Absinthe as a Cypher for Decadence and Catalyst of Degeneration in Marie Corelli’s Wormwood: A Drama of Paris
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Martina Allen
Abstract
Marie Corelli’s 1890 novel Wormwood is set in late-nineteenth-century Paris and details the absinthe-fuelled demise of its narrator, the wealthy banker and writer Gaston Beauvais. Gaston is persuaded by the impoverished artistic genius Gessonex to seek solace in a glass of opaline absinthe, thus irrevocably setting in motion the kind of dramatic downward spiral that has since become a familiar script within addiction narratives. While Corelli’s novel has often been read as a Bourgeois critique of the Decadent movement which evoked what Kirsten MacLeod calls a “sensationalized image of Decadence”, this article seeks to show how and why absinthe came to serve as such a powerful cypher for Decadence by tracing key shifts in the consumption patterns and cultural representation of the apéritif. It then illustrates how Wormwood uses the figure of the absintheur to link moral-medical discussions of intoxication and addiction to fears of national decline and post-Darwinist anxieties of degeneration. It also explores Corelli’s critique at the level of narrative and imagery, analysing the symbolism of purity and corruption and the ideological implications of autodiegetic narration. Repeatedly invoking late-nineteenth-century poets and artists, the novel introduces an ambivalence that betrays a covert fascination with decadent subjects even as Corelli critiques the widespread misogyny found in fin-de-siècle high art and literature.
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Late-Victorian Decadence as Mode, Theory and Attitude
- Vernon Lee’s Decadent Vision of History: Waste and Possibility
- Absinthe as a Cypher for Decadence and Catalyst of Degeneration in Marie Corelli’s Wormwood: A Drama of Paris
- Aestheticism and Decadence in the Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Closed Buds of Decadence: Reproductive Idleness in the Poetry of Alice Meynell and Rosamund Marriott Watson
- “All Things to All Men”: Decadence as Represented in Lionel Johnson’s Early Literary Journalism
- Dramatic Adaptations and Worldview Translations: The Implied Metaphysics of Roger Howard’s Margery Kempe. A Ballad Play (1978) and Heidi Schreck’s Creature (2009)
- The Neoliberal Impasse: Economy in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
- Eating the Archive: Food Recipes, Migrant Women, and Decolonizing Multiculturalism in Alibhai-Brown’s The Settler’s Cookbook
- I’m going home, Riv? Yes, Richie. I’m a take you home... African American Homeplaces and Resistance in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
- Reviews
- Sarkowsky, Katja, and Mark U. Stein (eds.). 2021. Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts. Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 262 pp., 14 figures, 5 tables, € 117.70.
- Jens Martin Gurr. 2024. Understanding Public Debates: What Literary Studies Can Do. New York, NY: Routledge, x + 209 pp., £ 145.00/$ 190.00.
- Pamela Buck. 2024. Objects of Liberty: British Women Writers and Revolutionary Souvenirs. Early Modern Feminisms. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 202 pp., 13 colour and 13 b-w images, $ 150.00.
- Naomi Levine. 2024. The Burden of Rhyme: Victorian Poetry, Formalism, and the Feeling of Literary History. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 255 pp., 3 halftones, $27.50.
- Emily Horton. 2024. 21st-Century British Gothic: The Monstrous, Spectral, and Uncanny in Contemporary Fiction. London/New York/Dublin: Bloomsbury Academic, 272 pp., £ 85.00.
- Miles P. Grier. 2023. Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery. Writing the Early Americas. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, xv + 325 pp., 15 illustrations, $ 100.00.
- Allan Hepburn (ed.). 2024. Friendship and the Novel. Montreal/Kingston et al.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 297 pp., $ 110 CAD/€ 143.95.
- Debamitra Kar. 2025. Conflict Zone Literatures: A Genre in the Making. London: Routledge, 196 pp., £ 145.00.
- Pramod K. Nayar. 2024. Vulnerable Earth: The Literature of Climate Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, x + 295 pp., £ 90.00.
- Heather Alberro, Emrah Atasoy, Nora Castle, Rhiannon Firth, and Conrad Scott (eds). 2025. Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown: Entangled Futurities. London: Routledge, 232 pp., £ 145.00/ $ 190.00.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Late-Victorian Decadence as Mode, Theory and Attitude
- Vernon Lee’s Decadent Vision of History: Waste and Possibility
- Absinthe as a Cypher for Decadence and Catalyst of Degeneration in Marie Corelli’s Wormwood: A Drama of Paris
- Aestheticism and Decadence in the Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Closed Buds of Decadence: Reproductive Idleness in the Poetry of Alice Meynell and Rosamund Marriott Watson
- “All Things to All Men”: Decadence as Represented in Lionel Johnson’s Early Literary Journalism
- Dramatic Adaptations and Worldview Translations: The Implied Metaphysics of Roger Howard’s Margery Kempe. A Ballad Play (1978) and Heidi Schreck’s Creature (2009)
- The Neoliberal Impasse: Economy in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
- Eating the Archive: Food Recipes, Migrant Women, and Decolonizing Multiculturalism in Alibhai-Brown’s The Settler’s Cookbook
- I’m going home, Riv? Yes, Richie. I’m a take you home... African American Homeplaces and Resistance in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
- Reviews
- Sarkowsky, Katja, and Mark U. Stein (eds.). 2021. Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts. Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 262 pp., 14 figures, 5 tables, € 117.70.
- Jens Martin Gurr. 2024. Understanding Public Debates: What Literary Studies Can Do. New York, NY: Routledge, x + 209 pp., £ 145.00/$ 190.00.
- Pamela Buck. 2024. Objects of Liberty: British Women Writers and Revolutionary Souvenirs. Early Modern Feminisms. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 202 pp., 13 colour and 13 b-w images, $ 150.00.
- Naomi Levine. 2024. The Burden of Rhyme: Victorian Poetry, Formalism, and the Feeling of Literary History. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 255 pp., 3 halftones, $27.50.
- Emily Horton. 2024. 21st-Century British Gothic: The Monstrous, Spectral, and Uncanny in Contemporary Fiction. London/New York/Dublin: Bloomsbury Academic, 272 pp., £ 85.00.
- Miles P. Grier. 2023. Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery. Writing the Early Americas. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, xv + 325 pp., 15 illustrations, $ 100.00.
- Allan Hepburn (ed.). 2024. Friendship and the Novel. Montreal/Kingston et al.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 297 pp., $ 110 CAD/€ 143.95.
- Debamitra Kar. 2025. Conflict Zone Literatures: A Genre in the Making. London: Routledge, 196 pp., £ 145.00.
- Pramod K. Nayar. 2024. Vulnerable Earth: The Literature of Climate Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, x + 295 pp., £ 90.00.
- Heather Alberro, Emrah Atasoy, Nora Castle, Rhiannon Firth, and Conrad Scott (eds). 2025. Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown: Entangled Futurities. London: Routledge, 232 pp., £ 145.00/ $ 190.00.
