Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
Introduction and Thesis Statement
Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950) and Titus Alone (1959), the major works of English
author, poet and illustrator Mervyn Peake, are often said to defy categorisation. Critics have
attempted to pigeon-hole the trilogy as fantasy or gothic romance, but strikingly few have tried to
reach a deeper understanding of the one word that recurs in almost every critic, biographer and
reviewer’s attempt to describe the novels: Grotesque. While critics generally agree that Mervyn
Peake’s art can be considered grotesque and many of his biographers note his fondness for
grotesque characters and situations, the term is typically used fleetingly, without explaining what it
is, exactly, that makes Peake’s creations grotesque or what the aesthetic purpose is.
This paper aims to do precisely that by applying literary theories of the grotesque to the
Gormenghast Trilogy in order to determine to what extent they can be considered genuine grotesque
works of fiction and to discuss the function of the grotesque elements in the novels. While the
Gormenghast Trilogy is the main focus of this paper, comparisons with other classic works of the
grotesque by Samuel Beckett and E.T.A. Hoffmann illuminate the importance of themes such as
isolation, dehumanisation and estrangement in grotesque literature – all of which are crucial to
Peake’s story of the individual’s struggle to attain personal freedom and growth in a stagnant,
crumbling and absurd society.
It is the grotesque mode of expression which ultimately sets the Gormenghast Trilogy apart from
typical works of fantasy and romance, as Peake juxtaposes the horrific and the ridiculous in order to
depict existential struggles in a world where old value systems no longer make sense and where
freedom and imagination are constantly threatened by dictatorship. In Titus Groan and
Gormenghast, this shows a vision of the world which reflects the historical situation at the time of
writing, namely World War II, while Titus Alone deals with modern anxieties about alienation and
the technological world.
1
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
Grotesque Theory
The meaning of the word ‘grotesque’ is rather broad and difficult to define precisely as an aesthetic
and critical term as well as in everyday language. As an adjective, it is commonly used to mean
strange, absurd or unnatural. As an aesthetic term, it derives from an ornamental style used in
Roman murals which were discovered during excavations in the fifteenth century. These murals
showed figures combined of human, animal and vegetable parts in swirling, fantastical patterns.
Throughout the many alterations in meaning since the fifteenth century until present time, the
term ‘grotesque’ has retained this combination of elements that belong to different spheres as one of
its core features, and critics widely agree that the fusion of heterogeneous elements is a defining
aspect of grotesque art, in literature as well as in painting (Kayser 51, Jennings 9-10). This mixture
of incompatibles is not restricted to the physical, but also describes the mood typically expressed in
grotesque art, as it combines the horrific and the comic (Thomson 9, 11). The significance of these
opposing reactions to grotesque art, horror and laughter, is one of the key discussions among critics,
and this paper discusses the function of both the horrifying and the comic in the Gormenghast
Trilogy at length.
Two classic critical works on the grotesque are Wolfgang Kayser’s The Grotesque in Art and
Literature (1957) and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World (1965). This paper bases its
examination of the Gormenghast Trilogy largely on The Grotesque in Art and Literature, a work
generally considered one of the most definitive studies on the literary grotesque. Kayser defines the
grotesque as a play with the absurd, a depiction of the estranged world and an attempt to invoke the
demonic aspects of the world and subdue them by confronting them (Kayser 187, 184, 188).
Kayser’s view of the grotesque is absurdist in the sense that the grotesque, which intrudes upon the
natural world and distorts it, is always inexplicable. If the author offers an explanation or meaning,
the work is no longer grotesque, argues Kayser, because the grotesque is “primarily our failure to
2
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
orient ourselves in the physical universe” (Kayser 185). Kayser stresses the ominousness of
grotesque art, and argues that it leads to existential angst as a result of the estranged world where
concepts that are normally perceived as reliable, such as historical order, identity and personality,
and natural shapes and sizes are distorted, fragmented and abolished (Kayser 185).
The main difference between Kayser and Bakhtin’s theories is that while Kayser emphasises the
horrific aspect of the grotesque and concludes that laughter in the grotesque is essentially negative
(Kayser 187), Bakhtin argues that laughter has a positive liberating function and ultimately
overcomes the horrific aspects in grotesque art (Bakhtin 39, McElroy 14). This can be partly
explained by Bakhtin’s close association of the grotesque with the carnivalesque, a literary mode
which subverts the established norms and social hierarchy through a celebration of folk humour
(Bakhtin 10-11). Due to the limited size of this paper and the fact that Bakhtin largely bases his
theory on the medieval and Renaissance grotesque, this paper mainly draws upon the introduction
and chapter five of Rabelais and His World in order to show how the Gormenghast Trilogy contains
elements of the carnival folk humour that Bakhtin believes defines genuine grotesque art.
The Estranged World
Gormenghast Castle, the central location in the first two novels and a constant presence in the
minds of the characters in the third novel, has a crucial function in the works. Far from being simply
a background for the action, it is inextricably tied to the plot of the novels as characters struggle to
overcome or are overcome by its influence. A closer look at Gormenghast Castle and the additional
topography in the trilogy reveals how Peake uses the confusion of separate spheres, distorted
timelines and grotesque paradoxes to make his setting transgressive and depict the estranged world
which Kayser argues is a crucial element in grotesque fiction.
