Gendering the British posthuman: George Du Maurier’s "Trilby" and Bram Stoker’s "Dracula"

Abstract

Evolutionary theory in the late nineteenth-century used progressive narratives to explain the material or physical aspect of human development. The contemporary field of posthuman scholarship also depends on progressive narratives and evolutionary theory to discuss materiality. Some forms of posthumanism posit a utopian body as the effect of these progressive narratives. Looking at Bram Stoker's Dracula and George Du Maurier's Trilby from the end of the nineteenth-century will show some of the less than utopian effects of progressive narratives. The analysis presented here emphasizes the ways gendered nationalism writes the material posthuman in the late nineteenth-century.