Abstract
In neo-Victorian young adult narratives, authors return to the figure of the “mad scientist” to reinterrogate the assumption of male dominion over science, women as objects of experimentation, and ethical concerns over transgressive scientific practices. In Megan Shepherd’s trilogy—The Madman’s Daughter (2013), Her Dark Curiosity (2014), and A Cold Legacy (2016)—and Theodora Goss’ Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club—The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (2017), European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (2018), and The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerising Girl (2019)—the texts focus on the narratives of young women who are either the biological or scientifically created children of their scientist fathers, men whose motives are by turns questionable and corrupt. These stories, of females who are othered in various ways, show how they seek to reframe science and systems of knowledge-seeking as no longer the property of their male fathers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
“STEAM” is the anachronym for a kind of holistic learning where students should embrace Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics; in a less holistic and humanities exclusive version, it is more often than not called “STEM” at the exclusion of the Arts (see Maier 2021).
- 2.
This assertion may seem to be an overreach but a recent publication for adults, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (2022), positions its protagonist—Carlota Moreau—much differently in that she grows up on an estate and is an adult when the reader encounters her.
- 3.
In the original novel, H. G. Wells does not give Dr. Moreau a first name; however, in Shepherd’s series, he is given a full name.
- 4.
The full title is, more correctly, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
- 5.
It is likely that the book referred to is one known as Gray’s Anatomy first published in London in 1858 by John W. Parker and Son but by 1863 and the third edition, the imprint is by Longman.
- 6.
Ezechia Marco Lombroso—Cesare—was an Italian-born physician who expanded the study of phrenology and criminology using degeneration theory, psychiatry, and social Darwinism. His theory was that a person would be easy to identify as dangerous to society via physical deformities or congenital defects that would locate an individual as a criminal. Factually, these features and his photographic examples were often persons of Eastern European birth or Jews; the “evidence” of potential savagery was highly derogatory to persons of non-Western European and non-white birth.
- 7.
- 8.
Another neo-Victorian narrative that confronts the alienation of the healing woman as a dangerous, malignant witch is the Cut-Wife in “The Nightcomers” episode of Penny Dreadful (Season Two, Episode Three) where she suffers from decades of persecution at the hands of the people who come to her for help when they are desperate.
- 9.
Given the caretaking nature of Mrs. Poole, Goss might intend here a rehabilitative portrait or attempt to revision the madwoman’s nurse in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847).
- 10.
Ayesha is the powerful female figure who encounters the man of action, Allan Quartermain, in the Imperial Gothic novel She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard published in 1887, the first of a series.
- 11.
Bibliography
Abrams, M. H. “Science Fiction.” In A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed., edited by Abrams, 278–79. Boston: Heinle and Heinle, 1999.
Baumgaertner, Emily. “How Many Teenage Girls Deliberately Harm Themselves? Nearly 1 in 4, Survey Finds.” The New York Times. July 2, 2018: n. p. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/health/self-harm-teenagers-cdc.html
Botting, Fred. “Candygothic.” In The Gothic, edited by Botting, 133–51. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001.
Brown, Lyn Mikel. Raising Their Voices: The Politics of Girls’ Anger. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1847.
Burdett, Carolyn. “Post Darwin: Social Darwinism, Degeneration, Eugenics.” British Library. May 15, 2014. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/post-darwin-social-darwinism-degeneration-eugenics
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” In Classic Readings on Monster Theory, edited by Asa Simon Mittman and Marcus Hensel, 43–54. York: Arc Humanities Press, 2018.
Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur. “A Scandal in Bohemia.” 1891. In The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes. Foreword by Ruth Rendell, 161–75. New York: Penguin Books, 2009.
Connors, Sean P., and Lissette Lopez Szwydky. “The Pre-Monstrous Mad Scientist and the Post-Nerd Smart Girl in Kenneth Oppel’s Frankenstein Series.” In Young Adult Gothic Fiction: Monstrous Selves/Monstrous Others, edited by Michelle J. Smith, Kristine Moruzi, 87–109. Montreal: McGill University Press, 2012.
Corelli, Marie. Wormwood: A Drama of Paris. London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1890.
Creation. Ocean Pictures, HanWay Films, BBC Films, 2009.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray, 1859.
Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. 1871. London: Penguin, 2004.
de Kock, Leon. “Interview With Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: New Nation Writers Conference in South Africa.” Ariel 23, no. 3 (1992): 29–47.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. No Man’s Land: Sex Changes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Goss, Theodora. The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter. 2017. New York: Gallery/Saga Press, 2018.
