Darwin Wasn't A Complete Chauvinist After All
Charles Darwin Wikimedia Commons The man who once calling having a wife "better than a dog, anyhow" expressed far more egalitarian views in his private letters. The annals of scientific history are filled with brilliant men who, when push came to shove, weren't exactly super nice guys. Renown evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin, though, may have gotten more of a bad rap when it comes to his views on women than he rightly deserves. Historians have long thought of Darwin as a pretty typical man of his time--a Victorian conservative who once wrote that having a wife would be "better than a dog, anyhow," and in his writing "cast women as deficient in arenas 'requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination'"--but his private letters to women, published through the Darwin Correspondence Project, tell a slightly more nuanced story of the scientist's views on gender. Previously unpublished letters between Darwin and various...