The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

“When Carlota peered into books […] magic lands of make-believe spread before her eyes. England, Spain, Italy, London, Berlin, and Marseille. They seemed like made-up names to her.”

Carlota’s obsession with books emphasizes the isolation of her childhood within Yaxaktun, where she learned very little about the world outside her estate. The sheltered nature of her life establishes the trajectory of her character arc from innocence to experience—one of the novel’s central themes. The estate functions as a parallel to the island in Wells’s novel The Island of Doctor Moreau. It also serves to center Mexico as the place that is most real to Carlota, with European countries existing largely as fictional and even fantastical places. This description inverts the traditional Eurocentric perspective of Western literature and culture.

“Mexico was constantly buffeted by conquering forces and internal strife. Moreau was but another European man who’d arrived with a bit of capital and great ambition.”

This quotation provides context for Moreau’s experiences in Mexico, and for the novel’s historical and geo-political context. It’s significant that Moreau is European, and not Mexican; his cultural background reflects his sense of entitlement and belief that he should be able to pursue his research without any constraints. It also reflects the way that he views the hybrids and even Carlota as fundamentally lesser. Because Mexico is a colonized country, Moreau is able to obtain and wield significant power as a European man, a power he largely misuses, exerting that