The Aesthetics of Artifice: Villiers' L'Eve Future

A detailed reading of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's 1886 novel L'Eve future, this study explores Villiers's construction of an android woman from two angles: science and art. Marie Lathers shows that novel is a satire of the era's belief that science world cure the ills of the modern world and redeem the femme fatale. She also exposes Vllliers's prescient discussion of technologies that form hybrids of science and art. The only lengthy study of Villiers's novel in English, Lathers's book engages significant thinkers of nineteenth-century French aesthetic, medical, and scientific discourse. Contemporary cultural and feminist criticism, particularly that of Roland Barthes, Mary Ann Doane, and Judith Butler, forms the framework of her analysis.