Evolution and 'the Sex Problem' , livre ebook
406
pages
English
Ebooks
2004
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406
pages
English
Ebooks
2004
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
01 janvier 2004
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781612777351
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
2 Mo
A noteworthy investigation of the Darwinian element in American fiction from the realist through the Freudian eras In Evolution and "the Sex Problem" author Bert Bender argues that Darwin's theories of sexual selection and of the emotions are essential elements in American fiction from the late 1800s through the 1950s, particularly during the Freudian era and the years surrounding the Scopes trial. Bender contends that novelists with different social points of view explored "the sex problem," and what resulted was a great diversity of American narratives aligned with either Darwinian or a number of anti-Darwinian theories of evolution. Included are intriguing discussions of works by Frank Norris, Jack London, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Gertrude Stein, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, five writers of the Harlem Renaissance, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway. Among the ideas explored are Darwin's theory of common descent; the question of man's place in nature; the possibility of evolutionary progress; the issues of heredity and eugenics; the Darwinian basis of Freud's theory of sexual repression; the quandary of male violence and the role of female choice in sexual selection; the power of and the problems of racial and sexual difference; and the ecological problems that arose directly from Darwin's theory of evolution. This volume provides a valuable treatment of an underappreciated aspect of America's major narratives of human life and love and will be appreciated by literary scholars and readers interested in Darwinism and culture.
Voir
Publié par
Date de parution
01 janvier 2004
EAN13
9781612777351
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
2 Mo
Evolution
and
“the Sex Problem”
Eôlûtiôn ànd
“te Sex Prôblem”
American Narratives during
the Eclipse of Darwinism
Bert Bender
t h e k e n t s t a t e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s k e n t & l o n d o n
Frontis:Creative Evolution.InThe Song of the LarkCather dramatizes one of Thea Kron-borg’s “rapid evolutions” when she sees a majestic eagle soaring into the light. Celebrating this symbol of Bergson’s creative evolution, Cather sings, “O eagle of eagles! Endeavour, achievement, desire, glorious striving of human art!”
©2004by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio44242 a l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d Library of Congress Catalog Card Number2004008855 isbn 0873388097 Manufactured in the United States of America
08 07 0605 04
5 4 3 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bender, Bert. Evolution and “the sex problem” : American narratives during the eclipse of Darwinism / Bert Bender. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. isbn 0873388097(alk. paper) 1. American fiction—20th century—History and criticism.2. Literature and science— United States—History—20th century.3. Darwin, Charles,1809–1882—Influence.4. American fiction—English influences.5. Evolution (Biology) in literature.6. Mate selection in literature.7. Narrration (Rhetoric)8. Sex in literature. I. Title. ps374.s33b46 2004 813’.5209—dc22 2004008855
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.
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Côntents
Prefàce ix
Intrôdûctiôn: In à Dàrk Time 1“Man’s Place in Nature,” Life Itself, and the Sex Problem8of the Aspects Sex Problem12 Modern Psychology and the Sex Problem16
1 Frànk Nôrris ôn te Eôlûtiôn ànd Repressiôn ôf te Sexûàl Instinct 30Joseph Le Conte’s Version of Darwinian Theory and His Emphasis on Sexual Reproduction32 Norris’s Battle with the Theory of Sexual Selection35Norris and the Repression of the Sexual Emotions47
"#$ %& ' The Red Badge of Courage 52Crane and William James56Progress, the “Throat-Grappling Evolutionary Instinct,” and the Emotions57 Sexual Selection and the “Law of Battle”62
723 Jàck Lôndôn ànd “te Sex Prôblem” London’s Early Explorations of Sexual Selection:A Daughter of the Snows,The Kempton-Wace Letters, andThe Sea-Wolf73Martin EdenandThe Valley of the Moon: Havelock Ellis, Freud, and the Ecological Vision78 The “Bawling of Sex” inThe Little Lady of the Big House91
,,-) * +# ( The Problem and Solution: The Evolutionary Tangle and Evolutionary Prog-ress119Choice and the “Distant Wings” of Beauty Carrie’s 121“A Real Man—A Financier”126
