Retrospective Posthumanism: According to Our Vocabulary

Sara Martín © Sara Martín, 2021 Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Abstract: conceived Frankenstein as a Gothic horror story. However, Brian Aldiss claimed in 1973 that her novel is the true originator of science fiction—a 1920s label of which she could not be aware. Also in the 1970s, ‘posthumanism’ emerged as the critical current that might replace humanism. The word ‘posthuman’, though, had first appeared in a 1936 novella by H.P. Lovecraft. Because of this changing vocabulary Frankenstein must be re-read retrospectively (though not unproblematically) without neglecting its Gothic origins, as pioneering fiction about the creation of a posthuman individual, even of a whole posthuman species. In this article I argue that, nonetheless, the new posthuman re-reading should not obscure Mary Shelley’s intention to characterize her monster as an abject creature intended to produce intense fear and terror in her readers. This is an affect that has been lost in the contemporary academic treatment of the creature as a being dispossessed of his rights as a living individual.

Keywords: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Gothic, science fiction, posthumanism

1. Frankenstein as a Gothic text: her husband Percy, and Horror and technophobia (the daughter of Mary’s step-mother), were frequent visitors at on In her Introduction to the second edition the shores of Lake Geneva, where Lord of Frankenstein (original publication Byron was staying at the time with his 1818)—published in 1831 by Colburn & personal physician, John Polidori. The Bentley within their Standard Novels Shelleys were in Switzerland at the collection—Mary Shelley (1797-1851) request of Claire, who was then pregnant narrated the genesis of her novel, thus by Byron; she would give birth to their establishing the enduring Romantic myth daughter Allegra in early 1817. Beyond of its creation. During the cold, rainy sex, however, Byron did not care for summer of 1816,1 nineteen-year-old Mary, ————— of the Lesser Sunda Islands in Indonesia. The ————— events at Villa Diodati have inspired films as 1 The Summer of 1816 was abnormally different as Gothic (1986), Rowing with the cold all over the Western hemisphere because Wind (1987) or Haunted Summer (1988), and of the eruption in April 1815 of Mount even the Doctor Who episode The Haunting of Tambora, a volcano in northern Sumbawa, one Villa Diodati (2020).

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Claire; he clearly preferred Percy pressure (she was asked daily whether Shelley’s intellectual company. According she already had thought of a topic), to Mary, the two men’s conversations on caused a great deal of anxiety, which scientific topics—which she claims to resulted in an agitated state or “waking have witnessed without ever participating dream” (9), one evening when Mary was in them—together with Byron’s proposal trying to sleep: that the four of them (excluding Claire) wrote each a ghost story in imitation of I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental the German horror tales2 they were vision—, I saw the pale student of reading to pass the time, were major unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing sources of inspiration for her novel. he had put together. I saw the hideous Mary mentions in her Introduction phantasm of a man stretched out, and that she had been writing since childhood then, on the working of some powerful but she still had a reluctance to believe engine, show signs of life, and stir with an herself endowed with the talent that uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it Percy attributed to her, as the daughter be; for supremely frightful would be the of intellectual authors William Godwin effect of any human endeavour to mock the and Mary Wollstonecraft. She took, stupendous mechanism of the Creator of nonetheless, Byron’s challenge seriously, the world. (9) making a constant effort to come up with Unable to get rid of her “hideous a story that would be up to the expected phantom”, Mary chose this haunting standard: “One which would speak to the vision as the subject of her “tiresome mysterious fears of our nature, and unlucky ghost story!” (10). It was her aim awaken thrilling horror—one to make the to terrorize readers in the same degree reader dread to look round, to curdle the she had been terrorized by her blood, and quicken the beatings of the imagination, or her subconscious. heart” (8). Her difficulties to find a Initially, Mary wanted to write a short subject, together with Percy’s and Byron’s story but, encouraged by Percy, she ————— expanded her tale into the novel 2 A key volume was Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus, (1812), a collection of German ghost stories which she published anonymously. Since, anonymously translated into French by Jean- because of this quite habitual Baptiste Benoît Eyriès. The main authors circumstance, most readers and critics featured in it are Johann Karl August assumed that the novel had been written Musäus, Johann August Apel, Friedrich Laun, by Percy, Mary made a point of clarifying and . Byron and Shelley in the Preface to the second edition that never finished their own ghost stories but John Polidori did. His novella The Vampyre, everything in Frankenstein was her own the first prose narration dealing with this creation, though she granted that her topic in English, was published in 1819. husband had written the Preface to the Unfortunately, The Monthly Magazine, where first edition of 1818. it appeared, attributed it to Byron, who was Frankenstein, originally published by actually the inspiration for the horrid vampire the small press of Lackington, Hughes, Lord Ruthven. Polidori is rumoured to have Harding, Mavor, & Jones when Mary was committed suicide in 1821 because of this 21, fit well the literary market for Gothic humiliation.

