Discuss Women As Objects and Practitioners of Science

Alice White - HI776: Literature & Science in the Twentieth Century - Seminar Leader: Charlotte Sleigh
Discuss women as objects and practitioners of science in the early

twentieth century.
The very language of science is highly gendered, a fact of which holds great significance
when one comes to study how women have been treated as a subject of science. A
dichotomy between male, interpreting subject and female, passive, observed object has
been present since the time of Aristotle or before. Aristotle stated ‘“the female, as female,
is passive and the male, as male, is active, and the principle of movement comes from
him.”’1 This concept has helped to legitimate the authority of dominant subject over
controlled object, male over female. The very language with which it is imbued causes
science to view woman as hierarchically lower.
The metaphor of science as masculine and nature as feminine can be seen again in
language and metaphor associated with science. Gender is retained when the term nature
is translated from languages with a feminine gender, personifying nature as female rather
than a more ambiguous “it”.2 Analogy continues the metaphor of nature as female, with
suggestions of science desirous of “penetrating” Nature’s hidden secrets; such
suggestions of sexual conquest are highly suggestive of a dominant male and passive and
sexualised female. In the nineteenth century, Nature was willingly revealing herself to
educated males, as seen in Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe (1863) and Nature Unveiling
Herself Before Science by L.E. Barrias.
In light of this, early twentieth century feminist association with the vivisection
movement and vegetarianism demonstrated how women made object by men ally
themselves with the animal made object by science and humans. Ann Veronica’s left-
wing friends the Goopes introduce her to these movements amongst others.
When considering women as objects of science in the early twentieth century it is

1 Aristotle, De generatione animalium, trans. Arthur Platt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), 1.19, 729b13
from History of Women in the Sciences: Readings from Isis, ed. S.G. Kohlstedt (University of Chicago
Press, 1999), p. 13
2 Carolyn Merchant, “Isis Consciousness Raised”, History of Women in the Sciences: Readings from Isis,
ed. S.G. Kohlstedt (University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 18
1
necessary to understand the scientific knowledge which was used at the time to justify
both their position as subjects of science and the place of women in society generally.
With the rise of evolution in the nineteenth century, new authority to replace religion was
sought to give human nature a history. Darwin’s The Descent of Man and Selection in
Relation to Sex was pivotal in providing a teleological historical narrative which justified
society as it was at the time of writing, particularly with reference to women. For
instance, his statement that ‘Man is more courageous, pugnacious and energetic than
woman, and has a more inventive genius’3 verifies that the male is superior and thus
should be dominant. Darwin considers that the male is the more highly evolved form
since ‘it is the male which has been chiefly modified, since the several races diverged
from their common stock’4, and suggests that the reason for this higher station of
evolution is due to males acquiring sex-characters in order to possess the female he
desires.
The idea that the female needed to be wooed by the more highly adapted male also
conveniently served to reaffirm the courting rituals present in early twentieth century
society; in the novel Ann Veronica, the protagonist is forced by the society around her at a
party to embark upon a walk with Mr Manning because he wishes to court her. Darwin
suggests that women ‘are generally thought to possess sweeter voices than men, and as
far as this serves as any guide, we may infer that they first acquired musical powers in
order to attract the other sex’.5 Again, this assumption fits perfectly the early twentieth
century courtship ritual in which young women were trained to sing or play instruments
in order to appear pretty and attract a husband.
Darwin, though, even makes the assumption that sex-differences in females must have
arisen at an earlier point in evolution ‘before our ancestors had become sufficiently
3 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, (Project Gutenburg, 2000)
<http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2300> p. 421
2
human to treat and value their women merely as useful slaves’; this statement suggests
that not only are women’s sex differences less significant in case one should argue that
they are equally well evolved, but also that subjugating women is a sign of being more
highly evolved than lower species.
The female, ‘in the formation of her skull, is said to be intermediate between the child
and the man’.6 This, as well as not needing to develop skills to woo a mate and then
protect and feed the family by wielding tools, was used to justify the concept that women
were less intelligent than men. Craniotomy was long used as a justification for
androcentric and ethnocentric societal structure and the concept that men were inherently
more intelligent than women. Comparative anatomy’s focus upon the measurements of
the cranium indicated that the white European male was at the highest end of the
evolutionary scale and thus the social order. Scientists such as Darwin did concede that
‘with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are
more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic
of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation.’7 Hence women
are associated with “lower races” and the characteristics thought to be shared by the two
are re-affirmed as inferior or negative by playing on contemporary social assumptions.
Moscucci explains how in the eyes of science women were ‘irresponsible creatures in
need of protection and guardianship; like children … the word ‘man’ carried two
meanings, signifying both the adult member of the human species regardless of sex and
the human male’. Thus women are excluded from full adult status and the respect and
reason attributed to men. Ann Veronica’s father is unable to come to terms with his
daughters as adults capable of making their own descisions, and so considers them to be
‘quasi-independent dependents’.8
Of course, such measures were deliberately chosen because they produced the desired
8 H.G. Wells, Ann Veronica, (ebookslib, 2004) p. 15
3
results. For instance, proportionately to the body, women have far larger craniums, but
this evidence was disregarded by many scientists as not fitting their ingrained social
beliefs. In his book originally published 1869, J. Stuart Mill, stated that ‘the things win
which men most excel women are those which require most plodding and long
hammering at a single thought, while women do best what must be done rapidly’9 and
suggests that this makes them superior because of their tenacity; Darwin quotes him,
similarly suggesting that such traits are an example of man’s superior genius, ‘for genius
has been declared by a great authority to be patience’.10
Quick-thinking would seem a praise-worthy trait but is demeaned because it deviates

