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Author Bender, Bert.

Title The descent of love : Darwin and the theory of sexual selection in American fiction, 1871-1926 / Bert Bender
Published Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, ©1996

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 440 pages) : illustrations
Contents The descent of man and selection in relation to sex: the Darwinian unknown in American literary history -- Sexual selection -- The descent of love -- Recurrent problems, themes, and scenes in the courtship novels, 1871-1926 -- Evolutionary anthropology and sexual selection in William Dean Howells's Their wedding journey -- Courting design: chance, choice, and sexual difference in Howells's courtship novels of the 1870s -- Darwinian problems in a modern instance: heredity, primitive marriage, and male sexual aggression -- Henry James and The descent of man: "The loves of the quadrupeds" in "The madonna of the future" and Roderick Hudson -- Psychological Darwinism in The portrait of a lady -- Darwin and "The natural history of doctresses": the sex war between Howells, Phelps, Jewett, and James -- Kate Chopin's quarrel with Darwin before the awakening -- The teeth of desire: the awakening and the descent of man
Summary Upon its publication in 1871, Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex sent shock waves through the scientific community and the public at large. In an original and persuasive study, Bert Bender demonstrates that it is this treatise, rather than any of Darwin's earlier works, that provoked the most immediate and vigorous response from American fiction writers
These authors embraced and incorporated Darwin's theories, insights, and language, creating an increasingly dark and violent view of sexual love in American realist literature. In The Descent of Love, Bender carefully rereads the works of William Dean Howells, Henry James, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Harold Frederic, Charles W. Chesnutt, Edith Wharton, and Ernest Hemingway, teasing from them a startling but utterly convincing preoccupation with questions of sexual selection. Competing for readership as novelists who best grasped the "real" nature of human love, these writers also participated in a heated social debate over racial and sexual differences and the nature of sex itself. Influenced more by The Descent of Man than by the Origin of Species, Bender's novelists built upon Darwin's anthropological and zoological materials to anatomize their characters' courtship behavior, returning consistently to concerns with physical beauty, natural dominance, and the power to select a mate
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 405-419) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
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Print version record
Subject Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882 -- Influence
SUBJECT Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882 -- Influence
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882 fast
Subject American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
Romance fiction, American -- History and criticism
American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
Literature and science -- United States -- History
American fiction -- English influences
Evolution (Biology) in literature.
Mate selection in literature.
Courtship in literature.
Love in literature.
Sex in literature.
Man-woman relationships in literature.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
Man-woman relationships in literature
American fiction
American fiction -- English influences
Courtship in literature
Evolution (Biology) in literature
Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
Literature and science
Love in literature
Romance fiction, American
Mate selection in literature
Sex in literature
United States
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 95042582
ISBN 058517198X
9780585171982
1512814296
9781512814293