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"Fish had faith, she reasoned": Evolutionary discourse in "The Voyage Out", "Mrs. Dalloway" and "Between the Acts"
Abstract
From the earliest draft of her first novel through her last published work, Virginia Woolf treated science--particularly evolutionary theory--as a powerful discourse that claimed the authority to explain reality and which legitimized the patriarchal social structure. While appreciating the richness of Darwin and later evolutionary writers, Woolf consistently criticized science in general and evolutionary discourse in particular as expressions of patriarchal values. In turn-of-the-century Britain, biology, medicine and the theories that directed social policies were imbued with various interpretations of evolution, most of which considered white northern European men the apex of evolution. Belief in the possibility of devolution prompted evolutionary minded social thinkers to warn that global societal degeneration would ensue if "lesser races" followed their own paths without European guidance and if women of any race or class turned their limited energies to educating themselves and entering professional work rather than bearing and rearing children. Woolf grew up in an intellectual Victorian circle involved in evolutionary fervor and the reification of the sciences that both objectified her as a female and provided her imagination with new realms of experience. Woolf read Darwin and the science and social theory of the late nineteenth century, and as scientific writing itself became more specialized, she continued to read about science throughout her life. Through extensive and usually ironic revisionist readings of evolutionary concepts, Woolf anticipated the feminist critiques of science of the late twentieth century. The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway and Between the Acts, along with their published drafts, are the works in which Woolf most clearly involves science in her social criticism and evolutionary discourse in her treatment of science. In those three sets of works, Woolf critically examines the cultural values that made evolutionary theory such a compelling social force. In these same works, she also creatively appropriates evolutionary writing, particularly Darwin's, to evoke connections among eons of time, vast reaches of the earth and relationships among different types of beings.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature|Womens studies
Recommended Citation
Lambert, Elizabeth G, ""Fish had faith, she reasoned": Evolutionary discourse in "The Voyage Out", "Mrs. Dalloway" and "Between the Acts"" (1991). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9132877.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9132877