Representing female-friendly science and technology in fiction and film

Abstract

As a humanities scholar teaching in a technological university, I am interested in developing a sociohistorical and literary analysis concerning the continuing problem of underrepresentation of women in science and engineering education and professions. Fictional representations of women engaged with science and technology offer images reflecting and rehcting historical and contemporary cultural values regarding those influencing and affected by the consequences of innovative technologies. My paper examines three fictional texts delineating the roles of women in technology--Lydia Maria Child's 1846 short story Hilda Silfierling: A Fantasy and two Hollywood movies, IQ (1994; directed by Fred Schepisi) and Conracr (1997; directed by Robert Zemickis). I have deliberately chosen American narratives optimistically representing scientific and technological advancement and offering atypical characterizations of women because I am interested in outlining a counterpoint narrative to the dominant paradigm offered in many fictions about science and technology, one as old as Mary Shelley's Frunkmtein (181 8), which describes how the inventor Victor Frankenstein is destroyed by the monster, the successhl outcome of his experiment. Shelley's novel suggests that human beings should not tread beyond acceptable boundaries in seeking new howledge about science and technology, noting that men create technology for ambitious purposes at odds with the stereotypically defined feminine projects of nurturing a family within a well-managed domestic space.In contrast, Child's Hilda Silfverling depicts how scientific study and technological solutions free women from the social boundaries of patriarchal oppression. The title character, an unmanied domestic servant, is unjustly condemned to death in 1740. Just before Hilda's execution, a chemist convinces the court that instead of being killed she should be frozen for 100 years as an experiment. The chemist's advice is followed, Hilda is frozen, and the experiment is successfully concluded in 1840 when she comes back to life too find a world much friendlier to women. Suspended animation has not harmed her physically, for it has protected her from the narrow-minded and ill-founded prejudices of her culture by allowing her to live a productive life at a later historical moment.Child's fantasy imagines how an experimental technology of her own time, refrigeration, can work a kind of social engineering in rescuing women.Similarly offering representations of how understanding science and technology can help reconfigure gender stereotypes, IQ and Conracr demonstrate how studying science and developing new technologies can lead to new howledge of the world, self, and society. Both films focus the audiences' attention on female scientists who work in maledominated fields, mathematics and radio astronomy respectively, and whose technical research projects enhance personal, social, and professional attainments. Catherine Boyd, the heroine of IQ, endures the matchmaking of her famous uncle Albert Einst...