Grappling with Evolutionary Theory. Femininities and Masculinities in the Work of Virginie Loveling (1836–1923)

Abstract

In this article, the authors discuss evolutionary thought as it manifests itself in the literary works of the (Flemish) Belgian writer Virginie Loveling (1836–1923). By introducing certain aspects of the evolutionary ideologies popular in Europe in the last decades of the nineteenth century, Loveling fulfilled a mediating role in the production and dispersion of knowledge. In her novels she integrates the mechanisms of natural and sexual selection, follows traditional Darwinian courtship plots, but also subtly deviates from conventional gender constructions. She repeatedly portrays men as caring and sensitive, and refuses to portray women exclusively in their traditional caring roles of wives, daughters or nurses. Loveling does not provide neat and straightforward answers, but questions the existence of uniform or stable gender roles.

Notes

Mary Kemperink (2005) Evolution and Utopianism in Dutch Literature around 1900. An Early Polemic, in Patrick Dassen & Mary Kemperink (Eds) The Many Faces of Human Evolution in Europe, c. 1860–1914 (Leuven: Peeters), pp. 115–128, p. 125.

Antonin Van Elslander (Ed.) (1963) De ‘biografie’ van Virginie Loveling (Ghent: s.n.).

Van Elslander, De ‘biografie’, pp. 18–19.

Virginie Loveling (1872) Moederlijk gezag, De Toekomst, 16, pp. 93–94 and (1874) De keus eener kostschool, De Toekomst, 18, pp. 183–184.

Virginie Loveling (1892) The Conferring of Degrees te Cambridge, Nederlandsch Museum, 18, pp. 313–320, reprinted in De Hollandsche Lelie (1892) and De Toekomst, 37 (1893), pp. 144–149.

L'Infanticide en Chine, La Flandre Libérale, January 6, 1876; Le bon Dieu détrôné, ibid., February 7, 1876; [untitled], ibid., February 24, 1876; Voltaire au Paradis, ibid., May 23, 1876; On nous écrit de M. petit village dans la Flandre Orientale, ibid., February 3, 1880; On nous écrit d'A., ibid., March 2, 1880; On nous écrit de Nevele, ibid., August 12, 1880; Le dernier ami, ibid., September 20, 1880; L'école de l'armée, ibid., January 18, 1881.

Virginie Loveling (1877) In onze Vlaamsche gewesten: politieke schetsen (Ghent: Hoste) and Virginie Loveling (1884) Sophie (Ghent: Hoste).

Virginie Loveling (1892) Een dure eed (Ghent: Engelcke).

Maurits Basse (1921) Het Aandeel der Vrouw in de Nederlandsche Letterkunde II (Ghent: Hoste), p. 135.

Virginie Loveling (1907) Meesterschap, in Jonggezellenlevens (Aalst: De Seyn-Verhougstraete, repr. Antwerpen: Sikkel, 1934), pp. 79–153; Virginie Loveling (1911) Een revolverschot (Antwerp: Nederlandsche Boekhandel) and Virginie Loveling (1906) Erfelijk belast (Rotterdam: Brusse).

Virginie Loveling (1876) De kwellende gedachte, in Rosalie Loveling & Virginie Loveling, Nieuwe novellen (Ghent: Hoste); Virginie Loveling (1893) Eene idylle (Amsterdam: Veen, repr. Antwerp: Sikkel, 1934).

For a discussion of evolutionary theories in the literary production in the Low Countries, see: (1993) De biologisering van het wereldbeeld: de doorwerking van Darwins evolutietheorie in de Nederlandse cultuur, special issue of Negentiende eeuw 17(1); Mary Kemperink & Wessel Krul (Eds) (2000) De gedeelde werkelijkheid van wetenschap, cultuur en literatuur, special issue of Spiegel der letteren, 42(2); Mary Kemperink (2001) Het verloren paradijs: de Nederlandse literatuur en cultuur van het fin de siècle (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press); (2002/2003) Darwin & Co. Dubbelnummer over taal, evolutie en literatuur, special issue of Armada. Tijdschrift voor wereldliteratuur, 8(29/30).

John Dudley (2004) A Man's Game. Masculinity and the Anti-Aesthetics of American Literary Naturalism (Alabama: University of Alabama Press).