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fiction, a genre in which women writers remote past nor in a mysterious building were abundant—from the lesser ones (preferably a castle, convent, or haunted published by the blatantly commercial mansion). Although it does feature a Minerva Press (see Copeland, 1995) to romance (between Victor and his fiancée best-selling Ann Radcliffe, who gave Elizabeth), this is secondary to the main Gothic in the 1790s the literary plot. Frankenstein does not even have a respectability which the genre was villain clearly identifiable as such. Both missing. Horace Walpole accidentally Victor and his creation have been invented the label ‘’ by described as hero-villains or villain- giving his novel The Castle of Otranto heroes, an ambiguity which enriches this (1764)—the text that inaugurated this unique masterpiece. narrative mode in Britain—the subtitle A Even though Victor Frankenstein Gothic Story. Walpole alluded to the originated the figure of the ‘mad doctor’ pseudo-medieval atmosphere of his that would eventually appear in countless romance but the adjective ‘Gothic’ was stories, from H.G. Wells’ Dr. Moreau to eventually applied to any type of fiction Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Mary (initially prose and drama, and later a herself was not attributed any main merit long etcetera) interested in awakening as a ground-breaking author for too long a the most universal affect: fear. As David time. English fantasy and science fiction Punter notes in his pioneering study of author Brian Aldiss3 was the first to the genre, argue, in his 1973 essay Billion Year Spree, that the Gothic nature of Fear is not merely a theme or an attitude, Frankenstein is no obstacle to read it as it also has consequences in terms of form, science fiction, quite the opposite. Calling style and the social relations of the texts; Mary ‘the origin of the species’ (the title of and exploring Gothic is also exploring fear his chapter), Aldiss exalts her to the and seeing the various ways in which position of main initiator of modern terror breaks through the surfaces of science fiction, a title that would certainly literature, differently in every case, but have surprised her, since this was a label also establishing for itself certain distinct created in 1926 by editor Hugo continuities of language and symbol. (1980: Gernsback.4 Aldiss is right to connect 21) ————— 3 In view of Mary’s avowed declaration In his novel Frankenstein Unbound (1973) Aldiss enacts through his delegate in that it was her intention to elicit a feeling the text, Joe Bodenland, the fantasy of of fear from readers, there is no doubt travelling backwards in time to meet Mary that Frankenstein is primarily a Gothic Shelley. For the 1990 adaptation by Roger text, though not at all the ghost story she Corman, see my own article (Martín, 2003). had set out to write. Her novel is, in any 4 ‘Scientifiction’ appeared in the editorial case, a late addition to the first cycle of article by Gernsback written to present Gothic fiction—Melmoth the Wanderer Amazing Stories (April 1926). “By (1820) by Charles Maturin is often named ‘scientifiction’,” Gernsback clarifies, “I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan as its closing point—with very little Poe type of story—a charming romance respect for the habitual conventions of the intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic genre. Frankenstein is neither set in the vision” (3). The magazine Astounding Stories

