Chapter One
Metaphors of âInstinct and Traditionâ
I. âTHE POETIC VALUE OF THE EVOLUTIONARY CONCEPTIONâ
In A Backward Glance (1934) Edith Wharton acknowledged the role in her intellectual development of scientific works introduced to her by her friend Egerton Winthrop:
He it was who gave me Wallaceâs âDarwin and Darwinism,â and âThe Origin of Species,â and made known to me Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Romanes, Haeckel, Westermarck, and the various popular exponents of the great evolutionary movement. But it is idle to prolong the list, and hopeless to convey to a younger generation the first overwhelming sense of cosmic vastness which such âmagic casementsâ let into our little geocentric universe. (94)
Much earlier in her life, she had mentioned in a letter her reading of neoDarwinist1 works such as R. H. Lockâs Variation, Heredity and Evolution (1906) and Vernon Kellogâs Darwinism Today (1907). The French writer Paul Bourget, who met Wharton in 1893 and was thought by her to be âbrilliant and stimulatingâ (BG 103), described her as deeply involved in scientific reading: âthere is not a book of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Renan, Taine, which she has not studiedâ (qtd. in Lewis 69). Her engagement with the âevolutionary movementâ was not unusual, for Wharton avidly consumed scientific texts during a period in which an âoverwhelming interest in scientific developments and the new rationalismâ took hold in the United States (Hofstadter 24).
While Wharton participated in the trend of keeping up with scientific developments, she recognized in her reading of Darwin, the neo-Darwinists, and biologists such as Ernst Haeckel (1834â1919) the applicability to human behavior and culture of theories that describe non-human animal behavior and change in nature. The contemporary contention âthat it is not right to separate the Darwinian debate from broader cultural, ideological, political, and economic issuesâ (Young âDarwin and the Genre of Biographyâ 19) is one that Whartonâs novels during the period 1905â1920 predict by insisting that morality, and the dialectics of ideology, are related to the evolutionary heritage of humankind. This issue resonates with contemporary research in sociobiology. The evolutionary biologist Steven Pinker reflects that â[a]gency, personal responsibility and so on can all be tied to brain function [ ... ]. Itâs a fallacy to think that hunger and thirst and sex drive are biological but that reasoning and decision making and learning are something else, something non-biologicalâ (qtd. in Rakoff 27). That Wharton perceived something like Pinkerâs contention is the topic of part one of this chapter. Part two considers the critical response to Whartonâs explorations of science in order to delineate the current state of knowledge on the subject. The final part of this chapter describes Whartonâs formal expression of evolutionary concepts as operant features within the social domain she details, and juxtaposes this feature of her fiction with her opinions on literary realism and naturalism.
* * *
One way Wharton summons the glittering surfaces of New Yorkâs social whirl into the range of Darwinâs hypotheses lies in her depiction of male protagonists who are insensible to the possibility that cooperation among members of a class âtribeâ (AI 32) might, if acknowledged and addressed, moderate the incinerating competition from the socioeconomic elite that predicts the end of gentry privilege. One statement of cooperation exists in The Descent of Man, in which Darwin writes that âan advancement in the standard of morality [ ... ] will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over anotherâ (185), delicately knitting the moral dimension of human behavior to the chancy processes of natural selection. Darwinism evidently offered Wharton a middle way between âthe Spencerian notion of an accord between moral fitness and the ability to surviveâ (Beer Darwinâs Plots 64), which is known as social Darwinism, and, for her, the insupportable idea that culture possesses complete autonomy from nature. In The Fruit of the Tree (1907), her multi-themed novel about labor, social reform, and euthanasia, she posits ethics as âthe universal consensusâthe result of the worldâs accumulated experienceâ (418), and it is arguable that ethics, a product of evolutionary processes in Darwinâs The Descent of Man, is a result of âaccumulated experienceâ that is not exclusively the result of âreasoning.â For the group of novels addressed here, ethics is an aspect of the human experience that owes its existence to a combination of inherited biological predispositions and cultural history.
