The Queen in Yellow: How The Substance Reinvents a Gilded-Age Short Story

The Coralie Fargeat film The Substance, which came out in the autumn of 2024, has since gained notoriety as one of the most memorable and beloved films of the year. ¹ With its focus on an aging celebrity who takes a black-market drug–the eponymous Substance–to create a younger version of herself, the film shines a satirical light on the misogyny and unrealistic beauty standards that have long been a part of Hollywood culture. However, the roots of The Substance’s storyline go way back–much farther back even than the classic horror films that inspired it, such as The Shining and Videodrome. Whether intentionally or not, the storyline of the film, and its lead character, both bear a striking resemblance to those of a much older story: the gilded-age science-fiction short known as The Repairer of Reputations.

An Overview of The Repairer of Reputations

The Repairer of Reputations is the first entry in Robert W. Chambers’ short story collection The King in Yellow. The collection focuses on hedonistic, artistic, bohemian characters, all of whom are connected through their encounter with a mysterious document called The King in Yellow, which is supposed to drive those who read it to madness. The Repairer of Reputations is the longest and most detailed of these stories, and follows the adventures of Hildred Castaigne.

Once a young man who lived a life of luxury and pleasure, Hildred suffered a head injury during a riding accident four years prior to the story’s beginning, and read The King in Yellow while he was recuperating. Hildred also has a more outgoing and successful cousin, Louis; and an acquaintance by the name of Mr. Hawberk, whose daughter Constance is romantically involved with Louis. However, it is heavily implied that Hildred also wants Constance, and is not happy that she prefers Louis over him. All these characters live, at least according to Hildred, in a then-futuristic, dystopian version of New York City where a government-funded “lethal chamber” offers euthanasia services to residents who wish to die. This lethal chamber has little direct bearing on the plot, but its introduction foreshadows the ultimate fate of at least two characters, possibly including Hildred himself.

Hildred’s closest and most trusted companion throughout the story is a disfigured, corpselike little man named Mr. Wilde, who is the titular “repairer of reputations”–that is, a professional blackmailer. Mr. Wilde owns a book called The Imperial Dynasty of America, which appears to claim that Hildred is next in line to be crowned Emperor and, by extension, a personal servant of the King in Yellow. Hildred attempts to explain this to Hawberk and Louis, but they dismiss his claims as insanity, which he considers a grievous insult.

Later in the story, by the power supposedly vested in him as Emperor, Hildred signs a writ of execution for Constance and Mr. Hawberk, and orders Louis into exile. These plans come to nothing, however, and ultimately Mr. Wilde is found dead and Hildred is subdued and taken away by the police while Louis, Constance, and Mr. Hawberk look on. The story ends with Hildred screaming “Woe to you who are crowned with the crown of the King in Yellow!” and an editor’s note stating that he has since died in a hospital for the criminally insane. Depending on how one reads the story, it could be the case that he was euthanized in the aforementioned lethal chamber.

One of the key features of Chambers’ horror fiction is the unconventional settings. Whilst most horror stories take place at night or in gloomy and abandoned environs, most of the action of The Repairer of Reputations takes place in broad daylight, on a tranquil spring day in the middle of New York City. The story also blends genre quite a bit, incorporating a romantic subplot and some aspects of a comedy of manners. As such, according to writer and critic Berthold Gambrel, when Hildred observes of The King in Yellow that “The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterwards with more awful effect,” he could have easily been speaking about The Repairer of Reputations itself! ²

Hildred Castaigne, Up Close and Personal

Hildred Castaigne, the main protagonist and unreliable narrator of The Repairer of Reputations, is an easy character to pity but a hard one to like. His introduction consists of him rhapsodizing about the increasing authoritarianism of the United States’ governmental systems and the beauty and utility of the new lethal chamber. Hildred himself spends most of his time plotting world domination and revenge against those he perceives as having wronged him, or else stewing in resentment over Louis’s richer and more rewarding life. By the time the story ends, he may or may not have murdered both Mr. Wilde and Dr. Archer, the man who nursed him following his accident. Since so little of Hildred’s early life is known, it is unclear whether his erratic and antisocial behaviors are the result of his accident, or whether he has always been this way and the accident simply made him worse.

