61 pages • 2 hours read
Robert W. ChambersThe King in Yellow
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1895A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The King in Yellow
Content Warning: This section of the guide quotes outdated and offensive language around mental health conditions and suicide as well as discussing stigmatizing attitudes toward mental health.
The King in Yellow is a fictional play read by several characters in the stories. This play (and the images associated with it) is the most prominent motif in the first half of the book. A rumor is embedded in the first story: that anyone who reads it is driven “mad” by the experience. The exact content of the play is left vague and mysterious: The play is only partly revealed through quotations and references made by the characters.
The first detailed description of the play comes from Castaigne in “The Repairer of Reputations,” who says:
for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow (3).
In addition, “The Yellow Sign” offers some clues as to how reading the play might drive someone into an extreme mental state. Mr. Scott laments the “wickedness” of the soul who would write such a thing, to “fascinate and paralyze human creatures with such words,—words understood by the ignorant and wise alike, words which are more precious than jewels, more soothing music, more awful than death!” (68).
The epigraph that opens the book, and the epigraph in “The Mask” offer “excerpts” from the play, which introduce images embedded into the stories that follow. Cassilda and Camilla are characters in the play and there is a frightening person or a thing called The Pallid Mask, as well as the King in Yellow himself, who is the terrifying ruler of Carcosa. There is also the symbol of the “yellow sign,” which is gifted to Mr. Scott on a piece of onyx in the story of the same name. This yellow sign is a warning of the King in Yellow’s approach, or a symbol of his power. But is clearly dangerous to those who should not have it.
Chambers’s invention of the fictional play The King in Yellow informs his creation of horror. As a concept, it explores the nature of literature as an influence on the mind, the potential contagion of fear or mental disorder from work to reader, and the role of art and/or genius as a vehicle for moral influence, good or bad. The invention of a rumor that reading The King in Yellow causes mental health conditions not only creates suspense and mystery in relation to the characters who engage with it but brings a sense of jeopardy to the act of reading, in which Chambers’s readers are by definition engaged. In composing excerpts, Chambers is forcing his readers into proximity with a work which, his stories say, can cause “madness.” The patterning of the play, its characters, and motifs construct a sense of heightened significance and strangeness, leaning into the horror genre’s use of the uncanny, suspense, and unsettling unpredictability.
Christianity and Catholicism
Images and references to Christian faith and Catholicism occur in many of the stories in The King in Yellow. Several of the characters are Catholic, either by explicit statements or by the implication of their actions and surroundings. In “The Yellow Sign,” Mr. Scott says explicitly: “I am Catholic. When I listen to the high mass, when I sign myself, I feel that everything, including myself, is more cheerful, and when I confess, it does me good” (60). He also mentions that Sylvia, his lost or dead love, is also Catholic. The unnamed protagonist from “In the Court of the Dragon,” is also Catholic. This is clear because he is attending Mass. In other stories, there are other mentions of faith and Catholicism, such as here several mentions of priests, the Jesuit school or convent in “The Street of Our Lady of the Fields,” not to mention the Reverend Byram, and Jeanne in “Demoiselle d’Ys,” who is shown praying on a few occasions (in the 16th century, she would be Catholic).
Chambers and his family were American Protestants, as were most wealthy white American at the time. In introducing Catholicism as a major symbol, Chambers is leaning into his French settings and signaling the strangeness and difference of France to his American audience. Using the “old” religion and its connotations in 1890s America with the deep past, elements of the supernatural, wealth and decadence, and the gothic, Chambers uses Catholicism to create a world where the familiar and the unfamiliar can be combined.
This motif of Christianity and Catholicism is also one of several key elements of the theme of Decadence and Moral Decay throughout the book. The motif is often used as a juxtaposition to the “modern” dissipation and worldliness of the fin de siècle and to present an alternative or lost way of life. Playing into the horror genre, religion, priests, and churches in these stories yield little protection for the sinful or hypocritical, and the inclusion of these traditionally reassuring elements without a reassuring outcome augments the darkness and terror of the characters’ predicaments.
Women
Throughout the book, women are symbols of men’s desire and longing. They are mostly portrayed without agency: They do not have their own motives, histories, or personalities. They are instead merely ciphers—blank figures upon which men can inscribe their own needs, interests, and motives. These women are sources of inspiration, for instance working as models for the many male artists who inhabit these stories. Genevieve in “The Mask,” works as a model for her lover Boris's sculptures, and in an instance of art becoming reality, she turns herself into a literal sculpture by throwing herself into Boris’s chemical solution. The selfless love of Alec appears to bring her back to life. Tessie, in “The Yellow Sign,” also works as an artist’s model for the protagonist, Mr. Scott. Additionally, both women are also objects of desire: Genevieve for Alec, and Tessie for Mr. Scott and are engaged in affairs with them. In the fin de siècle, working as an artists’ model was not a reputable job and was often implicitly conflated with sex work and/or sexual freedoms in the literature of the time.
Many other women in these stories are also objects upon which men cast their longings and desires. For Severn in “The Street of the Four Winds,” both the phantom-like Sylvia of his memories and the real-but-dead Sylvia he finds in the apartment have no voice and no function outside of representing Severn’s longing for the past and may even be imagined by him. Meanwhile, both Valentine and Rue Barrée are defined by their physical beauty and are the objects of sexual desire for most of the men in the Latin Quarter. Clifford does not view either woman as a real person but rather as beautiful figurines to flirt and play with.
Hastings, in his treatment of Valentine as a woman with her own life, worthy of love and respect, is the exception, which is why he wins her in the end. Similarly, Sylvia in “The Street of the First Shell,” is the only woman character who possesses a history and life outside of the male protagonist, which is possibly why her husband, Jack, briefly abandons her. This might be to her benefit, however, as, after he returns to her, it is implied that these two will have a happy ending.
