Gendered Pathologies

The Female Body and Biomedical Discourse in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel

Sondra Archimedes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781135922894
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria

Gendered Pathologies examines nineteenth-century literary representations of the pathologized female body in relation to biomedical discourses about gender and society in Victorian England. According to medical and scientific views of the period, the woman who did not conform to the dictates of gender ideology was, biologically speaking, aberrant: a deviation from the norm. Yet, although marginalized in a social sense, the "deviant" woman was central as a literary and cultural trope. Analyzing novels by Charles Dickens, H. Rider Haggard, and Thomas Hardy alongside Foucault's notion of perverse sexualities and Herbert Spencer's model of the social organism, Archimedes argues that the pathologized female body displaces or resolves, on a narrative level, larger cultural anxieties about the health of the British as a species. While earlier feminist investigations asserted that bourgeois ideology helped to construct scientific discourses about female sexuality and social behavior, this study takes these assertions as a starting point. Examining incest, racial stereotyping, and neurasthenia, Gendered Pathologies attempts to shed light on the ways in which biological thinking permeated British culture in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Chapter One
Science, Gender, and the Nineteenth Century

The Social Body and the Biological Metaphor

The communities portrayed in each of the novels I am analyzing here are, in varying ways, diseased societies, threatened by the spectre of their own demise. In the case of Hard Times, industrial society and a mechanistic social ethic produce dysfunctional family relationships. She, on the other hand, ventures outside of bourgeois England and portrays a small African society marked as diseased according to the terms of Victorian anthropology. Similarly, in Jude the Obscure the widespread desire for social and intellectual advancement, added to the pressure of changing gender paradigms, render "modern civilization" a breeding ground for nervous disorders. In each case, the depiction of society as diseased is enabled by an underlying biological metaphor envisioning the social sphere as a living organism or social body. Each story in its own way sees the community in which narrative events take place as a biological entity: a living organism comprised of many smaller organisms, capable either of development or decline. It is this concept that allows us to see Jude's "modern civilization," for instance, as pathological— not only disease-producing, but also an unhealthy organism in itself. The biological metaphor allows the narrators of all three of these texts to cast the social body as subject to the same kinds of infirmities as the human body. The same metaphor that links organism and social domain joins the pathologized female body to the social body, but results in very different constructions of the social sphere. Whereas the connection between human body and social domain was often deployed as a means to uphold the existing social order, the connection between female body and social domain was used to reveal problems in that domain.¹ The female body, associated with reproductive and physical or mental frailty, was the counterpart to the diseased or at-risk society, the society on the brink of reproductive decline. In the texts I am examining, the deviant female body which engages in nonprocreative sex or experiences problems associated with reproduction signifies the uncertain reproductive future of the diseased community in much the same way that the individual organism in nineteenth-century thought represented the larger species in a biological system.

These associations—between society and biology, individual and species—were fundamental to much scientific thinking in the second half of the nineteenth century. Herbert Spencer, in particular, underscored these correlations by making the link between society and organism a cornerstone of his though t, refining his theories over a number of years. George Stocking observes that as early as 1851, Spencer, in Social Statics, introduced the outlines of his concept of the "social organism," making this one of three major principles of his social theory. As Stocking explains:

One can find in Social Statics the germs of each of what have been called Spencer's "three sociologies": the contractual individual, the social organic, and the cultural. The first is evident in his conception of society as an aggregation of individual social atoms, whose individual natures determine by summation the character of the social whole; the: second, primarily as an occasional metaphor—the "social organism"— tacitly opposed to the "mechanism" of state administration; the third, implicit (as it was to remain) in the relation of social forms and national character. (132)

Spencer developed his thoughts on the metaphorical relationship between the social whole and the living organism more fully in an I860 essay entitled "The Social Organism." In it he posited outright "an analogy between the body politic and a living individual body," emphasizing the thought that "society is a growth and not a manufacture (269). For Spencer the concept of "manufacture entailed an artificial imposition of a plan that was rigid and unchanging, whereas an "organism" grew, developed, and adapted itself to changing conditions, becoming larger and more complex while individual units became more interconnected. Spencer's concept of the social organism, with its explicit biological referent, was a fairly novel way of thinking about society at the time; although the basic metaphor between individual body and social body had a long history, the scientific framework was something new. In this, Spencer was representative of larger cultural trends, illustrating the increasing tendency for scientists and laypeople alike to look to biology rather than religion or philosophy to explain and evaluate human relationships, human institutions, and human desires.

