Mental Inferiority Research Articles

Prelingual Deafness and the Manualist/Oralist Controversy in the Dutch Republic

This essay discusses the life and career of the prelingually deaf painter Jan Jansz. de Stomme (1615-1658) in the context of early modern debates on deafness, oral speech, and gestural communication. A son of a Franeker burgomaster, Jan moved to Groningen in 1643, where he became known for his portraits of Frisian aristocracy, got married twice, and lived in wealth in a prestigious neighbourhood. The theologian Samuel Maresius and scholar Anton Deusing described Jan’s devout attendance of services in the Reformed Church, which defended his right to participate in Holy Communion. A similar account was given in a family chronicle written by Jan’s grandnephew, who further specified that Jan joined the church as a communicant member expressing his understanding of the doctrine through gestures. By examining these various sources, I argue that church membership played an important role in bolstering Jan’s social status and undermining the alleged intellectual and mental inferiority of prelingually deaf people. I further show that despite the belief that oral speech was a sign of intelligence necessary to perform functions deemed normative, Jan established a successful career communicating only through gestures.

Girolamo Camerata and the Querelle des Femmes between Discourse and Paradox

In this article, I focus on the rhetoric of the querelle des femmes in the only book by Girolamo Camerata, Trattato dell’honor vero, et del vero dishonore (1567), offering a critical analysis of the chapter entitled “Questione dove si tratta chi più meriti honore o la donna, o l’huomo di M. Girolamo Camerata da Randazzo, Siciliano Dottor dell’Arti” (Question where it is discussed who merits more honour, woman or man, by Girolamo Camerata of Randazo, Sicilian Doctor of Arts). The main aim is to show how Camerata, in line with the prevalent rhetoric of the time and the other authors of the querelle des femmes, relies on androcentric literary codes (rhetoric within the androcentric cultural environment) and socially and culturally prescribed gender roles in order to provide reasons why women should be considered worthier of honour and more perfect than men. His work is an example of how arguments once used in reproach can paradoxically be reversed and serve the opposite aim (e.g., when the humoral theory is invoked to show that women are cold and therefore inferior, and then later to show that they are hot and therefore superior). Similarly, arguments citing bodily weakness as proof of mental inferiority can easily be turned to women’s advantage, connecting the body’s tenderness with greater mental activity.

Malorossianism in contemporary Ukrainian historical and journalistic discourse

The article is devoted to the analysis of the concept of “Malorossianism” in the modern Ukrainian scientific discourse. Leaders of the Ukrainian national movement in the Russian Empire argued about Malorossianism. They considered it a negative phenomenon, a mental inferiority complex, provincialism. During the Bolsheviks’ policy of Ukrainianization in the territory of Soviet Ukraine, disputes about the legitimacy of the name “Malorossi” began to cease. The Bolsheviks chose the term “Ukrainian” as the official name of the population of the Soviet republic. During the period of Soviet Ukrainianization, the name “Maloross” became synonymous with the oppressive policies of the tsarist government. Outside the Soviet republic, proponents of the Ukrainian idea continued to write about the Malorossians and Malorossianism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the question of Malorossianism became popular again in modern Ukraine. Modern Ukrainian specialists actively write about Malorossianism and consider it a negative phenomenon. Specialists in the field of literary and cultural studies, as well as specialists in other branches of social sciences write about it. The concept is often found in historical and historical-politological and historical-philosophical works. In modern domestic literature it is not given enough attention. This article examines the concept of Malorossianism, which is characteristic of modern Ukrainian science and Ukrainian historical grand narrative.

To “Evaluate the Mental Powers of the Indian Children": Race and Intelligence Testing in Canada's Indian Residential School System

Scholars have examined how theories of race-based intelligence as they relate to IQ testing have impacted Canadian society in the realms of educational policy, immigration, and public health, yet little research has focused on the role of IQ and other intelligence testing in the Indian residential school system. When administrators observed students’ poor grade progression, they sought not to reform a system that forced the children to work for at least half the day, but rather to blame students’ home environments and supposedly hereditary racial traits. This paper examines the social scientific context of intelligence testing in residential schools in the early to mid-1900s and argues that testing results—a biased and inaccurate measure of mental ability—played a role in justifying the schools’ emphasis on a limited academic curriculum. It argues that the data gathered on Indigenous mental deficiency came to form part of the “official information” guiding the Department of Indian Affairs’ administration of the residential school system. Ultimately, discourses of race-based mental inferiority impacted the type and quality of education provided to Indigenous children with reverberations down to the present day.

