A Trans* Reading of Mary Shelley’s The Last Man

William D. Brewer, “A Trans* Reading of Mary Shelley’s The Last Man” (pp. 185–212) This article’s reading of The Last Man (1826) employs the term trans*, an asterisked prefix signifying “across, into, and through,” as an umbrella term that includes gender-fluid individuals and species-crossing tranimals. Applying this concept to the novel, the article contends that both characters who have been identified by scholars as the multigender plague’s enraged female instigators, the Cumaean Sibyl and Evadne Zaimi, are trans*, as is the novel’s narrator, Lionel Verney, who depicts himself as “manly,” “womanlike,” and “effeminate.” Along with being genderqueer, Verney is a tranimal whose “life is like that of an animal” until he is “humanized” by the maternal Adrian, Earl of Windsor and who reverts to animal behavior after Adrian’s death. Rather than the last man, a more accurate description of Verney would be the last surviving mammal assigned male and human at birth. His anthropocentrism ultimately evolves into a biocentric worldview that recognizes the rights of animals and his kinship with them. In the novel, the nonbinary plague strikes a deathblow against a humanity already infected by sexism, speciesism, transphobia, homophobia, racism, nationalism, and militarism. Along with liberating domestic animals, the plague eliminates oppressive gender and species categories and hierarchies.