from the male, which according to ingrained social bias is considered to be superior. The
fact that the male was considered the higher form and the norm from which the female
was a deviation meant that the source of her deviation was attributed the cause of all
differences and supposed weaknesses. The source of women’s difference was located in
their different reproductive organs, which came to define them. Language suggested that
women were entirely defined by their sex; ‘the use of the phrase the ‘Sex Question’ to
mean the ‘Woman Question’’11 demonstrates the extent to which this applied in the early
twentieth century.
Some even considered that the ‘menopause acted as a natural ‘cure’ for much female
disease’12 by causing woman to return to a neutral state freed from irrationality, child-
bearing responsibility and sexuality. Others proposed that at times when their
reproductive organs were actively affecting the body, such as at puberty, child-bearing
age and menopause, women were especially at risk of mental illness. This conveniently
provided a need to monitor the behaviour of women throughout their entire lives even
once they had passed into the adult age, which justified the pre-existing claims to the
rights of men to the social monitoring of female behaviour.
9 John Stuart Mill, The subjection of women (Transaction Publishers, 2001), p. 63

11 Ornella Moscucci, The science of woman: gynaecology and gender in England, 1800-1929 (Cambridge
University Press, 1993), p. 28
12 Ornella Moscucci, The science of woman: gynaecology and gender in England, 1800-1929 (Cambridge
University Press, 1993), p. 103
4
As a result of the cultural assumption that women were defined by their sex, and that
almost every illness of woman was related to disorder of the female reproductive organs,
gynaecologists treated a wide range of conditions, including mental illness; they ‘shaped
a specialty around the otherness of woman; it was woman's difference, the "essential"
femaleness of woman, that was the object of gynecological knowledge.’13 It was naturally
in the economic self-interest of gynaecologists to increase public perception of their
authority by expanding the domain over which they could claim understanding, and this
is one explanation for their interest in the mental state of women.
Some gynaecologists attempted to justify their authority in other domains, such as the law
courts. Their ‘claims to expertise in medico-legal questions involving marriage divorce,
illegitimacy, rape, infanticide and abortion, implied that the maintenance of the public
order depended on the medical surveillance of women’s sexual functions’, and in this
way perpetuated the idea that woman’s proper place was as an object of scientific study,
not only for their own good but for that of society.
The contemporary concerns of society as reflected in the practice of gynaecological

medicine can be seen in the “symptoms” of which many patients were brought in for
treatment. ‘Insane and nervous women were described as antimaternal, selfish, willful,
violent, erotic’14; all of which are go against contemporary society’s notion of the way in
which a young lady should act. Theriot argues that predominantly, cases of mental illness
were brought forward by husbands or mothers. One of the gynaecologist Baker Brown’s
patients had her clitoris removed because of the illness of a ‘desire to obtain a divorce’.15
From her husband’s perspective, who claimed moral authority over her, this was socially
unacceptable behaviour. Likewise, ‘young women who were insubordinate, sexually
promiscuous, or not interested enough in socializing were brought to physicians by
13 Nancy Theriot, ‘Women’s Voices in Medical Discourse: A Step Towards Deconstructing Science’ Signs
(Univesity of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 6
15 John Studd, ‘A Comparison of Nineteenth-Century and Current Attitudes to Female Sexuality’
<http://www.studd.co.uk/sexuality.php> accessed 09/11/09
5
anxious mothers.’16
Such contemporary concerns can be observed in Ann Veronica; Mr Stanley is highly

