Small obsessions, or tics, aren’t unusual - turning back to check the front door is locked, or washing your hands for the umpteenth time - but few of us would allow a single fixation to drive us to despair. In literature, obsessives aren’t so lucky. From a man who trades his soul for eternal youth to a jilted bride who becomes marooned inside her past, here are some of the literary monomaniacs who take things too far.
1. Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
It’s easy to become consumed by a single conquest, but Frankenstein takes his ambition one step further. Fascinated by the mystery of life, he thinks of little other than his wish to artificially create a human-like creature. “For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation.” But once the monster opens his “dark, watery eyes”, our scientist realises he has made a grave mistake.
His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath ... his eyes seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set ... the beauty of my dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.
His ambition is replaced by hatred of the monster, which he sees as a loathsome mirror of his life’s work. Alone, unloved and confused - his creation is the true victim of Frankenstein’s warped obsession. And as Frankenstein lies dying at the end of the book, he sees that, while a selfish infatuation drove him to create the monster, it was love, not hate, that would have saved them both.
2. Mrs Danvers in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The second Mrs de Winter is haunted by the presence of her husband’s first wife, Rebecca, with whom housekeeper Mrs Danvers has a malign obsession. “I think it was the expression on her face that gave me my first feeling of unrest. Instinctively I thought, ‘She is comparing me to Rebecca’; and sharp as a sword the shadow came between us.” The depth of Mrs Danvers’s perversion is revealed when she tries to drive the unnamed narrator to commit suicide.
She did not hear me, she went on raving like a madwoman, a fanatic, her long fingers twisting and tearing the black stuff of her dress ... ‘She’s still mistress here, even if she is dead. She’s the real Mrs de Winter, not you ... none of us want you. He doesn’t want you, he never did. It’s you that ought to be lying there in the church crypt, not her. It’s you who ought to be dead, not Mrs de Winter.’
But Mrs Danvers is also haunted by her naive and idealistic view of Rebecca. Unlike many other literary obsessives, we do not see her fixation consume her. The house might go up in flames but we never discover what happens to the housekeeper. “I wonder what she is doing now,” muses the narrator. We can only guess that she continues to run the house, gripped by an overwhelming grief, and never to find peace.
3. Miss Havisham in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Another character glued to her past: Miss Havisham is consumed by despair at being jilted as a young woman, and harbours a lifelong fixation with a traumatic wedding day that never was. Her ghostly appearance is so odd that it terrifies Pip when he first meets her:
She was dressed in rich materials - satins, and lace, and silks - all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table ... I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.
Miss Havisham’s obsession manifests in her adopted daughter Estella, who she teaches to break hearts. But the irony of her predicament is that seeing Estella hurt Pip and others only causes her more pain, as she relives her own heartache. Miss Havisham suffers an operatic ending but at least this ensures that the desolate, dusty scene of her humiliation will not outlive her.
4. Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Obsession is often vengeful: after the white whale bites off his leg, Captain Ahab becomes fixated on hunting him. Few would embark on such a monomaniacal pursuit, but anger clouds his thoughts and, like our other characters, Ahab becomes blinded by his obsession. When he finally finds and harpoons the whale, the line gets looped round his neck, and Ahab is pulled away with it to sea:
The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope’s final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths.
So, yet another obsessive loses their life to a fixation. Captain Ahab is so addicted to hunting the whale that he doesn’t see it for what it is: a futile quest for revenge. The object of his obsession escapes with a harpoon in its side.
5. Dorian Gray in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Youthful looks have ever been revered, but few of us are so obsessed with beauty that we would hand over our soul to buy eternal youth. “I know, now, that when one loses one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything ... Youth is the only thing worth having,” declares Gray after seeing the beautiful portrait Basil Hallward has painted of him.
‘How sad it is!’ murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. ‘How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young ... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that - for that - I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!’
Short-sightedness is a common theme with fictional obsessives. Gray gets his wish. But, like so many others, he is eventually consumed by his fixation. After being driven to despair by his degenerate life, Gray attempts to destroy the painting - which has grown hideous with his sins - but in doing so kills himself.
They found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was.
It seems obsessives are defined by their ability to focus on a single pursuit at the cost of all else. Blinded by pride, revenge and greed, they become bent and corrupted. Though there’s a morality to most of these tales, there’s also a sadness. Perhaps obsessions are just misguided passions: what our characters think will be their salvation, ends up being their downfall.
Share your favourite literary obsessions in the comments below.
— guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News & Media Ltd, 2016
