing my mouth open, trying to insert his tongue into my mouth, but I panicked, and resisted. I was too confused to respond (62).” This is the line between an inappropriately close style of teaching and the abuse of his professorial authority and Gillian’s respect. Andre Harrow goes right over it. Oates expertly crafted the passage to both be a noticeable shift, but not nearly so alarming as it should be, given the offense. After, Gillian’s thoughts continue to contradict the ideology Andre Harrow has been attempting to foster in her. “It was an animal reaction, unthinking (62).” Andre wants to be with women whose “unthinking, animal reaction” would be to kiss him in response, to pursue their deepest desires above anything else. Oates gives more evidence here that Gillian is not here for the tea Andre has been serving at Catamount College. However, animals don’t think. Oates said this. If Andre desires to be a “beast,” and idolizes reaction emotion over intellect and planning, then why does he, very intentionally, continue to toy with Gillian. A beast, not getting what he wants, will go away, to some new venture more likely to bring success. Andre Harrow, on the other hand, grows cold once more, in the typical fashion of an abuser. He retaliates through emotional withdrawal, as well as a withholding of praise and affection, just as he was doing before, to get Gillian to come out of her shell, and go to him. He immediately reinforces the emotional distance he had been using against her, and Gillian senses this right away:
<blockquote>He would be protective now. He would be brisk, brusque now. He would provide the narration, the interpretation, for what had happened, as, in his lectures and workshops, he controlled such information.
“We had an unfortunate misunderstanding, Gillian. Nothing more.”
As if he’d struck me a blow instead of kissed me. (62)</blockquote>
Andre’s previous withholding, demanding nature in his workshop kept Gillian intent on gaining his approval and affection, even more than it had before. This increased state of emotional deprivation had similar results over the coming weeks.
After some time with the official “cold shoulder” treatment, Gillian makes a decision:
I was terrified, but elated. I recalled Mr. Harrow’s hard, punishing kiss and the grip of his fingers on my shoulders. I wanted only for him to forgive me: to touch me. In tenderness or in hurt, simply to touch me. (84)
On the night Gillian goes to his office, Andre Harrow refuses to talk to Gillian about her work, calling it “schoolgirl poetry.” (85) Andre has shown a preference for strong women, those who know their desires, can demand they be met, and take them for themselves if they are not. Dorcas is often very harsh in her jokes to Andre, but still, he is never apparently discontent with the dynamic of their relationship. Still, he takes great pleasure in breaking the girls of Catamount College, using them up like so much crinkled paper, together with Dorcas.
Meanwhile, Gillian has decided that she needs Andre’s validation so much, that she will take whatever he offers, rather than the love she wants. Andre is pleased by this, and begins their affair on a braided rug on his office floor.
Not much farther into the book, Oates offers us a reminder of how Gillian perceives the nature of beasts in relation to Andre and Dorcas’s views. “It wasn’t the wine–or the médecine–that made me euphoric. It was the knowledge that never again would Gillian have to crouch outside in the dripping woods like a beast (92).” Gillian thinks of how this affair makes her feel validated, accepted. The comparison to her former lonely state of that of a beast stands out against the grotesque scene of her first night with Andre and Dorcas Gillian doesn’t realize that by entering into this affair with Andre, that she’s quickly losing hold of her humanity. Gillian’s sense of self-preservation, in combination with her desire for real love, will keep her from losing herself completely.
Animals, “beasts”, are not exactly known to plan or manipulate. This is a discrepancy between how Andre claims to believe, and how he acts. Time and time again, Andre and Dorcas play with the people around them, pushing them around the campus like little chess pieces. And when the chess pieces break, new ones are called to the board.
Gillian’s misguided feelings of love stand out in a world where almost every character thinks only of themselves. The reader knows, we hope, that Andre and Dorcas only see her as an object, lured, then won over, now to be used as they wish. What happens when the object no longer serves them the way they would like? The object will be discarded. Abusers have a superpower. They can make their victim forget how despicable, how abhorrent the abuser can be, making their victim feel cherished, worshipped, important. Like the victim completes their abuser. Andre and Dorcas shower Gillian in pet names, smiles, laughter, and complements, not to mention copious sexual attentions.
Small details, whether imagined by Gillian in her retelling, or real, show that Andre may care about Gillian a bit. A small bit:
When it was time to say good-bye Andre framed my face in his hands and kissed my forehead lightly. Still, he was avoiding my eyes. I wished he’d look at me so that I could forgive him. Dorcas was more passionate, wrapping me in her strong arms, kissing my mouth. (110)
Dorcas, though more intense in her affections before leaving for Paris, does not care even this small bit:
On the stairs, my knees buckled, so they carried me. My feet were bare. I was limp, unresisting as a rag doll. It was then that I was sick, suddenly choking and vomiting, which disgusted Dorcas. “Ugh! Obscene!” The hot, smelly liquid spilling from my mouth had splattered onto the bosom of her quilted tunic and onto her shapely small feet in gold-gilt slippers. Dorcas would have let me drop to the floor but Andre held me by the armpits, laughing. (128-129)
Typically, if a person pours wine and drugs into an emaciated lover, they should expect such results. If Dorcas did care about her “chérie,” we might expect her to be concerned for Gillian’s health, possibly even remorseful that she pushed her too far. Not so. Instead, she exclaims how disgusting she find Gillian’s predictable action, and nearly drops Gillian onto the stairs.This starts Gillian’s mind churning. Later that night, rather than tending to their lover, who might be overdosing, close to death, the couple falls into bed in a drunk and drugged out stupor, and have sex: “Their giant jaws had been grinding food and now their bodies would grind each other (129).” Gillian feels upset, “I tried to press my hands against my ears, but I was too weak (129).” She begins to lose faith in their pretend affections to her. “They want me to hear, I’m their witness (129).” Later, in the wee hours of the morning, Dorcas and Andre have fallen asleep. Gillian has found the strength to leave. She sets the fire, not on purpose, by her account, “It was not that I was thinking, These too, are flammable (131).” Ultimately, Gillian’s need to be loved, paired with Andre’s lust to conquer his entire student body, led to his downfall, and to the end of the vicious cycle of abuse.