Evolutionary Feminism, Popular Romance, and Frank Norris's "Man's Woman"

Abstract

late nineteenth century was a period of intense ideological struggle-in fact, a period of several struggles that often overlapped and intersected. well-known clash between evolution and Christianity, for example, has tended to obscure a less conspicuous battle within evolutionary camp itself that pitted Darwin and his supporters against evolutionary-minded advocates for woman's emancipation. These late nineteenth-century feminists took issue with conclusions Darwin had reached in Descent of Man, using same he had adduced to support his contention that woman was inferior sex to advance their own arguments that she was in fact equal with or even superior to man. But like most ideological struggles, this scientific one over gender took place largely on a discursive battlefield, and therefore incorporated and was incorporated by still other discourses that, on surface, appeared to have little to do with it -- most notably, those of popular romance and emerging narrative mode that has come to be called literary naturalism. Although locked in their own ideological over literary purpose and value, most writers in these two literary forms embraced same culturally dominant gender ideology that Darwin had. And so a writer like Frank Norris, a naturalistic writer with a strong sense of literary purpose that expressed itself in rebellion against genteel tradition and popular, sentimental romance, found himself in an ideological quandary, a between a rebellious literary and a culturally-sanctioned gender ideology that were at odds with one another. His work, and in particular recurrent character-type he called highlights complex interactions between competing ideologies and their discursive expressions, becoming a site in which Darwinian, feminist, and popular representations struggle. In Descent of Man (1871), Darwin elaborated his theory of sexual selection which he had only sketched in Origin of Species (1859) and, important, extrapolated it to human behavior and human biological history. Sexual selection, unlike natural selection, did not involve for existence, but struggle between males for possession of females.(1) female, as passive agent in this process, acted in same capacity as did environment in natural selection; she chose or selected those males that were most appealing and whose attributes would therefore be passed on to their progeny. Darwin argued that sexual selection, although significantly altered in modern society since male now acted as selector, played a major role in differentiation of sexes. As a result, man, as sex actively involved in struggle, had become superior to woman both physically and intellectually. Competition had produced variation among men than women -- a sign to Darwin of biological superiority -- as well as made man stronger, tenacious, and cunning. Physical superiority, in other words, was not enough; in competition for females, Darwin reasoned, mere bodily strength and size would do little for victory, unless associated with courage, perseverance, and determined energy, as well as with the higher mental faculties, namely, observation, reason, invention, or imagination.(2) Man, he concluded, is therefore more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman, and has a inventive genius (p. 557). To bolster his argument, Darwin appealed to evidence exhibited in modern civilization: The chief distinction in intellectual powers of two sexes is shewn by man's attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman -- whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely use of senses and hands (p. 564). Darwin did, however, grant a few concessions to woman's worth. He noted that man's competitiveness passed too easily into selfishness, and that woman, due to her maternal instincts, possessed greater tenderness and less selfishness (p. …