The Descent of Love: Darwin and the Theory of Sexual Selection in American Fiction, 1871-1926

Bert Bender

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 1996

The Descent of Love

Darwin and the Theory of Sexual Selection in American Fiction, 1871-1926

Bert Bender

https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512814293

Overview
Contents

About this book

Upon its publication in 1871, Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex sent shock waves through the scientific community and the public at large. In an original and persuasive study, Bert Bender demonstrates that it is this treatise on sexual selection, rather than any of Darwin's earlier works on evolution, that provoked the most immediate and vigorous response from American fiction writers. These authors embraced and incorporated Darwin's theories, insights, and language, creating an increasingly dark and violent view of sexual love in American realist literature.

In The Descent of Love, Bender carefully rereads the works of William Dean Howells, Henry James, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Harold Frederic, Charles W. Chesnutt, Edith Wharton, and Ernest Hemingway, teasing from them a startling but utterly convincing preoccupation with questions of sexual selection. Competing for readership as novelists who best grasped the "real" nature of human love, these writers also participated in a heated social debate over racial and sexual differences and the nature of sex itself. Influenced more by The Descent of Man than by the Origin of Species, Bender's novelists built upon Darwin's anthropological and zoological materials to anatomize their character's courtship behavior, returning consistently to concerns with physical beauty, natural dominance, and the power to select a mate.

Bringing the resources of the history of science and intellectual history to this, the first full-length study of the impact of Darwin's theories in American literature, Bender revises accepted views of social Darwinism, American literary realism, and modernism in American literature, forever changing our perceptions of courtship and sexual interaction in American fiction from 1871 to 1926 and beyond.

Author / Editor information

Bert Bender is Professor of English at Arizona State University.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xv
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I: The 1870s and 1880s
1. Evolutionary Anthropology and Sexual Selection in William Dean Howells's Their Wedding Journey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
2. Courting Design: Chance, Choice, and Sexual Difference in Howells's Courtship Novels of the 1870s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
3. Darwinian Problems in A Modern Instance: Heredity, Primitive Marriage, and Male Sexual Aggression Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
4. Henry James and The Descent of Man: "The Loves of the Quadrupeds" in "The Madonna of the Future" and Roderick Hudson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
5. Psychological Darwinism in The Portrait of a Lady Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	132
6. Darwin and "The Natural History of Doctresses": The Sex War Between Howells, Phelps, Jewett, and James Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
Part II: The 1890s
7. Kate Chopin's Quarrel with Darwin before The Awakening Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
8. The Teeth of Desire: The Awakening and The Descent of Man Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	214
9. The Damnation of Theron Ware: His Failure in "The Work of Selection" Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	230
10. Sources of Power in The Market-Place: Sexual Vigor, Nerve Force, and the Concealment of Emotions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
Part III: 1900-1926
11. Race and Sexual Selection in Charles W. Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	289
12. Edith Wharton, from "The Descent of Man" to The Reef Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	314
13. Sexual Selection in The Sun Also Rises Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	341
Appendix: Darwin in American Literary History since 1950 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	361
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	369
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	405
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	421

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 456
Keywords: Literature; Cultural Studies

eBook

Published: November 16, 2015
ISBN: 9781512814293