Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2023
Before the specter of the Nazi Final Solution, many British intellectuals at the fin de siècle perceived eugenics as forward-thinking and liberating. In their respective novels, A Superfluous Woman (1894) and The Girl from the Farm (1895), the socialist-feminists Emma Frances Brooke and Gertrude Dix paired ideologies of degeneration and eugenics with an endorsement of Edward Carpenter’s ethos of simple living, celebrating good health and wholesomeness. They adopted Francis Galton’s policy of selective breeding yet rejected his promotion of the peerage as “eminent” specimens for propagating future generations. In their fictions, the conservative aristocrat and entitled upper-middle-class man are instead enervated, parasitical decadents and obstacles to social, evolutionary advancement. Ultimately, Brooke’s and Dix’s visions are not altogether unified: whereas Dix simply dismisses her flimsy, immature dandy, Brooke advocates a more radical “negative eugenics” with an eye to her decadent’s diseased offspring. Rejecting privileged, dissipated men in favor of health and liberation, both authors anticipate twenty-first century social critiques of decadence.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.