It is commonly understood that Hildred is delusional and out of touch with reality, and the narrative does an excellent job slowly building up his eccentricities and delusions until they become unmistakable. He seems to be sane enough at first, as he describes the world he lives in in great detail; but as the story goes on, more and more of his pronouncements are disregarded or contradicted by other characters. For instance, Hildred claims that he has a sturdy metal safe in which he stores a shiny golden crown; however, when Louis comes to visit, he describes the crown as a fake costume piece and the safe as a biscuit box. Hildred’s mental fragility even becomes something of a running joke as he compares Mr. Wilde’s mental state to his own in an attempt to reassure his skeptical friends of Mr. Wilde’s reliability. Of course, because the entire story is told from Hildred’s point of view, there is no clear answer provided about what “really” happened and why, and the extent of Hildred’s unreliability–as well as the ultimate fate of most of the characters–remains a matter of debate to this day.

Crucially, although Hildred attributes his current foray into madness to reading The King in Yellow, it could be just as easily the result of his head injury alone. Traumatic brain injuries have been known to cause aggression, ³ behavior changes, ⁴ and even symptoms of psychosis. ⁵ Even Hildred himself acknowledges that he likely suffered a quite serious injury when he notes that “Ever since that fall from my horse four years before I had been troubled by pains in the back of my head and neck.” Louis also states that Hildred has shut himself up in his room since his accident four years ago, which further suggests (but does not absolutely insist) that his behavior changes predated his reading of The King in Yellow. In any event, Hildred is framed as a bitter, lonely, pathetic man, who can no longer enjoy life the way he once could; and who consoles himself by entertaining fantasies, part delusion and part wishful thinking, that allow him to someday come out on top. This is particularly poignant because few if any of the current procedures for treating traumatic brain injuries would have been around at the turn of the twentieth century. In those days, anyone who received a traumatic brain injury would either get better through a period of rest and recuperation or–as in Hildred’s case–not at all.

The Context of The King in Yellow

To fully understand Chambers’ intentions with The Repairer of Reputations and its subsidiary stories, it is necessary to understand the context in which he was writing. Though today Chambers is little known outside of weird fiction circles, in his lifetime he was an immensely popular and successful author, whose King in Yellow collection inspired H.P. Lovecraft and many other later writers of weird fiction. ⁶ Lovecraft himself included numerous references to both the King in Yellow and the Yellow Sign in his own works.

Robert W. Chambers was born in New York and came of age during the so-called gilded age of the United States, a time period that lasted from the end of the Civil War through the latter part of the nineteenth century. This time period saw rapid technological advancement and industrialization, coupled with increased political corruption and a widening gap between the rich and poor. The term “gilded age” was coined by the famous writer Mark Twain, and pointed up the glitzy exterior of a booming economy that masked the cruelty and decadence beneath the surface (“gilded” literally means “gold-plated”). ⁷ Chambers himself studied painting as a young man, in both the United States and France, which likely marked his first foray into the artistic, bohemian subculture at the time. ⁸

The references to the color yellow–in the form of the King in Yellow and the Yellow Sign–are also very deliberate. In Chambers’ lifetime, the color yellow had come to be associated with money, opulence, and all things corrupt. As M. Grant Kellermeyer, of Oldstyle Tales Press, explains:

[T]he color yellow was first connected to themes of corruption and impropriety several decades earlier when the fops of Jane Austen’s Regency period wore the garish color to suggest their appetites for the indulgent, grotesque, and shocking. Later in the century, French books banned in England for their lewd content were at first discreetly packaged in yellow jackets, but when the code was figured out, booksellers even went so far as to wrap relatively tame publications in the lurid amber color because it would increase sales amongst eager buyers. Yellow became a symbol for all that was diseased in the soul, all that was unconventional, contrarian, rebellious, and decadent. If something was “Yellow” it was gaudy and luscious, but also vulgar and decayed. ⁹