Gormenghast Castle goes beyond the natural limits of a building in several ways. Its immense
physical proportions are exaggerated to the point where they surpass any ordinary castle by far, and
3
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
the boundaries between realms are blurred as the architecture of the castle merges with the animal
and vegetable realm. The castle is anthropomorphised throughout the trilogy. The Tower of Flints is
described in terms of human anatomy on the opening pages of Titus Groan: it “arose like a
mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry... At night the owls made of it an
echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless…” (Peake 7). Other descriptions depict the castle as a
huge, dormant beast: During summer “[t]he masonry sweated and was horribly silent” (Peake 300)
and in stormy weather the rain “beat across the massive back of Gormenghast and swarmed down
its sides” (Peake 305).
The boundary between the human and the architectural becomes increasingly blurred as
characters describe the castle as a physical part of themselves: “To have asked [Sepulchrave] of his
feelings for his hereditary home would be like asking a man what his feelings were towards his own
hand or his own throat” (Peake 42). Fuchsia expresses the same view of the castle as an integral part
of herself: “It was something which she … could never do without, or be without, for it seemed as
though it were her own self, her own body” (Peake 197). Flay also experiences his
excommunication as being physically maimed: “In his banishment he had felt the isolation of a
severed hand, which realizes that it is no more part of the arm and body it was formed to serve and
where the heart still beats” (Peake 301). In Gormenghast characters who have been eliminated in
Titus Groan are described as “teeth missing from the jaw of Gormenghast” (Peake 403), again
depicting the castle as the body of a living organism and the characters as its appendages.
The above quotes show how characters’ identities are fused with their role in the castle. Flay, for
example, perceives himself as “formed to serve” (Peake 301). The consequence of blending with
the castle in this way is the gradual loss of personal identity and autonomous action. Some
inhabitants, such as The Grey Scrubbers, have literally merged with the architecture and become
almost totally dehumanised: “the faces of the Grey Scrubbers had become like slabs … The eyes
4
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
were … small and flat as coins, and the colour of the walls themselves, as though … the grey stone
had at last reflected itself indelibly once and for all” (Peake 16).
Tanya J. Gardiner-Scott notes in Mervyn Peake – The Evolution of a Dark Romantic (1989) that
characters are often objectified and points to Juno in Titus Alone who is described in “classic
architectural terms” (Gardiner-Scott 220) as an example. The contrast between the
anthropomorphised castle and the objectified characters evokes a sense of alienation as the natural
order is distorted to the point where the castle seems to be a living entity while human beings
resemble inanimate objects. As Kayser puts it, “[t]he mechanical object is alienated by being
brought to life, the human by being deprived of it” (Kayser 183).
Titus Groan’s struggle throughout the trilogy is essentially a battle for autonomy and a desperate
attempt to differentiate his own identity from his role at the castle. G. Peter Winnington argues in
The Voice of the Heart (2006) that it is the fear of losing his identity by becoming fused with the
castle in a similar way to the Grey Scrubbers that “fills him with dread” (Winnington 2006 158).
Even as a young boy, Titus feels the insistent urge to assert that he is “not only the 77th Earl of
Gormenghast, he was Titus Groan in his own right” (Peake 444) and he experiences “a sense of
terror” when he is lost in an ancient part of the castle, feeling that he is about to be “absorbed into
the stone” (Peake 505).
The castle’s sinister ability to consume characters can also be seen in the tragic fates of
Sepulchrave and Fuchsia Groan. Sepulchrave is literally consumed when he is eaten by the owls
that inhabit the Tower of Flints. Fuchsia is slowly defeated by her environment as her need for love
and artistic expression is strangled by the rigid and oppressive world of the castle, and her death by
drowning can be seen as the castle consuming her after overpowering her youthful and imaginative
spirit.
5
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
Having said this, it is important to note that Gormenghast Castle is not an altogether hostile
entity. Although the aesthetic purpose of the blurred boundaries between the human and
architectural is to evoke feelings of alienation and horror, the sheltering walls of the castle also
protect its inhabitants. The castle has a double role as both refuge and prison, in a way that
resembles the fictional world in Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame (1957). In Endgame the characters
are confined in a house which on one hand protects them from the seemingly post-apocalyptic
environment outside while on the other hand trapping them in a stale and miserable world of
endless repetitions and absurd rituals.
The rituals are dreary and joyless in both works, but in both cases they also create a sense of
order and safety in a disintegrating world. When Sepulchrave is close to losing his mind after the
fire in his beloved library, he feels that the rigid daily routine in the castle is a “great blessing” as it
“kept his mind, to a certain degree, free from introspection” (Peake 241). Likewise, Hamm is able
to establish an illusion of meaning through ritualised speech and patterns of behaviour. In both
works the characters live as if according to a familiar script, and naturally this is in a sense safer
than living spontaneously, although it is also a stagnant and lifeless existence. In short, the
existential situation in Endgame is highly similar to the one in Titus Groan and Gormenghast:
Characters are suspended in a closed, decaying world which evokes contradictory feelings of
security and imprisonment.
