Gender in the 1870’s Victorian Novel:
Evolution and Women’s Rights in
The Egoist and The Descent of Man,
The Eustace Diamonds and The Subjection of Women
Kendall Landers
Dr. Robert DeGraaff, Faculty Mentor
McNair Summer 2005 Research
My project uses feminist methodology to explore femininity and masculinity in the Victorian novel of the 1870s. Using, as precedent, previous scholarship which looks at George Meredith’s The Egoist through the lens of Darwin’s chapters on “Sexual Selection” in The Descent of Man, I re-interpreted The Egoist through Darwin, and shed further light on the work through John Stuart Mill’s essay The Subjection of Women. I then extended this mode of analysis by reading Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds through the lens of The Subjection of Women with application of the British Married Women’s Property Act (1870).