The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

Doctor Moreau owns an elegant and expensive French clock that he displays in his sitting room at Yaxaktun. The clock is ornate and decorative, featuring “a courting scene, showing a man in French livery […] kissing the hand of a woman” (16-17). Because of its overall design and ornamentation, the clock stands out as an unusual artifact. Eventually, when Eduardo proposes that Carlota become his mistress (and not his wife), he and Carlota get into an argument, and the clock ends up falling and breaking. The clock symbolizes Carlota’s ingrained expectations of courtly and romantic behavior from men—a key characteristic of her innocence that falls away with experience. Because Carlota grows up in such a sheltered environment, she only ever knows her father and Montgomery, both of whom treat her in guarded and careful ways. Carlota dreamily cultivates fantasies of her masculine ideal; the clock’s depiction of a man treating a woman in a courtly way explicitly feeds these fantasies.

The breaking of the clock symbolizes the end of Carlota’s illusions and innocence. When she first meets Eduardo, Carlota imagines that he might be the romantic hero of her dreams. Carlota acknowledges these youthful fantasies, reflecting that “the beautiful courting scene [the clock] showed had entranced her young eyes” (257).