Vathek

Content Warning: This section references child murder, racist stereotypes, and misogyny.

“Being much addicted to women and the pleasures of the table, he sought by his affability, to produce agreeable companions; and he succeeded the better as his generosity was unbounded and his indulgences unrestrained: for he did not think, with the Caliph Omar Ben Abdalaziz that it was necessary to make a hell of this world to enjoy paradise in the next.”

This is the key to Vathek’s character and establishes The Dangers of Excess. Even before his fall from faith begins in earnest, he spends his time not on religious matters but on enjoyments and pleasures. Even his generosity is in pursuit of self-satisfaction, bringing pleasant people and company to Vathek.

“This menace was accompanied by one of the Caliph’s angry and perilous glances, which the Stranger sustained without the slightest emotion; although his eyes were fixed on the terrible eye of the Prince.”

This is the first appearance of Vathek’s “terrible eye,” which frightens his enemies into submission. The episode suggests both Vathek’s resistance to self-reflection and the Stranger’s power. Most people are devastated by Vathek’s glare; the Stranger shows his supernatural origins through his nonreaction.

“Carathis, apprehensive of leaving Vathek to himself, had him put to bed; and, seating herself by him, endeavoured by her conversation to appease and compose him. Nor could any one have attempted it with better success; for the Caliph not only loved her as a mother, but respected her as a person of superior genius. It was she who had induced him, being a Greek herself, to adopt the sciences and systems of her country which all good Mussulmans hold in such thorough abhorrence.”

Carathis’s introduction establishes all the major facets of her character. She is solicitous of her son, eloquent and persuasive, and unequivocally tied to dark arts. The directness of this introduction also exposes a facet of her character, as Carathis acts directly and usually without pretense. By “the sciences and systems of her country,” Beckford seems to refer not to classical knowledge (which was in any case widely studied throughout the Muslim world), but rather to the dark arts, associating these with Greece in an example of Orientalism.