THE TASTE OF BLOOD’: SANGUINARY ECONOMICS IN THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU

Abstract

H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) has long been recognised as a particularly bloody romance. Yet criticism has yet to explore this blood’s functions. This article argues against early reviewers’ objections that Wells’s use of the motif of blood in Moreau is excessive and artless. Rather, it contends that Wells’s deployment of the substance is carefully planned. Wells’s romance engages contemporary debates about free trade and protectionism, juxtaposing the pro-free trade motif of free trade as the circulation of blood against the competing protectionist motif of free trade as vampirism. Wells interrogates the problematics and justifications of both discourses, while simultaneously suggesting the impossibility of economic healthiness under either system.