Monstrosity and Alterity in H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau

Lykaon, der Wolfsmann, und Mary Shelleys Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus

“…Gerade dadurch, dass Moreau monströse Hybridwesen aus Mensch und Tier erzeugt und dies nicht zu einem höheren wissenschaftlichen Zweck betreibt, sondern aus reiner curiositas und der Lust an der Selbstermächtigung, wird er zu einem Monster, wie Heinz Antor hervorhebt: „This element of the novel takes up the contemporary debate on vivisection, but the doctor’s experiments could not even be approved of by the defenders of this practice because they do not serve the solution of a scientific problem but only the satisfaction of Moreau’s curiosity and his will to see how far he can go and what he can achieve. There is no moral or scientific justification, then, for the suffering he causes, and the doctor yet again takes on a somewhat monstrous quality himself“ (Antor, 2019, 99). Im weiteren Verlauf seines Aufsatzes vergleicht Antor selbst Dr. Moreau mit Shelleys Frankenstein: „As the initiator of a generic border‐crossing that results in the creation of hybrid in‐between beings that to Prendick seem to be grotesque and monstrous, Moreau again displays his monstrous quality and appears like the late Victorian Frankenstein of the artificial acceleration of evolution“ (S. 103).…”