From the Plant of Life to the Throat of Death: Freakish Flora and Masculine Forms in Fin de Siècle Lost World Novels

Abstract

This article explores the representation of “plant horror” in fin de siècle “lost world” novels, from hideously dynamic carnivorous trees to mysterious plant-based drugs with the power to send their victims into torpid apathy. Such freakish flora can contribute to new understandings of the imperial romance novel, specifically in relation to its depiction of threatened masculinities. Combining modern ecocritical research into plant horror with readings of the imperial gothic, this article sheds new light on both fields by challenging the common assumption that both genres often associate the uncanny with moments of accelerated violence. Rather, I argue that these texts are instead most interested in questions of lassitude and stasis, and in problematizing the ideologies of conquest and control that animated British imperialism. Nuancing the ecophobia that is often identified with moments of plant horror, this article interprets nature not as phobic object but as sublimated metaphor for a specifically gendered anxiety. Encounters with the monstrous vegetal serve as an unsettling reminder that male bodies were ultimately disposable, controllable, and replaceable within the flawed economies of Victorian imperialism.