uncomfortable contemplating his daughter as a sexual being, and ‘recalled with
exasperating perplexity her clear, matter-of-fact tone as she talked about love-making’,17
demonstrating how scandalised the conservative early twentieth century society was by
the notion of women and sex.
Edwin H. Clarke, a physician, wrote that ‘the problem of woman’s sphere… must be
submitted to Agassiz and Huxley, not to Kant or Calvin, Church or Pope’.18 Scientists
believed that women were unsuited to study because of their physiology. Fears of
degeneration which abounded at the turn of the twentieth century are played upon by
Clarke when he suggests that educated women will produce a mutant race, if they are
capable of reproduction at all; he believes that in educating women ‘it substitutes in her
case a wiry and perhaps thin bearded masculinises for distinctive feminine traits and
power’.19 The concept of losing one’s feminine power is suggestive of the “equal but
different” concept of the male and female role, women being suited to running the
household and having domestic power and men having economic, political and
intellectual power. Women were thought to be sacrificing their femininity in pursuit of
power in the masculine world.
Additionally, gynaecologists suggested that so subject to their reproductive system were

women, which was ‘“so subtle and so easily disarranged by even slight external causes,
that the real wonder is not that so many women are invalid, but that any are well”’.20
Menstruation was thought to affect women so significantly that they should rest and not
learn during their periods, in case the exertion at a time when their body was already
physically exerted exhaust them and cause physical illness.
17 H.G. Wells, Ann Veronica, (ebookslib, 2004) p. 25
18 E. H. Clarke, Sex in Education: Or a Fair Chance for the Girls (KayDreams, 1878), p. 10
19 E. H. Clarke, Sex in Education: Or a Fair Chance for the Girls (KayDreams, 1878), p. 31
20 Horatio Storer, as quoted in Nancy Theriot, ‘Women’s Voices in Medical Discourse: A Step Towards
Deconstructing Science’ Signs (Univesity of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 6
6
As practitioners of science, therefore, women had much to combat in order to assert their
place in education in general, let alone the very discipline which was used to justify why
they should not be allowed to be educated. This can be seen in the case of the Balfour
Biological Laboratory for Women at Cambridge University. The very reason that the
separate laboratory needed to be founded was because women were being excluded from
the male laboratories; science was expanding at such a rate that the needs of the many
new male students who could gain proper degrees were placed first. Women were already
at somewhat a disadvantage, lacking the tutoring and ‘denied membership in the various
university scientific societies that were central to undergraduates and senior members
alike’.21 The male-only peer groups discussed new ideas and which would have provided
the opportunity to be involved in cutting-edge science. The repeated failure of the
Degrees for Women movement at Cambridge similarly indicates the difficulty which
women faced in establishing themselves in education, although in 1878 women were
admitted as full degree students to University College London to study science.
The difficulty by the early twentieth century was that many women were educated, but
having won that battle they were struggling to break into the field of professional science
because of a lack of jobs. Rossiter explains that:
If it had been intolerable in the 1870’s that so many uneducated women should be
sitting home idle, how much more of a waste that unmarried college graduates should
lack useful and respectable work.22
Women were employed to work in the Balfour Laboratory, which was a significant
opportunity. There were few fields into which women gained footholds, for instance in
astronomy as computers, librarianship, child psychology, social work and more especially
in home economics and botany. Indeed, their infiltration into the field of botany was such
that it had to be defended as a discipline suited for young men to study as well.
The reasons that these fields were considered feminine were partly economic; equally
21 Marsha L. Richmond, ‘“A Lab of One’s Own”’, History of Women in the Sciences: Readings from Isis,
22 Margaret W. Rossiter, ‘"Women's Work" in Science, 1880-1910’, Isis, (The University of Chicago Press
on behalf of The History of Science Society, 1980), p. 382
7
qualified women could be paid lower wages than men because there were more
opportunities for men. There was less turnover of female staff because they had fewer