Like Hamm and Clov, the inhabitants of the castle are a community of misanthropes, preferring
the claustrophobic and insular world inside the castle walls to the risk of any disrupting outside
influence. When a rat enters Hamm’s house he immediately orders it killed, and in Gormenghast
Castle there is a similar frantic fear of anything from the world outside, as can be seen from the
treatment of the Bright Dwellers who live outside the castle walls. The castle is like a living
embodiment of this misanthropy. John Batchelor argues in Mervyn Peake – A Biographical and
6
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
Critical Exploration (1974) that “[i]n the flood the castle becomes Steerpike’s executioner, driving
him into the avenging arms of Titus” (Batchelor 106). It fights Steerpike like a disease because, as
Gardiner-Scott puts it, “the essence of Steerpike’s personality is change, the quality most foreign to
the grain of Gormenghast” (Gardiner-Scott 63).
Although both Steerpike and Titus rebel against the castle, it is significant that while Steerpike
can be seen as a foreign body in the castle, Titus is a part of it and tears himself free from the
organism because he views it as diseased. It is simultaneously “his marrow and his bane” (Peake
759) and in Titus Alone the castle continues to haunt him like a phantom limb.
As mentioned earlier, the boundary between the architectural and the vegetable realm is also
blurred in Gormenghast Castle. Kayser mentions that “[t]he plant world, too, furnishes numerous
motifs, and not only for ornamental grotesques … the jungle with its ominous vitality … is so
grotesque that no exaggeration is needed” (Kayser 183). The vegetation that overgrows parts of the
castle has a similar ominous vitality. In Gertrude’s room birds and plants pour in through the
window, obscuring the boundary between inside and outside, for example.
The overgrown state of the castle depicts it as simultaneously ancient and timeless. By merging
with nature, the castle is made to seem primordial and everlasting. Time is a crucial concept to life
in the castle, but while there is an obsession with the time of day, characters are “uncertain about the
year” (Peake 11). This portrays the world of Gormenghast as on one hand dominated by a rigid time
schedule and on the other hand as ageless and unaffected by the passage of time.
It is significant that the full extent of both the castle’s size and the fusion of the natural with the
architectural are not immediately obvious to the reader. Kayser argues that “[s]uddenness and
surprise are essential elements of the grotesque” (Kayser 184), as feelings of disorientation and
uneasiness are evoked when the world is suddenly distorted. The castle as a whole is not revealed
until nearly 100 pages into Titus Groan when Steerpike surveys the roofscape of the castle. When
7
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
he sees two tiny white figures, which turn out to be horses, swimming in the hollow rain-filled
summit of a tower, appearing to be “the size of a coin” (Peake 97), the reader realises for the first
time how huge the castle really is.
Steerpike makes another observation on the rooftop that surprises the reader: “he had seen,
growing from… a sheer, windowless face of otherwise arid wall, a tree… Upon the main stem that
grew out laterally from the wall, Steerpike had seen two figures walking” (Peake 96-97). This
enormous tree is a part of the castle, functioning both as a balcony and as part of Cora and Clarice
Groan’s labyrinthine Room of Roots. The idea of a city wholly or partially made of giant trees is not
unusual in fantasy fiction, and would not be grotesque in a pure fantasy story where the reader
would anticipate the existence of such a place. Despite the strangeness of Gormenghast Castle,
however, nothing has prepared the reader for revelations as fantastic as these, and the swimming
horses and giant tree are grotesque precisely because they are unexpected and incongruous within
the parameters of the fictional universe established so far.
Although the fantastic is an essential aspect of the grotesque (Kayser 51), critics often stress that
for the grotesque to be effective, the fictional world must be, at least partly, our own, familiar one.
The “ominous tension” (Kayser 184) that Kayser views as a vital part of the estranged world is only
evoked when “it is our world which ceases to be reliable” (Kayser 185). Bernard McElroy makes a
similar point in Fiction of the Modern Grotesque (1989) when he says that “[t]he grotesque
transforms the world from what we ‘know’ it to be to what we fear it might be” (McElroy 5), and
Philip Thomson emphasises in The Grotesque (1972) that it is the fact that “the grotesque world,
however strange, is yet our world, real and immediate, which makes the grotesque so powerful”
(Thomson 23).
In the Gormenghast Trilogy, Peake distorts the world just enough to make it bizarre, but he never
takes his story into an entirely different universe. The natural laws of the real world still apply; there
8
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
are no magical events, abilities or beings. Gerhard Mensching argues in his dissertation The
Grotesque in Modern Drama (1961) that “[t]he hallmark of the grotesque in the realm of the
fantastic is the conscious confusion between fantasy and reality” (qtd. in Thomson 23-24). Kayser
suggests the same when he says that “[t]he grotesque world is – and is not – our own world”
(Kayser 37). This confusion between fantasy and reality is very prominent in the trilogy. Titus
Groan and Gormenghast are a set in a gothic, fantastically exaggerated castle while Titus Alone
takes place in the 20th century where cars, aeroplanes, factories and cities are commonplace.
