As reminders of our baser animal nature and the wild power of the natural world, animals frequently play an important role in Gothic literature. I have previously written posts on the roles of cats and dogs. Now I want to focus on one animal that had been particularly feared throughout history: snakes. Associated with deception, temptation, and sin, snakes make powerful symbols of abstract evil, in addition to the connotations they already hold as genuine objects of fear in the real world. Below are a few classic works that derive their horror from deadly snakes or serpents:
“The Anaconda” by Matthew Lewis (1808)
In this short story, Matthew Lewis uses the same level of gory, shocking violence that he was notorious for in The Monk, only this time the bloodshed is committed not by a man but by a snake. Everard Brooke has recently returned to England from the East Indies suddenly in possession of a great fortune. When his lover’s family demands he account for how he came by the money, Everard tells a frightening tale about a monstrous anaconda that lived in the forests of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), devouring man and beast alike. Its multi-colored scales can deflect bullets, and its mere breath is poisonous. In a particularly gruesome scene, the snake kills a beloved pet dog by crushing every bone in its body. With the help of one of the locals, Everard engages in a valiant fight against the monstrous snake to rescue his friend trapped in an outbuilding. But though the snake is ultimately killed, the story does not quite have a happy ending. As a work of colonial Gothic, the serpent in “The Anaconda” embodies the wild unknown dangers that lurk in strange and foreign lands.
“The Adventure of the Speckled Band” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)
This is one of the twelve tales featured in Arthur Conan Doyle’s collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Doyle himself considered it his favorite story he’d written about the detective. Spoiler warning! By including it here, I’m giving away a bit of the solution to the story’s central mystery. At the start of the story, a young woman named Helen Stoner comes to Sherlock concerned that her stepfather has murdered her sister and now plans to kill her next, though she cannot figure out how. The tale is a classic example of a “locked room” mystery, and among the more puzzling clues are the sister’s dying words: “The speckled band!” Through a series of clever deductions, Sherlock discovers how the stepfather accomplished the murder of Helen’s sister: he dropped a venomous snake through the vent in her ceiling! As in Lewis’s story above, the snake is a product of British colonialism—the stepfather had developed a passion for exotic animals after living abroad in India and the snake is one of many dangerous creatures he collected in his home. Sherlock identifies it as a “swamp adder … the deadliest snake in India.” While many critics consider the snake specified here to be a fictitious creation, Sherlock fans have debated for many decades which real-life species Doyle may have been referring to.
The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker (1911)
A decade and a half after publishing his groundbreaking vampire novel, Dracula, Bram Stoker took on another mythological monster in his final novel before his death, The Lair of the White Worm. The story takes as its inspiration the local English legend of the Lambton Worm, a giant underground monster that terrorizes a village. In Stoker’s novel, Adam Salton comes to his great-uncle’s estate in Derbyshire after spending most of his life in Australia. When he arrives, Salton discovers that Lady Arabella March, a local witch-like woman, has been murdering people by tossing them into a pit where they are eventually devoured by the White Worm. Though called a worm, the creature is not a little wriggling invertebrate but rather a giant, serpentine monster with glowing green eyes that is suggested to be a holdover from times when dragons roamed the earth. The mystical connection between the White Worm and Lady Arabella is reminiscent of legendary snake-women, such as Lamia in Greek mythology. While the snake in this tale appears to originate in England, unlike the two above, there are still strong currents of xenophobia and British imperialistic thought throughout the book.
What other monstrous snakes in Gothic literature can you think of? And what other animals would you like to see covered here? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!