Neo-Victorian Experiments with (Natural) History in Harry Karlinsky’s The Evolution of Inanimate Objects

Abstract

If the contemporary neo-historical novel is sometimes tempted to ‘exoticise’ the past, there is one period in particular it seems especially fond of returning to, that of the debate and controversy surrounding Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species (1859). A number of recent neo-Victorian novels have indeed re-imagined the life and work of the nineteenth-century scientist, creatively re-staging both Darwin’s discovery of evolution and its aftermath.¹ These fictional returns to the scientific ideas of the Victorian age may seem to long for the excitement of a time when important discoveries were being made, and when new scientific disciplines were being created. Such uses of the scientific discourses of the nineteenth century may also offer these novels a way ‘to address metaphysical and ethical issues and anxieties, first raised by Darwinism [. . . ] but still of crucial relevance to current epistemological debates’ (Letissier, 2010, p. 96). Yet what these texts reveal as well is their fascination with reliving previous moments of scientific discovery, and in the case of Darwin’s development of evolution theory, this seems to include experiencing anew the public controversy the latter triggered. Indeed, neo-Victorian re-enactments of the reception of evolutionary ideas in the nineteenth century often tend to resort to predictable tropes and plots, for instance ‘dramatised conflicts between the Church and Science’ (Pesso-Miquel, 2010, p. 101), or at the very least ‘dual confrontation[s] between two emblematic characters, i.e. the creationist and the evolutionist’ (Letissier, 2010, p. 79).