opportunities to migrate elsewhere, and also the male bosses ‘may have liked the "harem
effect" of being surrounded by a bevy of female subordinates, competent but less
threatening than an equal number of bright young men.’23 Particularly in roles where
monotonous and detailed observations needed to be made, women were a cheap
workforce. Furthermore, certain roles were considered more suited to woman because of
the close relationship with the family or household, such as home economics, or the need
for long hours of quiet and meticulous details to be dealt with such as in librarianship or
computing, or for observations in biology.
Richmond suggests that ‘ultimately, this privilege [of being able to further one’s scientific
career through research] depended on the tolerance of the professor who headed the
laboratory’,24 expressing the importance of individual male figures in allowing the
progress of women. Ann Veronica was aided in her studies by her mentor, Mr Capes. He
allows her access into the world of scientific thought. Similarly, the importance of
mentors can be seen in the case of Miss Muriel Wheldale and William Bateson when
studying Mendelian genetics at Cambridge University. Richmond Bateson’s role
regarding Wheldale, assisting her to move forward in her career, he:
served as a mentor, acting as an intermediary between her and other biologists…
arranged a place for her in Albert Charles Seward's botanical laboratory at Cambridge;
sent her first manuscript to Frederick Gowland Hopkins, professor of biochemistry, for
comments prior to publication; arranged for publication of her papers and instructed
her about the distribution of offprints to interested biologists; introduced her to
prominent visiting geneticists, such as de Vries and Hermann Nilsson-Ehle; advised
her about priority disputes and scientific controversy; and recommended her for one of
the first studentships offered at the John Innes Horticultural Institute to support her
further work.
This indicates the extent to which women, as newcomers to the field of science, needed
to be aided by men in order to be respected and heard. Whilst they risked being thought
of as only an associate, they needed the association in order to progress. Women were
23 Margaret W. Rossiter, ‘"Women's Work" in Science, 1880-1910’, Isis, (The University of Chicago Press
on behalf of The History of Science Society, 1980), p. 388
24 Marsha L. Richmond, ‘“A Lab of One’s Own”’, History of Women in the Sciences: Readings from Isis,
8
able to break into genetics because it was such a new discipline, but also because of the
willingness of men in the field to employ them, for reasons such as economics initially,
but later due to their proving their merits as scientists.
Through work in other fields, women practitioners have sought to revise the science
which defines them as a gender inferior to men. Miss Miniver in Ann Veronica talks
about American professors proving that the ‘primitive government was the
Matriarchate’25 and Eliza Burt Gamble sought a new interpretation of evolutionary
science which promoted women as equal, if not superior to men. She proposed that they
were the motivators of evolution via their altruism and proposed that ‘female power over
sexuality [was] the missing link between biology and culture’.26 Crucial to Darwin’s
assumption that man is superior is the idea that he is further evolved than woman through
sexual selection and the need to be more varied. Gamble revised this by suggesting that
actually, such characteristics could be detrimental, and higher specialisation in the female
denoted higher organisation and thus the female was more highly evolved.27 Darwin had
argued that female selects male in the lower animals and initially in primitive man, but
that “reason”, which he considered the epitome of manliness and high level evolution,
caused man to pervert the natural process and select females. By seizing on weaknesses
in the narrative implemented in order for Darwin to create a teleological story, Gamble
suggests that this relatively recent perversion of natural order was a retrogression and not
progress. The idea of rectifying the social situation is expressed to almost comic extreme
in Ann Veronica, where Miss Miniver suggests that ‘Science some day may teach us a
way to do without them…Some [species] have no males’28.
Another individual who sought to redress the balance in favour of women through
science was Marie Stopes. She argued that in the field of sex, men assume women to be
unreasonable creatures, ‘and as reason is man's most precious and hard-won faculty, the
25 H.G. Wells, Ann Veronica, (ebookslib, 2004), p. 40

