ABSTRACT
The chapter synthesizes why stories about motherless creations recur in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American, British, French, and German literature, particularly in the authors and texts that constitute the book’s subject matter: Quillet’s “Callipaedia,” Descartes, Smellie’s obstetrical work, Vaucanson’s promotional material about his automata, Deslandes’s Pygmalion, or the Animated Statue, the lyrical scene Pygmalion by Rousseau, Goethe’s tragedy Faust, Hoffmann’s novella The Sandman, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Arnim’s Isabella of Egypt, Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s Tomorrow’s Eve, Melville’s The Bell-Tower, and Ellis’s The Huge Hunter; or, the Steam Man of the Prairies. Key concepts such as the singularity and the motherless creation’s relationship to slavery are reviewed, and the book’s contributions to understanding fictions of artificial life are summarized. This book exposes the fabricated nature of narratives that promote the perfection of spermatozoa, question the role of maternal imagination in congenital birth defects, and celebrate automaton manufacturers and obstetricians who can seemingly operate the human body like a machine. The narratological effect of these themes is considered. Writers’ emphasis on creators tends to suppress the development of motherless creations as round characters. Some characters’ anonymity allows them to perform an allegorical function, teaching readers that preserving their identity as free men depends on mastering technology. This concluding chapter reviews the ways in which motherless creations pose either a threat against humanity or suggest humanity’s potential.
