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From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America
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.
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.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
About the author
Kimberly A. Hamlin
3 books30 followersKimberly A. Hamlin writes about women, gender, science, and medicine in the U.S.
A recent recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Scholar Award, she has just completed Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener(March 2020, from W.W. Norton). Free Thinker tells the remarkable story of the "fallen woman" who reinvented herself, became one of the most sought-after speakers in 19th-century America, and then charmed her way into the Wilson White House and steered the 19th Amendment through Congress. Free Thinker unearths Gardener's incredible journey and centers both sex and race in women's long struggle to attain the vote.
Hamlin's first book, From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America (University of Chicago Press, 2014), tracks the 19th-century women who drew on evolutionary science to argue for women's rights. Hamlin has also written about the origins of the Miss America Pageant, bearded ladies, the inception of the Girl Scouts, the history of women running for President, and the Equal Rights Amendment. She is currently involved in local and national efforts to highlight the 2020 centennial of the 19th Amendment, and she serves as historical consultant to the Bearded Lady Project (now on view at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History).
Hamlin regularly contributes to the Washington Post's Made by History column and other popular media. She has appeared on various public radio shows on both NPR and CBC and contributed to multiple PBS documentaries. A member of the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program, Hamlin lectures throughout the country.
A recent recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Scholar Award, she has just completed Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener(March 2020, from W.W. Norton). Free Thinker tells the remarkable story of the "fallen woman" who reinvented herself, became one of the most sought-after speakers in 19th-century America, and then charmed her way into the Wilson White House and steered the 19th Amendment through Congress. Free Thinker unearths Gardener's incredible journey and centers both sex and race in women's long struggle to attain the vote.
Hamlin's first book, From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America (University of Chicago Press, 2014), tracks the 19th-century women who drew on evolutionary science to argue for women's rights. Hamlin has also written about the origins of the Miss America Pageant, bearded ladies, the inception of the Girl Scouts, the history of women running for President, and the Equal Rights Amendment. She is currently involved in local and national efforts to highlight the 2020 centennial of the 19th Amendment, and she serves as historical consultant to the Bearded Lady Project (now on view at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History).
Hamlin regularly contributes to the Washington Post's Made by History column and other popular media. She has appeared on various public radio shows on both NPR and CBC and contributed to multiple PBS documentaries. A member of the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program, Hamlin lectures throughout the country.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 31, 2020
Prior to 19th century science, men predominantly used religion to justify restricting women’s access to public and professional life. They would reference the Genesis creation story to establish the respective roles in society for men and women. Most often, they deployed the narrative of Eve’s secondary creation, transgression, and curse to justify oppressing women. In response, feminists offered re-interpretations of scripture to argue for women’s empowerment. Women like Judith Sargent Murray countered antifeminists be re-imagining the story of Eve or citing the first chapter of Genesis, arguing that men and women were simultaneous creations. In 1893 Matilda Joslyn Gage published Woman, Church and State critiquing the Christian church for upholding patriarchy and obscuring the history of pre-Christian matriarchy (49).
Darwin’s theory of evolution reframed gender debates in the late 19th century “from biblical ancestors to animal kin, from individual to species, and from piety to reproduction” (55). Framing the “woman question” with evolution allowed antifeminists to resource “nature as an ally and describe female inferiority as a biological inevitability and evolutionary necessity” (167). Patriarchal evolutionists would argue that as animals progressed from asexual to sexual reproduction, they developed more complex mating systems as they ascended the evolutionary ladder. In their view, humans with the “most strictly defined gender roles” with couples with a working husband outside of the home and a wife in charge of domestic tasks were the highest pinnacle of civilization (72). The thought of women going to college “threatened to minimize sex differentiation, thwart evolutionary advancement, and diminish white racial superiority” (73).
At the same time, developments in 19th century science also provided women with another language and method to challenge patriarchy. Since so much scientific development was happening so quickly, women were able to maximize the moment and advanced their own scientific analysis, creating an unprecedented space for political progress. In 1886 Smith College established the Lilly Hall of Science, the nation’s first building dedicated to women’s scientific studies and experimentation (63). Antoinette Brown Blackwell argued that women had to cultivate a “science of feminine humanity” (60) in order to counter the “false pronouncements of male scientists” who were using science to justify oppression of women (60). While men would argue that they were superior because of their supposedly larger brains, she would argue that women had more complex nervous systems. Elizabeth Cady Stanton also started to challenge patriarchal science, arguing that women’s brains had not received sufficient scientific attention. She encouraged women to donate their brains to science when they died to aid in the struggle (When Stanton died in 1902 she planned for her brain to go to Cornell University).