26 Rosemary Jann, ‘Revising the Decent of Woman’, Natural Eloquence, ed. Barbara T. Gates, Ann B.
Shteir (University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), p. 149
27 Rosemary Jann, ‘Revising the Decent of Woman’, Natural Eloquence, ed. Barbara T. Gates, Ann B.
Shteir (University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), p. 151
9
one which has raised mankind from the ranks of the brute creation, he cannot bear to see
it apparently flouted’,29 but also that men have neglected to investigate the laws of
women’s desire for the selfish reason that then they do not have to concede anything to it.
She studied and charted women’s arousal in order to remedy this. Ann Veronica speaks
about how women are educated to ‘pretend bodies are ugly. Really they are the most
beautiful things in the world. We pretend we never think of everything that makes us
what we are.’30 The study of biology allows both Stopes and the fictional Ann Veronica to
realise and attempt to explain to others that women’s sexuality should not be a source of
shame, but of enjoyment. Stopes suggested that the husband’s pleasure may be all the
more if he allows for his wife’s desire, and perhaps Wells was so keen on sexual
liberation for women as a result of his well documented libido.
The science of evolution seeks to note and explain differences, and as such was a
particularly useful tool for men in the early twentieth century to justify their social
standing as superior to women. Despite this, the efforts of women in science have helped
to prove their worth, not only as women, but as scientists, even in fields initially
originally suited to perpetuating the concept of male dominance such as studies of
evolution or sex. Although a gender divide remained in careers in science, it is perhaps
more now because of women’s choice to have families (like Ann Veronica), and it is lack
of choice which is more objectionable perhaps than the choices that are made. 31 Perhaps
most relevant for women today are the inroads made by women practitioners of science
in altering the attitudes to women as objects of scientific study. Whilst Marie Stopes and
Ann Veronica may not seem revolutionary today, they were brave early examples of the
New Woman, and the New Women of science have battled many difficulties to be
allowed even the smallest foothold in science.
29 Marie Stopes, Married Love (Pelican Press, 1918), pp. 15 - 16

31 For more on this, see J. Scott Long, ‘The Origins of Sex Differences in Science’, Social Forces
(University of North Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 1297-1316
10
Bibliography
Clarke, E. H., Sex in Education: Or a Fair Chance for the Girls (KayDreams, 1878)
Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, (Project
Gutenburg, 2000) <http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2300>
ed. Gates, Barbara T., and Shteir, Ann B., Natural Eloquence, (University of Wisconsin
Press, 1997)
Ed. Kohlstedt, S.G., History of Women in the Sciences: Readings from Isis, (University of
Chicago Press, 1999)
Long, J. Scott, ‘The Origins of Sex Differences in Science’, Social Forces (University of
North Carolina Press, 1990)
Mill, John Stuart, The subjection of women (Transaction Publishers, 2001)
Moscucci, Ornella, The science of woman: gynaecology and gender in England, 1800-
1929 (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Rossiter, Margaret W., ‘"Women's Work" in Science, 1880-1910’, Isis, (The University of
Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society, 1980)
Schiebinger, Londa, Has Feminism Changed Science? (Harvard University Press, 1999)
Stopes, Marie, Married Love (Pelican Press, 1918)
Studd, John, ‘A Comparison of Nineteenth-Century and Current Attitudes to Female

Sexuality’ <http://www.studd.co.uk/sexuality.php> accessed 09/11/09
Theriot, Nancy, ‘Women’s Voices in Medical Discourse: A Step Towards Deconstructing

Science’ Signs (Univesity of Chicago Press, 1993)
Wells, H.G., Ann Veronica, (ebookslib, 2004)
11

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Alice White - HI776: Literature & Science in the Twentieth Century - Seminar Leader: Charlotte Sleigh

Discuss women as objects and practitioners of science in the early

When considering women as objects of science in the early twentieth century it is

Quick-thinking would seem a praise-worthy trait but is demeaned because it deviates

9 John Stuart Mill, The subjection of women (Transaction Publishers, 2001), p. 63

The contemporary concerns of society as reflected in the practice of gynaecological

Such contemporary concerns can be observed in Ann Veronica; Mr Stanley is highly

Additionally, gynaecologists suggested that so subject to their reproductive system were

25 H.G. Wells, Ann Veronica, (ebookslib, 2004), p. 40

29 Marie Stopes, Married Love (Pelican Press, 1918), pp. 15 - 16

Mill, John Stuart, The subjection of women (Transaction Publishers, 2001)

Stopes, Marie, Married Love (Pelican Press, 1918)

Studd, John, ‘A Comparison of Nineteenth-Century and Current Attitudes to Female

Theriot, Nancy, ‘Women’s Voices in Medical Discourse: A Step Towards Deconstructing

Wells, H.G., Ann Veronica, (ebookslib, 2004)

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