I have been trying to sort out the relationship between human nature and animal nature in Elsie Venner. The story seems to be driven by a fear that animal nature can contaminate human nature. I came back to the term contamination even after reaching the end of the novel, in which the doctor explains his theory that Elsie’s snake-nature has existed separately, in a parasitical relationship to her human nature. (Thinking back to an earlier scene in the novel, this image is suggested by the tree branch choked by a parasitic vine, which Dick finds in Elsie’s bedroom.) The final explanation strikes me as almost too neat, as it assumes that the distinction between human and animal nature is as readily apparent as human/animal physical characteristics. I don’t think that contamination is explicitly mentioned in Elsie Venner, but this term seems to define the interaction between human and animal nature more adequately than parasitism. Although Elsie always retains a more or less human form, her supposedly “true” human nature is so affected by / contaminated by her animal nature that she seems to exist somewhere between the two. The curious admixture provokes apprehensions, impressions, and physical responses to Elsie Venner: her family and acquaintances becomes nervous and perspire; they feel they must look at Elsie; they seem to lose their willpower. The physical evidence of contamination is vague and, perhaps, suggestive more in aggregate than in isolation—a tendency to wear necklaces and striped clothing and to avoid company, eyes that look “cold.” Holmes more and more overt, dwelling on Elsie’s sinuous curves, her love of dancing with rattle-like castanets, the tingling bite-marks on Dick’s arm, etc, but the more straightforward the descriptions becomes, the more apparent it becomes that there is no straightforward way to separate human and animal nature in Elsie. Up until the final moments of her life, at least, she isn’t both—she’s neither.
The characters most harmed by Elsie’s animal nature—Dudley Venner, Helen Darley, Dick Venner—seem to classify her as essentially human, which makes them more vulnerable to Elsie. Bernard Langdon’s classification seems to be more consciously undertaken, and even contradictory. Consider, for example, his changing descriptions of Elsie’s hair. Emerging from his first brush with death, Langdon watches Elsie walking on the path ahead of him and is struck by how similar her braid looks to a snake. Later, though, in a letter to an old friend, he compares her hair to a brook. Since Langdon has never seen Elsie’s hair unbraided, the second comparison, even more than the first, is an imaginative act. Langdon visualizes Elsie hair as unbraided, imposing a more human (or less animalistic, at least) Elsie over the mythical animal-Elsie with snakes for hair. This corresponds with the humanizing effects Langdon has on Elsie herself. Dick’s suspicions of Elsie’s feelings are confirmed by her blushing when he mentions Langdon, and Elsie even shows her feelings by leaving a flower in Langdon’s Plato, as other schoolgirls have been known to do. (Interestingly, Elsie’s choice of flower actually aligns her more with masculinity, emphasized by Langdon’s observation that young Swiss men climb mountains to obtain edelweiss for their beloveds.) It would seem then, that because Langdon draws out Elsie’s more human qualities, he can exercise power over her—power of the kind that a handsome young man might have over any smitten woman.
This doesn’t account for the way his power plays out in practice, though. At the widow’s tea party, Langdon essentially wills Elsie not to disturb Letty, the reverend’s granddaughter. “He turned toward Elsie and looked at her in such a way as to draw her eyes upon him. Then he looked steadily and calmly into them. It was a great effort, for some perfectly inexplicable reason. . .Presently she changed color slightly,--lifted her head, which was inclined a little to one side…and turned away baffled, and shamed, as it would seem, and shorn for the time of her singular and formidable or at least evil-natured power of swaying the impulses of those around her” (310). When he controls Elsie, Langdon actually seems to control her animal nature rather than appealing to her human nature. If Langdon were trying to control a normal girl, he might pull her aside to talk to her or simply shake his head. Instead, Langdon seems to be behaving more like a snake charmer. His exertion of force over Elsie is reminiscent of Elsie's display of power over the rattlesnake that tries to attack Langdon earlier in the novel. Langdon coopts Elsie’s technique, but it isn’t clear to me whether this hypnosis or charming is the same in both cases. Elsie’s eyes are the primary evidence of her animal nature, while Bernard uses both his eyes and his will—the “great effort” in the quote above. Is human willpower qualitatively different from but effectively identical to animal magnetism? Langdon’s hypnosis humanizes Elsie—she is “baffled” and then, more significantly, “shamed”—but seemingly without agency. All of which seems to lead to the reductive conclusion that a charmed snake is a more human snake. Or: Langdon makes Elsie act like a woman by treating her like a snake. (It’s also striking that Elsie, the least typically feminine woman in the novel, is re-feminized by her silence, which is associated with her animal nature but also implies a certain passivity.)
Langdon’s pattern of behavior also holds good in later scenes. Despite the fact that Langdon always of course refers to Elsie as a girl, he tells the doctor that her coldness (animal contamination) would prevent him from ever loving her. When Elsie actually asks Langdon to love her, then, it seems to me that she’s asking him to classify her as human. Langdon’s pity for Elsie makes his offer of friendship a condescending one—not a relationship among equals. The relationship between human and animal nature plays out in Elsie’s protracted death from the fever that is not really a fever. Particularly in this last section of the novel, Elsie seems to have some agency in determining which side of her mixed nature will predominate. In the scene with Langdon, for example, she seems to be somehow consolidating her humanity against her animal nature. In her longest line of dialogue up until that point in the story, she says, “They tell me that my eyes have a strange power…”—separating her self from her eyes, whose mixed nature has baffled so many people. What effect does Langdon’s rejection have? It seems to either force or convince Elsie to give up on ever being fully human. Having no desire to live, she behaves like a snake in hibernation—she refuses food and becomes curiously cool to the touch. The final push seems to come from Langdon’s gift of white ash. Fascinatingly, the plant is not chosen consciously, but it’s difficult not to fault Langdon for, again, treating Elsie like a snake. Assuming some sub-conscious awareness of the effects of white ash—we might think of Langdon’s gift as a covert attempt to save her from herself, or from that part of herself which contaminates her humanity. This seems like too generous a reading of Langdon, though: Elsie is part snake, and the white ash, by killing her snake-nature, and her already-weak human nature (thanks, Langdon!) collapses.
I’m not sure how to conclude this other than by pointing out that, if we accept that Elsie’s nature is a mixture of human and animal—or, to put in terms more appropriate to the novel’s ethos, human nature contaminated by animal—then Langdon, who acts on both sides of Elsie’s nature, takes more of her true self (not the “true nature” alluded to in the novel) into account than the other characters seem to do. Is it Elsie’s snake-nature, or Langdon’s de-humanizing scientific “objectivity,” that seals Elsie’s fate?
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