Darwin the Writer by George Levine (review)

George Levine’s last book, Darwin Loves You (2006), showed that a reading of Charles Darwin’s own texts reveals a far more positive worldview than the soulless materialism often attributed to him and his theory. This new book begins from the same point, the preface asserting, optimistically, that creationists might take a more positive view of Darwinism if only they learned something about it, preferably from Darwin himself. Levine begins with several chapters on Darwin’s writings, followed by studies of his influence on literary figures, especially Oscar Wilde and Thomas Hardy. In this he follows the lead of Gillian Beer, whose inspiration he acknowledges. His enthusiasm for Darwin’s writing style is infectious and can yield valuable insights. But this focus tends to imply that any evolutionary language found in later writers must have been derived from a reading of Darwin’s books. Historians of science are certainly keen to uncover links between scientific texts and the wider culture in which they are embedded. But there was a wide range of evolutionary theories in the late nineteenth century, and we tend to require hard evidence that Darwin’s books, rather than any others, were the source of those links.

Levine analyses Darwin’s writing on and about the Beagle voyage as well as On the Origin of Species (1859) and later evolutionary works. He enthuses over Darwin’s ability to spot the significance of apparently trivial observations and explore the deeper questions they imply. And he demonstrates that Darwin upset his readers’ expectations by showing that the richness of nature is built on processes that run against our anthropomorphic vision of the world. This is an impressive demonstration on Levine’s part, although reference to other Victorian travel writers and evolutionists, such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates, would have strengthened it. Levine explores the theme of the grotesque in Darwin’s writings, nicely highlighting his interest in the apparently bizarre structures sometimes produced by natural selection. I was less impressed by the idea of a comic element in his work, and was left wondering about differences between the American and British senses of humor. (It is rather worrying in this context to find an incorrect spelling of Monty Python on page 23.)

I was unconvinced by some of Levine’s claims concerning Darwin’s influence. One problem here is that without documentary evidence we cannot be sure that a reference to a Darwinian theme was derived from an actual reading of Darwin. Levine concedes that in Darwin’s lifetime the Origin of Species was not a bestseller, because there were as yet no cheap reprints—but this implies that many Victorians got their Darwinism secondhand, filtered through the impressions of various commentators and critics. By focusing on the effectiveness of Darwin’s own writings at the start of the study we are led to assume that later allusions to Darwinian themes must represent a direct influence, when a wider study of other scientific and popular writings on evolutionism would reveal a host of other potential sources. Levine notes that Wilde, for instance, does not seem to have been familiar with the Origin of Species, and accepts that by the end of the century Darwinian language had permeated the culture—so how exactly was the influence transmitted? He includes a couple of substantial footnotes explaining that Herbert Spencer and other writers promoted an evolutionary worldview similar to Darwin’s, and that many readers found it hard to distinguish between them. While Darwin and Spencer were certainly not singing from identical hymnsheets, both drew on themes such as progress and struggle that had become commonplaces by the 1860s. So we cannot be sure that any reference to the struggle for existence, for example, must come from Darwin. Surely this issue needs to be confronted before we can assume that Darwin’s own writings were so effective.

Equally important is the need to be aware that some versions of late nineteenth-century...