‘Carrying Her Coyness to a Dangerous Pitch’: Mathilde Blind and Darwinian Sexual Selection

Abstract

Abstract: The poet and novelist Mathilde Blind (1841–96) is known to have been influenced by evolutionary theory, particularly in her epic poem The Ascent of Man (1889). However, critics have not yet noted the extent to which her depictions of the courtship plot in her less overtly evolutionary writings are indebted to Darwin's representations of animal mating rituals. Although Darwin's commentary on patterns of relationships in the animal world often reinforced stereotypes of masculine aggression and feminine coyness, feminist writers, including Blind, shifted the focus onto creatures, such as birds and spiders, whose mating behaviour disrupts these stereotypes. This article examines four pieces in which Blind re-imagines the courtship plot by applying imagery of other species to human relationships: her poems ‘The Song of the Willi’ (1871), The Heather on Fire (1886) and ‘The Teamster’ (1889), and her novel Tarantella (1885). By rewriting the courtship plot in this way, Blind contests the idea that middle-class gender relations are sanctioned by the natural world and highlights the variety of possible gender roles found in other species.

Keywords:

• Mathilde Blind
• Darwin
• evolution
• sexual selection
• Victorian poetry
• feminism
• gender

Notes

¹For a discussion of evolution and gender in ‘The Leading of Sorrow’, see Hawkins (1997: 271).

²Other critical works that discuss Blind's responses to evolution include Armstrong (1996) and Mills (2007).

³As well as being linked to Darwin's Descent of Man through its title, the posthumous 1899 edition of this book contains an introduction by Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, in which he remarks upon the book's indebtedness to Darwin's Descent (Wallace 1899: vi).

⁴Most of the quotations that I give from the poem will be from the original 1871 version, but at times I will refer to the 1891 version, in which Blind strengthened the rhythmic elements of the poem and added an explanatory note. When I quote from the 1891 version, I will make it clear that this is the version I am referring to.