ABSTRACT

The female is anomalous, 'a variation on the main theme of mankind'. This body becomes imbricated in tales of the monstrous/anomalous, as Braidotti continues: the association of femininity with monstrosity points to a system of pejoration that is implicit in the binary logic of oppositions that characterises the phallogocentric discursive order. The association between the monstrous and the feminine, the configuration of ideas to which Braidotti refers, may best be explored through literature, perhaps most graphically by returning to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The conflict in Frankenstein of the monstrous and the image of God mirrors not only, as Paul Cantor has argued, the Shelleyan fear of the disjuncture between inspiration and composition, but also, subtextually, the perceived duplicity of the female body. Examining the provisions of Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, it is argued that the woman constructed through the provisions governing embryo experimentation and access to reproductive services is indeed an object of horror and fascination.