Abstract:
In this thesis, I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and H.G. Wells's The
Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) as meditations on an ongoing, collective struggle
to define what it means to be human. In Chapter 1, I focus on the reasons why
Victor Frankenstein builds his creature and on his "uncanny hysteria"
following its first moment of life. I argue that the creature functions as a
mirror, reflecting back knowledge that destroys identity by revealing its
symbolic, artificial nature. Chapter 2 shifts the focus to Moreau. Here I argue
that, regardless of Wells's attempt to maintain and normalize the
human/animal binary, it actually deconstructs. More precisely, this autodestruction
seems to occur because Wells applies so much pressure to this
distinction that it collapses under the weight of his insistence. Throughout
Moreau, Wells inadvertently dramatizes characteristics that are simultaneously
the most human and animal - sympathy brought on by a shared appreciation of
pain, suffering, and fear, for example - which ultimately break down the very
distinctions upon which he bases his entire division. Together these texts
illustrate ways in which ideas like monstrosity and humanity are constructed in
the realm of representation.