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science fiction and Romanticism since, of the main technological optimists, as he thanks to the spectacular technoscientific called himself, is Isaac Asimov. In his progress that led to the Industrial hybrid detective/science fiction novel The Revolution, Mary’s generation was “the Caves of Steel (1954), Asimov distances first to enjoy that enlarged vision of himself from Mary Shelley, whom he time—to this day still expanding— gently mocks, by introducing through the without which science fiction is main robotics experts on Earth (in a perspectiveless, and less itself” (1975: 3). future distant 3000 years from our Nonetheless, even though it is obvious present) a key concept. As Dr. Gerrigel that modern science fiction from tells Detective Elijah Baley: Frankenstein onwards has frequently used horror elements—an outstanding “The human race, Mr. Baley, has a strong early 20th century example is “The Color Frankenstein complex”. Out of Space” (1927) by H.P. Lovecraft, “A what?” published in Gernsback’s Amazing “That’s a popular name derived from a Stories—claiming that this genre is Medieval novel describing a robot that “characteristically cast in the Gothic or turned on its creator. I never read the post-Gothic mould” (8) is a risky novel myself. […]” (170) manoeuvre. Despite this, many other critics have followed Aldiss. Goss and The solution which Asimov found to Riquelme, for instance, present the problem of how to prevent the Frankenstein as a villain similar to the rebellion of the robots, the famous Three classic aristocratic villains of Gothic Laws of Robotics that guarantee their fiction, calling him an “intellectual obedience,5 reveals that the trope of the aristocrat” (2007: 425) since he is upper creation of non-human, self-conscious class but bourgeois (his native country, artificial life need not result in horror Switzerland, has no aristocracy). Gothic tales. Brian Stableford was the first one fiction, they add, “reaches an important to clarify why this is the case in moment of cultural realization in its Frankenstein. According to him, Mary did offspring, science fiction, when the not characterize young Victor as a scientist replaces the ruler and the priest scientist because she wanted to comment as wielder of power and source of on the scientific debates of her time but wrongdoing” (435). because she needed to distinguish her Whereas Frankenstein is a novel from the typical Gothic story of technophobic novel—whether we argue ————— that Mary only opposed certain aspects of 5 The Three Laws of Robotics were science or all of it—the abundant science suggested by editor John W. Campbell and fiction that lacks Gothic elements, and introduced in the short story “Runaround” that Aldiss ignores, is technophiliac. One (1942). They are: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a ————— human being to come to harm; 2. A robot must of Super-Science (founded in 1930) was obey the orders given it by human beings renamed Astounding Science-Fiction by its except where such orders would conflict with new editor, John W. Campbell, in 1938, who the First Law; and 3. A robot must protect its seems to have coined the label habitual today own existence as long as such protection does for this genre. not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

