Within the gothic narrative Housman presents, Christian would represent the “good” or Christ-like figure, and Sweyn would represent the so-called “evil” figure. The terms “double” and “doppelgänger” are often used interchangeably in gothic scholarship, as there is no formal definition for the gothic double though it can be generally understood as a physical representation of the division of the self, with two figures representing opposing sides of a good-evil dichotomy. Everard Hopkins's illustration of Sweyn and Christian for Atalanta in 1890, highlighting the religious allegory of The Were-Wolf This essay examines Housman’s reinvention of the double motif in The Were-Wolf by focusing on the narrative’s twin brothers in relation to gothic theory.įigure 1.
However, Hodges’ analysis focuses principally on the religious rather than the psychological and she does not emphasize the significance of Housman’s main characters, Sweyn and Christian, as biological twins. In her comprehensive analysis of the motif of the double in The Were-Wolf, Shari Hodges argues that Housman “uses Gothic literary conventions to present a Christian allegory of the conflict between good and evil forces within the universe and within the soul of man” (57). Hyde (1886), all of which precede the first publication of Housman’s novella in 1890. The gothic double has been a mainstay in gothic literature from as early as Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly (1800), and has subsequently been reimagined in a multitude of fictional gothic texts-particularly British-authored gothic texts-such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson (1839), Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Following in the literary footsteps of other gothic fiction writers, Clemence Housman uses the motif of the gothic twin or double in The Were-Wolf via its twin characters Christian and Sweyn.
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