Infertility and Darwinian Anthropology in Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Novels

Considering the impact of Darwinian anthropology on the cultural context surrounding the publication of Anthony Trollope’s Phineas novels, this article focuses on the intersecting issues of Phineas Finn’s and Marie Goesler’s contested ethnicities and ultimate infertility. Such childlessness is explained as a result of Trollope’s tempered liberalism on racial issues, allowing for their interfaith and interracial marriage as well as their individual social success, but not for the multiethnic future for Britain that their hybrid children might represent and enable.