Hitting the barriers – Women in Formula 1 and W series racing

In this article, it will be concluded that the major automotive racing league, Formula 1, is failing in its efforts to be a truly unisex sport. In the current Formula 1 series, there are no female drivers. Although women have never been officially prohibited from competing in Formula 1, there have been fewer than 10 female drivers since its inception. This inquiry focuses on why women drivers have been prevented from securing professional driving positions in Formula 1 and racing on equal terms with men. I argue that there are five major barriers which perpetuate women’s exclusion from this league: historical and current attitudes, assumed physical and mental inferiority, sexualisation, money, and representation and (in)visibility. In this cultural examination, I demonstrate that the situation for women in Formula 1 appears to be bleaker than in other sports that are making progress in their quest for gender equality. However, I also suggest that, despite ethical issues, W Series – a new, women-only, single-seater car racing championship – could potentially motivates positive change for women’s car racing by promoting gender equity through a new league which enables women to improve themselves in a protected category. This article also considers the impact of sex in Formula 1, which is pertinent to the discussion surrounding alleged biological differences. The discussion employs Simone de Beauvoir’s conceptualisation of ‘Otherness’, as well as Helmut Pflugfelder’s account of female embodiment in motorsport. The overall findings are that more focused research is required for gender issues in Formula 1 to be accurately addressed.

The Legal Status Of Electronic Theft In The Light Of The Quran And Hadith, A Research Study

Moral values are considered an integral part of every aspect of life, but when they reach the extremes of social degradation and deprivation, they encompass all aspects of life that lead to the emergence of morality and civilization. This kind of dilapidation affects pure scientific tendencies and activities. The tragedy is that when moral and scientific values and traditions are destroyed in the specialized institutions and schools and universities for knowledge, wisdom, and cognition, it’s astonishing. It is a state of moral and mental inferiority beyond which and the concept of decline is not possible. Presenting the intellectual ideas and results of a leading researcher as one's own is called plagiarism in the field of science and research. Electronic theft refers to the theft of information that is available online in which the computer is used as a tool. Stealing data by using information technology devices or forcibly stealing something secure is called electronic theft. Using someone's property without his permission is an undesirable act in Islamic law and seizing someone's property from head to toe is an unforgivable crime. It is illegal in Islamic law to get acquainted with a person's secrets and to spy on his secrets. In this regard, the relevant Shariah point has been clarified in the article.

"Their Own Happiness": The Ownership of Enslaved Africans' Emotions in William Warburton's SPG Sermon

This essay examines the condemnation of chattel slavery that William Warburton delivered in the anniversary sermon of 1766 for the Society for Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. This sermon, which was the first in the SPG's history to express outrage, rather than just sorrow, over slavery, merits attention for its contributions to abolitionist rhetoric, philosophies of feeling, and anti-racist thought. One of the most important contributions Warburton made was to assert enslaved Africans' ability to know their feelings, using those feelings to make decisions conducive to their own welfare. The sermon shows how Locke's writings on mental perception, emotions, and individual liberty combined with an Anglican missionary agenda and British imperial vision after the Seven Years' War to attack not only slavery but also assertions of Africans' mental inferiority.

Meningococcal infection in modern conditions: clinical, microbiological and preventive aspects

The problem of meningococcal infection remains relevant due to the high epidemiological and social significance throughout the world, the unpredictability of the course, a wide range of clinical manifestations (from asymptomatic carriage to extremely severe generalized forms) with a high risk of life-threatening conditions and deaths, and a significant incidence of disability after past illness (loss of limbs, deafness, mental inferiority, and more). The changing serogroup landscape of meningococcal infection with an increase in the incidence of diseases caused by Neisseria meningitidis serogroup W, Y and others is noteworthy. The article presents an analytical review of literature and reflects current clinical, epidemiological, diagnostic and preventive trends in the Russian Federation and abroad. The review focuses on the epidemiological features of meningococcal infection, depending on the serogroup affiliation of meningococcus, the variety of clinical manifestations of the generalized form of meningococcal infection, including atypical manifestations, age-related features, depending on the serogroup of the pathogen. New diagnostic approaches and the possibilities of specific prophylaxis are highlighted. Attention is focused on the importance of monitoring the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of meningococcal infection depending on the genetic characteristics of the pathogen, and the need for further in-depth studies of this problem.