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supernatural horror “which had already science with the real science of the period become tedious and passé” (1995: 54). If in which Mary’s novel is set, presumably Byron had challenged her to write a tale the 1780s or 1790s (though Captain about a ‘modern Prometheus’ (Mary’s Walton’s letters are dated 17— it makes subtitle for Frankenstein), Mary might little sense to place the story in an earlier have followed a very different course and period). The noun ‘scientist’ only perhaps present the creature’s awakening appeared in 18346 and since Victor refers as “a joyous and triumphant affair” (54). several times to ‘natural philosophy’— The problem, of course, is that nobody science as we know it today was only would have published this imaginary consolidated in the final third of the 19th alternative novel, which could only have century (Cahan, 2003: 4)—Sutherland been received as “horribly indecent and points out that he is no scientist, “mad or blasphemous” (56). Indeed, apart from sane, but an Enlightenment philosophe” Asimov, few if any authors have really (1996: 25). Following this line of overcome the Frankenstein complex. This argumentation, Johnson (2018) examines is why Stableford characterizes the disciplines that were taught in the Frankenstein’s enormous popularity as a real-life German University of Ingolstadt tragedy trapping “the entire genre of (1472-1800) in Bavaria, where Mary science fiction” (56). places Victor as a student. Johnson notes Generally speaking, there are two that from 1780 onward this university main lines of argumentation in relation to had a large circle of scholars interested in Mary Shelley’s technophobia, based in the application of modern chemistry any case on a splendid knowledge of the (Medieval alchemy’s descendant) to main debates of her time, quite an medicine. As he points out, though Victor achievement for a young woman of scant mentions having studied physiology and formal education. On the one hand, critics anatomy, disciplines taught at the real such as Andrew Smith maintain that Ingolstadt institution, he is neither a Frankenstein is, despite its manifest, physician nor a ‘doctor’ in any field but unambiguous horror, an ambiguous text just an advanced student of chemistry as regards science. The novel does not and electricity science with no degree. belong to the agitated post-French This historical precision contrasts with Revolution period in which Mary’s the deliberate anachronism of statements parents expressed their progressive ideas, ————— but to the far more conservative 6 William Whewell first used the word atmosphere which dominated Britain ‘scientist’ in print in his review of On the after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo Connexion of the Physical Sciences by Mrs. (1815). For this reason, Smith insists, Somerville for the Quarterly Review. He was “the novel’s refusal to either fully endorse actually reporting the occurrence which an or extol radical views should be seen as “ingenious gentleman”, whose name he does part of the political ambiguities of the not mention, volunteered during a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of time in which radicals, such as Mary Science. Since the word ‘philosopher’ sounded Shelley and her milieu, were unclear “too wide and too lofty a term” (59), this man about where to go next” (2010: 81). The proposed ‘scientist’ by analogy with ‘artist’ other main scholarly strategy consists of though, Whewell adds, “this was not found connecting Victor Frankenstein’s fictional palatable” (59).

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such as “Speculation about the neologism, the latest slogan, or simply posthuman emerged in the another image of man’s recurring self- Enlightenment in tandem with new hate” (843). Hassan warns that five notions of the human” (Yaszek & Ellis, hundred years of post-Renaissance 2017: 71). Obviously, the word humanism are coming to an end because ‘posthuman’ did not exist in the the impact of the brutal technoscientific Enlightened 18th century which moulds acceleration is transforming this Victor Frankenstein’s natural philosophy. intellectual current into something new Yaszek and Ellis use ‘posthuman’ with “that we must helplessly call the intention of connecting the past with posthumanism” (843, original italics). our present, confident that their Despite his negative tone, Hassan anachronism will not be perceived as an believes that “posthumanism may also error but as a productive strategy. Yet, hint at a potential in our culture, hint at though much is gained in this way, a tendency struggling to become more something is also inevitably lost, arguably than a trend” (843); it might thus become an accurate perception of past zeitgeists. a tool for regeneration. In Frankenstein’s specific case, the use of The problem is that posthumanism ‘posthuman’ in relation to this novel has exploded with such force and in areas originally born as a Gothic text creates of knowledge so diverse that it is important tensions in the very definition impossible to agree on a single meaning. of monstrosity, as I argue in the following Francesca Ferrando’s Philosophical section. Posthumanism (2019), which offers a comprehensive overview of all its main currents, conveys the impression, most 2. Frankenstein as a posthuman text: likely against the author’s intentions, Gains and losses that many scholars have used this label as randomly as postmodernism was used Frankenstein survived as a popular before and is still used. Ferrando, in any classic at the margins of academic literary case, does her best to explain in a very criticism until the publication of the useful, didactic way how the label has collective volume The Endurance of evolved. According to her (25-26), the Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's Philosophical Posthumanism which she Novel (1979), edited by George Levine and practices, as Rosi Braidotti’s disciple, U.C. Knoepflmacher. This volume was descends from the Critical and Cultural part of the then emerging Gothic Studies, Posthumanism developed between consolidated thanks to David Punter’s Hassan’s 1977 article and N. Katherine The Literature of Terror (1980). Hayles’s seminal volume How We Became Interestingly, the birth of this new Posthuman (1999). Another main research area overlapped with the highlight of this period, and the key text beginnings of posthumanism as anti- for Cultural Posthumanism, is Donna humanist critical practice. The witty Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” hybrid article by Ihan Hassan (half essay, (1985). The volumes by Braidotti The half masque) “Prometheus as Performer: Posthuman (2013) and by Stefan Toward a Posthumanist Culture?” (1977) Herbrechter Posthumanism: A Critical introduced the label as “a dubious Analysis (2013) consolidated the current

