DARWIN AND WOMEN: A SELECTION OF LETTERS

In April 1838, the 29-year-old Charles Darwin had returned from his Beagle voyage andwas beginning to earn a reputation as a gifted naturalist. But despite his professional success, he remained a single man, and it was time, he knew, to decide whether tomarry. The young Darwin enumerated the advantages and disadvantages of the institution and noted that, on the one hand, marriage would impede his travels, distract him from his burgeoning scientific career and require substantial financial resources. And yet, he mused, marriage would furnish him with a wife who would be a ‘constant companion (& friend in old age)… [an] object to be beloved and played with — better than a dog anyhow’ (p. 50). He decided that it was worth the distraction and six months later proposed to his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, with whom he would have ten children and to whom he would remain committed until his death in 1882.

Emma proved herself to be much more than an object of amusement. She translated work into French, German and Italian for her husband, managed his correspondence and visitors and served as his amanuensis. She also served as her husband’s trusted advisor and public representative. In 1844, for example, Darwin asked her to promote his ‘species theory’ if he died before publishing it, as revealed in a letter published in Darwin and Women: A Selection of Letters, edited by Samantha Evans and a product of the Darwin Correspondence Project. A letter published in the collection also indicates that Darwin’s daughter Henrietta contributed to his career: she served as his editor and her father praised her judgment and competency.

But although he was surrounded by these and other capable women, Darwin publicly declared that men were intellectually superior to their female counterparts, contending in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) that man attained a ‘higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain — whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination’. The correspondence included inDarwin andWomen illuminates the contradictions and complexities of Darwin’s views.

The collection takes us into Darwin’s interior world, and in addition to the letters of family members, includes correspondence with female friends, botanists and critics. The volume is organized thematically, rather than chronologically, with sections devoted to letters that discuss a range of topics which include religion, children, travels, and human and animal emotions. The correspondence provides rich source material for those interested in the development of Darwin’s ideas, nineteenth-century gender roles and domestic life, animal studies, and the reception of On the Origin of Species (1859), the Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).

The letters humanize Darwin, and we learn, for example, that Charles was a devoted father. He took care of his children when they were ill, let them roam freely around Down House and missed them terribly when they left home. The letters paint a vivid portrait of the daily lives, apprehensions and aspirations of learned Victorians as they navigated love, death and birth, and they should be valuable to scholars of cultural history and British Studies as well.

Furthermore, asDameGillianBeer argues in the collection’s foreword, these sketches of family life also provide insight into the development of Darwin’s scientific work. The significance of Darwin’s trip to the Galapagos Islands, and especially his observations of finches, is a well-known source of influence for the development of his theory of natural selection.

However, there were numerous sources of influence closer to home. For example, as Beer argues, the presence of Darwin’s grandchild in Down House may have inspired his interest in child development. The children of Darwin’s friends and acquaintances also influenced his scholarly work: he requested that mothers record their infants’moods, facial movements, and tears, and he used these observations in Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.