Gardiner-Scott notes that the description of the city in Titus Alone “sounds like an aerial view of
London, England” (Gardiner-Scott 217).
Edmund Little claims in The Fantasts (1984) that “[t]here are no place names, apart from
‘Gormenghast Mountain’ and ‘The Twisted Woods’” (Little 56), but this is not entirely true. In
Gormenghast there is in fact a brief mention of several place names which are taken from real
world locations, namely “the Silver Mines”, “Twin Fingers”, “Little Sark” and “the Coupée” (Peake
713). C.N. Manlove notes in Modern Fantasy (1975) that all of these locations can be found on the
Channel Island of Sark (Manlove 215). This is not to say that the story is set on Sark, since there is
no indication of the castle existing on an island, but it is nevertheless another detail which obscures
the boundary between the fantasy world and the real world.
Furthermore, Little points out the incongruity of the school depicted in Gormenghast, which he
describes as “a twentieth century English preparatory school in which are taught classics and
chemistry” (Little 55). This is another example of how the world of Gormenghast, even in the first
two volumes, contains warped, but recognisable parallels to our own world. It is through these
parallels that Peake depicts a universe that is simultaneously familiar and strange.
Little also notes that Peake “fudges the reader’s historical sense by mingling several historical
epochs from the Primary World” (Little 55). Little does not mention the grotesque in his analysis,
9
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
but his statement can be compared to Kayser’s claim that “the fragmentation of historical order” is a
typical device in grotesque art (Kayser 185). By mixing elements from different time periods, Peake
depicts time as unreliable and this augments the reader’s sense of disorientation. The strongest
example of this is the sudden transition to a futuristic setting in Titus Alone. Again, the parameters
of the fictional universe are suddenly transgressed and the effect is one of alienation as the reader
identifies with Titus’ uncertainty about what is real when he asks in Titus Alone “[w]ere they coeval;
were they simultaneous? These worlds; these realms – could they both be true?” (Peake 777).
By juxtaposing these contradictory worlds, Peake creates a grotesque paradox, and Titus verges
on a descent into madness as he tries to reconcile this modern world with his memories of
Gormenghast Castle. Kayser says that “madness is the climatic phase of estrangement from the
world” (Kayser 74), and this accurately describes Titus’ state towards the end of Titus Alone.
Cheeta’s attempt to drive him mad in the Black House by parodying Gormenghast Castle and its
inhabitants can be seen as the ultimate estrangement from the world where life is turned into a
bizarre performance.
A key point for Kayser is that the ominous force that distorts and estranges the world in
grotesque art must be “incomprehensible, inexplicable, and impersonal” (Kayser 185). Although
much of the grotesque horror in the Gormenghast Trilogy is instigated by the characters, especially
Steerpike in the first two volumes and Cheeta in the third, it is the inexplicable and impersonal
presence of Gormenghast Castle that ultimately makes the world distorted.
Grotesque Laughter and the Distorted Body
Both Gormenghast Castle and the futuristic world depicted in Titus Alone are populated by
eccentric, malformed characters that embody the dialectic tension of the grotesque by evoking
10
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
laughter as well as fear and disgust. It is, however, important to differentiate between the different
kinds of laughter that these grotesque figures evoke in the reader in order to determine the exact
function of the comic in the works.
To Kayser “[l]aughter originates on the comic and caricatural fringe of the grotesque. Filled with
bitterness, it takes on characteristics of the mocking, cynical and ultimately satanic laughter while
turning into the grotesque” (Kayser 187). This is the kind of laughter that Nell has in mind when
she says in Endgame that “nothing is funnier than unhappiness” (Beckett 101) – a resentful, derisive
laughter at the absurdity of the human situation. To a certain extent this describes the laughter in the
Gormenghast Trilogy, since a substantial amount of the humour in the novels is satire aimed at
unthinking adherence to pointless rituals at the cost of one’s humanity. One example of this is
Barquentine nearly crushing one-year-old Titus while “trampling (apparently as a symbol of the
power invested in his hands as warder of the unbroken laws of Gormenghast) up and down the
length of the Breakfast table seven times amidst the debris of the meal” (Peake 283).
Contrary to Kayser, Bakhtin claims that it is erroneous to define the grotesque as negative and
satirical (Bakhtin 307). In his view, “the medieval and Renaissance grotesque … was directly
related to folk culture” (Bakhtin 37). Bakhtin defines folk culture as carnival celebrations and “the
laughter of all the people” (Bakhtin 11), which had a liberating function as “[t]error was turned into
something gay and comic” (Bakhtin 39). Furthermore, Bakhtin argues that the grotesque image of
the body and bodily functions are typical expressions of this carnivalesque folk humour (Bakhtin
318-319).