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cycle, based on the premise that all human’ because unlike the creature “who Posthumanist critique must proceed “in later imagines a life modestly accepting of relational and multilayered ways, in a the limits which his extraordinary post-dualistic, post-hierarchical praxis circumstances have imposed” (2016: 161), which sets a suitable way of departure to Frankenstein feels “a ‘human’ desire to approach existence beyond the boundaries overcome his humanity” by refusing “to of humanism and anthropocentrism” live within the boundaries of the human” (Ferrando, 2019: 119). (161-162), marked by disease and death. These critical currents have appeared Those of us who appreciate the virtues in a historical period when real-life of science fiction are often frustrated by technoscience is moving ahead of science how the discourse on the posthuman, fiction, from which it often takes its which is quite distinctly defined in this inspiration anyway. This realization has genre, is oddly distorted in disquisitions multiplied almost to infinity the numbers that do not take sf into account. Haraway of narrative descendants and of academic pays homage to Joanna Russ, Samuel R. readings of Frankenstein. Feminist Delany, John Varley, James Tiptree Jr., criticism, for instance, has condemned Octavia Butler, Monique Wittig, and Frankenstein as a perpetrator of Vonda Mclntyre as the true “theorists for patriarchal technoscientific crimes which cyborgs” (1991: 173), whereas Hayles victimize women and children, even the presents in How We Became Posthuman monster. Far from being abject, as Mary critical analyses of Bernard Wolfe, imagined him, the monster is William Burroughs, William Gibson, reconfigured in contemporary texts “in Philip K. Dick, Neal Stephenson, and line with a posthuman trajectory of Greg Bear. Braidotti, in contrast, hybrid horror heroes from neo- develops her Philosophical Posthumanism Victorianism, graphic fiction, and familiar in The Posthuman with no reference at all mashed myths of marvellously animated to science fiction. Ferrando just offers a fantastic action” (Botting, 2018: 310). few passing remarks in her own volume. Braidotti’s views, according to which It is important, however, to recall that, as there is no division between nature and Prucher notes (2009: 54), the adjective culture but a continuum (2013: 2), ‘posthuman’ first appeared in a novella by inspired Outka to state that “The H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Out of Time creature disrupts the sublime formation (1936), in which it is used to describe the of the human/natural binary, and in doing diverse alien species that will replace so changes the definition of both” (2011: Homo Sapiens on Earth. This is still 36). The use which Victor makes of today mainly how posthumanism is animal parts (“The dissecting room and understood in science fiction. Whether the the slaughter-house furnished many of new posthuman species (or, rather, post- my materials”, 55) has resulted in Homo Sapiens) is extraterrestrial or readings of Frankenstein as an anti- terrestrial, natural or manufactured, is vivisection protest (Guerrini, 2008) about irrelevant: what matters is the concept of a fundamentally hybrid individual who is replacement. This, as I will comment, is also a human animal (McQueen, 2014). fundamental in Frankenstein. On his side, Mousley describes Victor It is necessary to briefly consider at rather than his monster as a ‘posthuman this point transhumanism, the

