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Description
This paper looks at two bestselling novels – Marie Corelli’s The Young Diana (1918) and Gertrude Atherton’s Black Oxen (1923) – both of which feature women who regain their youth through the power of science. One British and one American, these novels, which we could call science fiction romance, thematise scientific anti-aging technologies, responding to the rejuvenation craze of the 1910s and 20s. As scholars including Michael Pettit and James F. Stark have discussed, this movement was born out of the convergence of fears about an aging population, concerns about youthfulness and lost youth, and the growing popularity of eugenics. It also spoke to new sciences which suggested the actual potential for regaining or extending youth, particularly endocrinology, and the discovery of vitamins.
This paper discusses the plots of the novels in relation to rejuvenation science. But it also draws out another thread I observed in these texts – mentions of eating and digesting, and how they are related to aging. I look at descriptions of digestion in these two novels: about losing vitality, about the medico-moral pitfalls of greed, about the arteries hardening. These descriptions point to the fundamental significance of metabolism, an idea at the heart of rejuvenation science in the 1920s, yet which often goes uncommented on. I will tease out this connection between rejuvenation theory and digestive health in order to argue that these texts speak to a growing understanding of the role of gut bacteria, and increasing popular awareness of the potential of food, diet, vitamins and probiotics to radically impact the body.
This paper is part of a broader project considering how popular fiction visualised the digestive system during a period in which the science of gut health was burgeoning, and how digestive knowledge was in turn “culturized” through popular fiction.
| Principal domain of study | English literary studies |
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