/ & %4#$ *& + % 6 8& * % 9 ,;Heredity and Female Choice inThe Making of Americans(1903)138Q.E.D.:The Howling Wolves of Love140 “The Nature of Woman” inFern-hurst:The “Deepening Knowledge of Life and Love and Sex”146Three Lives: Anna’s “Strange Coquetry of Anger and Fear”148“ThGeentle Lena”: The Tyranny of Matchmakers and the Father-Instinct153Melanctha: “Too Complex with Desire”155
- * %& 9 O Pioneers!àndThe Song of the Lark ,-;Creative Evolutionand Sex166and Alexandra: Beyond Sexual Marie Selection inO Pioneers!168 “Dreamers on the Frontier”172Sexual Desire inThe Song of the Lark176and Sublimation in Sex The Power of Sound179 Sexual Selection, Marriage, and Evolutionary Play181
* >#$ * *# ,?@< = The Darwinian Pattern in Anderson’s Fiction194 Sexual Difference: “The Maleness of the Male”195 Sexual Difference: The Woman “Strong to Be Loved”200 Reflections of Freud and Havelock Ellis in Anderson’s Pre-sentation of Sex207Hidden Wonder Story”: The Unconscious and “The Anderson’s Transcendental Naturalism Sexual Violence, Play of Mind, and Transcendence inWinesburg, Ohio216
? a #$ " =& ghGatsby( 9 “Love or Eugenics”225The Riddle of the Universe: Accident, Heredity, and Selection226Selection in Sexual The Great Gatsby232
,@?$ " " *& K K# ((@ W. E. B. DuBois’sDark Princess: The Talented Soul250JessiFeauset’sPlum Bun: A “Biology [that] Transcends Society!”257NellLaarsen’sQuicksand: Darwin, James, Freud, and the Psychology of Mixed Race264Claude McKay’sHome to Harlem: The “It’s a Be-Be Itching Life” Blues272Rudolph Fisher’sThe Walls of Jerichoand the “Rising Tide of Rhythm”283
,M /o go '4 K >
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,, " #$ q *uThe Log from the Sea of CortezàndThe Wayward Bus 312The Log from the Sea of Cortez: Ecology and Man’s Place in Nature315Sweet-heart’s “Rear End” and the Marriage Problem inThe Wayward Bus320
*#$ % > 9 , v ;@Courtship and Anthropology in Africa333DarEkden342
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Prefàce
American novelists have long explored human nature in the light of Darwinian thought. Indeed, aside from religious beliefs, no other idea or cluster of ideas has ever provoked so strong and sustained a literary response as Darwin’s theory of evolution. Yet our novelists’ work with these ideas is scarcely known. Although it is widely accepted that Darwin initiated “the greatest of all scientific revolutions” (Mayr501), even now, nearly eighty years after the Scopes trial, our culture resists evolutionary theory. We resist it in public education, where the word “evolution” is unacceptable in many biology classes, and the forty-third president of the United States can strengthen his political base by announcing that he does not believe in evolution. “Why?” John Steinbeck asked in1941, “Why do we so dread to think of our species as a species?” (The Log from the Sea of Cortez219). The resistance to biological thought in academic, literary, and cultural studies is more complicated. It is entrenched in a long series of literary theories from the New Criticism of the mid-twentieth century to the latest trends in postmodern theory and in the simplistic belief that literary Darwinism yields only a brutish essential-ism. Among the many reasons for examining our novelists’ interest in evolutionary thought, one seems especially important. Their explorations of human nature are among our culture’s earliest efforts to comprehend the Darwinian reality on which our emerging ecological awareness is founded. Only two of the writers discussed here were truly ecological thinkers ( Jack London and John Steinbeck), but all of them took the first step toward ecological awareness by studying the human being in the evolutionary stream. Writing from their different social points of view, they constructed a great variety of American narratives and aligned them with particu-lar varieties of evolutionary theory from their own times. Thus, their narratives are among our culture’s first attempts to construct what E. O. Wilson calls a “true evolutionary epic” (Consilience264–65) or what Loyal Rue calls “everybody’s story,” the basis of “a new wisdom tradition that couples an evolutionary cosmology to an ecocentric morality” (xiii).! Evolution and “the Sex Problem”is a study in both literary history and that part of the history of science that concerns itself with the cultural assimilation of scientific thought. It completes a fifteen-year investigation of the American literary response to Darwin that should serve as a guide to America’s major evolutionary narratives.
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