(Post-)Modernism and Cyborg Writing in George Egerton’s “The Regeneration of Two” (1894)

Abstract

Taking into account Rita Felski’s (1995) discussion on stereotypical representations of women in modernity and the New Woman movement, in this paper we analyse George Egerton’s short story “The Regeneration of Two” (1894) from the perspective of Donna Haraway’s cyborg imagery and the concept of cyborg writing. We demonstrate that “The Regeneration of Two” dialogues with Haraway’s proposition of a cyborg writing as it opposes an oppressive patriarchal system with the creation of a women’s community. To do so, we explore two main aspects of cyborg imagery present in the short story: the fractured identities and the community of political kinship, resulting in a subversive “cyborgian epiphany.” This epiphany informs Egerton’s progressive and intersectional representation of gender relations and of women’s writing part and parcel of the late 19th-century radical feminist New Woman movement.