Feminists began to look toward the animal kingdom for alternative examples to organize society. They argued that excluding women from productive labor was a human construct, and that there were other labor arrangements demonstrated in nature that humans could adopt (105). They interpreted Darwin’s theory of evolution to argue that because women played such a significant role in the reproduction of species, they should have higher status in society. For example, they mobilized Darwin’s theory of sexual selection to make political claims for female sexual agency and birth control.
Darwin’s theory of evolution reframed gender debates in the late 19th century “from biblical ancestors to animal kin, from individual to species, and from piety to reproduction” (55). Framing the “woman question” with evolution allowed antifeminists to resource “nature as an ally and describe female inferiority as a biological inevitability and evolutionary necessity” (167). Patriarchal evolutionists would argue that as animals progressed from asexual to sexual reproduction, they developed more complex mating systems as they ascended the evolutionary ladder. In their view, humans with the “most strictly defined gender roles” with couples with a working husband outside of the home and a wife in charge of domestic tasks were the highest pinnacle of civilization (72). The thought of women going to college “threatened to minimize sex differentiation, thwart evolutionary advancement, and diminish white racial superiority” (73).
At the same time, developments in 19th century science also provided women with another language and method to challenge patriarchy. Since so much scientific development was happening so quickly, women were able to maximize the moment and advanced their own scientific analysis, creating an unprecedented space for political progress. In 1886 Smith College established the Lilly Hall of Science, the nation’s first building dedicated to women’s scientific studies and experimentation (63). Antoinette Brown Blackwell argued that women had to cultivate a “science of feminine humanity” (60) in order to counter the “false pronouncements of male scientists” who were using science to justify oppression of women (60). While men would argue that they were superior because of their supposedly larger brains, she would argue that women had more complex nervous systems. Elizabeth Cady Stanton also started to challenge patriarchal science, arguing that women’s brains had not received sufficient scientific attention. She encouraged women to donate their brains to science when they died to aid in the struggle (When Stanton died in 1902 she planned for her brain to go to Cornell University).
Feminists began to look toward the animal kingdom for alternative examples to organize society. They argued that excluding women from productive labor was a human construct, and that there were other labor arrangements demonstrated in nature that humans could adopt (105). They interpreted Darwin’s theory of evolution to argue that because women played such a significant role in the reproduction of species, they should have higher status in society. For example, they mobilized Darwin’s theory of sexual selection to make political claims for female sexual agency and birth control.
July 21, 2021
It turns out, Darwin had a big influence on feminist writers of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Descent of Man gave women a new way of thinking about women's roles, with sexual selection (women's choosiness over potential mates) driving much of their thinking. Looking at the behavior of females of other animal species led women writers to believe that women could play a much different role in society, and that the Christianity-related subjugation of women was just plain wrong. These women took strong steps toward banishing the idea that women are physically fragile and morally weak that arose from interpretations of the Adam and Eve story, not to mention absolving them of responsibility for the downfall of humanity. They argued that women should be able to choose their mates, have fewer children, and play many different roles in society. Men should help with housework while women are busy with reproducing and caring for children, and women should be able to work and become financially independent otherwise. A fascinating, if quite academic, investigation.
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October 21, 2015Review forthcoming at MedHum Fiction | Daily Dose. This account of how white Gilded Age women's rights activists marshaled science (and specifically Darwinian theories of evolution) in defense of gender equality is a thoughtful account of a shift in late-nineteenth century discourse from one primarily grounded in Biblical narratives to one in which scientific theories were ascendant. At times From Eve to Evolution over-reaches its evidence, and there is a frustrating lack of black female voices (white women were not the only writers and thinkers grappling with scientific rationales for social inequality -- nor were they the only ones to assert the usefulness of science in making the case for rights. I look forward to future work in this area addressing this lack.
June 9, 2014
This book was absolutely compelling, clear and thought provoking!
November 20, 2017
This was a somewhat dry but interesting look at early American feminism and its relationship with the science of its day and evolutionary theory.
September 13, 2026
thank you kimberly
November 26, 2019
A V scholarly tome
December 12, 2015
A fascinating and capable look of the relationship between feminism and Darwinian ideas in 19th century America - addressing intellectual debates, gender politics, discourses of sex difference (which, somewhat unsurprisingly, haven’t changed much between then and now) and women’s rights movements. Eminently readable. I particularly enjoyed the chapters “Eve’s Curse” and “‘Female Choice’ and the Reproductive Autonomy of Women”.
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October 30, 2015305.42097 H223 2014
cataloged
November 6, 2015Ordered 11/2015
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews