Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T02:17:33.047Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Descent of Man and the Evolution of Woman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Penelope Deutscher
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper addresses the appropriation of theories of evolution by nineteenth-century feminists, focusing on the critical response to Darwin's The Descent of Man by Eliza Burt Gamble (The Evolution of Woman, 1893) and Antoinette Brown Blackwell (The Sexes Throughout Nature, 1875) and Charlotte Perkins Oilman's social evolutionism. For Gilman, evolutionism was a revolutionary resource for feminism, one of its greatest hopes. Gamble and Blackwell revisit Darwin's data with the aim of locating, amidst his ostensive conclusions to the contrary, his implicit “defense” of either the equality (Blackwell) or the superiority (Gamble) of women. This article identifies the reasons for, and limitations of, this enthusiasm. To some extent, the basis of this feminism is provided by its keen perception of disparities between what a text does, and what it says it is doing. But these feminists did not think through the implications for their own rhetoric about race hierarchy. Darwin's trope of the “savage” would return in the work of some of these feminists, occasionally displaced or rejected, but usually reiterated, and sometimes integral to the feminism in question.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 19 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Women in the American Philosophical Tradition 1800-1930 , Spring 2004 , pp. 35 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Eric D. 1999. Black responses to Darwinism, 1859–1915. In Disseminating Darwinism: The role of place, race, religion, and gender, ed. Numbers, Ronald L. and Stenhouse, John. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Beer, Gillian. 1996. Open fields: Science in cultural encounter. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Blackwell, Antoinette Brown. 1875. The sexes throughout nature. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar
Bodington, Alice. 1890. Studies in Evolution and Biology. London: Elliot Stock.Google Scholar
Ceplair, Larry ed. 1991. Charlotte Perkins Oilman: A non‐fiction reader. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1964. On the origin of species. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1871. The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. In two volumes. London: John Murray. Facsimile published in one volume by Princeton University Press (1981).Google Scholar
Dickens, Peter. 2000. Social Darwinism: Linking evolutionary thought to social theory. Buckingham, U. K. and New York Philadelphia: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Douglass, Frederick. 1992. The Frederick Douglass papers, vol 5. Ed. Blassingame, John W. and McKivigan, John R.New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. 1970. “The conservation of races.” In W.E.B. Du Bois speaks: Speeches and addresses, 1890–1919, ed. Foner, Philip S.New York: Pathfinder.Google Scholar
Gamble, Eliza Burt. 1893. The evolution of woman: An inquiry into the dogma of her inferiority to man. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar
Gamble, Eliza Burt. 1916. The sexes in science and history: An inquiry into the dogma of woman's inferiority to man. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar
Ganohcsik‐Williams, Lisa. 1999. The intellectualism of Charlotte Perkins Oilman: Evolutionary perspectives on race, ethnicity, and class. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Optimist reformer, ed. Rudd, Jill and Gough, Val. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.Google Scholar
Gates, Barbara T., and Shteir, Ann B., eds. 1997. Natural eloquence: Women reinscribe science. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Gatty, Margaret Scott. 1863. British sea‐weeds: drawnfrom Professor Harvey's “Phycologia brittanica,” with descriptions, an amateur's synopsis, rules for laying out sea‐weeds, an order for arranging them in the herbarium, and an appendix of new species. London: Bell and Daldy.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Gubar, Susan. 1999. “Fecundate! Discriminate!” Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the theologizing of maternity. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Optimist reformer, ed. Rudd, Jill and Gough, Val. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.Google Scholar
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. 1911. The man made world; or, Our androcentric culture. New York: Charlton.Google Scholar
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. 1970a. The home: Its work and influence. New York: Source Book Press.Google Scholar
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. 1970b. Women and economics. New York: Source Book Press.Google Scholar
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. 1972. The living of Charlotte Perkins Oilman: An autobiography. New York: Arno Press.Google Scholar
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. 1976. His religion and hers: A study of the faith of our fathers and work of our mothers. New York: Century.Google Scholar
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. 1979. Herland. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. 1998. The yellow wall‐paper, ed. Bauer, Dale M.Boston: Bedford Books.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, Richard. 1959. Social Darwinism in American thought. New York: George Braziller.Google Scholar
Hubbard, Ruth. 1983. Have only women evolved? In Discovering reality: Feminist perspectives on epistemology, metaphysics, methodology, and philosophy of science, ed. Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merrill B.Dordrecht, Holland and Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Jann, Rosemary. 1997. Revising the descent of woman: Eliza Burt Gamble. In Natural eloquence: Women reinscribe science, ed. Gates, Barbara T. and Shteir, Ann B.Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Lane, Ann J. ed. 1981. The Charlotte Perkins Gilman reader. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Morgan, Elaine. 1973. The descent of woman. New York: Bantam Books.Google Scholar
Newby, Idus A. 1965. Jim Crow's defense: Anti‐Negro thought in America, 1900–1930. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Reed, Evelyn. 1975. Woman's evolution. New York: Pathfinder Press.Google Scholar
Sanderson, Stephen. K. 1990. Social evolutionism: A critical history. Oxford, U. K.: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Thompson, W. O. 1906. The Negro: The racial inferiority argument in the light of science and history, The Voice of the Negro 3 (11): 507–13.Google Scholar
Twining, Elizaheth. 1868. Illustrations of the natural orders of plants: with groups and descriptions. London: Sampson, Low, Son and Marston.Google Scholar
Ward, Lester. 1888. Our hetter halves, Forum 6: 266–75.Google Scholar
Ward, Lester. 1903. Pure sociology: A treatise on the origin and spontaneous development of society. New York: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Washington, Booker. T. 1972. The Booker T. Washington papers. Vol. 2. Ed. Daniel, Pete, Kaufman, Stuart B., Smock, Raymond W., and Welty, William M.Urhana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar