Adaptations and Related Works [edit]
The Underland was adapted as a stage play of the same name in 1932 at the Public Theater in New York City, and revived in 1944 and again in 1959. The 1959 production ended after only three nights, and was the subject of a House Un-American Activities Committee report citing its “hostility to American values, traditional family structures, and commerce.”
The Underland was produced as a feature film in 1983, but never released. A documentary about the filming of the movie, Unearthing Underland, was nominated for an IDA Award in 2000.
In 2003, the song “Nora Lee & Me” was produced as a hidden track on Josh Ritter’s third studio album, Hello Starling. The bluegrass girl group the Common Wealth also cites the book as an influence on their 2008 alt-country album, follow them down.
The book was adapted as a serialized graphic novel in the 2010s.
The Norman Rockwell Museum organized an art exhibition in 2015 titled Starling’s Heirs: A History of Dark Fantasy Illustration, which included works by Rovina Cai, Brom, and Jenna Barton.
Further Reading [edit]
??Mandelo, L. （1996）。 “Beastly Appetites: Queer Monstrosity in E. Starling’s Text.” In The Southern Gothic Critical Reader. Salem Press.
??Liddell, Dr. A. （2016）。 “From Wonderland to Underland: White Femininity and the Politics of Escape.” American Literary History. 24 （3）： 221–234.
??Atwood, N. （2002）。 Gothic Children’s Illustration from Starling to Burton. Houghton Mifflin.
FIVE
I don’t dream of the house that night. I don’t dream at all, actually, which is weird for me; I often wake up with the taste of river water and blood in my mouth, broken glass in my hair, a scream drowning in my chest. But that morning, the first one after I set foot on Starling land, there’s nothing but a deep quiet inside me, like the dead air between radio stations.
The gates of Starling House greet me with their empty iron eyes. My left hand aches, but this time I have the key strung around my neck on a red lanyard. The thunk of tumblers turning feels more dramatic than it is, a tectonic shifting I can feel through my shoes, and then I’m walking up the drive with the key knocking against my breastbone.
Starling House still looks like God scooped it up from the cover of a Gothic novel and dropped it on the banks of the Mud River, and I still like it far more than I should. I pretend the busted windowpanes are jagged little mouths, grinning at me.
Arthur Starling answers the door in a rumpled sweater that doesn’t fit, his eyes the resentful red of someone who does not appreciate being conscious before noon.
I give him several thousand watts of cheery smile and a merciless “Good morning!” I squint up at the sun, gleaming reluctantly through the branches. “You said anytime after dawn was fine.”
His eyes narrow to bitter slits.
“Can I come in? Where should I start?”
He closes his eyes completely, as if he is preventing himself from slamming the door in my face only through devout prayer, and steps aside.
Walking across the threshold of Starling House is like stepping from winter straight into summer: the air is sweet and rich and warm. It slides down my throat, goes straight to my head. The walls seem to lean toward me. My feet feel rooted in place—I have a vision of vines pushing up between the floorboards to twine around my ankles, nails driving up through the soft flesh of my feet—
The door snaps shut behind me, sharp as a slap. The walls straighten up.
I turn to see Arthur watching me from the dimness, his expression flat and unreadable, his palm flat on the door. This side is carved up just like the outside, except the neat rows of signs and symbols have been interrupted by a random crosshatch of deep, ragged lines, almost like claw marks.
I nod to the door, grasping at normalcy. “You got a dog?”
“No.” I wait, hoping he’s about to add some perfectly reasonable explanation about a rabid raccoon or an accident with a hatchet, but all he says is “Mother said we had enough to take care of without getting a pet.”
“In my experience you don’t get pets, they get you.” When I left this morning the hellcat was watching me with her usual deranged intensity from under the dumpster. “Don’t you ever have any strays turn up around here?” There are always strays in Eden, kittens with oozy eyes and yellow dogs with ribs like the tines of a pitchfork.
“No.” His eyes flick over me, lingering pointedly on the holes in my jeans, and his upper lip curls. “At least, not until recently.”