SOURCE: Civello, Paul. “Evolutionary Feminism, Popular Romance, and Frank Norris's ‘Man's Woman’.” Studies in American Fiction 24, no. 1 (spring 1996): 23-44.

In the following essay, Civello discusses the recurrent character-type in Norris's fiction known as the “man's woman.”

The late nineteenth century was a period of intense ideological struggle—in fact, a period of several struggles that often overlapped and intersected. The well-known clash between evolution and Christianity, for example, has tended to obscure a less conspicuous battle within the evolutionary camp itself that pitted Darwin and his supporters against evolutionary-minded advocates for woman's emancipation. These late nineteenth-century feminists took issue with the conclusions Darwin had reached in The Descent of Man, using the same evidence he had adduced to support his contention that woman was the inferior sex to advance their own arguments that she was in fact equal with or even superior to man. But like most ideological...