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The call of kind: Race in Jack London's fiction
Abstract
It is Jack London's attitude toward race which critics and scholars now find most embarrassing. Yet they offer no explanation of how this "regrettable flaw" arose in such an otherwise admirable socialist as London. My research shows that London's ideas and attitudes on race in general, i.e. racial evolution, social Darwinism, Aryanism, and eugenics, and on the superiority of the English-speaking branch of the Teutonic "race" in particular, as expressed in his fiction and essays, mirror those held by the majority of well-educated and prominent Americans prior to World War II. Chapter 1, "The Racial Education of Jack London," traces the emergence of London's racial consciousness from earliest childhood experience to the reason for his resignation from the Socialist Labor Party in 1916. Chapter 2, "Nineteenth Century Racial Theory," locates the major sources of London's belief in racial inequality in some of the most eminent race theorists of the period including Darwin, Galton, Huxley, Pearson, Spencer, Kidd, Haeckel, Weismann and others. Chapter 3, "Sexual Selection," shows how London's Yukon stories exemplify the "scientific" point of view by portraying human sexual behavior in terms of animal-like impulses which were thought to have evolved through the process of sexual selection. Chapter 4, "The Call of Kind," examines London's concept of gender, the "New Womanhood," and his faith in the "passion for perpetuation" (rightly guided) to improve mankind. Chapter 5, "Conclusion": London's stories dramatize the evolutionary superiority of the white man over all other peoples at a time when America needed to justify and explain her imperialist expansion abroad.
Subject Area
American literature|American studies|Ethnic studies|Biographies|Sociology
Recommended Citation
Nuernberg, Susan Marie, "The call of kind: Race in Jack London's fiction" (1990). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9022729.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9022729