61 pages • 2 hours read
Robert W. ChambersThe King in Yellow
Robert W. ChambersFiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1895A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Interpretations of Reality
Content Warning: This section of the guide quotes outdated and offensive language around mental health conditions and suicide as well as discussing stigmatizing attitudes toward mental health and suicide.
The first four stories center around the mythos of the fictional play, The King in Yellow, creating a sense of creeping horror and disorientation by blurring what is real and what is not. Neither the protagonists of each story, nor the reader, can always distinguish reality from dream, hallucination, or otherwise extreme mental states. How the various characters may interpret their own experiences becomes a major theme of these stories.
In “The Repairer of Reputations” Castaigne interprets his reality entirely through the lens of the play The King in Yellow, and through willful self-delusion. Having read the play while recovering from a head injury, Castaigne accepts the premise of the play without question, and views every piece of information outside it as either confirmation of his belief, or a conspiracy to thwart it. Despite all evidence to the contrary—Hawberk insisting that Mr. Wilde is dangerous and erratic, Louis seeing a brass costume crown where Castaigne sees priceless jewels; Hawberk and Constance are still alive at the end—Castaigne insists on his version of reality. In his version, he is the rightful king of the Empire of America, and anything contrary to that is an attempt to make him believe that his perception has broken from reality and usurp his throne.
This first story offers no clear division between true reality and the “madness” induced by reading The King in Yellow; the whole narrative is told by Castaigne and must be sifted through the reader’s understanding of his mental state. Since his mental state is only evidenced by his own narrative, this is an exercise in circular logic, an impossible conundrum. Likewise, “In the Court of the Dragon,” makes reality and imagination indistinguishable, as the unnamed first-person narrator sits in a church while simultaneously pursued through the streets by the mysterious organist. Although the narrator eventually rationalizes never left the church, and was not attacked at the gate to his apartment, he does not dismiss it as merely a dream or nightmare: even if the attack occurred only in his mind, that does not mean it did not happen. The recurrence of the organist after the dream has apparently ended breaks into this framing rationalization. Either he is still dreaming or all of his experience his true, or both. This view offers another interpretation of reality which argues that thought and external experience have equally real significance.
Similarly, “The Yellow Sign,” blurs the line between reality and dream. Although the dreams both Tessie and Mr. Scott experience are not literal—Tessie never actually stands at her window watching a funeral procession go by, and Mr. Scott is not actually a body driven away in a hearse—the dreams nevertheless prove true. Mr. Scott insists, at first, that dreams have no bearing on reality beyond echoing the anxieties of the waking. Yet by the end the dreams have become prophetic warnings of their inevitable fates and, possibly, suggestive triggers for the events that followed.
The only story of the four that clearly separates reality from dream or hallucination is “The Mask.” Though Alec experiences the horrifying, erratic mental state induced by reading The King in Yellow, while suffering from fever and illness, he seems able to separate from his experience of reality when he awakens. The fever dreams scare him, and they help him better understand his own feelings of jealousy over Boris and Genevieve, but he alone of the protagonists in these stories resists the urge to interpret his whole reality through this experience. This is also the only story which has a happy ending and positive language and imagery, suggesting that Alec’s self-knowledge and wisdom enables him to navigate the real world and his inner experiences in a moral way.
The fifth story, “The Demoiselle d’Ys,” and those that follow explore the theme of interpretations of reality in more subtle and less frightening ways. In “The Demoiselle d’Ys,” Philip experiences a time-travel love affair that goes unexplained, presenting his narrative as story of the pure supernatural that may be “true,” a dream, or a deliberate fiction. In “The Street of the Four Winds,” the protagonist seems led to Sylvia by memories of another Sylvia who may or may not be the same woman, depending on the reader’s approach to the blend of memory, dream, imagination, and reality in the story. All of the stories have open endings, a pattern which challenges the reader to consider their own role as an interpreter and the story as a presentation of various potential realities.
Decadence and Moral Decay
In keeping with the prevailing attitudes of the fin de siècle, images of decadence and moral decay fill these stories. This theme comes through in several ways, including the setting of the Latin Quarter, and the repeated references to Christianity and Catholicism. In these places, Chambers offers a moralistic view, revealing an attitude of Victorian-era virtue and superiority, despite depicting (and once living) the bohemian lifestyle of the decadent French artist.
