 |
||||
  
 
 |
19th century 'monsters' surprisingly human sometimes, students find
By Suzanne Galloway
Lurking in the Ray B. West Building on the Utah State University campus are the 19th-century monsters Dracula, Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde and the nameless creation of Dr. Frankenstein. These three freakish characters showed up on campus with Brain McCuskey as part of a job interview with the USU English department. When McCuskey was interviewed for a teaching position at Utah State, he was asked to present the ideal class. "The hypothetical class I chose to pitch was on 19th century monsters," McCuskey says. "It worked, I guess. I got the job." Not only did the imagined class help McCuskey land the teaching job, but he actually got to teach the 19th-century British literature class twice. McCuskey, who was hired by the USU English department in September 1995, set up the British literature course to examine19th-century culture. Dr. Frankenstein's creature, Dracula and Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde all emerged from that century. In addition, the class was designed to compare 20th century versions of these monsters with their original characters in the novels, McCuskey explains. Frankenstein's creation, for example, is portrayed as being a fierce and violent monster in today's film industry. "Films are all about technology and horror," says McCuskey. "The novel is much more about education and language." Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, created the character possessing more emotion than is revealed by recent movies. "I
lay quiet, looking out under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful
anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me . . ."
"He is extremely articulate, well educated and has greater depth of feelings then any of the humans around him," McCuskey says about the creature in the novel. A caption on the cover of the novel quotes the creature as saying, "If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear." "The novel is primarily made up of the creature trying to explain to his creator how hurt and rejected he feels. He only resorts to violence as a way to avenge himself," McCuskey says. "It's a tear jerker." On the flip side, McCuskey's students find the contemporary Dracula to be more closely matched with the Dracula of the 19th-century novel by Bram Stoker. Yet, an astounding feature of the novel stands out to McCuskey's literary students. "What surprises most of the students is how sexy of a book it is. [Dracula] is much more clearly about sex and sexual anxiety then the films are," McCuskey says. One sexual episode in Dracula that supports McCuskey's conclusions begins: "I lay quiet, looking out under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. . . . There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive. . . . I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited with beating heart." A fascination with 19th-century monsters was not always McCuskey's cup of tea. McCuskey was born in Ohio and raised in Los Angeles. He spent a portion of his life on the East and West coasts. McCuskey enjoys playing Frisbee on the beach, body surfing and sailing. He never had been to Utah before accepting the teaching position at USU. At first, he felt alarmed about moving to a part of the country that isn't close to the ocean. But since then he has come to like Utah and enjoys waterless hobbies, such as tennis. McCuskey's father worked in the computer industry and his mother was a math teacher. In high school he liked all subjects. "If anything I was more driven to mathematics and science," McCuskey says. In college he had a couple of inspirational English professors. "You hit a really good teacher and that teacher changes the course of your life. I got more and more into English and less and less into math and science," McCuskey says. English captivated McCuskey to the point that he went on to earn his bachelor's degree in it. He graduated with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned his master's and doctoral degrees in English from the University of Michigan. McCuskey credits Martha Vicinus, a professor of Victorian literature in graduate school, as being a major influence on where he is today. "She is the person I saw and thought, 'I want her job. I want to be paid to think about the things she thinks about all day,'" says McCuskey. His aspiration came true. McCuskey does think about and teach Victorian and British literature all day. His classes demonstrate it. Tuesdays and Thursdays in fall semester, his 9 a.m. British literature class has a routine. The students come to class and position their desks around the perimeter of the classroom. Instead of sitting so they encounter the back of their neighbor's head, they turn their desks 45 degrees inward, to face the middle of the classroom, forming a giant U shape. The front of the room is left open like a stage where McCuskey facilitates class discussion. Prepared for an invigorating discussion on Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, McCuskey is wearing khaki slacks, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up two folds, brown leather shoes and a tie with a mixture of brown, beige and periwinkle . The 6-foot, 1-inch professor has thick blond hair, blue eyes and knows his students by name. He moves around the front of the room using hand motions and gestures. He stomps his foot to add punch to his point. "He is so interesting. You can tell he loves teaching and that he has done research. It's so fun when your teacher loves what they're teaching," says Natalie Ricks, a senior in McCuskey's British writers class. "All he needs is a British accent," Clete Johansson, a senior majoring in literary studies, chimes in. "Any question, he can answer from the time of the novel. He made me love Jane Austen, the way everyone should." The text for the British writers course is the Jane Austen series. McCuskey chose Austen because the semester-long class gives the group time to read all six novels. Austen is familiar to the students, plus she is an excellent choice, McCuskey says. She's mean, vicious, witty, ironic and a lot of fun to talk about, he says. The students analyze Austen's novels from a Marxist, feminist and New Historicist point of view. A Marxist critic approaches the novel explaining and the social class system of the19th century. The feminist's point of view examines how women are featured in the novel. In Persuasion, McCuskey's students describe examples of women as passive, mentioned in regard to their husbands but expected to leap into action if there is an emergency. Finally, the New Historicist side examines the political angle, such as the effects of war on the society. "In class, we discuss both the advantages and the limitations of these theories, and the ultimate goal is for students to develop their own critical approaches to literature," McCuskey says. McCuskey aims to have his students walk out of his class feeling comfortable with British literature. He wants the students to be open-minded, literary critics. Aside from teaching, McCuskey continues to research the 19th century. Last summer McCuskey spent time in England. Most often then not, McCuskey finds himself in England for work-related purposes. He has done research in the British Library in London. It has the greatest books in the world, according to McCuskey. "I have along way to go to understanding 19th century culture," McCuskey says. "The more I learn, the more I realize how much there is to learn. I'm very good at making the things I read connect to the things I already know." From the vast pool of 19th-century culture, McCuskey has focused on servants and their roles. His dissertation on 19th-century servants won the C.D. Thorpe Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in the department of English at the University of Michigan in 1995. McCuskey notes that privacy was important to 19th-century, middle class families. In order to be ranked middle class, it was necessary to have servants, he says. "The imaginative games the families played to maintain this idea that their home was a private space were very weird. Of course their houses were never really private, there were always intruders in the form of these servants," McCuskey explains. In one extreme case, rich people had their servants turn and face the wall when they walked by. That way they could pretend the servant wasn't there, McCuskey says. Other rules 19th-century servants likely would have to abide by were not to speak unless spoken to, to be as quiet as possible with their physical movements and to be in specific parts of the house at designated times. For instance, a servant would be expected to clean the grates in the fireplace in the parlor, at 1 p.m. The master of the house always planned to be somewhere else in the house to maintain the illusion that servants were not there, McCuskey says. According to McCuskey, the servants were also supposed to look immaculate by wearing white gloves and a white apron, even though they were doing all the cleaning. McCuskey's knowledge and expertise led him to London to be the invited
lecturer for the University of North Carolina Honors Program last summer.
He lectured on the occult and imperialism in the 19th century. |
Archived Months:
September
1998 |
||