The Evil Eye (1830 short fiction)

"The Evil Eye" is a piece of short fiction written my Mary Shelley and published in The Keepsake for 1830. The tale is set in Greece and is about a man known as Dmitri of the Evil Eye. Dmitri's wife was murdered and his daughter abducted many years before the story begins. Dmitri's friend Katusthius Ziani enlists him to help recover his rightful inheritance, and during their journey they abduct a boy whom Dmitri discovers to be his grandson.

Summary

The tale centres on a man known as Dmitri of the Evil Eye, an Albanian Moreot who lives in Yannina, Greece. Many years before the story begins, Dmitri's wife was murdered and his daughter kidnapped my Mainotes while he is away from home. Dmitri searched for his daughter for three years before giving up hope, and his grief and anger transformed his features and character such that he is rumoured to possess the power of the Evil Eye. When the story begins, Dmitri's friend and sworn brother Katusthius Ziani visits Dmitri to ask for help recovering his father's fortune. Katusthius had joined a crew of Barbary corsairs after they boarded his merchant ship, and after leaving them had wandered through Europe before returning to his father's home in Constantinople. When he returned, he discovered that his father, thinking him dead, had willed all of his fortune to another son, Cyril. When Cyril discovered that he had a half brother, he shared the inheritance with Katusthius, but he was determined to regain it all. He asks Dmitri to help him in this mission. Ziani visits Cyril and asks him and his wife, Zella, to accompany him to Naples to see him off on a long journey. While they are away from home, Dmitri kidnaps their young son, Constans. Cyril is enraged when he finds out and goes in search of his son. He discovers that Dmitri is the man responsible, and that Ziani is involved as well. He enlists his father-in-law, Camaraz, to help him find Constans, and leaves Zella at home mourning her son and fearing for her husband's life. Dmitri becomes attached to Constans during their travels, but Ziani is suspicious and resentful of this attachment. One night, while Dmitri is sleeping, Ziani takes the boy and conceals him in a nearby monastery, and enlists the monks to protect him from Dmitri. Dmitri is furious at his friend's betrayal and attacks the monastery in order to retrieve Constans. As he and Constans escape through the mountains, he encounters Ziani and his party of men. They are accosted by Cyril and Camaraz, who have been tracking the kidnappers. Camaraz declares himself a Mainote and the grandfather of the abducted boy, and Dmitri's feelings of affection transform instantly to revulsion. He threatens to kill Constans, but before he is able to, Camaraz explains that his daughter is a Moreot who was herself kidnapped as a young girl. Dmitri realizes that Constans is the son of his lost daughter, Zella, and returns home with Cyril to be reunited with her and his newfound grandson.

Publication History

"The Evil Eye" was first published in The Keepsake for 1830, a British literary annual. It was accompanied by an illustration entitled Zella, which was painted by Henry Corbould and engraved by Charles Heath. It has since appeared in one collection of Shelley's work and of supernatural stories, but is not widely read or studied.

Themes and Influences

"The Evil Eye" is one of several tales Shelley published in The Keepsake. Others include "Ferdinando Eboli" (1829), "Transformation" (1831), "The Invisible Girl" (1832), "The Dream" (1833), and "The Mortal Immortal" (1834).

"The Evil Eye" employs many motifs common in Gothic fiction, including abduction, revenge, and the curse of the Evil Eye. The tale displays the aesthetics of Romantic Orientalism, and can be categorized as an Oriental tale alongside William Beckford's novel Vathek (1786), Lord Byron's poems The Giaour and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–1818), Thomas Hope's Anastasius (1819), and Prosper Mérimée's La Guzla (1827). Unlike other Gothic tales by Shelley, such as "Transformation" and "The Mortal Immortal," and her Gothic novel Frankenstein, "The Evil Eye" does not involve supernatural phenomena.

The tale may have been inspired by La Guzla, which Shelley reviewed in 1829.

"The Evil Eye" is a variation on the Gothic fragment, a form exemplified by Anna Letitia Aiken's "Sir Bertrand: A Fragment" (1773). Although it is now categorized as a short story, that form was not named until the 1880s in Britain. It is more accurately classified as a Gothic tale, a story about an experience of the the strange or supernatural, often narrated in the first or third person.