Darwinian Feminism and Early Science Fiction

Patrick Sharp

Description

Darwinian Feminism in Early Science Fiction provides the first detailed scholarly examination of women’s SF in the early magazine period before the Second World War. Tracing the tradition of women’s SF back to the 1600s, the author demonstrates how women such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Shelley drew critical attention to the colonial mindset of scientific masculinity, which was attached to scientific institutions that excluded women. In the late nineteenth century, Charles Darwin’s theory of sexual selection provided an impetus for a number of first-wave feminists to imagine Amazonian worlds where women control their own bodies, relationships and destinies. Patrick B. Sharp traces how these feminist visions of scientific femininity, Amazonian power and evolutionary progress proved influential on many women publishing in the SF magazines of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and presents a compelling picture of the emergence to prominence of feminist SF in the early twentieth century before vanishing until the 1960s.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Scientific Masculinity and its Discontents
2 Charles Darwin, Gender and the Colonial Imagination
3 Evolution’s Amazons: Colonialism, Captivity and Liberation in Feminist Science Fiction
4 Women with Wings: Feminism, Evolution and the Rise of Magazine Science Fiction
5 Darwinian Feminism and the Changing Field of Women’s Science Fiction
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Science Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 28 mars 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781786832306
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

New Dimensions in Science Fiction

Darwinian Feminism and Early Science Fiction

New Dimensions in Science Fiction

Series Editors Professor Pawel Frelik Maria CurieSklodowska University

Professor Patrick B. Sharp California State University, Los Angeles

Editorial Board Dr. Grace Dillon Portland State University

Dr. Tanya Krzywinska Falmouth University

Dr. Isiah Lavender III Louisiana State University

Prof. Roger Luckhurst Birkbeck University of London

Dr. John Rieder University of Hawai‘i

Darwinian Feminism and Early Science Fiction Angels, Amazons and Women

Patrick B. Sharp

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS 2018

© Patrick B. Sharp, 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.

www.uwp.co.uk

British Library CIP Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN eISBN

9781786832290 9781786832306

The right of Patrick B. Sharp to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset by Marie Doherty Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham

For Sharon and Tonks

Series Editors’ Preface

Science fiction (SF) is a global storytelling form of technoscientific modernity which conveys distinct experiences with science, technology and society to a wide range of readers across centuries, continents and cultures. The New Dimensions in Science Fiction series aims to capture the dynamic, worldwide and mediaspanning dimensions of SF storytelling and criticism by providing a venue for scholars from multiple disciplines to explore their ideas on the relations of science and society as expressed in SF.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

Scientific Masculinity and its Discontents

Charles Darwin, Gender and the Colonial Imagination

Evolution’s Amazons: Colonialism, Captivity and Liberation in Feminist Science Fiction

Women with Wings: Feminism, Evolution and the Rise of Magazine Science Fiction

Darwinian Feminism and the Changing Field of Women’s Science Fiction

Works Cited

Index

xi

1

13

35

69

101

145

175

189