Social Darwinism:

Natural Selection, also evolution, occurred through sexual selection of the struggles of males for females

Charlotte Perkins Gilman "Women and Economics" (1898)

• Refuted Darwin and its implications
• used the Social Darwinist hypothesis to prove that women's subjugation is an unnatural aberration that is impeding the progress of the race
• Women's primary energy is wrongly channeld into making themselves pleasing to men because of their economic dependency
• Break up relic of patriarchal age--the family as an economic unit
• Materanl energy as a socially cohesive force--sisterhood, altruism, cooperation
• Male and female differences--from prehistoric roles assigned the the two sexes--feminine impulse to gather, construct; males to scatter and destroy
• Human race evolving to new phase--feminine virtues of altruismare most important
• "Masculine Literature" first modern example of feminist literary critique
  • Two main plots predominate--stories of adventure and love story
  • struggle, adventure, predatory--women's experience is not depicted
  • http://www.readbookonline.net/read/302/8725/