From Eve to Evolution

"From Eve to Evolution documents the ardent ways in which women's rights advocates articulated and advanced Charles Darwin's observations of female choice in the natural world as a counterargument to age-old biblical assertions about women's roles in society. Original and synthetic, Hamlin's analysis follows key activists--some radical and others well established in society--to demonstrate their careful attention to the science involved as they made their case. She provides a fresh intellectual history of late nineteenth-century feminism that will interest historians of science as well as those interested in women, gender, and science issues."--Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, editor of History of Women in the Sciences
"From Eve to Evolution offers a lucid account of Darwin's theories and their reception in America, focusing particularly on elements critical to women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--the conflict between work and motherhood, women's individuation, and sexual selection. The book restores figures, important in their own day but lost to historical consideration, such as Helen Hamilton Gardener and Eliza Burt Gamble, and presents lesser-known aspects of better-known figures, such as Antoinette Brown Blackwell. The work offers an important reminder of the role that science increasingly played in American culture and the baneful effects of the silencing of women's voices from scientific discussion and debate."--Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, author of Wild Unrest
"It may come as a surprise to many that Darwinian theory was a potent resource for feminism in America in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Hamlin traces the work of authors and activists Antoinette Blackwell, Elizabeth Stanton, Charlotte Gilman, Eliza Gamble, Helen Gardener and Margaret Sanger, all of whom drew inspiration from evolutionary writings in the watershed period before science became professionalized and 'masculinized'.... In this well-researched and clearly written study, Hamlin examines these varied contributions to a 'reform Darwinism' or 'Darwinian feminism', and the possibilities they helped to open for women and men to forge new identities and social relations."
-- "Archives of Natural History"
"The title of this book, From Eve to Evolution, neatly summarizes Hamlin's narrative: how a relatively small but influential group of American feminists embraced the natural evolution of humans as a weapon to challenge the biblical--and notoriously patriarchal--account of God's creation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The fact that historians have struggled for decades to identify women's voices in the debates over Darwinism, both pro and con, makes this volume especially valuable."--Ronald L. Numbers, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"This engaging and persuasive discussion shows how American feminists influenced by The Descent of Man sought to reframe gender relations in Darwinian terms. Hamlin offers much-needed historical perspective on current debates over evolutionary concepts of human difference."--Rebecca Herzig, Bates College
"Full of original insights into well-known figures in women's history--Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Margaret Sanger and Cady Stanton--even as it reintroduces long-forgotten contributors. . . . From Eve to Evolution is a contribution to both the history of American feminism and the history of women and science, as well as an excellent read."--Ellen Carol DuBois, University of California, Los Angeles "Times Higher Education"
"The most comprehensive account so far of how nineteenth-century US men and women appropriated Darwinian ideas to argue for the equality of the sexes in the domestic and public spheres. . . . This deeply researched and richly detailed picture of US feminism in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century is an important contribution to our understanding of the interrelation of gender politics and science. From Eve to Evolution firmly corrects the mistaken view that evolutionary biology and feminism are at odds. And it reveals a more diverse dialogue around the science of sexual equality in the era than is generally appreciated."--Sarah S. Richardson "Nature"