Two Misogynist Novels: A Feminist Reading of Villiers and Verne

Although Villiers's L'Eve future has been advanced as the source for Verne's Le Château des Carpathes, actual influence, if any, is insignificant. Rather, these novels, involving man's attempted creation of woman, are complementary documents. Villiers discusses the problem for the serious public; Verne constructs a metaphor for the popular audience. In both works, the simulacrum is destroyed and its would-be consumers chastened, keeping womankind safely outside the boundaries of hubristic male technology. (MGR)