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 150–151 & 189; Loveling, Een revolverschot, pp. 6 & 107.

Ibid., pp. 41, 68 & 131; ibid., pp. 127, 128, 138, 182 & 195–196.

Lenora Ledwon (1989) Darwin's Ghosts: the influence of Darwinism on the nineteenth-century ghost story, Proteus, 6(2), pp. 10–16.

Loveling, Eene idylle, p. 98; Loveling, Meesterschap, p. 124; Loveling, Een revolverschot, pp. 25, 47, 102, 104, 113, 150 & 159.

Loveling, Een dure eed, pp. 174 & 179; Loveling, Eene idylle, p. 34; Loveling, Meesterschap, p. 89; Loveling, Een revolverschot, pp. 79, 82 & 146.

Ibid., p. 96.

Loveling, Meesterschap, p. 90; Loveling, Een revolverschot, pp. 23, 37 & 55.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 169; Loveling, Een revolverschot, pp. 100, 102, 127 & 181.

Jonathan Smith (1995) ‘The Cock of Lordly Plume’: sexual selection and The Egoist, Nineteenth-Century Literature, 50(1), pp. 51–77, p. 54.

Loveling, Meesterschap, p. 124; Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 194 & 209; Loveling, Een revolverschot, pp. 26, 127, 145, 146, 180, 185 & 194.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 72; Loveling, Een revolverschot, p. 180.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 40: ‘Why should such creatures exist, and procreate, and yield generations of illnesses? Why are there no laws forbidding it, why is there no selection, as when breeding useful animals?’

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 42, 135 & 207.

Raf de Bont (2008) Darwins kleinkinderen. De evolutietheorie in België 1865–1945 (Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Vantilt), pp. 106, 251 & 136–137.

Van Elslander, De ‘biografie’ van Virginie Loveling, pp. 19–20.

Royer supplied her translation with a long anticlerical preface. ‘Being the major disseminator of Darwinian ideas to a French-speaking audience, she was also highly critical of the male-dominated scientific establishment’, in Griet Vandermassen, Marysa Demoor & Johan Braeckman (2005) Close Encounters with a New Species: Darwin's clash with the feminists at the end of the nineteenth century, in Anne-Julia Zwierlein (Ed.) Unmapped Countries: biological visions in nineteenth-century literature and culture (London: Anthem Press), pp. 71–81, pp. 75–76.

Klaas van Berkel (2000) Over het ontstaan van de twee culturen in het negentiende-eeuws Europa, Spiegel der Letteren, 42(2), pp. 83–96, pp. 91–92.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 154. All translations are mine.

Loveling, Een dure eed, p. 18.

Loveling, Eene idylle, pp. 114–115.

Loveling, Een revolverschot, p. 44.

Johan Braeckman (2001) Darwins moordbekentenis. De ontwikkeling van het denken van Charles Darwin (Amsterdam: Nieuwezijds).

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 193.

Ibid., pp. 100, 103, 120 & 193; Loveling, Een revolverschot, pp. 25 & 47.

Gillian Beer (2000) Darwin's Plots. Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Loveling, Een dure eed, p. 113.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 209; Loveling, Een revolverschot, pp. 9, 32, 57, 70, 120 & 138.

Helena Cronin (1994) The Ant and the Peacock: altruism and sexual selection from Darwin to today, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). However, Darwin interprets ‘the appropriation of female sexual choice by men in modern societies as a sign of evolutionary progress’, thus revealing his male bias, Vandermassen et al., ‘Close Encounters’, p. 80.

Ibid., pp. 74–78.

Charles Darwin (1989) The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, in Paul Barrett & R. B. Freeman (Eds) vols 21 & 22 of The Works of Charles Darwin, 2nd edn (New York: New York University Press), p. 230.

Loveling, Een dure eed, pp. 53, 174 & 180; Loveling, Eene idylle, pp. 62 & 178; Loveling, Een revolverschot, p. 55; Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 203–207.

Ibid., p. 230.

Ibid., p. 341.

Smith, ‘The Cock of Lordly Plume’, p. 61.

Darwin, The Descent of Man, p. 230.

Loveling, Een revolverschot, p. 16.

Ibid., p. 32.

Ibid., pp. 57–58 & 70.

Ibid., p. 120.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 192 & 194.