Wharton writes that âMiltonâs allusion to Galileoâs âoptic glassâ shows how early the poetic mind was ready to seize on any illustration furnished by the investigations of scienceâ (âGeorge Eliotâ 72), and she summons an effective authorizing example for the disciplinary syncretism she practised. Relating to both formal and thematic issues, a set of questions arises from Whartonâs own seizing of scientific language to illustrate her subjects: To what purpose is the hybridization of social analysis and evolutionary and biological science put in the novels? What is at stake for Wharton, politically, in the premise that cultural forms such as class hierarchies, courtship and marriage rituals, rites of exclusion, and the concept of equality itself, might arise from an evolutionary foundation? To what extent is Whartonâs biological interpretation of culture an aesthetic conceit that capitalizes on a popular passion for things scientific, and to what degree does Whartonâs fiction assert that biological laws function as agents of social change? In what ways, from novel to novel, does she alter her interjection in the debate about the meaning of Darwinâs arguments, and in particular, what forms do her responses take to social Darwinist discourse regarding the idea that the âsurvival of the fittestâ not only does obtain in human culture but should? As I address these questions, I also evaluate the success of the narrative strategies Wharton used to present these ideas in the literary marketplace, for her desire to rigorously analyze in fiction the social strata she depicted was matched by a need to persuade a wide audience of her conclusions.
The force of manners in distancing sexuality in the novels suggests ideology is a factor in the sublimation of desire some characters exhibit. A lack of awareness of ideological power displayed by many of Whartonâs weak men is an aspect of ideologyâs depicted operation. A more substantial claim for Whartonâs representation of ideology,2 though, exists in the possibility that she links it to Darwinâs theory of natural selection, which is to be seen as a mechanism affecting social change. The critical history on the topic of Darwinism in Whartonâs fiction leads one to explore her varied portraits of heredity, which express biological and social inheritance as inextricable. In this respect, Whartonâs method assaults the artificiality of manners that represent social heredity solely in terms of tradition and ritual, or, as in Newland Archerâs world, âthe [fashionable] thingâ (AI 4) which The Age of Innocence reveals to be a codifying cloak that conceals biological essences. I pursue this topic by exploring the implications, for the fictional portraits of ideological competition, of Claire Prestonâs claim that âWhartonâs sociobiological frame of reference predicts modern social analysis, which has made [ ... ] [the] useful analogy between evolution/selection theory and social development, treating the macro-social structure as âa selection environmentââ (54â55).
The fictions I examine oppose the idea that it is not possible to curb the harm to individual equality caused by unregulated natural selection; these works find a politicized interpretation of Darwin, which is actually a form of cultural selection, objectionable. In this limited sense the novels tender a model of incremental progress predicated on scouring away from an idealized core of American distinctiveness an aberrant brutality toward marginal and vulnerable people, no matter their class affiliation. Ironically, though, the novels do not offer a clear idea of how to balance natureâs positive effect on cultureâin the case of Ellen Olenska and Newland Archer, how sexual freedom might lead to a mutually enriching hybridization of American and European cultural practicesâwith natureâs disruptive potential. Individual moral agency holds out the possibility of resisting, even altering, a pervasive âsurvival of the fittestâ ethic. Outside a problematic social Darwinist culture, there exists another interpretation of nature in Whartonâs texts, but it is one that must now be acknowledged as having its own distinct political thrust. In this interpretation, symbiosis and cooperation are key words, and mutual dependence between species provides a model for relations between individuals, and between classes.
The narratives find in Darwinian ecology a model for obviating the kind of individual aggression displayed by Undine Spragg in The Custom of the Country, and the cultural expansionism depicted in Whartonâs statement that â[t]he modern European colonist apparently imagined that to plant his warehouses, cafes and cinema-palaces within the walls which for so long had fiercely excluded him was the most impressive way of proclaiming his dominationâ (IM 22). Intervention is called for in preventing the wastage that is visited on humankind in an uncultured state, and which persists in a âcivilizedâ world that extirpates Lily Bart and Ralph Marvell, causes the social death of Ellen Olenska, and colonizes other cultures. Whartonâs participation in the broader literary response to Darwinism, moreover, exhibits a complex and relatively consistent perspective that requires some historical contextualization to understand.
