From Hell
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- For the 2001 film interpretation, see From Hell (film). For the original letter, see From Hell letter.
From Hell is a graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell speculating upon the identity and motives of Jack the Ripper. The title is taken from the first words of the "From Hell" letter, which some authorities believe was an authentic message sent from the killer in 1888. The work is dense, multilayered and immensely detailed; the collected edition is about 572 pages long.
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[edit] About the book
From Hell was originally published in serial form in Taboo, an anthology comic book published by Steve Bissette's SpiderBaby Press. Taboo only lasted a handful of issues before cancellation, making Moore and Campbell take the series to be published by Tundra Publishing and Kitchen Sink Press between 1991 and 1996. The series was published in 10 volumes and an appendix, From Hell: The Dance of the Gull-Catchers, was published in 1998. The entire series was collected in a trade paperback and published by Eddie Campbell Comics in 1999; trade paperback and hardcover versions are now published by Top Shelf Productions in the USA and Knockabout Comics in the UK.
From Hell takes as its premise Stephen Knight's theory that the murders were part of a conspiracy to conceal the birth of an illegitimate royal baby fathered by Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. Knight's theories have been described as "a good fictional read" whose "conclusions have been disproved numerous times" [1]; see Jack the Ripper royal conspiracy theories for further information.
In an appendix added to the collected From Hell, Moore writes that he did not accept Knight's theory at face value (and he echoed the then-growing consensus that such claims were likely hoaxes), but considered it an interesting starting point for his own fictional examination of the Ripper murders, their era and impact.
While From Hell is admittedly fiction, Moore and Campbell conducted significant research to ensure plausibility and verisimilitude. The collected From Hell features over forty pages of page-by-page notes and references, indicating which scenes are based wholly on Moore's own imagination and which are based upon specific named sources. Moore's opinions on the reliability of those references are also listed, which often disagree quite dramatically with experts on the Ripper case and history.
The Hughes Brothers adapted From Hell into a motion picture, released in 2001 and starring Johnny Depp, Heather Graham and Ian Holm; see From Hell (film).
[edit] Plot overview
The Duke of Clarence fathers a child with Annie Crook, a shop worker from the East End of London. Queen Victoria employs royal physician Sir William Withey Gull to kill those with knowledge of the child. The victims are Crook's friends, prostitutes who've attempted blackmail to obtain money to pay a thug's demanded extortion.
Gull, a highranking Freemason, justifies the brutal murders by claiming they are a Masonic warning to an apparent Illuminati threat to the throne. (Historically, the Illuminati were blamed, in some quarters, for the French Revolution.) Secretly, however, the killings are part of an elaborate mystical ritual to ensure male societal dominance over women (see "Interpretations" below).
The story also serves as an in-depth character study of Gull; exploring his personal philosophy and motivation, and making sense of his dual role as royal assassin and serial killer. This study is largely fictional, and admittedly speculative - for example, the real-life Gull suffered a stroke; Moore fictionalizes this event as a theophany, with Gull seeing "Jahbulon," a mystical Freemasonic figure, fundamentally altering Gull's world view and indirectly leading to the murders.
Gull takes John Netley, his coachman, sole confidant, and reluctant aide, on a tour of London landmarks (such as Cleopatra's Needle and Nicholas Hawksmoor's churches), expounding about their hidden mystical significance, which is lost to the modern world. (Moore credits Iain Sinclair with inspiring much of this portion of From Hell.) Gull forces the semi-literate Netley to write the infamous "From Hell letter" which lends the work its title.
Gull has a number of transcendent, mystical experiences in the course of the murders, culminating with a vivid vision of what London will be like a century after he kills Mary Jane Kelly.
Gull is tried by a secret Freemasonic council, which determines he is insane. A phony funeral is staged, and Gull is imprisoned under a pseudonym. Moments before his death, Gull has an extended mystical experience, where his spirit travels through time, instigating or inspiring a number of other killers (Peter Sutcliffe, Ian Brady), and serves as the model for William Blake's "The Ghost of a Flea." The last thing his spirit sees before (it) 'becomes God' is a view of Mary Jane Kelly herself, the one person on earth able to see him, with children named after her friends whom he killed, including both who he killed in her place.
Inspector Frederick Abberline investigates the Ripper crimes, but resigns from the Metropolitan Police, protesting the official coverup of the murders. One critic noted that From Hell might be seen as a "police procedural as it follows Scotland Yard's Inspector Abberline through the case".[2]
Cameo appearances are made by such luminaries as Oscar Wilde, Aleister Crowley, William Butler Yeats, James Hinton, Joseph Merrick (known as "The Elephant Man"), and members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show including Black Elk.
