Is Penny Dreadful a Christian Gothic Horror Tale?
Listen: John Clare reciting Wordsworth in Penny Dreadful Finale
In my office, I have a collection of leather bond books from Easton Press 100 Greatest Books Ever Written. I haven’t read all of them, but it’s on my bucket list. Contained in the collection are several 19th century Victorian Gothic literary masterpieces—Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Dracula by Bram Stoker, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, to name a few—which employ supernatural characters to explore themes of spirituality and the paradox of human nature. I’ve always been fond of these characters and all their reincarnations through film and literature—dark themes and characters with glimmers of redemption and hope.
Like many Americans during the pandemic, I was searching for some streaming online series to watch. My favorite of 2020 was The Queen’s Gambit (I highly recommend it for anyone), but I found one gothic horror series that intrigued me—Penny Dreadful. (I don’t recommend this for everyone—dark themes for mature audiences. It was originally released on Showtime 2014-16 and now available on Netflix.) What drew me to the series was its writer and creator—John Logan. (I’m going to geek out a bit, but I have always tried to mash up the Bible with literature, music, history, philosophy, and pop culture, so I hope you enjoy!)
John Logan is one of my favorite American playwrights, screenwriters, film producers, and television producers. He is a three-time Academy Award nominee; twice for Best Original Screenplay for Gladiator (2000) and The Aviator (2004) and once for Best Adapted Screenplay for Hugo (2011). In Penny Dreadful, Logan mashes up gothic characters like Dr. Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll, Mina Harker; new characters like Sir Malcolm (Timothy Dalton), Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), and Vanessa Ives (Eva Green); and various monsters and witches into a gothic horror thriller that explores the apocalyptic battle between good and evil, the existence of God, human depravity and dignity, and redemption set against the gaslight and fog of Victorian London.
John Clare is one of Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s creations in Penny Dreadful (named after a British poet). Clare has a love for poetry much like the original monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Dr. Frankenstein was the creator, not the monster). John Clare is played by Rory Kinnear, which is an astonishing performance. I feel like he should have won an award! John Clare is poignantly presented as a “monster” who is capable of great violence and vengeance, but who is also poetic, compassionate, and an existentially tortured soul. He narrates and reads Romantic poetry throughout the series by people like Keats, Blake, Tennyson, and Wordsworth.
This brings me to my original question: Is Penny Dreadful a Christian Gothic Horror Tale? The short answer is “no, I don’t think so.” However, its finale episode features sacrificial love—of which Jesus is the primary example—as the key to the redemption and the salvation of the world. As the “end of days” is about to unfold in the finale episode and darkness is about to engulf the world, Penny Dreadful displays the loving, sacrificial embrace of the two main characters quoting the Lord’s Prayer—Vanessa Ives and Ethan Chandler—and Vanessa gives her life in loving sacrifice to vanquish the threat of darkness embodied by Dracula.
In the final scene of the series, the main cast of characters are gathered around the grave of Vanessa Ives, and John Clare, the monster, quotes lines from William Woodsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. The lines of poetry are a haunting reminder of our own mortality contrasted with the dream children sometimes have of immortality. Death speaks eternal:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
—But there’s a Tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone;
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
I love the fact that the deep truth of Jesus’ sacrificial death for humanity echoes throughout the ages in literature and movies and music and plays and history and nature and romance. There are reminders and echoes everywhere. Our hearts are strangely warmed when we find this kind of sacrificial love in unsuspected places—eternity beats in our hearts.
Shalom
©realfredherron, 2021