Donald Pizer3 describes the influence of Darwinism on American literature during the first decades of the twentieth century. He identifies a misinterpretation of Darwinian thought that the novels I examine refute in a systematic way:
[ ... ] Darwinâs belief that biological change is the product of variation and natural selection was immediately available as a possible means of examining change in other phases of manâs experience. The application to literary study of the environmental determinism implicit in the theory of natural selection was also encouraged, of course, by Taineâs belief that literature is the product of a nationâs physical and social conditions. But the basic pattern of evolutionary change which was joined to Taineâs environmental determinism to produce an evolutionary critical system was seldom Darwinian. Rather most critics accepted and absorbed Herbert Spencerâs doctrine that evolution is, in all phases of life, a progress from the simplicity of incoherent homogeneity to the complexity of coherent heterogeneity. [ ... ] The combination of Taine and Spencer is therefore the basic pattern in most evolutionary critical systems of the 1880s and the 1890s. (Realism and Naturalism 88)
Born in 1862, Wharton came of age intellectually in the period Pizer identifies. She once wrote that âTaine was one of the formative influences of my youth, the greatest after Darwin, [and] [ ... ] Spencerâ (Letters 136). Frederick Wegener relates that âher criticism generally bears little resemblance, on the whole, to Taineâs famous deterministic methodâ (âEnthusiasm Guided by Acumenâ 31), but the influence of Taineâs method exists in the âenvironmental determinismâ present in novels such as The House of Mirth, which Carol Singley views as documenting âthe effects of an increasingly consumer-based culture, shifting sexual relations, and changing urban and rural demographics on women of all classesâ (Historical Guide 8). In Whartonâs sustained focus on change in culture that does not lead to coherence, one finds that her evolutionary fictional and critical system combines Taine and Darwin and, mostly, rejects Spencer; by 1902, in fact, she viewed Spencerâs thought as âthe popular superstitionâ (âGeorge Eliotâ 73).
Despite her stated earlier enthusiasm for Spencerâs thought, Wharton grew to be skeptical of the optimism implied by his doctrine, which viewed evolution as a goal-directed process. In Social Statics (1851) he had written âso surely must evil and immorality disappear; so surely must man become perfectâ (31). Informed as she was in these matters, Wharton would have encountered criticism of Spencerâs views on evolution. He had, for instance, come under attack from the American sociologist Albion Small who wrote that âbiological sociologyâ (qtd. in Bannister 45) had unfortunate ethical and social consequences. In 1897 Small charged that Spencerâs alleged âprinciples of sociologyâ were really âsupposed principles of biology prematurely extended to cover social relationsâ (qtd. in Bannister 45). A strikingly similar exception to Spencerâs work is a prominent feature of Whartonâs writing between 1905 and 1920, and, to a lesser extent, in later work too; signs of the esteem in which a young Wharton held Spencer, and then the growing dissatisfaction with his views, are present in her fiction and non-fiction.
Whartonâs confrontation with social Darwinist derivations of Spencerâs teleological evolutionism exists in her representation of characters such as Lily Bart, an âorganismâ with âinherited tendenciesâ (HM 301). Though highly moral, Lily, by the novelâs end, is eliminated because what T. H. Huxley called âthe cosmic processâ in his 1893 essay âEvolution and Ethicsâ (327) is reckoned with ineffectively. Some today view Huxley as the originator among Darwinâs defenders of the idea that progress toward a preordained goal is an element of natural selection, something absent from Darwinâs original concept. Colin Tudge argues, âHuxley (and Herbert Spencer, and many others since) did not simply espouse Darwinian evolution. They promulgated evolutionismâwhich effectively conflates progressive evolution in nature with social progressâ (29). But one must also acknowledge that Huxley perceived Darwinâs original concept clearly, and that Huxley sought to address the dilemma evolution presents to beings capable of moral reasoning. âNow when the ancient sage [ ... ] looked the world, and especially human life, in the face, he found it as hard as we do to bring the course of evolution into harmony with even the elementary requirements of the just and the goodâ (âEvolution and Ethicsâ 315). Huxley made political points with Darwinâs work, and Wharton fictionally assesses the conflict between evolution and the ârequirementsâ of which Huxley writes. She is sympathetic to Huxleyâs belief that the âconscience of man revolted against the moral indifference of natureâ (âEvolution and Ethicsâ 316), and she locates in Darwinâs work a material basis for conscience.