In light of all this, it is perhaps telling that The Substance also appears to be obsessed with the color yellow. This color can be seen everywhere throughout the film, not least in the Substance itself. The activator solution is a bright neon yellow, demonstrations of how it works employ the use of yellow egg yolks and yellow modeling clay, and its logo consists of two overlapping bright yellow D’s–a literal yellow sign. Yellow and gold (which is a shade of yellow) can also be seen in other places, such as cars, the mood lighting of Elisabeth’s home, road signs, and the costumes and lanyards worn by the cast and crew of the TV show. There is even a scene in which Sue, Elisabeth’s Substance-created younger body double, exits the studio through a door marked with a small yellow arrow.

Yellow also seems to be the favorite color of both Elisabeth and Sue, but they display this favoritism in a very interesting fashion. Their “work” clothes, which they wear during their public appearances, are usually the more innocent colors of blue and (in Sue’s case) pink. However, when they are trying to keep a low profile, both of them favor yellow. Elisabeth always goes out in public wearing a bright yellow pea coat, and Sue is sometimes shown wearing a yellow crop-top shirt around the house. When Sue goes out on a date at night, she wears a black cat suit with a golden zipper, as well as golden earrings and eye shadow. The dress that Elisabeth plans to wear to her abortive date is red, but also has a golden zipper. These color patterns effectively hint at the duality exhibited by both Elisabeth and Sue, of someone who is friendly, outgoing, and eager to please on the surface whilst at the same time being thoroughly corrupt and degenerate on the inside.

The Story of The Substance

The film opens with a Hollywood starlet named Elisabeth Sparkle celebrating her fiftieth birthday and subsequently being, apparently, fired from her aerobics show at the network. As she drives home, distracted and distraught, she suddenly gets herself into a car accident so violent that it causes her to roll and spin, completely destroying her vehicle. She ends up in the hospital, supposedly unharmed, and an attractive young nurse passes along some information about the mysterious Substance of the film’s title. At first, Elisabeth is skeptical, but when she sees a classified ad in the papers looking for “the next Elisabeth Sparkle,” she places an order with the company. The company gives her an electric key card with the number 503 and an address, which turns out to lead to a run-down back alleyway covered with graffiti. This alleyway in turn leads to a series of post boxes from which she receives her first Substance kit, including activator solution and a bunch of needles, syringes, and tubes. There are no detailed instructions for how to use the kit, but only a set of note cards with the following statements: “You activate only once. You stabilize every day. You switch every seven days without exception. Remember you are one.” When Elisabeth injects the activator solution, a hot young woman named Sue emerges from her back, and promptly becomes a media sensation.

Unfortunately, Elisabeth cannot “respect the balance” of the Substance for very long. As time goes on, she becomes increasingly frustrated and resentful of Sue’s success, despite the company repeatedly hitting both her and the audience over the head with the fact that she and Sue are one and the same. Conversely, Sue begins stealing more and more fluid from Elisabeth’s spinal column so that she can remain youthful for longer and longer, thereby causing Elisabeth’s body to prematurely age and further increasing the animosity between them. The relationship becomes so poisonous that at one point Elisabeth begins cooking elaborate French recipes from a cookbook she received as a gift purely so that she can enact her revenge fantasies on the ingredients.

Eventually, she decides to remain as Sue consistently, farming Elisabeth’s body for stabilizing fluid in the process. This has the effect of damaging Elisabeth’s body even further, and when Sue finally runs out of the fluid and has to switch, Elisabeth reemerges as a deformed old woman with brittle bones and no hair. In desperation, she calls the makers of the Substance and orders a termination kit to be used on Sue, even though Sue is supposed to appear that evening at a New Year’s Eve special organized by Harvey, the sleazy producer of her show. Elisabeth is unable to go through with this, however, and when she revives Sue, Sue viciously attacks her and beats her body to death.

