UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Evolutionary Aestheticism: Scientific Optimism and Cultural Progress, 1850-1913 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Lindsay Puawehiwa Wilhelm 2017 © Copyright by Lindsay Puawehiwa Wilhelm 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Evolutionary Aestheticism: Scientific Optimism and Cultural Progress, 1850-1913 by Lindsay Puawehiwa Wilhelm Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Joseph E. Bristow, Chair While evolutionary science may appear to have little in common with the Aesthetic Movement—the “art for art’s sake” philosophy of culture that arose in Britain in the late 1860s—this dissertation contends that these schools of thought formed interdependently, through a sustained dialogic exchange between writers whose interests spanned both art and science. Prominent Victorian figures such as the polymath Herbert Spencer, the aesthete Oscar Wilde, and the critic Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) not only accepted the truth of Charles Darwin’s insights, but also converged in their conception of what I term “evolutionary aestheticism”: a rational and yet remarkably optimistic philosophy that looked to the enjoyment of beauty and the cultivation of taste, rather than violent Darwinian competition, for modes of peaceable evolutionary progress. ii Each chapter explores the development of evolutionary aestheticism, from the decade leading up to Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) to the publication of Lee’s aesthetic primer The Beautiful (1913). The first chapter traces the tradition to Darwin’s and Spencer’s mid-century evolutionary theories, which exempted aesthetic experience from brutal natural laws of scarcity and struggle. Next, the dissertation considers how the cultural critic Walter Pater and the mathematician W. K. Clifford shaped aestheticism in the 1870s—the movement’s formative years—by postulating a scientifically inflected ideal of the aesthetic temperament. The third chapter juxtaposes Wilde’s criticism with Grant Allen’s popular science writing: in the 1890s, these two writers articulated a radically hedonic aesthetics that equated individual happiness with social progress. The fourth chapter analyzes the “life-enhancing” aesthetics of Lee and the connoisseur Bernard Berenson, both of whom discerned the true value of beauty in its capacity to revitalize the entire species as well as the individual. A short coda evaluates the legacy of evolutionary aestheticism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although the scientific claims of evolutionary aestheticism have all but disappeared from modern-day discourse, its central aim of reconciling aesthetic pleasure with social good has reemerged, this study concludes, in recent debates within literary and cultural criticism. iii The dissertation of Lindsay Puawehiwa Wilhelm is approved. Jonathan Hamilton Grossman Louise E. J. Hornby Robert G. Frank, Jr. Joseph E. Bristow, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv To JFS—an unexpected optimist, a man of science, and a true artist. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ………………………………………………………………………………. vii Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………………….. viii Vita …………………………………………………………………………………………… x Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter One …………………………………………………………………………………. 25 Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and the Origins of Evolutionary Aesthetics Chapter Two ………………………………………………………………………………… 90 A Religion of Humanity: The Evolutionary Aestheticism of W. K. Clifford, Walter Pater, and Mathilde Blind Chapter Three ……………………………………………………………………………….. 143 Sexual Selection and Social Progress: The Utopian Evolutionism of Grant Allen and Oscar Wilde Chapter Four ………………………………………………………………………………… 217 “Art for the Sake of Life”: The “Life-Enhancing” Aesthetics of Vernon Lee and Bernard Berenson Coda …………………………………………………………………………………………. 291 Evolutionary Aestheticism in the Twentieth Century Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………… 318 vi LIST OF FIGURES George Du Maurier, “An Aesthetic Midday Meal,” Punch, 17 July 1880 …………………… 5 Edward Linley Sambourne, “Mr. Punch’s Designs After Nature,” Punch, 1 April 1871 ……. 