Loveling, Een revolverschot, p. 55: ‘But alas! Honesty seems to be a virtue young girls seldom take into account when figuratively weighing potential husbands, and, if there are any girls who consent to marry a man in whom nothing else is praised than kindness, it is despite instead of because of that quality. Since the first visit he paid to the daughters of his predecessor, the sisters had classified him: “A boy like a girl”, Marie had said, without sparing any criticism of his good manners and small figure’. Later on, however, Marie is more positive, admitting that ‘A man who loves his mother, will love his wife’.

Darwin, The Descent of Man, p. 579.

Vandermassen et al., ‘Close Encounters’, p. 74.

Loveling, Meesterschap, pp. 116, 128 & 139–140.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 10, 12 & 44.

Darwin, The Descent of Man, p. 586.

Loveling, Meesterschap, pp. 85 & 89; Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 212 & 224; Loveling, Een revolverschot, pp. 37 & 86.

Loveling, Meesterschap, pp. 96 & 102; Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 71, 101, 127, 174 & 184.

Loveling, Eene idylle, p. 175; Loveling, Meesterschap, p. 124; Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 51; Loveling, Een revolverschot, p. 22.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 42; Loveling, Een revolverschot, pp. 82–84.

Ibid., p. 23.

Loveling, Een dure eed, p. 14.

Loveling, Eene idylle, pp. 51, 57 & 93.

Loveling, Een dure eed, p. 14.

Ibid., p. 17.

Loveling, De kwellende gedachte, pp. 151 & 255.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 8.

Loveling, Een revolverschot, p. 38.

Loveling, Een dure eed, p. 165; Loveling, Eene idylle, p. 144; Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 131.

Ibid., p. 15; ibid., pp. 38–39; ibid., p. 139.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 43, 69, 137 & 192; Loveling, Een revolverschot, p. 179.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 192.

Ibid., pp. 3–4, 21 & 159.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 76 & 84; Loveling, Een revolverschot, pp. 146, 164, 173, 177 & 180.

Loveling, De kwellende gedachte, p. 265.

Loveling, Eene idylle, pp. 45 & 158.

Thomas Laqueur (1990) Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 6.

Loveling, Een revolverschot, p. 185.

Ibid., p. 130.

Ibid., p. 144.

Loveling, Eene idylle, p. 7.

Loveling, Meesterschap, pp. 120 & 126.

Ibid., pp. 123 & 136.

Ibid., pp. 158, 188 & 204.

Loveling, Meesterschap, pp. 88, 99 & 102; Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 149 & 207; Loveling, Een revolverschot, p. 22.

Loveling, Erfelijk belast, p. 49.

Ibid., p. 53.

Cyndy Hendershot (1998) The Animal Within. Masculinity and the Gothic (Michigan: University of Michigan Press), p. 1.

Loveling, Eene idylle, p. 83; Loveling, Erfelijk belast, pp. 140 & 158.

Hendershot, The Animal Within, p. 4.

Rachel Blau du Plessis (1987) Writing beyond the Ending: narrative strategies of twentieth-century women writers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Liselotte Vandenbussche

Liselotte Vandenbussche studied English and Dutch literature and linguistics at Ghent University and literary theory at Leuven University. She wrote a doctoral dissertation on liberal women writers in Flemish cultural magazines (1870–1914). She teaches at the University College Ghent and is affiliated to Ghent University.

Griet Vandermassen

Griet Vandermassen studied philosophy and English and German literature and linguistics at Ghent University. She wrote a doctoral dissertation on the relationship between feminism and evolutionary theory and is affiliated to the Philosophy Department at Ghent University.

Marysa Demoor

Marysa Demoor is Professor of English Literature at Ghent University. She has published extensively on Victorian and Edwardian culture. Her recent book publications are Their Fair Share. Women, Power and Criticism in the Athenaeum, from Millicent Garrett Fawcett to Katherine Mansfield, 1870–1920 (Ashgate: Scolar Press, 2000) and Marketing the Author: authorial personae, narrative selves and self-fashioning, 1880–1930 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

Johan Braeckman

Johan Braeckman studied human ecology at the Free University of Brussels and philosophy at Ghent University. He wrote a doctoral dissertation on the philosophical implications of Darwin's evolutionary theory and teaches philosophy at Ghent University.