Sue attempts to still appear at the New Year’s Eve show, but because she cannot live without Elisabeth, her body begins falling apart right in her dressing room. In a fit of desperation, she injects herself with the remainder of the activator solution–which is meant to be single-use only–and consequently is transmogrified into a hideous abomination that the film dubs Monstro Elisasue for convenient reference. The monster decides to perform at the New Years show anyway, but ends up exploding right on stage, showering the cast, crew, and audience with blood as she runs off into the night. She is just able to crawl out to Elisabeth’s star on the Hollywood walk of fame before disintegrating into nothing.

Elisabeth Sparkle as Unreliable Narrator

Like Hildred Castaigne before her, Elisabeth Sparkle is implied to be a deeply unreliable narrator. On the subject of Hildred’s unreliability, the Oldstyle Press blog explains:

Ultimately any probe into the reality of Hildred Castaigne’s narrative is a hopeless bound into speculation. Virtually nothing he tells us can be trusted without question. […] Ultimately, even Louis and Hawberk and Constance may be figments of his imagination (or, if they are real, their words might be fabricated by Hildred’s deranged mind). ¹⁰

Although an unreliable central character may be far easier to sustain in written than in visual form, The Substance drops several hints about the unreliability of its lead character early on, which get more pronounced later, as they do with Hildred. Probably the first indication that there is something not quite right about Elisabeth appears in the very first act of the film, when she spies a women’s restroom that is out of order and barely hesitates before wandering into the men’s room across from it. This one simple act–using the men’s restroom instead of finding a different women’s room or simply waiting until she got home–already establishes her as someone who thinks the rules don’t apply to her. While she is in the restroom, she overhears Harvey ranting on the phone about an “old b–ch,” and the need to find a new, young, hot actress. He never actually singles out Elisabeth by name, but Elisabeth immediately assumes that he is talking about her, and that he no longer wants her around because she isn’t young and hot enough for him. The depiction of Harvey in general is somewhat suspect, as most of his dialogue appears to take the form of over-the-top invocations of sexist cliches. He could genuinely be a sexist creep, of course; but the audience sees him entirely through Elisabeth’s eyes and never gets his side of the story. As such, there is a chance that he might be different in his everyday life.

Still, the most compromising evidence of Elisabeth’s unreliability is the sheer number of improbable coincidences and scenarios that the film contains. Early on in the film, Elisabeth gets into a car crash so violent that it should have left her grievously injured; and yet somehow walks away unharmed. She then runs into an old friend, Fred, who she has not seen since high school, and yet somehow still sees her as “the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world” after all these years. This becomes even more implausible in light of the fact that, if Sue’s talk of her past is any guide, both Elisabeth and Fred grew up in a small farming community in the Midwest. It would be pretty remarkable for even one person from a community like that to successfully relocate to Hollywood, let alone two.

Then there are the actions taken by Elisabeth and Sue in relation to the Substance. When Elisabeth receives the Substance for the first time, she is left to inject herself with the activator, suture the gaping wound formed during Sue’s emergence all by herself, harvest cerebrospinal fluid from her regular body and inject herself with it, and keep whichever body is not in use fed intravenously for seven full days. Moreover, despite the fact that she has no medical training and is operating in a nonsterile environment, she somehow is able to do all of this without ever once developing an infection–at least until she starts abusing the drug. Sue similarly demonstrates an improbable level of accomplishment when she breaks a hole in the wall of her bathroom to create a space in which to hide the body that isn’t being used, and constructs a fitted door for the room all by herself. This sequence also marks the arrival of Oliver, who introduces himself as her neighbor despite there being no previous indication that Elisabeth was living in a shared dwelling (when the Substance answering machine asks for her address, she rattles off “1057 Beverly Canyon” without bothering to mention a room number or PO box).

The wheels come off even more when Sue starts to fall apart in the buildup to the New Year’s show, and subsequently transforms into Monstro Elisasue. Despite the film’s lingering on the excruciating pain that Sue is going through, and the disfigurement of her body, nobody else around her seems to notice that anything is amiss until she actually arrives on stage. When an obviously monstrous Elisabeth returns to the studio for her close-up, the stage manager simply waves her inside. One easy way to explain the incongruity is that there is no Monstro Elisasue, and that Elisabeth looks no different than usual. If this is the case, all the people working with her would be able to see is an ordinary, middle-aged woman having a mental breakdown on stage and running away.

