Time and the Terrors of the Shoreline in Dunsany and Wells

Alder, Emily

Abstract

The shoreline is a popular stage for the end of the world in fin-de-siècle fiction – it is upon a shore that H. G. Wells’s Time Traveller witnesses the final remnant of animal life, William Hope Hodgson’s Recluse discovers the meaning of eternity, and Lord Dunsany’s Dreamer waits out his centuries of punishment. This paper explores the Gothic representations of shoreline settings in two apocalyptic tales, Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) and Dunsany’s ‘Where the Tides Ebb and Flow’ (1910).

Tidal shorelines, I argue, have particular qualities that lend themselves to imaginings of deep time. Implying the origins of terrestrial life emerging out of a primal sea, shores are also a suggestive possibility for where it might end. At the same time, continual re-making by the tide also characterises shores as sites of perpetuity. The narrators of both stories face, on the edge of a future Thames, the existential terror of eternity and recognition of humanity’s miniscule place within it. These tales use their Gothic shores to position human existence against a vast non-human backdrop, interrupting a linear anthropocentric narrative of development and progress. In Wells’s novel, the dimming sun illuminates the degeneration of human life back to its invertebrate origins amongst mud, water, and weed. In Dunsany’s tale, the Dreamer’s bones share a muddy grave with other ‘forsaken things’ while his cursed soul bears witness to the passing of civilisation until Nature triumphs over morality

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Gothic Interruptions: 16th Biennial Conference of the International Gothic Association
• Start Date: Jul 26, 2022
• End Date: Jul 28, 2022
• Deposit Date: Apr 17, 2023
• Keywords: Gothic