Special spheres of the UGCC charitable activity in the light of confessional media: religious analysis

The specific directions and forms of social activity of the UGCC during the period of independence in the aspect of philanthropy are considered. Detailed analysis of the spiritual care of people with various physical and mental inferiority, serious illnesses and homeless in the light of church media is made. It has been found out that the deaconion, or the social ministry of the Church, is called to spiritual care for the following layers of the population by the means of social service of the marginalized society, such as abandoned with either physical and mental disability, or loneliness, or being in a particular life situation, etc. It is emphasized on the religious motivation of the volunteer activity of priests and believers in such pastoral care. It was emphasized that active development of civil society and personal religiosity contributed to the formation of an entire network of various forms of social and charitable activities.

“As White as Most White Women”: Racial Passing in Advertisements for Runaway Slaves and the Origins of a Multivalent Term

In 1731 man named Gideon Gibson, along with several of his relatives, emigrated from Virginia to South Carolina. At first it was reported with consternation that Gibson was free black man married to wife.1 However, when the South Carolina House of Assembly took up an investigation of Gibson, then governor Robert Johnson concluded that the Gibson family were Negroes nor Slave but Free people.2 The Gibsons were allowed to remain in the colony, and they prospered, eventually purchasing 450 acres of prime South Carolina land; Gibson owned black slaves, and his sister married wealthy planter. Gideon Gibson's son married woman and himself became the owner of at least seven slaves. It would be forty-five more years before the colonies declared independence from Britain, but it seems the Gibsons had already declared themselves free from the social, legal, or ideological codes that would construct them black, Negro, or mulatto. Another investigation in 1768 revealed that Gideon Gibson, Jr., escaped the penalties of the negro law by producing upon comparison more red and in his face than could be discovered in the faces of half the descendants of ... [the House of Assembly].3 Gideon Gibson, Jr., was judged to have been passing for white; he was in actuality light-skinned black man with black ancestors.4 Yet he was also slave owner and prosperous member of South Carolinian society.On May 15, 1845, an enslaved black woman named Fanny ran away from her Alabama owner. Since Fanny could read and write, her owner speculates in an advertisement posted in the Alabama Beacon (June 14, 1845) that might forge pass for herself. But Fanny's master also comments that she is most women, with straight light hair, and blue eyes, and can pass herself for woman.5 Fanny can pass for white, but indeed one wonders what her owner means when he says that is as most women. Are many white women not quite pure white? And yet they are not subject to perpetual enslavement, Fanny is. Fanny is also described very pious and very intelligent. This valuable piece of it is implied, in other ways is no different from woman. She is religious, rational, and light-skinned. In what ways is not, the advertisement seems to wonder, white woman? The advertisement appears to grant Fanny humanity more than property, even it seeks to re-enslave her. Her owner seems to know that nothing but a fiction of law and custom-to borrow Mark Twain's words in Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)-keeps her enslaved.6Although some scholars argue that racial passing began in earnest in the mid- to late nineteenth century, reached its pinnacle in the early twentieth century, and then abated or became passe by the 1930s,7 these two incidents and many others discussed in this essay indicate that, both word and behavior, passing has longer and more extensive early history and genealogy. Moreover, its meaning is unstable and changes based on historical context. When Gideon Gibson passed for in 1731, he did so to migrate into category of identity that empowered him in period in which such racial migration was somewhat acceptable because ideologies of black racial inferiority had not yet solidified. That he owned slaves himself indicates that he did not see his passing challenge to the codes of law that allowed the perpetual possession of black human property; for Gibson slaveholding might have been sign of his wealth, status, and power, rather than racially inflected behavior. Fanny's owner, on the other hand, manifests more convoluted attitude toward passing and race, because by 1845 the ideology of African American physical and mental inferiority was entrenched and often used to rationalize the fact that blacks were the only group of individuals who could legally be held in perpetual enslavement in the United States. …

Exploration of Social, Environmental, and Familial Influences on the Sexual Health Practices of Urban African American Adolescents.

