London, July 15: The University of Cambridge has announced a groundbreaking new study to look at the impact of Charles Darwin’s ideas on attitudes to gender and sexuality.
The Darwin and Gender project will make available for the first time in a single resource Darwin’s private and largely unpublished writings relevant to all aspects of gender, in particular, a large body of the great naturalist’s own letters.
The research for the three-year project will be overseen by the Darwin Correspondence Project at Cambridge University Library.
It is anticipated that the project will illuminate such private relationships as that of Darwin with his elder surviving daughter, Henrietta.
Too young to be much involved in the writing of On the Origin of Species, she is likely to emerge as of hitherto unsuspected importance in the writing of The Descent of Man, Darwin’s first public statement on human evolution, a university release said.
Darwin had a surprisingly large number of other female correspondents throughout his life (some 148). Among the specific areas that Darwin and Gender will address are Darwin’s domestic life, gender in a scientific context and gender and society. More PTI PS
The initiative, which will be funded for the next three years by a trust, will provide accurate transcripts of the letters and research and write contextual material to make them accessible to both scholars and the general public.
Project director Professor Jim Secord said: “These are extraordinary letters that deserve a wide audience.
Differences between the sexes played a key role in Darwin’s thinking, which in turn had a major impact on Victorian society.”
Ruth Parasol DeLeon, founding member of The Bonita Trust International Advisory Board said: “Many of the issues raised by Darwin in his correspondence have great relevance to modern society. The Darwin and Gender project will allow a wider audience an insight into how his views on gender shaped Victorian society”.
Darwin, although he believed that women were best suited to domestic life and the care of children, went out of his way to encourage the scientific interests of women who wrote to him.
–PTI