The nineteenth-century debate over evolution, perhaps more than any other scientific debate, elevated the tenets of biology to public prominence. As Russett observes, "[b]iology in the second half of the nineteenth century was steeped in an atmosphere of evolution. Though the concept had not awaited the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin's collection of facts and powerful reasoning made evolution central to biological inquiry" (4). Nineteenth -century biological evolutionism offered two basic lines of thought as to how characteristics were inherited and passed on to the next generation.² The theory of natural selection, first suggested by A.R. Wallace but developed in detail by Darwin in the Origi.fi, asserted that animals which were best suited to a particular environment survived, passing their innate characteristics onto their offspring; in this way, over many generations, characteristics which favored survival became prominent, while characteristics unsuitable to a particular environment tended to diminish. Darwin's concept of natural selection diverged from the widely accepted idea, promoted by Jean Baptiste Lamarck, that characteristics acquired during an individual's lifetime could be passed on to his or her offspring. According to Lamarck's logic, the rustling of wind on an animal's coat, for instance, could stimulate more fur to grow, thus causing animals in cold climates to have thicker fur than those in warm areas. In the Origin, Darwin considers "the direct action of the severe climate" to alter inherited characteristics a possibility, but believes the greater probability to be that "[t]he structure of an organism ... is primarily determined by its response to other organisms and to the environment rather than by the direct effect of external conditions" (389). Yet despite his comments here, as Russett notes, "Darwin was far from denying a role to the Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics, and indeed he expanded that role as time went by" (65). Darwin's continued consideration of Lamarck's ideas illustrates one reason why both theories remained influential throughout the century. Both within and outside of the scientific community, the notion of acquired characteristics continued to be associated with evolution for several decades, even in the face of new information. As Janet Oppenheim comments, "Down to the end of the century, natural selection and the inheritance of acquired characteristics coexisted as plausible alternative explanations of evolutionary change, both attracting staunch adherents and acerbic critics. . . . Lamarckism was never eclipsed by Darwinism during the Victorian era because there was no tidy distinction between the two" (Oppenheim 290). In fact, it was not until the 1880s, when August Weismann discredited Lamarck's ideas with his findings on the germ-plasm, that the scientific basis for natural selection was clearly established; yet in the minds of the general public, the two theories continued not only to coexist with one another, but also to be thought of as a single theory.³

Theories of evolution, whether based on natural selection or acquired characteristics, emphasized the importance of heredity and reproduction, while at the same time drawing attention to the concept of the "species." The individual was not merely an independent unit, but part of a larger biological entity to which it was intimately bound. The close connection between individual organism and species was exemplified in an important scientific maxim of the nineteenth century, succinctly expressed as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" (Russett 50). This phrase explains the theory of recapitulation, which Russett defines as "the concept . . . that every individual organism repeats in its own life history the life history of its race, passing through the lower forms of its ancestors on its way to maturity" (50). Thus, the individual human being, in passing from an embryonic stage to physical maturity, goes through the same developmental phases as the human species did over millions of years. Russett's point is that recapitulation theory was used extensively in the sciences, including the social sciences, where it was employed to impose a biological model onto one of social hierarchy, with women, children and "savages" ranking far below the adult white male on the "phyletic ladder" (Russett 51). Yet it is also interesting to note the more rudimentary idea that recapitulation theory formalized the relationship between individual and species, making what was essentially a metaphor into an absolute equivalency Although recapitulation was not established as a theory until the 1860s, an 1852 article by Spencer in support of evolution describes biological relationships in a similar way.⁴ "Surely," Spencer writes, "if a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race" ("Development Hypothesis" 6). In this view, society is not merely like an organism in terms of social development and growth, as it is in "The Social Organism," but more specifically is an organism, stripped to its cellular essence. The social body is almost literally an extension of the human body.

Spencer's comments and the ensuing interest in recapitulation theory suggest the extent to which the concept of biological unity between individual organism and "the race" or larger species permeated both the natural and the social sciences.⁵ Moreover, such reasoning reconfigured social concepts that elevated the status of the individual in relation to society, so important to eighteenth-century political thought. The biological model automatically invoked the concept of species in any examination of an individual, so that the idea of health or disease in a human being could apply similarly to a large social network. Here, as elsewhere in evolutionary discussions, the notion of the species subsumed social organization under that of the biological, laying the groundwork for a powerful metaphor that resonated far beyond the scientific community.

Parallels between the social sphere and biological organization were especially apparent in a kind of thinking loosely known as "social Darwinism," an idea which gained ascendance in the second half of the century. The popular catchphrase "survival of the fittest"—the legacy of Spencer and not Darwin— captured the essence of social Darwinism in assuming a direct relationship between the social sphere and the natural world of plant and animal biology. "Survival of the fittest" followed the general logic of natural selection, but implied that the most physically "fit" organism was also the most capable in other categories, such as intellectual and moral. Thus, in the social sphere, social Darwinism was used to justify the status quo and oppose government intervention to remedy social or economic imbalances; there will always be some individuals who are poorer and weaker than others (so the logic goes), but the "law of nature" which necessitates this imbalance guarantees the survival of the larger social body—and rightly so. Spencer's Principles of Sociology outlines much of the rationale behind social Darwinism. Spencer reasons, for instance:

To be slow of speed is to be caught by an enemy; to be wanting in swiftness is to fail in catching prey: death being in either case the result. ... On glancing up from low types of animals having but rudimentary eyes and small powers of motion, to high types of animals having wide vision, considerable intelligence, and great activity, it becomes undeniable that where loss of life is entailed on the first by these defects, life is preserved in the last by these superiorities. The implication, then, is that successive improvements of the organs of sense and motion, and of the internal coordinating apparatus which uses them, have indirectly resulted from the antagonisms and competitions of organisms with one another.