Despite efforts to examine social influences and provide interventions that lead to safer sexual practices for African American (AA) adolescent girls, statistics have demonstrated this population continues to have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV when compared with adolescent girls of other races. Guided by the principles of Black Feminist Thought and Photovoice and focus group methodology, this descriptive study aimed to discover the social realities influencing a group of eight AA adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 years. Data from individual interviews and a focus group session were collected from November 11, 2012, to February 1, 2013. Analysis of selected photographs, interviews, and focus group conversations through a feminist lens suggests AA adolescents of low socioeconomic status continue to foster racial and mental inferiority stereotypes by using their sexuality as a bargaining tool for acceptance, value, and even love.

Crazy brains and the weaker sex: the British case (1860-1900)

Psychiatry is sometimes described as a particularly sexist science, having contributed in the past to derogatory discourses on the inferiority of the so-called “weaker sex”, and colluded in practice with the consignment of women to mental institutions. The “mad-doctors” agreed to hospitalize “abnormal” women who dared to rebel against male desires. This article does not question the link between psychiatry and anti-feminism, but considers this history from another angle, by analysing the repercussions of this sexist standpoint on the shaping of medical knowledge, and conversely, on representations of female patients. The British case demonstrates that not all physicians accepted theories about women’s mental inferiority, and that such theories were sometimes contested by the patients themselves. “Psychiatric power” was not all-powerful, nor did it necessarily speak with one voice. By exploring the debates surrounding the “weaker brain” theory in nineteenth-century Britain, this paper aims to shed fresh light on the construction (and deconstruction) of psychiatric ideas, and to help understand how the subjects of such ideas – women patients – sometimes succeeded in challenging the views of their doctors, “from below”.

Productive paradoxes of a feminist translator: Carmen de Burgos and her translation of Möbius' treatise, The Mental Inferiority of Woman (Spain, 1904)

Synopsis In the early twentieth century, the controversial work of the German neurologist Paul Julius Mobius was published in Spain, The Mental Inferiority of Woman, translated it into Spanish by the feminist writer Carmen de Burgos. Despite the fact that this book was considered an important work of reference in the first three decades of the twentieth century by science historians, its translation by a feminist has been considered to be a paradoxical event. This article re-examines this paradox in the light of different primary sources that mention the translation: letters, press reviews, scientific articles or other texts which refer to Mobius' work by different authors of the time, including the translator herself. These different materials have allowed me to draw a slightly different interpretative map than the one accepted until now on this issue. Particular attention is paid to discussing the tension and pressure of the historical context which trapped the translator, both as a woman and as a feminist, within the paradigm of sexual complementarity that she defended.

Translating Science: Contexts and Contests

At the beginning of the 20th century, the well known German neurologist Möbius published an essay entitled Über den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes (On the Physiological Mental Deficiency of Woman). In this scientific compendium, Möbius developed a theory to prove the mental inferiority of women. The essay achieved wide circulation at the time and in 1904 was released in Spain as La inferioridad mental de la mujer (The Mental Inferiority of Woman) by a major publishing house. The translator was the eminent writer Carmen de Burgos, known for her radical politics and feminism. The Spanish edition contains an extensive paratextual apparatus written by the translator herself Informed by recent theoretical and methodological poststructuralist debates in translation studies, history of science, critical discourse analysis and feminist studies, this paper analyzes Carmen de Burgos’s paratext as an important site for elaborating the voice of the translator. It demonstrates that translation as a social practice is interwoven with the social and historical context in which it is framed.

A Living Will Clause for Supporters of Animal Experimentation

Many people assume that invasive research on animals is justified because of its supposed benefits and because of the supposed mental inferiority of animals. However probably most people would be unwilling to sign a living will which consigns themselves to live biomedical experimentation if they ever, through misfortune, end up with a mental capacity equivalent to a laboratory animal. The benefits would be greater by far for medical science if living will signatories were to be used, and also the mental superiority boast would no longer apply. Ultimately, it is argued that invasive biomedical experiments would be unacceptable in a democratic society whose members are philosophically self-consistent.

Ciencia y valores en los estudios del cerebro

In this paper the biological theories of the XIX century about the mental inferiority of the women are examined. The analysis is centered in evolutionism, phrenology and studies of the brain (with special attention to the proposal of Moebius). The author analyzes these theories showing that the ideology about the inferiority of women acts in the hypotheses that are sustained and in researchs that are carried out. The ideology acts in background assumptions and external values on women that are operating in scientific practice in these scientific areas. The conclusion is that these theories confirm the dominant gender stereotypes.

