Hamlin, Kimberly Ann (Author)
University of Chicago Press
Physical Details: vii + 238 pp.; ill.; notes; index
Language: English
From Eve to Evolution provides the first full-length study of American women's responses to evolutionary theory and illuminates the role science played in the nineteenth-century women's rights movement. Kimberly A. Hamlin reveals how a number of nineteenth-century women, raised on the idea that Eve's sin forever fixed women's subordinate status, embraced Darwinian evolution---especially sexual selection theory as explained in The Descent of Man---as an alternative to the creation story in Genesis. Hamlin chronicles the lives and writings of the women who combined their enthusiasm for evolutionary science with their commitment to women's rights, including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Eliza Burt Gamble, Helen Hamilton Gardener, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These Darwinian feminists believed evolutionary science proved that women were not inferior to men, that it was natural for mothers to work outside the home, and that women should control reproduction. The practical applications of this evolutionary feminism came to fruition, Hamlin shows, in the early thinking and writing of the American birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. Much scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing what Darwin and other male evolutionists had to say about women, but very little has been written regarding what women themselves had to say about evolution. From Eve to Evolution adds much-needed female voices to the vast literature on Darwin in America.
...MoreReview Paul White (2017) Review of "From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America". Archives of Natural History (pp. 179-180).
Review Megan Elias (2015) Review of "From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America". Journal of American History (pp. 266-266).
Review Evelleen Richards (2015) Review of "From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 956-957).
Similar Citations
Thesis
Hamlin, Kimberly Ann;
(2007)
Beyond Adam's Rib: How Darwinian Evolutionary Theory Redefined Gender andInfluenced American Feminist Thought, 1870--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001560667/)
Book
Grosz, Elizabeth;
(2011)
Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics, and Art
(/isis/citation/CBB001221153/)
Article
Cohen, Claudine;
(2010)
Darwin on Woman
(/isis/citation/CBB001211676/)
Chapter
Milam, Erika Lorraine;
(2010)
Beauty and the Beast? Conceptualizing Sex in Evolutionary Narratives
(/isis/citation/CBB001020306/)
Article
Hunter, T. Russell;
(2012)
Making a Theist out of Darwin: Asa Gray's Post-Darwinian Natural Theology
(/isis/citation/CBB001250446/)
Article
Hamlin, Kimberly A.;
(2011)
The “Case of a Bearded Woman”: Hypertrichosis and the Construction of Gender in the Age of Darwin
(/isis/citation/CBB001201814/)
Book
Numbers, Ronald L.;
Stenhouse, John;
(1999)
Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender
(/isis/citation/CBB000110621/)
Book
Larson, Barbara;
Brauer, Fae;
(2009)
The Art of Evolution: Darwin, Darwinisms, and Visual Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001035080/)
Book
Lander, James;
(2010)
Lincoln and Darwin: Shared Visions of Race, Science, and Religion
(/isis/citation/CBB001023156/)
Book
Werth, Barry;
(2009)
Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America
(/isis/citation/CBB000960310/)
Thesis
Lynch, Jacquelyn Scott;
(2001)
Darwin matters: Modernism and mate choice in Wharton, Joyce, and Hurston
(/isis/citation/CBB001560921/)
Article
Gianquitto, Tina;
(2013)
Botanical Smuts and Hermaphrodites: Lydia Becker, Darwin's Botany, and Education Reform
(/isis/citation/CBB001320191/)
Book
Leeuwenburgh, Bart;
(2009)
Darwin in Domineesland
(/isis/citation/CBB001024341/)
Article
England, Richard;
(2001)
Natural Selection, Teleology, and the Logos: From Darwin to the Oxford Neo-Darwinists, 1859--1909
(/isis/citation/CBB000671350/)
Article
Marco Mazzeo;
(2013)
Gli errori di Darwin? Evoluzione e storia naturale
(/isis/citation/CBB744523130/)
Book
Engels, Eve-Marie;
Glick, Thomas F.;
(2008)
The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB001022466/)
Chapter
Sloan, Phillip R.;
(2001)
“The Sense of Sublimity”: Darwin on Nature and Divinity
(/isis/citation/CBB000101144/)
Article
Cantor, Geoffrey;
(2001)
Quaker Responses to Darwin
(/isis/citation/CBB000671352/)
Book
Michael Ruse;
(2016)
Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us about Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB247868178/)
Book
McGrath, Alister E.;
(2011)
Darwinism and the Divine: Evolutionary Thought and Natural Theology
(/isis/citation/CBB001220972/)
Be the first to comment!