Struggle with the goddess: Alan Moore’s and Eddie Campbell’s “From Hell”

Abstract

Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell tells a version of the story of Jack the Ripper, here identified as William Gull, royal physician to Queen Victoria. Gull is depicted as believing that only by killing prostitutes in a gory ritualistic manner, will he be able to save Whitechapel as well as all of London from a collapse into degeneration, both social and intellectual, which is to be suffered at the hands of the broadly defined female element. In the present article From Hell is shown to be a story of an attempt at constraining and repressing the feminine, which for Gull is responsible for the progressing decrepitude. It is here argued that the desire to stifle the female represents an attempt to root out the creative impulse in favour of tyranny of reason, which Gull derives from a conserv-ative world view that regards tradition as a collection of beliefs impervious to change or challenge.