Overall, there is little in the trilogy that can be described as carnivalesque. The celebration of
Titus’ birth in the beginning of Titus Groan comes close, however; a great feast is being prepared in
the Great Kitchen and there is an abundance of bodily images – in addition to the theme of birth,
people are sweating, drinking and eating. Bakhtin considers all of these typical grotesque images
11
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
(Bakhtin 330) because “all these acts are performed on the confines of the body and the outer world,
or on the confines of the old and new body”, and to Bakhtin the grotesque body is always a body
“in the act of becoming” (Bakhtin 317).
Nevertheless, this scene is not truly carnivalesque. Flay stresses that although he personally
disapproves of the hedonistic celebration, it observes the tradition of the castle. Bakhtin says that
“carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order”
(Bakhtin 10) while the official feast “asserted all that was stable, unchanging, perennial: the existing
hierarchy” (Bakhtin 9). While the atmosphere in the Great Kitchen may resemble the carnival feast,
this is clearly an official feast in terms of purpose.
There are some carnival elements in the depiction of Irma Prunesquallor, too. Bakhtin argues
that comic grotesque images typically involve exaggerated noses, mouths and other protruding body
parts as well as features that resemble animals or inanimate objects (Bakhtin 316). Irma is the
perfect example of this type of comic grotesque figure with her protruding hip bones and a nose so
long and sharp that it is “almost a weapon” (Peake 549). Irma represents an earthy, bodily humour,
not only because of her ridiculous appearance, but also because of the situations she finds herself in:
She is painfully aware of her own sexual short-comings and fashions a false bosom for herself out
of a hot water bottle, for example. When she is wooed by Bellgrove a little later, the couple has to
exchange seats until the moonlight does not highlight Irma’s enormous nose and feet, and GardinerScott notes how “Peake’s final comic undercutting of the wooing scene comes when they are in
their first embrace; Throd streaks naked through the garden” (Gardiner-Scott 169).
Peake typically intersperses particularly violent or horrific scenes with Irma and Alfred
Prunesquallor as comic relief, and in that sense, the laughter that the Prunesquallors evoke in the
reader is always liberating. The professors also function as comic relief. They are caricatures of
academic types: There is the lethargic headmaster Deadyawn, the loveable but ineffective and
12
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
ancient Bellgrove, the constantly nervous Flannelcat and the pedantic Shred. Thomson notes that
the difference between caricature and the grotesque is that “in caricature there need be no
suggestion of the confusion of heterogeneous and incompatible elements” and that the laughter it
evokes is “a straightforward, uncomplicated reaction” (Thomson 38). The distinction is blurred
when “caricaturistic exaggeration becomes extreme” (Thomson 38).
Peake’s caricatures are typically so extreme that they become grotesque, involving both the
fusion of incompatible elements and a more complicated reaction of both laughter and uneasiness.
Deadyawn, for example, is fused to a “high rickety chair, with wheels attached to its legs … fitted
with a tray above which Deadyawn’s head could be partially seen” (Peake 411). Another example is
the depiction of the professors as a group: “As the professors moved like a black, hydra-headed
dragon with a hundred flapping wings, it might have been noticed that for all the sinister quality of
the monster’s upper half, yet in its numerous legs there was a certain gaiety” (Peake 458).
Peake himself said in a radio broadcast called “The Reader Takes Over” that he consciously
introduced “passages of writing that were … diametrically opposed to this grotesque horror
writing” (Yorke 175) as comic relief. In this way, the ominous power of the castle is occasionally
defeated temporarily through the liberating power of laughter. Overall, however, terror is not
“conquered by laughter” (Bakhtin 336) like Bakhtin argues was the case in the medieval and
Renaissance grotesque. The Gormenghast Trilogy has far more in common with the type of
grotesque fiction that Bakhtin calls Romantic grotesque, where “[l]aughter loses its gay and joyful
tone” (Bakhtin 38) and elements that were typically comic in the medieval and Renaissance
grotesque such as puppets and madness turn ominous (Bakhtin 39).
This can be illustrated by a comparison of the grotesque themes in the Gormenghast Trilogy and
E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story “The Sandman”. In both works there is little genuine, carefree joy, as
the estranged world and the ominous forces distort most smiles and laughter, including the reader’s.
13
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
As Kayser puts it, “Hoffmann’s figures are often shaken with laughter when they do not feel at all
in the mood for laughing” (Kayser 187). When characters smile or laugh in the Gormenghast novels
it is typically malicious or on the verge of turning into an insane grimace or a horrified scream: An
“inevitable, uncontrollable” (Peake 245) smile appears on Sepulchrave’s face when he begins to go
mad and when he succumbs to madness completely he lets out a “dreadful cry, half scream, half
laughter” (Peake 252). Cora and Clarice Groan’s “ghastly laughter” (Peake 594) can be heard for
days before they die of starvation in their prison cell, and Titus often finds that “his laughter was not
altogether without a touch of hysteria” (Peake 778) in Titus Alone.
Insane laughter also plays a large part in “The Sandman”: Nathanael finds that “mad laughter”
(Hoffmann 85) bursts from within him at the mere thought of Coppelius and when he loses his
mind entirely in the end he cries “in a piercing voice, interspersed with hideous laughter: ‘Spin,
wooden dolly!’ (Hoffmann 117).