17 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS None of this would have been possible without the tireless mentorship of Joseph Bristow, whose brilliant scholarship is equaled only by his generosity toward his students. It has been my honor and privilege to work closely with him (and, more often than not, his dachshunds Leo and Sabrina) over the years. I also owe a great debt to Jonathan H. Grossman for his careful and incisive feedback on the dissertation as well as his unfailing collegiality. In addition, I offer my sincerest thanks to both Louise Hornby and Robert Frank for putting their prodigious bodies of expertise at my disposal. Throughout this whole endeavor, the four members of my committee have been consistently kind, encouraging, and enthusiastic: I am deeply grateful to them all. Many other faculty, from UCLA and elsewhere, have fostered my academic career. In particular, I must acknowledge the justly celebrated Anne K. Mellor, Chris Mott (nou kēia mahalo no kou ho‘okahua‘ana kūmaumau mai ia‘u), and my undergraduate advisor Jeff Spear. Thanks also to Kristin Mahoney, Diana Maltz, and Anne Stiles—three Victorianists at the height of their powers—for graciously taking me under their wing at every NAVSA conference. Furthermore, both my scholarship and my mental health have benefitted immensely from the friendship and guidance of my remarkable fellow graduate students, including Sarah Nance, Mike Nicholson, Dan Couch, Will Clark, Amy Wong, Jay Jin, Sam Sommers, Jordan Wingate, Alex Zobel, Amanda Hollander, Sydney Miller, Katie Charles, Cailey Hall, Jonathan Kincade, Ben Beck, Grant Rosson, Caitlin Benson, Alethia Shih, and others too numerous to name here. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents Marcy and Lance, my sister Kate, my grandmother Merle, and my partner John for their unconditional support. When the going got tough, what motivated me to keep working was the sure knowledge that they would love me regardless of whether I finished. viii *** Portions of the Introduction have appeared previously in “Evolutionary Science and Aestheticism: a Survey and a Suggestion,” Literature Compass 13:2 (2016): 88-97, DOI: 10.1111/lic3.12315. Chapter 2 is a version of “The Utopian Evolutionary Aestheticism of W. K. Clifford, Walter Pater, and Mathilde Blind,” Victorian Studies 59, no. 1 (Autumn 2016): 9-34. Chapter 3 is a version of “Sex in Utopia: The Evolutionary Hedonism of Grant Allen and Oscar Wilde,” in preparation for publication in Victorian Literature and Culture. ix LINDSAY PUAWEHIWA WILHELM Curriculum Vitae EDUCATION 2017 Ph.D. Candidate, English, University of California, Los Angeles Dissertation Title: “Evolutionary Aestheticism: Scientific Optimism and Cultural Progress, 1850-1913” Advisor: Professor Joseph Bristow 2013 M.A., English, UCLA 2010 B.A., magna cum laude, English and American Literature (Highest Honors), Politics, New York University PUBLICATIONS 2017 “Sex in Utopia: The Evolutionary Hedonism of Grant Allen and Oscar Wilde,” forthcoming in Victorian Literature and Culture 2016 “The Utopian Evolutionary Aestheticism of W. K. Clifford, Walter Pater, and Mathilde Blind,” Victorian Studies 59:1 (Autumn 2016), 9-34 2016 “Evolutionary Science and Aestheticism: a Survey and a Suggestion,” Literature Compass 13:2 (2016): 88-97 2014 “'Looking South': Envisioning the European South in North and South,” Studies in the Novel 46:4 (2014): 406-422 AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS 2016 Graduate Division Dissertation Year Fellowship, UCLA 2015 Department Distinction in Teaching, UCLA 2015 Department Dissertation Fellowship, UCLA 2013 Graduate Research Mentorship, UCLA 2010 Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship, UCLA INVITED TALK 2016 “Sex and Social Progress: The Utopian Hedonism of Grant Allen and Oscar Wilde,” UCLA Department of English Winter Athenaeum, February 18 x SELECTED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS 2016 “Diagnosing the Body Politic: Victorian History and the Social Organism,” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) Annual Conference, Phoenix, AZ, November 2-5 2015 “A Meeting of ‘Sister Sovereigns’: Hawaiian Royalty at Victoria’s Golden Jubilee,” NAVSA Annual Conference, Honolulu, HI, July 9-12 2014 “Connoisseurship, Curation, and Pleasure in the Work of Vernon Lee and Her Circle,” Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States Annual Conference, CSU Fullerton, Fullerton, CA, October 16-18 TEACHING EXPERIENCE Instructor of Record 2013 Critical Reading and Writing, Utopia and Dystopia Teaching Assistant 2015 Science Fiction; Early Romantic Literature 2014 English Literature from 1700-1850 2013 Literary Los Angeles; Shakespeare 2012 English Literature from 1700-1850; English Literature from 1850-Present 2011 The American Novel PROFESSIONAL/ORGANIZATIONAL EXPERIENCE 2016 UCLA Friends of English Southland Graduate Conference Co-chair 2015 UCLA Nineteenth Century Group Graduate Coordinator PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS Modern Language Association; North American Victorian Studies Association; Victorian Interdisciplinary Association of the Western United States; Phi Beta Kappa Society xi Introduction Aesthetics, like sexual selection, make life lovely and wonderful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, and variety and change. —Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist” (1890, revised 1891) This dissertation investigates the