One scarcely knows whether to laugh or cry. The spectacle
presented, in Cynthia Russett's splendid book, of
nineteenth-century white male scientists and thinkers earnestly
trying to prove women inferior to men--thereby providing, along
with "savages" and "idiots," an evolutionary buffer between men and
animals--is by turns appalling, amusing, and saddening. Surveying
the work of real scientists as well as the products of more dubious
minds, Russett has produced a learned yet immensely enjoyable
chapter in the annals of human folly.
At the turn of the century science was successfully challenging
the social authority of religion; scientists wielded a power no
other group commanded. Unfortunately, as Russett demonstrates, in
Victorian sexual science, empiricism tangled with prior belief, and
scientists' delineation of the mental and physical differences
between men and women was directed to show how and why women were
inferior to men. These men were not necessarily misogynists. This
was an unsettling time, when the social order was threatened by
wars, fierce economic competition, racial and industrial conflict,
and the failure of society to ameliorate poverty, vice, crime,
illnesses. Just when men needed the psychic lift an adoring
dependent woman could give, she was demanding the vote, higher
education, and the opportunity to become a wage earner!
No other work has treated this provocative topic so completely,
nor have the various scientific theories used to marshal evidence
of women's inferiority been so thoroughly delineated and debunked.
Erudite enough for scholars in the history of science, intellectual
history, and the history of women, this book with its
stylishpresentation will also attract a large nonspecialist
audience.
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