(Post-)Modernism and Cyborg Writing in George Egerton’s “The Regeneration of Two” (1894)

Authors

  • Jéssica Katerine Molgero Da Rós PPGI/UFSC
  • Alinne Balduino Pires Fernandes Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2023.e91809

Keywords:

New Woman, Cyborg Writing, George Egerton, “The Regeneration of Two”

Abstract

Taking into account Rita Felski’s (1995) discussion on stereotypical representations of women in modernity and the New Woman movement, in this paper we analyse George Egerton’s short story “The Regeneration of Two” (1894) from the perspective of Donna Haraway’s cyborg imagery and the concept of cyborg writing. We demonstrate that “The Regeneration of Two” dialogues with Haraway’s proposition of a cyborg writing as it opposes an oppressive patriarchal system with the creation of a women’s community. To do so, we explore two main aspects of cyborg imagery present in the short story: the fractured identities and the community of political kinship, resulting in a subversive “cyborgian epiphany.” This epiphany informs Egerton’s progressive and intersectional representation of gender relations and of women’s writing part and parcel of the late 19th-century radical feminist New Woman movement.

Author Biographies

Jéssica Katerine Molgero Da Rós, PPGI/UFSC

Jéssica da Rós is a PhD student in the Post-Graduate Programme in English: Linguistic and Literary Studies (PPGI - UFSC) conducting research on the novels of Octavia E. Butler. She holds an MA in English, in the field of Film Studies, with focus on science fiction narratives, posthumanism, and surveillance. Her current research interests are narratives of displacement in speculative and science fiction written by women. Her PhD research is supported by the FUMDES/UNIEDU-SC scholarship.

Alinne Balduino Pires Fernandes, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

<

References

Atis, Nurbanu. The Rise of Female Consciousness in George Egerton’s Selected Short Stories Within the Concept of The New Woman (thesis). Hacettepe University Graduate School of Social Sciences, Ankara, 2016.

D’hoker, Elke. Irish Women Writers and the Modern Short Story. Springer Publishing, 2016.

Egerton, George. “The Regeneration of Two.” Discords. London: John Lane, 1894, pp. 168-253.

Evangelista, Stefano. Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English Fin De Siècle: Citizens of Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2021.

Felski, Rita. The Gender of Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995

Fogarty, Anne. “Women and Modernism.” The Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism, edited by Joe Cleary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014, pp. 147-60.

Grand, Sarah. “The New Aspect of the Woman Question.” The North American Review, vol. 158, no. 448, 1894, pp. 270- 276.

Hager, Lisa. Piecing Together a Gray Patchwork: The Formation of Feminine Identity in George Egerton’s Keynotes and Discords (thesis). U of Florida, 2001.

Hager, Lisa. “A Community of Women: Women’s Agency and Sexuality in George Egerton’s Keynotes and Discords.” Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. vol. 2, no. 2, 2006. https://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue22/PDFs/hager.pdf

Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” The Cybercultures Reader, edited by David Bell and Barbara Kennedy. New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 291-324.

Jusová, Iveta. “George Egerton and the Project of British Colonialism.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 19, no. 1, 2000, pp. 27–55. https://doi.org/10.2307/464408.

Kelso, Charlotte. “The Body as Interface: New Woman Identity in George Egerton’s ‘The Regeneration of Two.’” Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, 2019, pp. 80-93.

Maier, Sarah E. Dionysian Dominatrices: The Nineteenth Century Decadents/ce of Alcott, Egerton, D'Arcy and Rachilde (dissertation), U of Alberta, 1997.

Miles, Rosie. “George Egerton, Bitextuality and Cultural (Re)production in the 1890s.” Women’s Writing, vol. 3, no. 3, 1996, pp. 243-259.

O’Toole, Tina. “Keynotes from Millstreet, Co. Cork: George Egerton’s Transgressive Fictions.” Colby Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 2, 2000, pp. 145-156.

O’Toole, Tina. “George Egerton’s Translocational Subjects.” Modernism/modernity, vol. 21, no. 3, The Johns Hopkins UP, 2014, pp. 827-842.

Pykett, Lyn. The “Improper” Feminine: The Women’s Sensation Novel and New Women Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Downloads

Published

2023-08-22