“A Place for the Better Technical Education of Nurses”: The Dublin Metropolitan Technical School for Nurses, 1893–1969

Founded on December 16, 1893 to provide place for the better technical education of nurses in the Dublin Metropolitan Technical School for Nurses is reputed to have been the first centralized nurse training school in the world.1 At the time the School was founded, training schools for nurses in the Nightingale tradition had been established at all the principal voluntary hospitals in Dublin. However, these schools existed in a nominal sense only, and they generally did not operate as separate institutions with a formal curriculum. As local training schemes, the hospital training schools provided a schedule of lectures that were normally delivered during the probationers' rest periods. This system could not always guarantee that instruction would be delivered as planned, as it was vulnerable to the vagaries of the clinical situation in busy hospitals. With its standardized curriculum, the Dublin Metropolitan Technical School for Nurses offered the hospitals of Dublin a program of systematic teaching and uniform examinations on a centralized basis. Probationers and trained nurses from most of the large voluntary hospitals and some of the smaller specialist hospitals attended the three-year program, which the School conducted at one or more sites in the center of Dublin. Founded by Ireland's most influential nursing leader, Margaret Rachel Huxley,2 and by a number of other senior physicians, and surgeons in Dublin, the School came into being at a time when hospital nursing reform in Dublin was all but complete. The Nightingale system had been introduced into Ireland, replacing untrained nurses with lady nurses, young, educated, middle-class women who received probationer nurse training of the type offered by the London voluntary hospitals. The establishment of the School, with its formal, regularized curriculum consolidated the reforms that had been achieved up to that time. It was also part of the strategy of the advocates of state registration to demonstrate the benefits of such a system. As a central school offering uniform instruction and examinations, the Dublin Metropolitan Technical School provided the prototype for a regulated system of nurse training. The School was founded at a time when the campaign for the advancement of women's education was beginning to secure a tenuous foothold in areas of higher education, albeit on the basis of extant constructions of womanhood and their putative educational needs. Through the operation of guilds and apprenticeships and the propagation of scientific treatises on women's physical and mental inferiority, higher education remained for the most part the preserve of men.3 In the broader context of the women's education movement of the time, therefore, the School presented a unique example of an educational institution for women. The principal voluntary hospitals in Dublin maintained affiliation with the Dublin Metropolitan Technical School, taking advantage of its program of lectures and examinations until the School ceased to operate in 1969. This article critically examines the history of an institution that played an integral part in the education of nurses in Dublin for more than 75 years and considers the School's contribution to the development of modern nursing in Ireland. It is based on the Minutes of Proceedings of the Governing Authority of the School and related documentary primary sources.4 Background to the Establishment of the School: Health Care in Dublin in the Late 19th century Medical care for the sick poor of Ireland in the 19th century was provided through voluntary and state systems that became more organized as the century progressed. State provision of relief was through structures for outdoor relief, including a public dispensary service and a domiciliary nursing service, and institutions for indoor relief, comprising county infirmaries, fever hospitals, lunatic asylums, and workhouse infirmaries.5 Voluntary care took place in the context of Christian charity and philanthropy, including that offered by Catholic sisterhoods and voluntary hospitals. …

'Poor Senseless Bess, Clothed in her Rags and Folly': Early Modern Women, Madness, and Song in Seventeenth-Century England

