Book contents
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Race and Empire in the 1890s
- Chapter 2 Island Dandies, Transpacific Decadence, and the Politics of Style
- Chapter 3 The 1890s and East Asia: Toward a Critical Cosmopolitanism
- Chapter 4 Indulekha, or The Many Lives of Realism at the Fin de Siècle
- Chapter 5 Reading World Religions in the 1890s
- Chapter 6 Night Lights: The 1890s Nocturne
- Chapter 7 The Green 1890s:
- Chapter 8 “Only Nature Is a Thing Unreal”: The Anthropocene 1890s
- Chapter 9 Weird Ecologies and the Limits of Environmentalism
- Chapter 10 Queer Theories of the 1890s
- Chapter 11 Eugenics and Degeneration in Socialist-Feminist Novels of the Mid-1890s
- Chapter 12 The Conservative and Patriotic 1890s
- Chapter 13 Decadence and the Antitheatrical Prejudice
- Chapter 14 Religion and Science in the 1890s
- Chapter 15 Little Magazines and/in Media History
- Chapter 16 Fin-de-Siècle Visuality (and Textuality) and the Digital Sphere
- Index
Chapter 11 - Eugenics and Degeneration in Socialist-Feminist Novels of the Mid-1890s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2023
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Race and Empire in the 1890s
- Chapter 2 Island Dandies, Transpacific Decadence, and the Politics of Style
- Chapter 3 The 1890s and East Asia: Toward a Critical Cosmopolitanism
- Chapter 4 Indulekha, or The Many Lives of Realism at the Fin de Siècle
- Chapter 5 Reading World Religions in the 1890s
- Chapter 6 Night Lights: The 1890s Nocturne
- Chapter 7 The Green 1890s:
- Chapter 8 “Only Nature Is a Thing Unreal”: The Anthropocene 1890s
- Chapter 9 Weird Ecologies and the Limits of Environmentalism
- Chapter 10 Queer Theories of the 1890s
- Chapter 11 Eugenics and Degeneration in Socialist-Feminist Novels of the Mid-1890s
- Chapter 12 The Conservative and Patriotic 1890s
- Chapter 13 Decadence and the Antitheatrical Prejudice
- Chapter 14 Religion and Science in the 1890s
- Chapter 15 Little Magazines and/in Media History
- Chapter 16 Fin-de-Siècle Visuality (and Textuality) and the Digital Sphere
- Index
Summary
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.
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- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s , pp. 227 - 245Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023