As in the case of Hildred, Elisabeth’s immediate problems can be traced back to her accident. In all likelihood, the doctor’s statement about her emerging from the accident unscathed is either a delusion or wishful thinking, akin to Hildred’s claim that “The fall from my horse had fortunately left no evil results; on the contrary, it had changed my character for the better.” The mere fact that she was taken to the hospital is suspicious; if she truly had no injuries, she would have been able to go straight home after she filed a police report and settled the matter of her car. Before she can leave, the nurse palpates her spine, claiming that it’s “perfect” for the Substance. Perhaps Elisabeth suffered an injury to her spinal column in addition to her brain, and what she interprets as Sue springing out of her spine and suturing it closed is in reality corrective spinal surgery. Perhaps, as well, she develops a secondary infection following the surgery that she perceives, due to the pain, as someone harvesting her cerebrospinal fluid.

Then, of course, there is the specific cluster of symptoms that arise when Elisabeth and Sue “switch” from one to the other. These include a loss of muscle control, problems with vision and hearing, bleeding from the nose and mouth, and twitching, followed by a loss of consciousness. All of these symptoms are also associated with the tonic-clonic seizures of epilepsy, ¹¹ which can, in rare cases, develop following a head injury. ¹² The scene in which Sue “kills” Elisabeth may likewise represent a particularly long lasting seizure or cluster of seizures, particularly with the way in which most of the glass in her house ends up shattered by the end of it. In theory, this situation constitutes a medical emergency that requires hospitalization and intensive treatment. However, Elisabeth stubbornly decides to go onstage anyway, thus precipitating the film’s notorious final act. By the end, it is reasonable to assume, she drags herself out to her star on the Hollywood walk of fame, where she is apprehended and returned to the hospital–this time for a much longer duration. Of course, this is arguably a happier ending than the one the film presents to audiences. If Elisabeth has not actually exploded on stage, but was simply taken to a hospital again for further treatment, there is a chance that she could recover and pick up the pieces of her life.

Parallels Between The Substance and The King in Yellow

All in all, there are a number of striking parallels between The Substance and the stories in The King in Yellow, particularly The Repairer of Reputations. Because of this, Coralie Fargeat herself, the director of the film, could almost be thought of as a reverse Robert W. Chambers. Whilst Chambers was an author from New York who wrote many stories set in France, Fargeat is a French film director whose blockbuster film is set in the United States city of Los Angeles. Fargeat’s film also inspires shock and horror in its viewers in much the same way that Chambers’ stories aimed to shock the readers in his own day.

In The Substance, the dynamic between Elisabeth and Sue echoes the rivalry facing Hildred and his cousin Louis in The Repairer of Reputations. Just as Hildred resents the greater professional and military success of Louis, and his ability to woo Constance, Elisabeth resents Sue’s star power and sex appeal and considers it a grievous insult to her own sense of self. Harvey can, in his own way, also be seen as the fusion of Mr. Hawberk and Constance: someone who must be kissed up to and wooed in order to achieve the main character’s goals, but who also has the power to stand in their way and deny them what they seek. The French cookbook that Harvey gives to Elisabeth (“to keep you busy,” in his words) functions as a stand-in for the King in Yellow play, which Hildred read while he was recuperating–presumably so that he would have something to do. Whilst there is no indication that simply reading the recipes causes Elisabeth to act insane, she nevertheless displays some of her most unhinged behavior while she is in her kitchen cooking. Mr. Wilde–with his short stature, lack of ears and hair, yellowish skin, and scars–also bears some resemblance to both Monstro Elisasue and Elisabeth at her most withered.