'Poor Senseless Bess, Clothed in her Rags and Folly': Early Modern Women, Madness, and Song in Seventeenth-Century England' Dolly MacKinnon INTRODUCTION Much has been written on the state of early modem women's lives. Much has been written about 'madness', and much has been written about English music. But rarely are these three elements considered together. This article discusses the intersection of these three areas in the social context of seventeenth-century London, by focusing on a song by Henry Purcell (1659-1695) entitled 'Bess of Bedlam', and also known as 'From silent shades', published in 1683. 'Bess' was thefirstmad song composed by Purcell, and was not written for a specific I Henry Purcell, 'Bess of Bedlam', Choice Ayres, Songs, and Dialogues Books and V (London: Stainer & Bell, 1989), facsimile vol. 4, pp. 45-47. This article is based on a paper presented at the Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modem Studies Conference (February 2000), and I am grateful to the participants for their questions, comments, and suggestions. Many thanks also to Professor Patricia Crawford and Associate Professor Chris Wortham, as well as the anonymous readers. 2 Facsimile edition of John Playford's Choice Ayres, Songs, and Dialogues Books III, IV, and V (London: Stainer & Bell, 1989), vol. 4, pp. 45^17. 120 Dolly MacKinnon theatre work, as was the case with his later commissioned songs. M y aim is to show h o w this particular song, as well as the ballad/poem 'Mad Maudlin' from which it drew its inspiration, reflects contemporary societal attitudes, which readily linked w o m e n and madness. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, it is possible to place Purcell's 'Bess' back into the complex world from whence she came, and rediscover what audiences made of the visual and sonic elements of such a work as this. The social and experiential attractions for early modem London audiences in witnessing a performance of this work were coloured by contemporary assumptions about lunatics and the law, medical as well as magical diagnoses and cures, and the physical and mental inferiority of women, which contributed to their lustfulness, and inevitably made them more prone to lascivious manifestations of madness. Rebecca Crow-Lister observed in her study of female mad songs in seventeenth-century English drama that 'far more mad songs were composed for female roles than for male roles' in Restoration London. The question then arises as to why, as well as what predisposed London's audiences to portrayals of mad w o m e n in song? The answers lie in a combination of contributing factors: the increasing secularisation of madness and the rise of medical diagnosis and treatment of madness; the proliferation in popular culture of medical perceptions that women, when they did suffer mental illness, were more likely to experience 3 Timothy Roberts, 'The Restoration Mad Song', C D notes for Mad Songs: Purcell, Eccles, Blow (L'Oiseau-Lyre, CD, 1993), p. 8, states that '"Bess of Bedlam" is cle not a theatre song, since the sections sung by Bess alternate with passages ofnarration', Roberts adds that 'Tom D'Urfey planned to introduce parts of the song in his comedy A Fool's Preferment (1688), but in the event had Purcell compose a series of new mad songs.' 4 'Mad Maudlin' appeared in Wit and Drollery. Jovial Poems. Corrected andAmende with New Additions (London, 1682), pp. 147—49. While the anonymous seventeenthcentury ballad 'Mad Maudlin' published in Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth; or Pil to Purge Melancholy (London, 1719-20), iv, has commonly been connected with the mad song genre, due to their great similarities, I consider the popular verse 'Mad Maudlin' published in 1682 as the probable inspiration for the lyric content of Purcell's 'Bess of Bedlam'. 5 Rebecca Crow-Lister, '"Wild thro' the woods I'le fly": Female Mad Songs in Seventeenth-Century English Drama' (unpublished PhD dissertation, Florida State University, 1997), p. 5. Early Modern Women, Madness, and Song in 17th-Century England 121 more violent bouts, and that these bouts may involve a sexual manifestation; th representation of m a d w o m e n from 1660 onwards by female actors...

A Historical Overview of Women's Hysteria in Slovenia

The article is a discursive analysis of medical, ecclesiastic and lay articles on women's hysteria published in Slovenia between 1877 and 1935. The analysis shows which discourses of women's hysteria dominated across Europe at the turn of the century and how they influenced the construction of the image of female biological and mental inferiority. Special attention is paid to the issue of how far the medical discourse on hysteria helped to justify the gendered division between the public and private realm. The article presents the wider framework of the medicalization of women across Europe at that time, and tries to trace the ideas which mostly influenced medical doctors in Slovenia. The medical construction of women's hysteria has to be understood in conjunction with the construction of the social space in which segregation of ‘social deviants’ took place. The spread of hysteria went hand in hand with the psychiatric institutionalization, the pathologization of sexuality and the eugenic movements which appeared in different parts of Europe, to differing degrees, but which all influenced and gendered the everyday life of women and men.

Reevaluating Female “Inferiority”: Sarah Grand Versus Charles Darwin

The figure of darwin hovered like a specter over the fin de siècle, not only the Darwin of the explosive 1859On the Origin of Speciesthat redirected evolutionary thinking but also the author of the 1871Descent of Man— a less heralded work, though generating equally significant repercussions with its pronouncements on the intellectual capacities of the sexes. By linking a perceived mental inferiority of women to the mechanism of evolution, Darwin seemingly brought scientific proof to support a cultural truism. In so doing, he reinforced Victorian strictures that maintained women in a subservient state, which now could be justified on the basis of biological determinism. Yet Sarah Grand's popular 1897 novel,The Beth Book, contests the Darwinian verities, questioning the scientists' specious conclusions about sex-linked traits and identifying culture as an equally significant force determining the mental dispositions of the sexes.