According to his notes in his appendix, Moore was somewhat inconsistent with how "historically accurate" the events within the graphic novels are. On one hand, he revealed that he had actually written an entire scene where Abberline gets into an argument with Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley; he rewrote it after research revealed that Buffalo Bill had left England by the time of the murders. On the other hand, again according to his own notes, he had William Morris appear in London on the night of one of the murders, although historical records show he was out of town that night. Morris, however, does not interact with any of the characters, but is simply seen reading his poem "Love Is Enough", while Gull murders Elizabeth Stride in the alley below.
[edit] Interpretations
Although, as mentioned above, Moore does not subscribe to the whole "Royal/Masonic Conspiracy" theory of Jack the Ripper's identity and motives, this fictional approach did allow him to pursue his own societal critique of London at the time of the murders.
It is undeniable that Moore and Campbell use From Hell to severely criticize the Victorian Era and its inequalities. In one chapter, the lifestyles of the wealthy Dr. Gull and the poverty-stricken victim, Polly Nichols, are brutally contrasted and compared. During another murder, scenes from the killing are interspersed with scenes from a nearby meeting of a socialist club, addressed by William Morris, where a portrait of Karl Marx comes to dominate the scene. In his appendix, Moore sardonically expresses regret that England never had a bloody revolution as France did.
In the comic, Gull makes speculations on the subjugation of women as he prepares for the murders. Moore cites writers such as Marilyn French and Robert Graves, who argue (as the fictional Gull does) that women held both political and religious power prior to the rise of patriarchal religions such as Christianity. Such themes have become more prominent in recent years, as in the best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code. Nonetheless, Moore depicts Gull as a misogynist who opposes women's suffrage, along with other progressive movements of his time. In fact, in his visions, Gull believes himself to be performing an occult ritual to 'keep women in their place.'
In a brief appendix, "Dance of the Gull Catchers," Moore reports that he had been drawn into and even obsessed with the particulars of the Ripper crimes. The Ripperologists—or "Gull Catchers" as he refers to them—are depicted as slightly unhinged men running about with large butterfly nets, chasing details and connections, however tenuous. Initially, Moore observes them from a distance, but eventually—while researching and writing From Hell—he joins them. "Dance of the Gull Catchers" also serves as an effective overview of Ripperology through the mid-1990s, detailing the many claims, counterclaims and scandals associated with the subject, and serves to detail Moore's views on the likelihood - or rather, the near-impossibility - of identifying the true culprit.
Moore compares the multitude of increasingly outlandish Ripper theories to a Koch snowflake, where a finite, fixed location, event and era (London, in late 1888) can have an infinite number of nooks and crannies.
Perhaps the most elaborate theme in From Hell stems from Moore's statement[3] that "the Ripper murders — happening when they did and where they did — were almost like an apocalyptic summary of... that entire Victorian age. Also, they prefigure a lot of the horrors of the 20th century." In Moore's reading of the works of contemporary artists including Zola and the post-impressionist painters, the prostitute had become an icon of the working lives of the impoverished and disenfranchised. He notes that the 1880s saw the Mahdi uprisings, the first time the Western world had to face militant Islamic fundamentalism; physicists were beginning to make discoveries that would pave the way to the atomic bomb; and the growth of both Zionism and anti-Semitism. The period of the killings coincides with the conception of Adolf Hitler and the final scene alludes to the outbreak of the Second World War. This theme derives from the writings of C.H. Hinton (whose father James appears as a character) on the architecture of history.
In the comic, the theme is stated by Gull like this: "It is beginning...only just beginning. For better or worse, the twentieth century. I have delivered it." He says this after a vision of 1990s England.
Much of the metaphysical speculation in From Hell can be attributed to Moore's embrace of gnosticism, which takes a more central role in his other work, most notably his comic series Promethea.
[edit] Awards
The comic series was a top vote getter for the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for Favorite Limited Series for 1997, and the collected edition won their Award for Favorite Reprint Graphic Album in 2000.
[edit] References
- ^ Casebook: Jack The Ripper : The Final Solution
- ^ Holman, Curt. Salon Books | From Hell October 26, 1999
- ^ Groth, Gary. Last Big Words - Alan Moore on "Marvelman," "From Hell," "A Small Killing," and being published. The Comics Journal 140, February 1991.