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intellectual and technoscientific current hold no membership in any particular which defends the right to control the party or political platform. Yet, it is evolution of Homo Sapiens towards a new evident that their vision of the future posthuman state, or even species. Julian depends on tracing an inhumane division Huxley, Aldous’s brother and a first-rank between those who have access to biologist, with suspect eugenicist anatomical enhancement and those who interests, coined in 1957 this concept in do not. On the other hand, it is relevant to an often quoted passage: note that a major line of research in Oxford University’s Future of Humanity The human species can, if it wishes, Institute, founded by Bostrom, considers transcend itself—not just sporadically, an the impact of advanced AI in our future. individual here in one way, an individual The institute’s Centre for the Governance there in another way—but in its entirety, as of AI devotes its efforts to ensuring that humanity. We need a name for this new transhumanism stays within the belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: boundaries of Homo Sapiens’ evolution man remaining man, but transcending and is not overwhelmed by AI evolution. himself, by realizing new possibilities of and Victor Frankenstein is, in our new for his human nature. (17, original italics) vocabulary, a transhumanist ahead of his time since he intends to transcend the The transhumanist project was nature of Homo Sapiens to turn humans initially developed as fantasy within into a renewed posthuman species. His science fiction but became eventually the research is animated by the selfish, object of heated technoscientific debate in patriarchal idea that, if he succeeds, “A real life. Haraway’s call “for pleasure in new species would bless me as its creator the con-fusion of boundaries and for and source; many happy and excellent responsibility in their construction” (1991: natures would owe their being to me. No 150, original italics) in allusion to the father could claim the gratitude of his cyborg (a form of individual child so completely as I should deserve transhumanism) came only three years theirs” (54). The methods which before the foundation in 1988 of the Frankenstein uses require, as Coleridge World Transhumanist Association led by would say, our willing suspension of Nick Bostrom and David Pearce. Their disbelief. However, the advances in “Transhumanist Declaration” includes technoscience have made Mary’s novel points as alarming as “(4) “more relevant to apprehensive concerns Transhumanists advocate the moral right omnipresent in the twenty-first century for those who so wish to use technology to than it was in the nineteenth” (Friedman extend their mental and physical & Kavey, 2016: 12). There is no doubt (including reproductive) capacities and to that Frankenstein “perfectly illustrates improve their control over their own lives. [the] human anxieties of becoming We seek personal growth beyond our posthuman” (Heiise-von del Lippe, 2017: current biological limitations” (1998: 9), whereas its ending invites readers to online). Transhumanists claim to embrace consider “how a restricted notion of the main principles of modern personhood has led to the denial of rights humanism—a stance that may have made to a bioengineered being” (Karmakar & many anti-humanist converts—and to Parui, 2018: 351).

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Part of Gothic’s sinister charms is its Victor’s original design is faulty and that association with death and the ensuing he has a limited plastic ability. “As the bodily decadence, both presented as minuteness of the parts formed a great sources of disgust and terror. Victor hinderance to my speed”, Victor decides to passes from studying physiology and work on a gigantic being, “about eight feet anatomy as part of his university training in height, and proportionably large” (54). to manipulating dead bodies illegally Logically, his ignorance of modern obtained from cemeteries (cadaver microsurgery techniques cannot be solved dissection was limited to the bodies of by increasing the size of his creature. An executed criminals in the United eight-feet tall man can still look fully Kingdom until 1832).7 Victor claims he human—Gheorghe Mureșan, NBA’s feels no superstitious fears but Mary tallest player in the 2019-20 season, is Shelley aims at eliciting deep disgust seven feet seven inches, or 2’31 metres, with Frankenstein’s narration of his tall—but Frankenstein simply does not experiments to Walton; these include know how to make his creature’s various examining in detail “every object the most features cohere in a harmonious body. insupportable to the delicacy of the The poor aesthetics of his Adam are a human feelings” (52). Once he discovers consequence of Frankenstein’s limitations the secret of how to animate organic dead as an artist and plastic surgeon, and they matter, Victor starts using not just body are the only reason why he is perceived as parts but also living animals in these a monster. Victor tries to exonerate experiments. When he asks “Who shall himself by arguing that “I had selected conceive the horrors of my secret toil, as I his features as beautiful” (57) but still dabbled among the unhallowed damps of cannot explain why the creature’s the grave, or tortured the living animal to physical appearance is so incongruous: animate the lifeless clay?” (54), the immediate reply is ‘any minimally His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of sensitive reader’. muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was Initially, Frankenstein doubts between of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of creating “a being like myself, or one of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances simpler organization” but his overexcited only formed a more horrid contrast with his imagination gives him the self-confidence watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same he needs to create “an animal as complex colour as the dun white sockets in which and wonderful as man” (53). A crucial they were set, his shrivelled complexion and question often overlooked is the fact that straight black lips. (57)

