Representation of the Body in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race
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Abstract
Many critics have suggested that most of the monstrous characters in late-Victorian British science-fiction novels represent social misfits and the cultural fear of physical and moral degeneration. However, scholars of critical posthumanism believed that the body born in a techno-scientific context can depict a progressive hybrid that destabilises the natural-unnatural dualism from an anthropocentric view. In line with this posthuman perspective, this article studies Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race (1871) in which the non-human characters, the Vril-ya, can be considered advanced beings instead of malformed monsters. It argues that such characters represent progression rather than degeneration since the portrayal of their electric body, a body integrated with electrical technology, affirms the necessity for a bio-technological reform of civilisation. Through the electric body, Bulwer-Lytton seems to suggest the possibility of a new form of life that co-evolves with technology.
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