Evolution and Eugenics in American Literature and Culture, 1880-1940 Essays on Ideological Conflict and Complicity

Edited and with an Introduction by Lois A. Cuddy and Claire M. Roche

Lewisburg Bucknell University Press London: Associated University Presses Contents

Introduction: Ideological Background and Literary Implications 9 Lois A. CUDDY and CLAIRE M. ROCHE

Part I: Evolutionary Theory in American Literature "It is the race instinct!": Evolution, Eugenics, and Racial Ambiguity in William Dean Howells's Fiction 59 JUSTIN D. EDWARDS His and Herland: Charlotte Perkins Gilman "Re-presents" Lester F. Ward 73 CYNTHIA J. DAVIS Jack London's Evolutionary Hierarchies: Dogs, Wolves, and Men 89 LISA HOPKINS Evolving into Violence: Poor White Humor in T. S. Stribling's Teeftallow 102 DEBRA BEILKE The Origin of Story and the Survival of Character in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! 116 ALEX VERNON Part II: Eugenics in American Literature Eugenics and the Fiction of Pauline Hopkins 133 JOHN NICKEL Bad Blood and Lost Borders: Eugenic Ambivalence in Mary Austin's Short Fiction 148 PENNY L. RICHARDS "Feeble-Minded" White Women and the Spectre of Proliferating Perversity in American Eugenics Narratives 164 ELIZABETH YUKINS

f N1EBERS. STAATS- BIBL1OTHBK, I GOTTINGBF? 8 CONTENTS

"Tourists Accommodated' with Reservations: Dorothy Canfield's Writings, Vermont Tourism, and the Eugenics Movement in Vermont 187 JULIA C. EHRHARDT Eugenics and the Experimental Breeding Ground of Susan Glaspell's The Verge 203 TAMSEN WOLFF Helen in Philadelphia: H.D.'s Eugenic Paganism 220 ANDREW LAWSON Re-examining the Political Left: Erskine Caldwell and the Doctrine of Eugenics 240 SARAH C. HOLMES Reproducing the Working Class: Tillie Olsen, Margaret Sanger, and American Eugenics 259 CLAIRE M. ROCHE

List of Contributors 276 Index 279