Post blog entry #4: Briefly describe Murphy’s project and then discuss one specific way you might forward her analysis.

In Sarah Murphy’s project, Heart, Science, and Regulation: Victorian Antivivisection Discourse and the Human, she seeks to examine the intersections of law and literature (and science!) through late 19thcentury English discourse on vivisection.  She discusses the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876 and uses Wilkie Collins’ novel Heart and Science as a lens of analysis.  Heart and Science effectively portrays the antivivisection debate.  It is a perfect work to analyze through a cultural critical lens, as it mirrors society. Murphy examines the human centered, or anthropocentric, view of scientists, as they set human lives above those of animals. She takes the conversation beyond the scientific community and connects it to whole cultures.

“Benjulia is marked as vaguely foreign and even monstrous in his appearance” (Murphy 377).  He is not unlike Frankenstein’s Creature, and this idea can be forwarded.  If the vivisection debate had occurred at the beginning of the 19thcentury,Frankenstein would be a text cultural critics would turn to.  The Creature is composed of pieces, like putting vivisected parts back together.  One might question whether the Creature embodies wanton or habitual cruelty, as Murphy makes such a distinction when she discusses pro-vivisection scientists. Murphy compares and contrasts humans and animals.  Is the Creature a human or is he an animal?  The vivisection debate brings up the philosophical question, “What is human?” when compared to Murphy’s article.