In his analysis of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s grotesque characters, Kayser lists three distinct categories:
The first consists of characters “whose appearance and movement are grotesque” and who are
“composed of animal and human traits” (Kayser 105), the second of “eccentric artists …
distinguished by their odd outward appearance” who are “threatened by insanity” (Kayser 105-106)
and the third of “demonic” characters whose appearance and behaviour are grotesque” (Kayser
106). These categories also apply strikingly well to Peake’s characters, although they often overlap.
Nearly all of the characters in the Gormenghast Trilogy are marked by their similarity to one or
more kinds of animal as well as their distinctive gait. To mention a few examples, the emaciated
Flay is consistently described as insectile, resembling a “stick insect” (Peake 236) or a “mantis”
(Peake 152) with a “spider-like gait” (Peake 26), Alfred Prunesquallor’s dominant characteristic is
his maniacal laugh, described as a “horse’s whinny, with a touch of the curlew” (Peake 32) or as a
“hyena laugh” (Peake 377), and Sepulchrave is gradually transformed into an owl (Peake 266). The
14
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
characters’ grotesque appearance and movement alienate the reader and prevents identification with
them, although characters like Prunesquallor and Flay are sympathetically portrayed overall.
Lee Byron Jennings discusses the combination of heterogeneous elements in the grotesque body
in detail in The Ludicrous Demon – Aspects of the Grotesque in German Post-Romantic Prose
(1963). Jennings stresses that while the grotesque form always displays a “union of disparate parts”
(Jennings 9) it is crucial that “it is not an entirely random distortion … nor even one aimed at
merely altering the human form”. According to Jennings, the grotesque form “always displays a
combination of fearsome and ludicrous qualities-- … it simultaneously arouses reactions of fear and
amusement in the observer” (Jennings 10).
Hoffmann also merges the owlish and human form in “The Sandman” to evoke a fearful
response in the description of the Sandman’s children who have “crooked beaks, like owls, with
which to peck the eyes of naughty children” (Hoffmann 87). Kayser mentions the owl as one of the
“nocturnal and creeping animals” typically used evoke a fearful response in grotesque fiction
because they “inhabit realms apart from and inaccessible to man” (Kayser 182). Peake’s grotesque
owl-figure is ludicrous as well as horrific, however: The image of the normally solemn and
dignified earl perched on the mantelpiece, hooting like an owl and demanding that his servants
bring him sticks to build a nest also evokes laughter, and in this sense Sepulchrave is the character
that most closely fits Jennings’s definition of the grotesque form that arouses a simultaneous
response of fear and amusement.
There is a small group of characters in the trilogy who can be said to resemble Hoffmann’s
eccentric artist type threatened by madness. The only two characters who are artists in the literal
sense are Fuchsia and the unnamed poet. Sepulchrave shares Fuchsia’s sensitive nature and
appreciation of literature, however, and both are extremely susceptible to the ominous power of the
castle. Kayser argues that in Hoffmann’s fiction “the artist, whose existence rests on his rich
15
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
imagination, is in danger of being exposed to other forces which estrange the world for him”
(Kayser 74).
Sepulchrave’s world is his library and Fuchsia’s is her attic, and without them the ominous
power of the castle begins to engulf them. Fuchsia’s attic is invaded by Steerpike and afterwards it
is “no longer another world, but a part of the castle” (Peake 195). The disintegration of
Sepulchrave’s world is total, however, and where Fuchsia’s estrangement is only felt as “a surge of
unreality” (Peake 245), Sepulchrave’s identity crumbles entirely. Bakhtin argues that “[i]n folk
grotesque, madness is a gay parody of official reason … In Romantic grotesque, on the other hand,
madness acquires a somber, tragic aspect of individual isolation” (Bakhtin 39). Sepulchrave’s
madness is clearly tragic and breaks the tentative emotional connection between him and Fuchsia,
isolating both of them completely, like Nathanael’s madness destroys the bond between himself,
Clara and Lothar.
Steerpike stands out as the character that resembles Hoffmann’s demonic figure, exemplified by
Coppelius, to a striking degree. As Gardiner-Scott notes, he is consistently “described in residual
demon images” (Gardiner-Scott 135). Kayser argues that it is typical of Hoffmann’s demonic
figures that “their mere presence usually spells death and destruction” (Kayser 106). Steerpike’s
presence is always ominous, regardless of intent, as when he enters Fuchsia’s attic by chance.
Furthermore, Kayser notes that Hoffmann’s demonic characters often possess “uncanny mechanical
skills” which seem to give them almost supernatural powers (Kayser 106). In the beginning of
Gormenghast Steerpike has arranged a complicated and ingenious system of mirrors which allow
him to spy on the inhabitants of the castle. Batchelor views this as simply a “useful narrative device
because it permits a rapid survey of Gormenghast” (Batchelor 93), but it also characterises
Steerpike as a demonic figure who uses his skills to grant himself powers of omnipresence and
omniscience.
