Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century: Rational Reproduction and the New Woman

The idea of eugenics - human selective breeding - originated in Victorian Britain in response to the urban poor. Darwin's evolutionary theory had laid the foundations for eugenics, replacing paradise with primordial slime. Man had not fallen from Grace, but risen from the swamps. And, as architect of his own destiny, he might rise still further. Eugenics was developed by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton in the 1860s. Embracing the idea of evolution, eugenists argued that through the judicious control of human reproduction, and the numerical increase of the middle class, Britain's supremacy in the world could be maintained. Born and bred among the competitive Victorian middle class, eugenics was a biologistic discourse on class. Aiming at 'racial improvement' by altering the balance of class in society, it was, Galton argued, 'practical Darwinism'. Eugenics found its most sustained expression in fiction and the periodical press, and was central to late nineteenth-century ideas on social p