This thesis proposes that Promethean masculinity, a specific form of hegemonic
masculinity characterised by egotistical technoscientific enquiry coupled with the
exploitation of women, animals and nature, emerges at certain periods of tension
between masculinity and both women’s and animal rights. Further, it proposes that this
emergence has been reflected in contemporaneous literary narratives. The thesis
examines how and why Promethean masculinity manifests in three specific science
fiction texts: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), H. G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor
Moreau (1896) and Brian Aldiss’ Moreau’s Other Island (1980). Written at key periods
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, each of the latter texts represent selfaware responses to the former. The three texts have a distinct literary relationship, and
this thesis traces, through this relationship, common threads that have previously been
overlooked. By linking them to the Prometheus myth, the thesis offers novel analysis
of the anxieties in masculinity that each text depicts.
While fictional treatments of masculinity, women’s rights and animal rights have
all been analysed in the past, this thesis suggests that Promethean masculinity as a
specific form, and its confluence with debates about technoscientific attitudes to
women and animals, have previously been neglected. It therefore seeks to address the
absence of focused work in this area. Drawing on a theoretical framework of
scholarship in ecofeminism, animal studies, masculinity studies and mythology, it
suggests that the myth of Prometheus offers a useful lens through which to analyse a
specifically technoscientifically-inflected form of hegemonic masculinity. It further
demonstrates that literary Prometheus figures reveal salient details about the
technoscientific landscapes, and the juxtapositions of masculinity, femininity and
animality, of the times in which they were written and published. It also indicates some
of the forms that resistance to Prometheanism has taken at these junctures, including
vegetarianism, feminist movements and anti-vivisection.
| Date of Award | 21 May 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - University Of Strathclyde
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| Sponsors | University of Strathclyde |
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| Supervisor | Erica Fudge (Supervisor) & Elsa Richardson (Supervisor) |
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