The most obvious element of this theme of decadence and moral decay is in the choice of setting. For Chambers and much of his readership, the Latin Quarter would have been an easy short-hand way of invoking an artistic, bohemian lifestyle, with its poverty, excess, heavy drinking, and “loose morals.” These are the kinds of things Reverend Byram imagines when he calls the Latin Quarter a place of “immorality” in “The Street of Our Lady of the Fields.” Clifford also acknowledges this kind of immorality. However, where Reverend Byram views this atmosphere with suspicion and disgust, Clifford rejoices in it. He is a willing participant in it. Hastings, as the protagonist of this story, is rewarded for keeping his innocence and incorruptibility. Meanwhile, both Clifford, and later Selby in “Rue Barrée,” are punished for being corrupted by the decadence and immorality of the Latin Quarter. Thus, the narrative clearly places the pious reverend and the innocent Hastings on the moral high ground. “The Street of the Four Winds,” and “The Street of the First Shell,” also portray the Latin Quarter as a place of decadence and decay. First, we see it in the cavalier attitudes of the American expatriate artists who, despite claiming to be poor and starving, nevertheless appear to eat and live like kings compared to the destitute French citizens around them.
The stories also imply the moral decay of the characters through portrayals of literal death and physical destruction: Sylvia who is dead and decomposing in her bed in “Street of the Four Winds,” and then in the dying soldiers and collapsing city in “Street of the First Shell.” In “Repairer of Reputations,” the official government “lethal chambers” have made suicide legal, a signal of society’s failure in this alternative future America and Mr. Wilde, representative of this society, is physically deformed. In “The Yellow Sign,” the body of the churchyard watchman, with his face like a coffin-worm, and a body that is months’ dead, is the embodiment of literal decay touching and infecting those around him. Death is also the corollary of moral corruption as a punishment, drawing on Christian imagery: Mr. Scott in “The Yellow Sign” and the narrator of “In the Court of the Dragon” are both practicing Christians but suffer hellish deaths apparently linked to their moral failings. Boris takes his own life as a result of his strange scientific experiments (he is “playing God”), in comparison to his friend Alec who survives due to his strong character and is rewarded by the resurrection of his love Genevieve. In this way, the theme is closely linked to the motif of Christianity and Catholicism.
The Recklessness of Desire
A third theme is the way feelings of desire can make people, particularly men in these stories, impulsive and reckless. In most cases, the desire felt is romantic and sexual in nature, though the desire that drives Castaigne in “The Repairer of Reputations” is one for power and revenge. Overall, however, these stories reflect on the kinds of desire that men feel for women, and which can drive them to ill-advised and dangerous actions.
One obvious example is Selby in “Rue Barrée,” who is so driven by his desire for a mysterious woman that he would break into her room in the middle of the night. Not only is this action reckless, but it is also criminal, highly threatening to the woman in question, and potentially violent in nature. Only after Selby catches sight of his own reflection in a mirror does he come to his senses and realize what a horrible and shameful thing he has done. Now, not only has he risked arrest, but he has also destroyed any chance he might have had to earn her attention and affection. To a lesser extent, Clifford’s actions in this story also support this theme. Though he does nothing actively dangerous, he is so overcome with desire for this woman he impulsively proposes marriage to her. As Selby did, he only realizes too late how reckless this is, and is relieved when she refuses him, thus saving him from the consequences of his own lack of control.
Though “Rue Barrée” is the most explicit example, it is far from the only one. Desire leads Clifford to all kinds of immoral decisions in “The Street of Our Lady of the Fields” as well, such as when Valentine rejects him because of his reputation of womanizing and his inability to choose between her and Cecile. In fact, Clifford’s main characteristic is recklessness in the face of overwhelming physical desire, especially for women that he seems to barely know and will move on from shortly.
Similarly, Mr. Scott and Tessie are both overcome with desire for each other, which leads to their downfall and death at the end of “The Yellow Sign.” Though Tessie is also a participant in this relationship, the narrative focuses on Mr. Scott’s point-of-view and his devout Catholicism, which places most of the blame on his shoulders. Tessie is young, inexperienced, and naive; Mr. Scott is older, worldly, and a man without morals, who knows better than to give in to desire for a young woman. And yet, he does so anyway, thus ensuring their corruption and deaths.
Even Jack Trent in “The Street of the First Shell,” is caught up in this. His recklessness comes not from the onslaught of desire itself—he is married to the person of his desire—but rather from jealousy when he realizes that Sylvia has been a person of desire for other men. His reckless decision to leave her very nearly gets him killed and causes him to abandon Sylvia at the worst possible moment for everyone’s safety. It is only through pure luck, apparently a reward for his change of heart, that he finds her alive and unharmed at the end of the story.
It is interesting that the protagonist in “The Mask,” is one of the few exceptions to this theme. Though Alec loves Genevieve, he never succumbs to this desire to do anything dangerous or reckless. He is, in fact, the most level-headed character in the love triangle, despite being struck with illness after reading The King in Yellow. While Genevieve and Boris both give in to despair and kill themselves, Alec stays in control, just as he is the only character who reads the play and keeps his sense of reality. For this restraint, he is rewarded at the end with the object of his affection. The closest parallels to this are Jack Trent in “The Street of the First Shell” and Hastings in “The Street of Our Lady of the Fields,” both of whom are rewarded for their ability to be true to morality and the women they love, even when those women have pasts they must forgive.
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