The Doyles of High Place believe in eugenics, a pseudoscience with the goal of genetically improving the human species by promoting certain traits through selective breeding. It should come as no surprise to readers that this field of study has been discredited as unscientific and racially biased. The Doyles, however, believe that a person’s nature is determined at birth, and that their actions in life will always be in accordance with their nature. Furthermore, they believe themselves to be genetically superior to those around them, particularly the local Mexicans. Yet, these beliefs are regularly undermined over the course of the novel. Though Virgil claims that criminals have distinctly recognizable facial characteristics, none of these eugenics experts are able to recognize Ruth’s potential for violence before she begins shooting her family. Additionally, Francis’s decision to side with Noemí to fight against his family, and his ability to survive outside of High Place, indicate that the Doyles’ beliefs about predetermined natures are wrong, too. Surely if Francis’s nature was to be a docile servant of Howard, Noemí wouldn’t have been able to change that. But the book posits an alternate theory: that love overrides any predetermined, inherited, or learned behavior. Francis initially tells Noemí that the Doyles are incapable of love and that it’s against their nature. And yet, when Noemí learns the truth about High Place, she asks Francis why she should trust him. He responds that he can no longer pretend everything is fine; Noemí has changed him, and he can’t overlook his family’s wrongdoing anymore. The novel thus implies that love is capable of remaking a person’s nature into something kinder.
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Nature vs. Love Quotes in Mexican Gothic
“What are your thoughts on the intermingling of superior and inferior types?” he asked, ignoring her discomfort.
Noemi felt the eyes of all the family members on her. Her presence was a novelty and an alteration to their patterns. An organism introduced into a sterile environment. They waited to hear what she revealed and to analyze her words. Well, let them see that she could keep her cool.
It was the kind of thing she imagined impressing her cousin: an old house atop a hill, with mist and moonlight, like an etching out of a Gothic novel. Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, those were Catalina’s sort of books.
“I have seen the world, and in seeing it I’ve noticed people seem bound to their vices. Take a walk around any tenement and you’ll see the same sort of faces, the same sort of expressions on those faces, and the same sort of people. You can’t remove whatever taint they carry with hygiene campaigns. There are fit and unfit people.”
Catalina had told her she expected more. True romance, she said. True feelings. Her cousin had never quite lost that young-girl wonder of the world, her imagination crowded with visions of women greeting passionate lovers by moonlight[…] Noemí wondered if High Place had robbed her of her illusions, or if they were meant to be shattered all along. Marriage could hardly be like the passionate romances one read about in books.
“When I was younger, I thought the world outside held such promise and wonders. I even went away for a bit and met a dashing young man. I thought he’d take me away, that he would change everything, change me,” Florence said, her face softened for the briefest moment. “But there’s no denying our natures. I was meant to live and die in High Place. Let Francis be. He’s accepted his lot in this life. It’s easier this way.”
“It’s the house,” Francis murmured[…] “It wasn’t made for love, the house.”
“Any place is made for love,” she protested.
“Not this place and not us. You look back two, three generations, as far as you can. You won’t find love. We are incapable of such a thing.”
His fingers curled around the intricate iron bars, and he stood there, for a second, looking at the ground, before he opened the gate for her.
“There’s a cicada fungus. Massospora cicadina. I remember reading a journal article which discussed its appearance: the fungus sprouts along the abdomen of the cicada. It turns it into a mass of yellow powder. The journal said the cicadas, which had been so grossly infected, were still ‘singing,’ as their body was consumed from within. Singing, calling for a mate, half-dead. Can you imagine?” Francis said. “You’re right, I do have a choice. I’m not going to end my life singing a tune, pretending everything is fine.”
The future, she thought, could not be predicted, and the shape of things could not be divined. To think otherwise was absurd. But they were young that morning, and they could cling to hope. Hope that the world could be remade, kinder and sweeter. So she kissed him a second time, for luck. When he looked at her again his face was filled with such an extraordinary gladness, and the third time she kissed him it was for love.
