Victorians and vivisection: Fictions of pain from fin de siecle (Wilkie Collins, Sarah Grand, H. G. Wells, Octavia E. Butler)

Victorians and Vivisection: Fictions of Pain from the fin de siècle explores the role of the vivisection controversy in late-Victorian literature. Vivisection, the method of experimentation that propelled medicine from an art to a science, becomes complicated by its connection to eugenics, gender and procreative issues, and for its role in revisiting Darwinian debates about the relationship between human and non-human animals. These concepts are woven into works of fiction and non-fiction, particularly those that concern themselves with a moral vision for the future of humanity.; The first chapter, “The Laboratory,” examines the laboratory as the site of the vivisector's gruesome work. Dr. Benjulia, the archvivisector in Wilkie Collins's novel, Heart and Science (1882/83), is an emotionally stunted man who shuns social intercourse, preferring to remain cloistered within his mysterious laboratory. Charles Darwin's theory that people find pleasure in the company of others is belied by Benjulia whose unnatural occupation invites solitude.; The second chapter, “The Home,” looks at the role of women in the antivivisection movement. Sarah Grand's The Beth Book (1898) illustrates the moral dangers a woman faces when living with a degenerate vivisector. Darwin's examination of the moral laws that serve the interests of the community lie behind Grand's message of sacrifice for the common good and eugenics as the means of creating a race of healthy, virtuous humans.; The third chapter, “The Wild,” explores the results of unrestricted vivisection in H. G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896). In spite of his freedom to pursue experimental science in exile, Moreau fails to create a viable creature. By an effort of sheer will, Moreau overcomes the sympathetic instinct that Darwin claims is innate to all social animals, placing him, like Benjulia, in the category of unnatural vivisector.; The fourth chapter, “The Future,” uses Octavia E. Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy (1987/88/89) as a means of examining the issues raised by Victorians in a futuristic context. Butler's future humans can survive only if they interbreed with aliens. This trilogy is strongly influenced by a Darwinian understanding of the necessity of evolution and mutation to ensure survival.