Wharton is critical of Spencerian evolutionism for its promulgation of the idea, as the philosopher Daniel Dennett expresses it, that the ââsurvival of the fittestâ [ ... ] is not just Mother Natureâs way, but ought to be our wayâ (461). She finds in an adaptive moral sense a viable basis on which to base her view, shared with Huxley, that mitigation of the âcosmic processâ is possible. It is arguable, moreover, that Huxley was not so much an evolutionist as he was a thoroughgoing materialist who viewed ethics as an adaptive feature of humans and their collectives, a possibility suggested by his claim that
the sum of tendencies to act in a certain way, which we call âcharacter,â is often to be traced through a long series of progenitors and collaterals. So we may justly say that this âcharacterââthis moral and intellectual essence of manâdoes veritably pass over from one fleshly tabernacle to another, and does really transmigrate from generation to generation. (âEvolution and Ethicsâ 317)
These complexities are addressed in The Custom of the Country, for example, in Whartonâs portrait of Undine Spragg as signifying a recurrence of an earlier stage in social evolution. Undine finds her âimpulsesâ (39) untrustworthy in an upper-class context desultorily battling the ethos of individualism and the isolation that kills Lily in The House of Mirth. But Undine soon gravitates to the ambitious Elmer Moffattâs sphere, which exists apart from the world of the gentryâuntil Moffatt begins to buy it; here she can release her primal power. As an anti-heroine, Undine is the logical outcome of a Spencerian interpretation of Darwinian theory that downplays Huxleyâs view, and that of Darwin in The Descent of Man, that moral âcharacterâ has evolved in response to environmental factors. Whartonâs depiction of Undineâs aggression illustrates a contemporary âscientificâ devaluation of moral agency and judges it negatively.
In Thomas Kuhnâs The Structure of Scientific Revolutions he discusses one radical aspect of The Origin of Species, clarifying what were difficult and important aspects of evolutionary theory for Wharton to present:
Though evolution, as such, did encounter resistance [ ... ] it was by no means the greatest of the difficulties Darwinians faced. [ ... ] All the well-known pre-Darwinian evolutionary theoriesâthose of Lamarck, Chambers, Spencer, and the German Naturphilosophenâhad taken evolution to be a goal-directed process. The âideaâ of man [ ... ] was thought to have been present from the first creation of life. [ ... ] Each new stage of evolutionary development was a more perfect realization of a plan that had been present from the start. [ ... ] The Origin of Species recognized no set goal either by God or nature. [ ... ] What could âevolution,â âdevelopment,â and âprogressâ mean in the absence of a specified goal? (171â72)
The âidea of manâ present in these âpre-Darwinian evolutionary theoriesâ views the human species, in its biological and moral dimensions, as subject to a process of perfectibility supposed to existâand which was a sign of divine presenceâin natural law; Wharton must have been skeptical of the pre-Darwinian theorists of evolution, for she depicts the version of evolution that was linked to the concept of perfectible humankind, but only in terms of the resultant damage to characters like Lily Bart. This misconception contributes directly to Lilyâs fate by fostering the notion that an individualâs lack of adaptation to the social environment yields one unable to contribute to the realization of the âplanâ Kuhn describes. A nineteenth-century teleological view of the evolutionary process, one that Wharton was conversant with, thus presented her with a working example of assumptions about a perfectible society her biological reading of culture had to dislodge.
Evolution argues for invisibly slow yet inescapable change, an idea that assaults not only theological principles, but, as Dorothy Ross notes, the ahistorical tenor of an American society that saw itself in Whartonâs time as exempt from the political dialectics of the old world (23).4 This sense of the special quality of the United States was under siege. As Ross writes: âAmerican social scientists understood the laws of nature as Europeans had in the eighteenth century, as the rules through which God governed the world. [ ... ] In the Gilded Age [ ... ] secular naturalism would begin to undermine this early modern conception of natural lawâ (50). Wharton illustrates that social evolution progresses by chance variation, and so questions the p...