Gender & Science

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 8, 2007
Beth Chandler
University of Missouri Press
(573) 882-9672

 

 

JOPLIN, MO (SNS) – Dr. Patricia Murphy, associate professor of English and Philosophy at Missouri Southern State University, has published a new book. In Science’s Shadow: Literary Construction of Late Victorian Women is now offered by University of Missouri Press.

 

The Victorian era was characterized by great scientific curiosity—as exemplified by the publication of Darwin’s Descent of Man—as well as by new questions regarding the place of women in society. In her new book, Murphy explores the tenuous interplay of gender and science to show how the era’s literature both challenged and reinforced a constrictive role for Victorian women.

 

Focusing on a specific body of literature involving women intensely associated with scientific pursuits, and examining selected writings, Murphy demonstrates how these works informed the “Woman Question” by reinforcing or rejecting presumed truths about gender and science.

 

 Some of these texts offer lucid insights into the ways in which women were defined, marginalized, and excluded. In his novel Two on a Tower, Thomas Hardy presented science as a masculine realm threatened by female intrusion, while Wilkie Collins in Heart and Science depicted a woman interested in science as a villainous schemer. Charles Reade’s novel A Woman-Hater was more sympathetic in its portrayal of a female physician but continued to reinforce Victorian stereotypes.

 

In contrast, Murphy also shows the poetry of science enthusiast Constance Naden, who used the language of the discipline to reflect its marginalization of women. Murphy also uses the travel memoirs of botanical painter Marianne North, which reveal her attempts to use a gender-neutral voice to position her work in the Victorian scientific realm.

 

In Science’s Shadow makes new inroads in the study of gendered scientific discourse while introducing readers to some little-known, but most revealing, literary works

 

Dr. Murphy is also the author of Time Is of the Essence: Temporality, Gender, and the New Woman. She lives in Joplin.

 

The book (ISBN # 978-0-8262-1682-3, $39.95) is available at local bookstores or directly from the University of Missouri Press. For more information, for excerpt possibilities or to interview the author, contact Beth Chandler at chandlerb@umsystem.edu or call (573) 889-9672.