Gerstel, Jennifer Elisabeth (Author)
University of Toronto
Matus, Jill
Edition Details: Advisor: Matus, Jill
Physical Details: 278 pp.
Language: English
This thesis considers three novels; The Mill on the Floss (1860), Wives and Daughters (1865), and Far From the Madding Crowd (1874); in light of the Victorian fascination with breeding, generation, and descent; issues which are brought into focus with Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871). The thesis argues that the topics of female mate choice and gendered roles in courtship begin to emerge in the literature of the period as a kind of evolutionary story, taking the traditional courtship plot in new directions and with new consequences. Sexual selection, an evolutionary approach to courtship and mating activities, is used in these works both as a literal mechanism to describe reproduction, mate choice, and sexual rivalry, and also as a powerful metaphor through which the novelists could raise other important issues, such as morality, social progress, and existential anxiety. These novels struggle with social and scientific change, and their characters are shown to be embedded in an inescapable natural system which makes their choices at once insignificant and also relevant along an evolutionary continuum. This project uses feminist and sociobiological theories as well as Darwinian evolutionary theory to demonstrate how these novels assimilate and interrogate ideas about natural and sexual selection among larger concerns about Victorian culture and society. An introductory chapter considers the position of women in nineteenth-century evolutionary thought, while the chapter on The Descent of Man closely examines Darwin's troubled movement from ethology to anthropology. Each chapter on the novels by Eliot, Gaskell, and Hardy offers close readings of key passages which show careful attention to Darwinian evolutionary theory, specifically with reference to issues of generation, inheritance, courtship, and mating. The pastoral settings common to the three novels, their emphasis on farm life and the perseverance of closely knit communities in simultaneous conflict and harmony with the natural world, bring these concerns to the forefront. Furthermore, these novels focus on the dynamics of courtship and mate selection diversely but also with striking similarities, in each case self- consciously through the lens of Darwinian and post- Darwinian thought.
...MoreDescription “This thesis considers three novels ... in light of the Victorian fascination with breeding, generation, and descent.” (from the abstract) Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 63 (2003): 4321. UMI order no. NQ74645.
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