FEMINISM, SOCIALISM, AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY: UNDERSTANDING DEGENERATION IN EMMA FRANCES BROOKE’S A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN.

Abstract

With the growing concern about evolutionary degeneration in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, discussion turned to potential avenues by which society might be regenerated. For many, the new science of eugenics, built upon principles of natural and sexual selection as described by Charles Darwin, promised the answer. The predominant history of eugenics focuses on its application by white, middle class, males to maintain racial, class, and gender boundaries. However, in recent years, historians such as George Robb and Angelique Richardson have both highlighted ways that the language of evolutionary degeneration and eugenics was appropriated to counter the status quo, and call for social and political reform. While eugenics may seem at first opposed to the goals of feminism and vice versa, many feminist writers and thinkers employed eugenic principles and language in order to bolster the scientific validity and appeal of their arguments. Emma Frances Brooke, feminist, socialist, and New Woman author, used biological and eugenic language in her 1894 novel A Superfluous Woman to discuss the social and sexual boundaries that were set for women, as well as how these impacted gender relations and equality, female labor, reproductive rights, and the nature and meaning of marriage and of motherhood, ultimately leading to degeneration. An historical analysis of Brooke’s work that pays attention to the history of biology, and specifically to the history of evolutionary ideas about progress, degeneration, and their relation to eugenics, affords us a deeper insight into the social and political issues that were at stake in what was called the “woman question.” Brooke’s work is grounded in ideas of heredity, as well as natural relationships between men and women and the ways that society impacted these relationships. For Brooke, the threat of evolutionary degeneration was thwartable through the education of women, and female choice in sexual partners, a more natural attraction based alternative to the contemporary male-led “marriage market.”