A parallel truth is disclosed on watching how there evolves the regulating system of a political aggregate, and how there are developed those appliances for offence and defence put in action by it. (Principles of Sociology 520)

Thus conflict, disparity, and imbalance contribute to the strengthening and improvement of the social body in the same way as they do to the human body In this reasoning, certain animals are more highly evolved than others, and the struggle between disparate organisms and groups benefits the species by improving the physical and mental attributes of the survivors. Some individual members may suffer, but that is necessary for the good of the whole. The implication is that inequalities of wealth or social status among individuals or groups are somehow "natural."

Spencer enlarges on the idea of the natural social body—or "body politic," in Spencer's words—when he turns to the issue of internal regulation. The body politic is a self-regulating mechanism, like the human body, with no need of outside interference. Consequently, Spencer asserts, "[t]he general result, then, is that in societies, as in living bodies, the increasing mutual dependence of parts, implying an increasingly-efficient regulating system, therefore implies not only developed regulating centres, but also means by which the influences of such centres may be propagated" (Principles of Sociology 538). To support his praise of the "efficient" self-regulating system, Spencer provides the example of the British banking system, wherein "this kind of regulation is effected by the system of banks and associated financial bodies which lend out capital" (Principles of Sociology 546); he argues, in short, that where one sphere experiences a great flow of capital, another sphere experiences a diminishment, which keeps the larger organism healthy. Not surprisingly, in a later section, Spencer laments the intrusion of government, complaining that "in London the Metropolitan Board having proposed that the rate-payers should spend so much to build houses for the poor in the Holborn district, the Secretary of State says they must spend more!" (583). Spencer's conclusion is that free trade and a general loosening of state interventions will improve the quality of life for the social aggregate. In this formulation, Spencer recasts Adam Smith's laissez-faire capitalism more specifically as an organic model. Spencer's ruminations about the "efficiency" of self-regulating free markets, for example, added a biological rationale for opposing governmental regulation and advocating the free flow of capital.

Analogies between the human body and the "natural" social body similarly rationalized the policies of Thomas Malthus, who believed, as Jeffrey Weeks puts it, "that population arrived naturally at its own correct level" (Sex, Politics 123). In Essay on the Principle of Population, for instance, Malthus states:

[I]f any man chose to marry, without a prospect of being able to support a family, he should have the most perfect liberty so to do. Though to marry, in this case, is in my opinion clearly an immoral act, yet it is not one which society can justly take upon itself to prevent or punish; because the punishment provided for it by the laws of nature falls directly and most severely upon the individual who commits the act, and, through him, only more remotely and feebly on the society. When nature will govern and punish for us, it is a very miserable ambition to wish to snatch the rod from her hands, and draw upon ourselves the odium of executioner. To the punishment, therefore, of nature he should be left, the punishment of severe want. (262)

Malthus advocates a policy that is basically non-interventionist, although he also cautions individuals to regulate their own reproductive functions lest "nature use her harsher methods of population control. Moreover, he believes that society should not intercede because the punishment falls exactly where it should—on the delinquent individual and not on the community. In this way, Malthus sees a direct correlation between the "proper" functioning of the individual and a healthy society, suggesting that the individual who is healthy in a moral sense contributes to a healthy social sphere with manageable population numbers.⁶ Like the "low types of animals who are eclipsed by the "animals having wide vision [and] considerable intelligence" of Spencer's description, the person who bears children without sufficient means (and a crystal ball to see into the future) will be justifiably punished by "nature."⁷

The Normal and the Pathological

In the field of nineteenth century medicine, "normality" was the functional equivalent to "natural." Like social theorists who believed in the validity of "nature's laws," doctors and scientists believed that an understanding of the "normal" processes of the human body would yield the answer to a larger comprehension of all the problems of human suffering. Normality, however, was the counterpart to pathology; and herein was the key to a major shift in medical thinking. In the early years of the nineteenth century, Parisian doctors moved away from the idea of disease as a process involving a certain amount of abstraction and mobility towards something more concrete and localized. Foucault terms the earlier mode of diagnosis "classificatory medicine," which imagined disease as having a free movement in space rather than being located at a particular site in the body. Classificatory medicine visualized "a free spatialization for the disease, with no privileged region, no constraint imposed by hospital conditions . . ." (Clinic 18). Nine...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction "Derangements of the Uterus" and Other Mysteries
• Chapter One Science, Gender, and the Nineteenth Century
• Chapter Two Towards a Discourse of Perversion: Female Deviance, Sibling Incest, and the Bourgeois Family in Dickens's Hard Times
• Chapter Three Women, Savages, and the Body of Africa: Rider Haggard's She as Biological Narrative
• Chapter Four "Shapes like our own selves hideously multiplied": Sue Bridehead, Reproduction, and the Disease of "Modern Civilization
• Afterword Female Deviance in the Twenty-First Century: From Martha Stewart to Lynndie England
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index