2000 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
The Impact of Darwinism on Feminist Thought and Literature at the End of the 19th Century
| Project/Area Number |
10610464
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
英語・英米文学
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| Research Institution | Yokohama National University |
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Principal Investigator |
TANJI Yoko Faculty of Education & Human Science, Yokohama National University Associate Professor, 教育人間科学部, 助教授 (90188459)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1998 – 2000
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| Keywords | feminism / Darwinism / Kate Chopin / C.P.Gilman / A.Kenealy / fin desiecle / Herland |
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| Research Abstract |
In end-of-the-19th-century America, Darwinism, incorporated into various fields of study, was a very influential thought and had a great impact on several writers. The present study, taking into consideration the various ways in which Darwinism was made use of by various American writers, concentrates on how it had an impact on the feminist thought of Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In particular, it studies (1) how Darwinism functioned to give scientific support to late 19th-century male-centered and anti-feminist ideologies, and (2) how feminist writers like Chopin and Gilman, by rereading Darwinism, applied it to undermine those anti-feminist ideologies.
In the first year, I read Arabella Kenealy's scientific paper "The Talent of Motherhood" (1890), which showed very clearly the close relationship between Darwinism and anti-feminism at the end of the 19th century. I studied how the scientific discourse of 1890s, by relying on Darwinism and the conservation law of energy, constructed an anti-feminist position to take against the feminism of the contemporary "New Women". I published the results of this study in a paper entitled "Science and the Woman Question".
In the second year, I studied Kate Chopin's fiction including The Awakening (1899), but could not show the result in the form of a published paper.
In the third year, taking C.P.Gilman's Herland (1915) as a main text, I studied how Darwinism was both accepted and repudiated in Gilman's feminist utopianism. The result was published as part of the report on the present study, under the title of "Notes for a Paper on C.P.Gilman's Herland".
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