La femme augmentée de Barbara Kirchner. Entre science et littérature, imagination et réalité
The Improved Woman by Barbara Kirchner. Between Science and Literature, Imagination and Reality

Summary/Abstract: : In the novel Die verbesserte Frau published in 2002, a scientist tries to create an “improved woman” in his institute. This creature results from transgressions of biological laws, moral and social laws and natural or human order. The description of this “creature” refers to abnormality, which makes her a singular being. This peculiarity shocks because it goes beyond the limits of what is acceptable. After first creating feelings of surprise or dismay in the reader’s mind, Barbara Kirchner's novel generally tends to trigger feelings of horror rather than admiration thanks to practices violating Ethics and scenes of an incredible violence meant “to improve” the woman. To plagiarize Charles Grivel, this new woman is a figure of excess, which is both scary and compelling. This theme of the improvement of the human being has already been dealt with in literature and in movies, but in this novel the scientist does not aim at creating a great genius able to use each and every capacity of the brain, cyborg-like. This improved version of a “woman” would only be a completely submissive sexual partner who would feel some pleasure at being tortured―almost to death―during SM sessions. We shall attempt to show how, in this contemporary work, a “modern day Frankenstein” and modern science are trying to create such a being. 171 years after Mary Shelley's final version of Frankenstein, another woman focuses on experimental medicine and on building a new human being. The interest that lies in Barbara Kirchner's novel, professor at the university of Bonn and doctor in chemistry at the University of Basel, is the fact that nowadays such “improvements” are not totally inconceivable anymore.

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