Human Evolution and Fantastic Victorian Fiction

183 Pages·2021·7.722 MB·English

by  Anna Neill

Human Evolution and Fantastic
Victorian Fiction
Following the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Victorian
anthropology made two apparently contradictory claims: it distinguished
“civilized man” from animals and “primitive” humans and it linked them
though descent. Paradoxically, it was by placing human history in a deep
past shaped by minute, incremental changes (rather than at the apex of
Providential order) that evolutionary anthropology could assert a new form
of human exceptionalism and define civilized humanity against both human
and nonhuman savagery.
This book shows how fantastic Victorian and early Edwardian fictions—
utopias, dystopias, nonsense literature, gothic horror, and children’s
fables—untether human and non-human animal agency from this increas-
inglyorthodoxaccountofthedeeppast.Astheyimagineworldsthatliftthe
evolutionary constraints on development and as they collapse evolution into
lived time, these stories reveal (and even occupy) dynamic landscapes of
cognitive descent that contest prevailing anthropological ideas about race,
culture, and species difference.
Anna Neill is Professor of English at the University of Kansas. She is the
author of two other books: British Discovery Literature and the Rise of
Global Commerce (2003) and Primitive Minds: Evolution and Spiritual
Experience in the Victorian Novel (2013).
Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction
Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film
Rant Against the Regime
Kirk Combe
The Biopolitics of Gender in Science Fiction
Feminism and Female Machines
Emily Cox-Palmer-White
Character and the Supernatural in Shakespeare and Achebe
Kenneth Usongo
Human Evolution and Fantastic Victorian Fiction
Anna Neill
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Human Evolution and Fantastic
Victorian Fiction
Anna Neill
Firstpublished2021
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Names:Neill,Anna,1965-author.
Title:HumanevolutionandfantasticVictorianfiction/AnnaNeill.
Description:NewYork,NY:Routledge,2021.|
Series:Routledgestudiesinspeculativefiction|Includesbibliographical
referencesandindex.|
Summary:“ThisbookexploresfantasticVictorianandearlyEdwardian
fictions-utopias,dystopias,nonsenseliterature,gothichorror,and
children’sfables-asresponsestoDarwiniananthropologyafter1860”–
Providedbypublisher.
Identifiers:LCCN2020054829|ISBN9780367722814(hardback)|
ISBN9781003154181(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:Humanevolutioninliterature.|Englishfiction–19th
century–Historyandcriticism.|Fantasyfiction,English–Historyand
criticism.|Literatureandanthropology–England–History–19thcentury.
Classification:LCCPR878.E95N452021|DDC823/.809356–dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2020054829
ISBN:978-0-367-72281-4(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-032-00998-8(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-003-15418-1(ebk)
TypesetinSabon
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
To my teachers, especially Susan Lamb, Jonathan Lamb, and
Neil Saccamano

Contents
List of figures ix
Acknowledgements x
1 Introduction: Strange Stories and the Descent of Mind 1
Deep Time and the Victorian Novel 1
Human Exceptionalism and Evolutionary Progress 3
Strange Stories and Evolutionary Anthropology 6
Descent, Narrative, and Reading 13
2 Phylogeny Recapitulates Ontogeny: Fantastic Evolution and
Fairy Science in The Water-Babies 22
Nature, Race, and a Marvelous Tale 22
Child Development and the Book of Nature 28
Evolutionary Science, Natural Theology, and Moral
Ontogeny 33
Deep History and Fairy Science 35
3 Developmental Nonsense in the Alice Tales 41
Nonsense and Cognitive Evolution 42
Alice and the Science of Mental Development 45
Photographic Development 50
Developmental Nonsense 53
4 Orality, Print, and Evolution in the Just So Stories 61
Stories Oral and Read 61
Folklore, Empire, and Print Culture 63
The Collaborative Bedtime Tale 66
Mixed Forms and Colonial Ambivalence 70
viii Contents
5 Becoming Animal in The Island of Dr. Moreau 79
Artificial Evolution and Scientific Romance 80
Deep Time Travel and the Beast Within 83
Moreau and the Uncanny Beast 85
6 The Machinate Literary Mammal: Samuel Butler’s Strange
Stories 94
Genius and the Organic Future 95
Common Sense and the Machinate Mammal in Erewhon 100
Writing for the Future: The Way of All Flesh 106
7 Exotic Geometry, Natural Religion, and the Liberal Case
against Eugenics in Flatland 111
Abbott and the London City School 113
Natural Christianity and Liberal Learning 115
A Romance of Many Dimensions 117
8 Deep Time and the Socialist Utopia 129
Looking Backward 131
News from Nowhere 134
A Modern Utopia 139
An Evolutionary Utopia? 145
9 Coda: Shallowing the Past 148
References 151
Index 165
Figures
2.1 Robert Dudley’s historiated initial for Chapter 1 of The
Water-Babies. The Water-Babies (London, 1863), p. 2. Image
courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library 26
2.2 Linley Sambourne, Richard Owen and Thomas Henry Huxley
inspect a water-baby. The Water-Babies (London, 1896), p. 69.
Image courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library 36
3.1 Lewis Carroll (C.L Dodgson), Alice Liddell as ‘The Beggar
Maid,’ 1858 51
3.2 Lithographic copyof aphotographby Hugh Welch Diamond,
Chronic Mania, 1858. Published in The Medical Times and
Gazette, new series v. 16 (Jan-June 1858), 405 52
4.1 Rudyard Kipling, The Wise Baviann. From Just So Stories
(1907),p.49.ImagecourtesyoftheKennethSpencerResearch
Library 66
4.2 Kipling’s illustrations to “How the Alphabet was Made.”
Image courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library 75
4.3 Kipling’s final illustration to “How the Alphabet was Made.”
Image courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library 76
7.1–5 Abbott’s illustrations to Flatland. Image courtesy of The
Kenneth Spencer Research Library 120
7.6 The Arion Press edition and first edition of Flatland. The first
edition published by Seeley & Co. is in the foreground. The
Arion Press edition is shown here with the permission of the
Press. Image courtesy of The Kenneth Spencer Research
Library 125