68 pages • 2 hours read
Bernard PomeranceThe Elephant Man
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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Dehumanization Through “Freakishness” and “Normalcy”
Viewing human oddities and abnormalities of nature as entertainment has been present throughout the history of human society. But in the Victorian era (mid to late 19th century), this interest in prominent differences coincided with a widespread fascination with science. “Freak shows” became wildly popular in England and throughout Europe as well as in the United States. The idea of “freakishness” was rooted in ableism, exotification, and imperialism. These spectacles of difference, bolstered by scientific claims, solidified general conceptions of the limits of normalcy as white, able-bodied, and conforming to European-centric cultural and physical standards. Alongside objects, animals, and scientific specimens, these shows displayed people who were considered racially or ethnologically different, as well as people with rare and visible disabilities. Many of these exhibits, human and otherwise, were faked, or sometimes real but with wildly fabricated stories of exotic origins. For instance, the real-life Joseph Merrick was billed as half man/half elephant, just as many other human exhibits were advertised as human/animal hybrids.
As the play demonstrates, the nature of these shows was to dehumanize difference. When Ross is attracting an audience for Merrick, he promises not only the visual of “physical deformities” but a show of animalistic anguish and rage. When Treves sees the advertisement for the Elephant Man, his piqued curiosity leads him to rent Merrick from Ross as if Merrick is an animal. Treves excuses his disinterest in Merrick’s humanity in the name of objective scientific inquiry.
Merrick’s entire life has centered on the way others either commodify his condition or attempt to destroy him for it. Those who attack Merrick or run away in revulsion are not simply put off by a man with what they deem an extraordinarily “ugly” appearance. They are angered by what they define as a monster trying to walk around like a man. When Treves takes Merrick on as a project, he is determined to teach Merrick how to be “normal.” Even though Merrick quickly demonstrates his intelligence and ability for critical thought, Treves instructs him with paternal condescension. But even Treves reveals that he sees Merrick as inhuman when he catches Mrs. Kendal allowing Merrick to see her naked.
The play has the potential to become a “freak show” in its own right, or at least the performance of one. In a note before the text, Pomerance stipulates to those who produce the play that the actor playing Merrick should not try to simulate Joseph Merrick’s appearance through special effects makeup or mimic the speech issues caused by his condition. Even affected movement is unnecessary depending on the ability of the actor. With this instruction, the playwright is trying to avoid contributing to the commodification and exploitation that Merrick endured throughout his life and even after death. But Merrick’s body is not entirely erased or made invisible in the play, as Treves shows images in his slide show, juxtaposed with the actor’s living body taking the same stances. The play highlights Merrick’s humanity while denying the audience the opportunity to gawk at and be distracted by his physical appearance.
Science Versus Religion
Science and religion are presented in the play as opposing forces. The Anglican Church in Victorian England was extremely powerful. Advancements in scientific research, such as the development of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution published in On the Origin of Species (1859), led to serious questions about the role of religion in society and the idea of religious faith. When Treves invites Bishop How to meet Merrick, the bishop expresses that he was reluctant to step into the hospital, a house of science, but his concerns were eased because Treves is a Christian. Yet Treves voices his skepticism of religion throughout the play. And even though he orchestrates the relationship between Merrick and the bishop, Treves seems to resent Merrick’s explorations into faith. Treves’s participation in the church is a matter of social propriety. Respectable people went to church. Treves believes that involving Bishop How in Merrick’s life is purely a matter of extending normalcy and respectability to Merrick.
When Bishop How first meets Merrick, he goes toe to toe with Gomm, representing the contention between science and religion. While the bishop is entirely religious, Gomm is entirely secular and scientific. The bishop claims that only God knows what will happen to Merrick, and Gomm retorts that God certainly should because he is the one who “afflicted” Merrick in the first place. Treves, on the other hand, is more conflicted. He rejects religion in favor of science but is unable to shed ingrained ideas of religious decency and morality.
