Science, Gender and History

The first substantial study comparing Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood, this book examines a selection of the speculative/fantastic novels of these two influential writers from the perspectives of contemporary feminist, postcolonial and science studies. Situating her readings at the troubled intersections of science, gender and history(-making), Banerjee juxtaposes Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Last Man with Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake in a way that respects historical difference while convincingly suggesting a tradition of ongoing socio-political critique in the work of women writers of the fantastic over the past two centuries. She offers insightful fresh readings of Shelley and Atwood, bringing out how the cognate values of technoscience and capitalistic imperialism work in tandem to foster oppressive gender ideologies, social inequity and environmental ruin. Banerjee explores how Shelley and Atwood levy powerful critiques of both positivist, masculinist science and the politico-economic proclivities of their respective times, engaging, in the process, with the meaning of the (post)human, the cultural impact of male (Romantic) egotism and the public/private division, the colonial impulse and its modern day counterpart, the patriarchal ideologies of ‘love’ and motherhood, and the sexual-politics of official historiography. Combining lively, creative scholarship with theoretical rigour, the book offers a nuanced study of the ways in which Shelley’s and Atwood’s novels each take critical aim at some of the conventional oppositions—nature/culture, masculine/feminine, reason/emotion, art/science—that have since long defined our lives in western technoculture. The book re-opens the ‘two-cultures’ debate, suggesting that Shelley’s and Atwood’s futuristic visions posit humanistic education and art as the ‘saving graces’ that might counter the schisms and reductionism innate to the technocapitalistic world view. One highlight of the book is the way the author goes beyond a strong critical consensus on Frankenstein and reads the novel not as a denunciation of technological violation of nature but as a subversion of the thematic itself of Nature versus Culture. Similar innovative interpretations are offered on the gender question in The Last Man, and on Atwood’s engagement with ‘feminist mothering’ in Oryx and Crake.