On the other hand, the biggest difference between The Substance and The Repairer of Reputations probably lies in the physical danger posed by their respective leads. Hildred is actively physically violent to the people around him on a number of occasions. It is strongly implied that he has murdered at least one person–Dr. Archer–and he hates many more people enough to want them dead, even going so far as to plan their executions. He also bites several of the police who attempt to take him away. By contrast, Elisabeth Sparkle is dangerous to nobody but herself. Sue does ultimately kill Elisabeth, but because Sue and Elisabeth are one and the same, even this is really an elaborate form of self-harm. In a rare moment of self-awareness, Elisabeth tells the comatose Sue that “I need you, because I hate myself.” When she shows up onstage in her monstrous form, she frightens her costars and audience, but does not physically hurt anyone.

Of course, none of this is to suggest that Elisabeth is gentler or more sympathetic than Hildred. She is just as self-obsessed and egotistical as him, and just as liable to see herself as a victim of those who don’t realize her superiority over them. One of the most unsettling features of both Hildred’s and Elisabeth’s visions is just how self-focused they are. Hildred is determined to be crowned Emperor by any means necessary, and other characters are just a tool for him to reach this goal–or an obstacle in his path that must be removed. Although he is attracted to Constance, he makes next to no attempt to woo her or convince her that he could give her what Louis cannot. Along similar lines, Elisabeth’s entire home and career are a shrine to herself. She even has an enormous portrait of herself covering one entire wall of her house! The one time she attempts to schedule a date with Fred, she seeks not genuine connection but rather validation–a chance to speak to the one person who still considers her “the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world.” This extreme self-centeredness suggests that both Hildred and Elisabeth suffer from some form of narcissistic personality disorder. It is for this reason that they are willing to take such extreme measures to repair their reputation.

The Substance and the Lethal Chamber

One of the less-obvious parallels to the Substance from The Repairer of Reputations is the lethal chamber. Like the Substance, the lethal chamber is a piece of futuristic technology that may or may not exist outside the main character’s head. Also like the Substance, the story goes into excruciating detail about the supposed benefits provided by the lethal chamber, which purports to provide a “painless death” to “him who can no longer bear the sorrows of this life.” The most significant line in the advertisement, however, is the following: “It is believed that the community will be benefited by the removal of [those whose lives are intolerable to them] from their midst,” as the word “removal” hints at the possibility of the chamber being used on unwilling subjects.

In addition, both the lethal chamber and the Substance break societal taboos surrounding attempts to “cheat God” or “cheat Nature.” Although the concept of eugenics, or the removal of the genetically “unfit” from the population, was popular in Chambers’ day–and may have influenced his portrayal of the lethal chamber ¹³–suicide still carried a very heavy stigma at the time. In religious circles in particular, suicide was seen as an attempt to foil God’s plans for one’s life or a rejection of God’s mercy and love. The Substance also carries the stigma of an attempt to cheat Nature–in this case, the natural passage of time and the aging process. As if this wasn’t enough, the characters also have the opportunity to cheat the Substance itself, by refusing to switch between bodies every seven days.

What Does it Mean to Repair One’s Reputation?

All in all, The Repairer of Reputations tells the story of a wealthy young man, who suffered a life-altering head injury during a riding accident, and subsequently makes believe that he is next in line to be crowned emperor of the world. The Substance, meanwhile, tells the story of a middle-aged starlet, who suffers a head injury during a car accident, and subsequently makes believe that there is a younger and sexier version of herself getting all the attention and accolades that she wishes she had. In both cases, in the words of Kellermeyer, “the pathos of [these characters] lies in a disappointed dream, the failure of which leaves [them] feeling powerless, pathetic, and overlooked.” ¹⁴. Because of this, both Hildred and Elisabeth are desperate to construct an alternate reality for themselves “that could offer [them] the dignity of being […] obeyed and catered to.” ¹⁵ The eponymous entities of their respective stories–the figure of the King in Yellow on one hand, and the Substance on the other–are the tools they employ in service of these alternate realities. Of course, the characters can’t sustain their delusions forever, and both stories maximize dramatic effect by having the wheels start to come off just as their antiheroes’ dreams seem to be coming true.

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