Disagreements about decency in the play center on what Merrick ought to be allowed to do in his conditional acceptance into society. For angry mobs and violent policemen, merely existing in public is indecent, an affront because superstition suggests that Merrick’s condition must have been brought about by his own sins. To the bishop and Treves, Merrick is decent as long as he remains nonsexual. Treves treats scientific inquiry as ideologically pure, justifying his exploitation and dehumanization of Merrick. But he cannot understand or explain why seeing a woman naked during surgery is different from a woman choosing to show Merrick her naked body.
Despite the supposition of constant tension between religion and science, Merrick seems to have the ability to accept both faith and reason. At his worst moment, when Merrick is alone, helpless, and unable to be understood, Merrick calls for Jesus in a single word. But in the safety of the hospital, Merrick engages with both critical thought and religion. He asserts his belief in heaven and God. But he questions the rigidity and control imposed by both the church and Victorian social values. Merrick is a Christlike figure. His short life is one of persecution and sacrifice, but he builds his (model) church and then gives in to death, even approximating Jesus’s final words when he says, “It is done.” He doesn’t waver in his faith, but he also doesn’t unthinkingly accept the parts of doctrine that don’t serve his faith. In the end, neither science nor religion can cure Merrick because his body cannot sustain his life regardless of whether that life derives from a religious or scientific origin. But he brings thought and reasoning into his faith and spirituality and empathy into cold logic.
Imperialism and Western Self-Superiority
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the British Empire reached the height of its imperialistic campaigns and stretched its power around the globe to Canada, Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Pragmatically, the purpose of imperialism is to achieve domination over foreign lands as well as control over the resources of those lands and the expansion of territory. Ideologically, the spread of British culture, religion, and ideas was a mission based in Western self-superiority, fueled by the belief that the English were a civilizing force in savage lands. And certainly, Britain was not the only colonizing and imperialistic force at the time. The scene at the Belgium fair illustrates how nationalistic pride was used to justify one of the most well-known examples of brutality in the history of colonialism. The fair is celebrating Belgian King Leopold II’s fifth year ruling the Congo. Over the course of Leopold II’s 23-year reign over the Congo, he engineered atrocities that killed anywhere between 1 and 15 million Congolese people.
Gomm sets up this ideological tension about imperialism at the beginning of the play when he explains to Treves that the empire creates cruel living conditions that supply the hospital with plenty of interesting medical cases. In contrast, Bishop How expresses unwavering support of imperialism, asserting with pride that Christianity and the duty to spread Christian beliefs is at the heart of all of Britain’s imperialistic campaigns. He identifies General Charles George Gordon as a Christian who was killed for his beliefs in Khartoum. Gordon had been sent by the British and Egyptian governments to extract the Egyptian military from the Sudan. Reportedly, Gordon decided to defy these orders and fight Islamic forces despite the hopelessness of the situation and the desperate conditions of his army. In the final siege of Khartoum, Gordon was killed and his army was eradicated. Many British Christians subsequently held Gordon up as a martyr for his faith.
This imperialistic spirit and belief in Western superiority were reflected in “freak shows” as people from conquered lands were often brought to England as exhibits. In the play, Merrick’s situation represents a microcosm and a symbol of imperialism. Although he is English, he is ostracized from society, first existing as an outcast and then surviving in a hospital that insulates him from the public. Merrick is British but rejected by his nation. Treves sees Merrick as a “barbarian” who needs to be tamed and taught to behave properly, and he considers himself charitable for his efforts. Similarly, Bishop How views Merrick as a seedling of a Christian, despite the bishop’s acknowledgment that Merrick is well-versed in the Bible. They both attempt to shape Merrick to their own beliefs without recognizing that Merrick is a fully formed man who doesn’t need molding and teaching. He only needs safety and human kindness. Treves’s unfulfilled promise to make Merrick “normal” is like the unfulfilled promise of imperialism. Treves will never see Merrick as a normal man, allowed to have normal sexual desires for women. Similarly, Britain would never treat its conquered peoples as equal to the British, as evidenced by centuries of exploitation and oppression.
