From Eve to Evolution analyzes the U.S. reception of Charles Darwin through the lens of gender and provides the first full-length study of women’s responses to evolutionary theory. Raised on the idea that Eve’s sin forever fixed women’s subordinate status, many 19th-century women embraced Darwinian evolution, especially sexual selection theory as explained in The Descent of Man (1871), as an alternative to the Genesis creation story. Darwin also introduced readers to the concept of human-animal kinship, allowing feminist reformers to look to animals for examples of non-patriarchal gender rol ... More

From Eve to Evolution analyzes the U.S. reception of Charles Darwin through the lens of gender and provides the first full-length study of women’s responses to evolutionary theory. Raised on the idea that Eve’s sin forever fixed women’s subordinate status, many 19th-century women embraced Darwinian evolution, especially sexual selection theory as explained in The Descent of Man (1871), as an alternative to the Genesis creation story. Darwin also introduced readers to the concept of human-animal kinship, allowing feminist reformers to look to animals for examples of non-patriarchal gender roles, domestic arrangements, and sexual power systems. This book chronicles the lives and writings of the women who combined their enthusiasm for evolutionary science with their commitment to women’s rights, including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Helen Hamilton Gardener, Eliza Burt Gamble, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Darwinian feminists believed evolutionary science proved that women were not inferior to men, that it was natural for mothers to work outside the home, and that the progress of women went hand-in-hand with that of science. The practical applications of this evolutionary feminism came to fruition in the early thinking and writing of the American birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. While household names in their day, after 1890, the Darwinian feminists frequently published in small women’s rights periodicals, the freethought press, and socialist publications, and, thus, are not as well-known today. Studying their writings reveals an alternate discourse in the history of U.S. feminist thought and the centrality of evolutionary science within it.