Goss, Theodora. European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman. 2018. New York: Gallery/Saga Press, 2019.
Goss, Theodora. The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. 2019. New York: Gallery/Saga Press, 2020.
Hadley, L. “Feminine Endings: Neo-Victorian Transformation of the Victorian.” in Ed. B. Tredennick. Victorian Transformations: Genre, Nationalism and Desire in Nineteenth-Century Literature. New York: Routledge, 2011. 181–194.
Haggard, H. Rider. She: A History of Adventure. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1887.
Haggard, H. Rider. Ayesha, The Return of She. London: Ward Lock, 1905.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” The United States Magazine and Democratic Review 1844: 545–60.
Heilmann, Ann. “Reflecting on Darwin.” In Reflecting on Darwin, edited by Eckart Voigts, Barbara Schaff and Monika Pietrzak-Franger, 91–111. London: Routledge, 2014.
Kohlke, Marie-Luise, and Christian Gutleben. “The (Mis)Shapes of Neo-Victorian Gothic: Continuations, Adaptations, Transformations.” In The Neo-Victorian Gothic, edited by Kohlke and Gutleben, 1–48. Amsterdam: Rodopi/Brill, 2012.
Le Fanu, Sheridan. Carmilla. In A Glass Darkly. London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1872.
Lombroso, Cesare. Criminal Man. [L’Homme criminel (1876)]. London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911.
MacLeod, Kirsten. “Marie Corelli and Fin-de-Siècle Francophobia: The Absinthe Trail of French Art.” English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920 43, no. 1 (2000): 66–82.
Maier, Sarah E. “Dark Descen(den)ts: Neo-Gothic Monstrosity and the Women of Frankenstein.” In Neo-Gothic Narratives: Illusory Illusions of the Past, edited by Maier and Brenda Ayres, 23–40. London: Anthem, 2020.
Maier, Sarah E. “STEAM(y) and Marvel(ous) Women: Agent Scully, Lisbeth Salander, Beth Harmon, and the Black Widow.” In Vindication of the Redhead, edited by Maier and Brenda Ayres, 261–81. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
May, Antoinette. The Determined Heart. Seattle: Lake Union Publishing, 2015.
Pick, Daniel. Faces of Degeneration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Pulliam, June. Monstrous Bodies: Feminine Power in Young Adult Horror Fiction. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2014.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. The Original 1818 Text, 3rd ed., edited by D. L. MacDonald and Kathleen Scherf. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2012.
Shepherd, Megan. The Madman’s Daughter. New York: Balzer + Bray, 2013.
Shepherd, Megan. Her Dark Curiosity. New York: Balzer + Bray, 2014.
Shepherd, Megan. A Cold Legacy. New York: Balzer + Bray, 2016.
Smith, Andrew. “Reading the Gothic and Gothic Readers.” In Interventions: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century, edited by Andrew Smith and Anna Barton, 72–88. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017.
Spooner, Catherine. “‘The Gothic is part of history, just as history is part of the Gothic’: Gothicizing History and Historicizing the Gothic in Celia Rees’ Young Adult Fiction.” In New Directions in Children’s Gothic: Debatable Lands, edited by Anna Jackson, 132–46. London: Routledge, 2017.
Spooner, Catherine. Contemporary Gothic. London: Reaktion Books, 2006.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1886.
“The Nightcomers,” Penny Dreadful. Desert Wolf Productions, Neal Street Productions, Showtime. Season two, episode three, 2015.
Wallace, Diana. Female Gothic Histories: Gender, History, and the Gothic. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013.
Waller, Alison. Constructing Adolescence in Fantastic Realism. London: Routledge, 2011.
Weber, Eugen. France, Fin de Siècle. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Wells, H. G. The Island of Dr. Moreau. London: Heinemann, 1896.
Wilkie-Stibbs, Christine. “Intertextuality and the Child Reader.” In International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, edited by Peter Hunt, 179–90. London: Routledge, 2004.
White, Kirsten. The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein. New York: Delacorte Press, 2015.
Wisker, Gina. “Gothic and Young Adult Literature: Werewolves, Vampires, Monsters, Rebellion, Broken Hearts and True Romance.” In The Edinburgh Companion to Gothic and the Arts, edited by David Punter, 378–92. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
Wolfreys, Julian. Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London: J. Johnson, 1792.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Maier, S.E. (2024). Mash(ed) Up: Maidens, Monsters, and Mad Scientists. In: Neo-Victorian Young Adult Narratives . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47295-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47295-4_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-47294-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-47295-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)