THE QUESTION OF HEREDITY

A science which could master disorder and provide a master narrative of disorder: this, it is often said, was a naive dream of Zola's naturalism. The discussion below will question the adequacy of that conception, but certainly in the eyes of many scientific ‘experts’ at the time, medicine had to be defined and guarded against an art which was obsessed with, but unqualified for, the representation of degeneration and pathological sexuality. Science in general, it appeared, was threatened by fictions which were themselves prurient and degenerate. The ‘obscenity’ of a Zola or an Ibsen was in part the refusal to respect the ‘proper’ spheres and borders of art. Science, it was insisted, had to be jealously defended against the encroachment of naturalist authors and the laconic proclamations of self-styled ‘decadents’.

An important aspect of the scandal of a late-nineteenth century novel like Against Nature (A Rebours, 1884) by Joris-Karl Huysmans, was the pleasure taken in the narrative of decomposition, the disintegration of bodies and families. Here, it seemed, was nothing less than the novel's love affair with degeneration.