Polymorphous Jack

Holmes and the Ripper are serial figures and, as demonstrated in previous chapters, share numerous features. One of them is their parallel development as culture-texts, resulting in voluminous layers of meanings and interpretations. Similarly to Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper as a serial figure is also malleable and adjusts well to the changing theories about his identity, and it is the very puzzle of this identity that forms the core of the majority of the versus texts. He is given numerous faces and numerous personas listed in this chapter, and the sheer amount and variety calls for a proper label, such as Judith Walkowitz’s polymorphousness (1992). My reading of the polymorphous character of the Whitechapel killer in the versus narratives is informed by the continued surplus of suspects revealed one by one in the press at the time of the murders and the Monster/Villain of the Week trope, thus bringing to the fore both their seriality and dialogism.