Modernism and Eugenics: Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, and the Culture of Degeneration by Donald J. Childs (review)

Abstract

Reviews Reviews Knox may well be correct in her observation that Wilde, spontaneous to the last, refusedto be limitedto one ideology. Yet she too has her own agenda of 'nookand -crannywork',the 'diggingup' of biographicaltitbits(p. 144),to advance.Wilde himself,contraryto his public image, knew when to value the Arnoldianqualitiesof restraintand indifference in his critical writings. It is this, and not his emotional legacy, which may prove of most lastingvalue to his modern critics. RUSKIN COLLEGE, OXFORD NICK KNEALE Modernismand Eugenics:Woolf,Eliot, Yeats,and the Cultureof Degeneration. By DONALD J. CHILDS. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne:Cambridge UniversityPress. 2001. vii + 266 pp. ?40; $59.95. ISBN:0-521-8060I-I. This is an area in which a good general studyis overdue, in the wake of pioneering work by Roy Greenslade, David Bradshaw, and others. Donald J. Childs's book goes part-waytowardsmeeting that demand, including a solid introductionsketching a wider context, and illuminating essays on each writer. But there are also limitationsto the case-studyapproach;and in attemptingto squeeze the maximum material out of its three authors this book raises general questions about the elucidationof relationsbetween a discursivefield such as eugenics and literarytexts. As Childs shows, eugenics permeates modern thinkingabout class, race, degeneration , and politics; and influences considerations of literary character (types), tradition, and creativity. It affects the way that all three authors think about psychological malaise, sex, and children. Eugenics is often, as he demonstrates, linked to a Lamarkianismwhich enables it to encode a social topography and a sense of transmitted, or threatened, cultural achievement. On Eliot and Yeats, Childs is workingwith fairly explicit views, and he has much that is interestingto say about Eliot'sthinkingon biology and society,particularlythe influenceof E. W. MacBride on his culturalpessimism. On Yeats, he makes a case for seeing eugenic thinkingas presentwell before the bitterpoliticsof the 1930s,tracinghis readingon the subjectfrom as early as 1900 and applying it to the drama in particular. My hesitationsrelateto the unresolvedquestionof the marginalityor centralityof eugenics itself.First,amidstthe detail the largerpicture is sometimeslost. We learn a lot about contexts for The WasteLand,but the discussion remains more like an extended annotation than a dynamic interpretation,unlike, say, David Trotter's linkage of its eugenics to imperial topography. Conversely, the topic is sometimes pushed into centre stage beyond where many readers would follow, concretizing traces as almost allegoricalrepresentations(charactersbecome 'eugenical heroes'). Woolf is the test case here, since beyond one irritateddiarycomment that imbeciles 'shouldcertainlybe killed',there is little explicit material.Childs arguesthat eugenics 'remainslargelyinvisibleand relativelyunscathedin the marginsof Woolfs text' (p. 42) that she reproduces the discourse uncontested. But in pursuing that argument,hints sometimes become secure conclusions.DiscussingMrsDalloway, he argues that while Bradshaw is mocked the narrative gaze nevertheless shares his eugenic vision. The evidence? Reading back, one finds that the novel's eugenics (meditationson beggars and so on) are usuallydelimited by focalization;all Childs offersas an instanceof narratorialdescriptionis a briefcharacterizationof Septimus as trembling-lippedand a marginaltype. Or, to take anotherexample, a I923 letter Knox may well be correct in her observation that Wilde, spontaneous to the last, refusedto be limitedto one ideology. Yet she too has her own agenda of 'nookand -crannywork',the 'diggingup' of biographicaltitbits(p. 144),to advance.Wilde himself,contraryto his public image, knew when to value the Arnoldianqualitiesof restraintand indifference in his critical writings. It is this, and not his emotional legacy, which may prove of most lastingvalue to his modern critics. RUSKIN COLLEGE, OXFORD NICK KNEALE Modernismand Eugenics:Woolf,Eliot, Yeats,and the Cultureof Degeneration. By DONALD J. CHILDS. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne:Cambridge UniversityPress. 2001. vii + 266 pp. ?40; $59.95. ISBN:0-521-8060I-I. This is an area in which a good general studyis overdue, in the wake of pioneering work by Roy Greenslade, David Bradshaw, and others. Donald J. Childs's book goes part-waytowardsmeeting that demand, including a solid introductionsketching a wider context, and illuminating essays on each writer. But there are also limitationsto the case-studyapproach;and in attemptingto squeeze the maximum material out of its three authors this book raises general questions about the elucidationof relationsbetween a discursivefield such as eugenics and literarytexts. As Childs shows, eugenics permeates modern thinkingabout class, race...