Reexamining Taxonomy and Gender: T.H. Huxley, G. H. Lewes, and George Eliot View the Medusa

Abstract

This article examines the collection of popular natural history essays titled Sea-Side Studies at Ilfracombe (1859), co-written by G.H. Lewes and George Eliot, and the debates over the classification of marine invertebrates in the mid-nineteenth century. In particular, I analyze how the taxonomic reorganization of marine invertebrates undermined assumed concepts of gender in the natural world, as Lewes and Eliot attempt to engage with new research into such topics as the alternation of generations and T.H. Huxley’s proposed reclassification systems. Investigation into invertebrate life cycles and the separation of the coelenterates from the echinoderms mark a major change in the understanding of how life is organized and thus viewed. These debates, as they worked their way into popular culture, increasingly moved natural sciences from more moralistic and ethnocentric approaches, and prepared the ground for Darwin’s argument for natural selection.