16
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
Finally, Peake and Hoffmann both make use of the typical grotesque motif of the automaton or
marionette. Bakhtin says that “in romanticism the accent is placed on the puppet as the victim of
alien inhuman force, which rules over men by turning them into marionettes” (Bakhtin 40). It has
already been discussed how the inhabitants of Gormenghast Castle become automaton-like by
fusing with inanimate objects and carrying out their functions mechanically, but Peake also uses the
automaton theme in the depiction of Steerpike’s relationship with the twins.
Cora and Clarice are consistently described as automaton-like with their “flat voice[s]”, “flat
eyes” (Peake 209), “limp fingers” and “faces … as expressionless as powdered slabs” (Peake 248).
The effect is increased by their synchronised thoughts and movements. Steerpike has the role of
puppeteer as he gains complete control over them to the point where they react “automatically, at
his orders” (Peake 345). Kayser notes that there is something comical about Nathanael mistaking
the automaton Olimpia for a human being and falling in love with her in “The Sandman”, but
argues that “Hoffmann’s presentation of the matter is so genuinely grotesque that its effect upon us
is humorous and horrible at the same time” (Kayser 75). The same can be said about Steerpike’s
relationship with Cora and Clarice, as the reader is both disturbed and amused by the reduction of
the twins to puppets.
The Fears of the Twentieth Century
Many critics of grotesque art stress that it typically appears in times of suffering and anxiety.
Geoffrey Harpham argues in his article “The Grotesque: First Principles” that “[t]he plain
assumption of the grotesque is that the rules of order have collapsed; for this reason it is strongest in
eras of upheaval or crisis, when old beliefs in old orders are threatened or crumbling” (Harpham
466). In the light of Harpham’s comment, it becomes significant that Peake wrote the Gormenghast
novels in the wake of World War II.
17
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
Winnington comments in his biography Vast Alchemies – The Life and Work of Mervyn Peake
(2000) that it was during Peake’s time in the Army that “mockery and mocking laughter began to
appear in his writing” (Winnington 2000 145), noting that this may be a result of Peake himself
being “an object of mockery from his fellow soldiers” (Winnington 2000 145). As well as this more
complex use of humour, which can be seen as the first step towards the grotesque humour and
negative laughter in the Gormenghast Trilogy, a sense of absurdity and estrangement also became
part of Peake’s art after the war.
Peake’s close friend Gordon Smith writes in Mervyn Peake – A Personal Memoir (1984) that
Peake “reacted strongly (though not deliberately) against the discipline and meaningless rituals, as
they seemed to him, of life in the forces; and later, in the Titus books these became one of his main
targets” (Smith 121). Peake’s wife, Maeve Gilmore, notes in her memoir A World Away (1970) that
a sense of isolation and estrangement entered their life together for the first time as a result of the
war: “There was a tenseness and a sense of withdrawal … Perhaps the first time in our lives that we
were not one. Was it the alien world that deprived one? It was certainly no loss of love” (Gilmore
38).
Harpham argues that “[e]ach age redefines the grotesque in terms of what threatens its sense of
essential humanity” (Harpham 463), and based on quotes above, the Gormenghast Trilogy can be
read as Peake’s attempt to process the dehumanising effects of the war as well as the anxiety of the
post-war period. In this way, the trilogy corresponds to Kayser’s final interpretation of the grotesque
as an attempt to “invoke and subdue the demonic aspects of the world” (Kayser 188): Titus Groan
and Gormenghast invoke the fears of deprivation of personal liberty and the erosion of free will that
the British population must have felt during the war. Titus Alone also contains images that recall the
war: Gardiner-Scott notes that Under-River resembles both the shelters in London and “the sewer
world of the 1944 Warsaw Rising” (qtd. in Gardiner-Scott 263), for example.
18
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
Furthermore, Titus Alone can be seen as a depiction of the 20th century as a world full of sinister
technology. Titus is pursued by various technological devices: a spy-globe, hovering listening
devices and an identical pair of helmeted figures who may or may not be automatons. An even more
chilling image is the factory with its thousands of workers “all of them the same, staring like
waxworks” (Peake 899). Peake uses the puppet motif once more in the depiction of the workers and
the helmeted pair, but these are entirely ominous figures with nothing of the comic about them. The
factory seems to have stripped all individuality and humanity out of its workers, and it is
surrounded by a sound and smell that Titus likens to “the smell of death: a kind of sweet decay”
(Peake 880). Considering the rapid advances in technological and industrial production after World
War II, as well as the devastating use of advanced weaponry, it seems clear that Peake was targeting
what he perceived as the dangers of science and mechanisation.
Titus Alone is also a novel about having lost touch with one’s roots and feeling displaced in the
world. The novel is full of lost, estranged individuals who are adrift in the world with nothing to
anchor them, and Gormenghast is suddenly shown in a positive light, as a symbol of an older, lost
world where identity was fixed and one could trust in a consistent system of values. The modern
world in Titus Alone could easily be seen as an image of man’s condition in the twentieth century,
after the two World Wars shook people’s belief a safe and stable world order.
