The Great God Pan

October 31st, a perfect day to tell you about my final RIP read, The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen. I don’t remember how I found out about this book, I probably saw it on a list somewhere and, oh Victorian gothic goodness!

It has a good premise but failed in being scary or so over-the-top melodramatic that it lived in the realm of good bad. Maybe if I were a man it would have been scary … but I’ll get to that in a bit.

The plot. Dr. Raymond has invited his friend Mr. Clarke to see an experiment that he is sure will allow the young woman upon whom he is performing the experiment, Mary, to see the god Pan. She does. She somehow becomes pregnant and bears the child of Pan (a virgin named Mary bearing the child of a god, where I heard that story before?). Many years later the adult child, Helen Vaughan, arrives on the London social scene. She is much liked by the young men. Eventually these young men begin committing suicide but there is never any obvious connection to Helen. Mr. Clarke, who knows nothing about who Helen really is, begins investigating, eventually figures it out, and then gives Helen an ultimatum: she must either kill herself or he will kill her.

There is the story in a nutshell. It is told in bits and pieces and there are scenes from other characters that then meet Clarke and tell him their story. It all proceeds apace. We never find out exactly what Helen does to these men to make them commit suicide we just find out from the newspaper that another gentleman has been found dead. It is all rather silly but the men in the story are horrified — they might be next!

Of course the men’s suicides are sex-related. Mythologically Pan is famous for his sexual powers so his sexually ravenous succubus-like daughter must have been quite a terrifying thought to a tightly buttoned Victorian gentleman. Clarke’s expressions of terror and horror in the book are so misogynistic I couldn’t begin to find them remotely funny. During his investigations Clarke sees a portrait of Helen (he has never seen her in person) and repsonds:

the glance that came from those eyes, the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole face, Clarke shuddered before it at his inmost soul, and thought, unconsciously, of Dr. Phillip’s words, ‘the most vivid presentment of evil I have ever seen.’

It is not just how the men react to Helen that is disturbing. The book starts off on a high patriarchal note. The procedure Dr. Raymond performs on Helen is brain surgery. Clarke is concerned for the girl’s safety. But Dr. Raymond assures Clarke that all will be fine and even if the worst happened,

As you know, I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit.

So it is just fine if he kills her because he owns her. By the end of the book Dr. Raymond is contrite, not because he killed Mary but because he forgot that humans were not supposed to look upon gods!

As if the woman-hating in the story weren’t disturbing enough, it seems the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King have been inspired by the horrors found within The Great God Pan as well as Peter Straub, at least according to Wikipedia.

If I weren’t reading the story for RIP I would not have finished it. And if it weren’t for it’s being an e-book on my Kindle I would have thrown it across the room. But I finished the story and spared my Kindle and have lived to warn you all what a dreadful novella this is.

Happy Halloween!