————— His second main strategy consists of 7 William Burke and William Hare placing an insuperable dividing line, murdered in 1828 sixteen people in Edinburgh defining himself as human and his to sell their bodies to famed anatomist Robert creature as a non-human monster. When Knox, who presumably new about their his youngest brother William is misdeeds. The scandal led to the passing of the murdered, Victor concludes at once that Anatomy Act in 1832, aimed at supplying “Nothing in human shape could have medical schools with sufficient dead bodies. Burke was hanged and subsequently his body destroyed that fair child” (76). When was dissected. Hare’s fate remains unknown. innocent Justine is wrongly accused of

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ending the child’s life, Victor understands of gratitude at his acceptance” (145), yet he that “every human being was guiltless of has already concluded that “the human this murder” (80). senses are insurmountable barriers to our Eventually, creator and creature meet union” (145). The solution is the in an isolated spot of the Alps. manufacturing of a female companion of Frankenstein sees “the figure of a man, at the same type, with whom he could live some distance, advancing towards me quietly on a lonely corner of Earth, an with superhuman speed” (98). This arrangement which he defines as “peaceful comment transforms the novel’s discourse and human” (146, my italics). Victor on monstrosity by adding to the problem grants his wish but contemplating the of the monstrous aesthetics the problem half-made woman he is gripped by a fear of the creature’s augmented, superhuman that his “daemon” will want to have capacities. He is far stronger than any children “and a race of devils would be man, can endure extreme cold, survive propagated upon the earth, who might with very little food (all of it of vegetal make the very existence of the species of origin), and has even self-educated himself man a condition precarious and full of in very limiting circumstances, just by terror. Had I right, for my own benefit, to observing how the De Lacey family speaks inflict this curse upon everlasting and reads. The new Adam (who never gets generations?” (165). Imagining the passage a name) insists that “I was benevolent; my from the posthuman individual to the soul glowed with love and humanity” (100, posthuman species finally forces Victor to my italics) but the violent rejection “from acknowledge that he had no right at all to your fellow-creatures” (100), he tells start his transhumanist project. Victor, forced him to accept his monstrous Understandably, the destruction of the difference. This can never be overcome. female companion and, in consequence, of Not even once he knows the creature’s the possible new posthuman species, turns complete story can Frankenstein control creature and creator into irreconcilable the revulsion that his abject creature enemies. Since Frankenstein claims that inspires in him. Among the accusations he has broken his promise of making the that the monster throws at his maker the woman because “never will I create main one is that he has been gifted with another like yourself, equal in deformity “perceptions and passions” (139) that and wickedness” (167), the monster make him aware of his terrible condition, attributes the betrayal to hatred without even though Victor seems to have cared fully understanding the anti-posthuman only for his anatomy and ignore his mind. fear that Victor feels. The fact that this is a far superior Returning to Stableford, the problem achievement than the body condemns the with any readings of Frankenstein as monster, even to the eyes of his creator. fiction on the posthuman is that its plot The motif of the augmented capacities depends on a questionable premise: of the monster is the foundation of the Victor’s act of creation produces a anti-posthuman horror that Mary Shelley monster to fulfil the Gothic requirements activates in her readers’ minds, even of the novel rather than because he is a today. The creature argues that if any bad scientist (he is in fact a great scientist human being could welcome him, “I would but a bad artist). Mary Shelley’s constant bestow every benefit upon him with tears preoccupation with the revulsion which

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