Yorke expresses the view that the Gormenghast novels became an escape for Peake during the
war, arguing that “[i]f the world he inhabited was like a prison then why not escape into a more
exciting one where he could make his own rules?” (Yorke 97). Yorke’s interpretation is not
necessarily at odds with a reading of the works as a grotesque reflection of the upheaval during and
after World War II, however, since the grotesque is defined by its ability to combine playful and
sinister elements. Thomson argues that “the play-urge, the desire to invent and experiment for its
own sake, is a factor in all artistic creation, but we can expect this factor to be more than usually
19
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
strong in grotesque art and literature” (Thomson 64). As Kayser puts it, the grotesque is a play with
the absurd which “may begin in a gay and carefree manner … But it may also carry the player
away, deprive him of his freedom, and make him afraid of the ghosts which he so frivolously
invoked” (Kayser 187).
Kayser argues that the “dark forces which lurk in and behind our world” can only be subdued
once “[t]he darkness has been sighted, the ominous powers discovered, the incomprehensible forces
challenged” (Kayser 188). After rebelling against Gormenghast and facing the dark powers of the
outside world, Titus is finally able to subdue the horror and disorientation which has plagued him
throughout the novels. He discovers that “he carried his Gormenghast within him” (Peake 953), and
with this discovery he recovers his inner balance and he is able to set out into the modern, living
world with a clear idea of who he is and what he believes in.
Conclusion
The aesthetic purpose of the grotesque in the Gormenghast Trilogy can be summed up as an
attempt to cross boundaries. By blurring the boundaries between the animal, vegetable and mineral
realm as well as the boundary between fantasy and reality, Peake depicts a universe which goes
beyond the limits set by typical gothic and fantastic fiction. Existing somewhere between fantasy
and reality, between horror and laughter, the Gormenghast Trilogy evokes a contradictory response,
and confronts the reader with a view of the world as a place where nothing is ever certain or reliable
– including one’s own humanity.
The first section of this paper illustrates how Peake achieves this disturbing effect by subverting
the natural order and depicting Gormenghast Castle as a living entity while characters are reduced
to objects or extensions of the castle’s body. In the second section it is made clear that while the
trilogy contains elements of the bodily themes and liberating carnivalesque humour that Bakhtin
20
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
views as the original source of grotesque art, the novels are ultimately permeated by the negative
laughter described by Kayser. This can be accounted for by the influence of the Romantic grotesque
on the trilogy, as illustrated by the similarities between Peake and Hoffmann’s use of common
grotesque themes.
The purpose of the final section is to illustrate how the historical context influenced Peake’s use
of the grotesque and how the novels can be read an attempt to confront the reader with the threats to
humanity in the twentieth century. Gormenghast Castle can be seen as a grotesque and exaggerated
reflection of the rigid adherence to orders and rituals that Peake felt threatened imagination and
individuality during the nineteen-forties, while Titus Alone can be interpreted as a depiction of the
less immediate consequences of the war, namely destructive technology and individual
estrangement and isolation. At the same time, the grotesque is a medium of imaginary freedom
which allows Peake to explore his themes across the normal boundaries of fiction. Ultimately, the
grotesque in the Gormenghast Trilogy can be seen as symbolic of the terror of becoming engulfed in
absurdity and estranged from the world by losing one’s humanity, sanity and personal liberty.
21
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Print.
Batchelor, John. Mervyn Peake – A Biographical And Critical Exploration. London: Gerald
Duckworth & Company Limited, 1974. Print.
Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1986. Print.
Gardiner-Scott, Tanya J. Mervyn Peake – Evolution of a Dark Romantic. New York: Peter Lang
Publishing, 1989. Print.
Gilmore, Maeve. A World Away – A Memoir of Mervyn Peake. London: Methuen London Ltd,
1983. Print.
Harpham, Geoffrey Galt. “The Grotesque: First Principles”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer, 1976), pp. 461-468. Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The
American Society for Aesthetics Stable. Web. Accessed 03/07/2012.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/430580
Hoffmann, E.T.A. The Golden Pot And Other Tales. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Print.
Jennings, Lee Byron. The Ludicrous Demon – Aspects of the Grotesque in German Post-Romantic
Prose. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963. Print.
Kayser, Wolfgang. The Grotesque In Art And Literature. New York: Columbia University Press,
1981. Print.
Little, Edmund. The Fantasts. Amersham: Avebury Publishing Company, 1984. Print.
Manlove, C.N. Modern Fantasy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Print.
McElroy, Bernard. Fiction of The Modern Grotesque. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Print.
Peake, Mervyn. The Gormenghast Trilogy. London: Vintage, 1999. Print.
Smith, Gordon. Mervyn Peake – A Personal Memoir. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1984. Print.
Thomson, Philip. The Grotesque. London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1972. Print.
Winnington, Peter G. Vast Alchemies – The Life and Work of Mervyn Peake. London: Peter Owen
Publishers, 2000. Print.
Winnington, Peter G. The Voice Of The Heart – The Working of Mervyn Peake’s Imagination.
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006. Print.
22
Crossing Boundaries: The Grotesque in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy
Anna Maria Vejen
Yorke, Malcolm. Mervyn Peake: My Eyes Are Mint Gold – A Life. London: John Murray Publisher
Ltd, 2000. Print.
23