AC 201 Cultures of Imperialism: Race, Class and Gender
Department of American Civilization
Brown University

Women & Evolutionary Economics
A comparison of Thorstein Veblen’s The Leisure Class & Charlotte
Perkins Gilman’s Women and Economics in historical perspective

Bert Bobock
MA American Studies/Newest History
Humboldt Universitaet zu Berlin
Fall Semester
3 December 2004

Table of Contents
I Introduction – Why and Wherefore ... 3
II Methodological Reflection ... 6
III Common Denominators between Veblen and Gilman ... 7
III 1 Adaptation and Reception Processe ... 11
III 2 Seeking Roots of Gender and Class Discrimination ... 15
III 2.1 Male Canons of Taste – Structural Repression ... 23
III 2.2 Fashion as Social Marker and Discriminatory Factor ... 25
III 3 Reproduction Processes of Discrimination ... 29
IV Conclusion ... 32
Bibliography ... 34

“There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of
a female liver.” – Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost and at any
risk to the rest of the community.” – Thorstein Veblen

I Introduction – Why and Wherefore

Ever since Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel “Looking Backward”¹ was published in the year 1888, it became a major influence for thinkers like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, John Dewey, Eugene V. Debs, Norman Thomas and Thorstein Veblen. What was so unique about the novel, and what fascinated particularly the economist Thorstein Veblen and the feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, was not only that it presented a vision of a future without war and crime, where men and women were equal, but that it addressed the causes for inequality and injustice in the 19th century, precisely rooted in their own technologically advanced society. In contrast to many other scholars at the time, Gilman and Veblen chose not to examine other cultures that were far away from their own life experiences. Instead, both were interested in unraveling the roots and causalities that had made their world such an unequal and often unjust place. Therefore, this essay seeks to draw a comparison between Thorstein Veblen’s and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s most respective books “The Theory of the Leisure Class”² and “Women and Economics.³” It will show that connecting these works, which were both written in the last three years of the 19th century, forms a compelling comparison on how oppressive class and gender relations came into existence and how Veblen’s ideas, which were shaped by anthropological and economic research, can be used to support, verify, extend and falsify Gilman’s theory of an inherited unhealthy relationship between the sexes.

Following the waves of Darwin’s evolutionary theories, which resulted in Herbert Spencer’s formulation of Social-Darwinism, there was a widespread opinion between 1880 and 1914 that social and biological phenomena were closely connected.⁴ Although both Gilman and Veblen derived their ideas from comparing social to biological and anthropological phenomena, they strongly opposed Spencer’s view that social grievances are naturally, i.e. biologically determined. While the concepts of survival and development of the human species are central in “Women and Economics” and “The Leisure Class” alike, Gilman, in contrast to Veblen, did believe in the progress of civilization⁵. She was convinced that social conditions were not simply imposed by God or Nature but lay in our hands.

Veblen and Gilman rejected Spencer’s term, “Survival of the Fittest,” precisely because they were convinced that economical institutions, social relations and cultural habits were historically grown and were themselves results of adaptations to past circumstances and processes.⁶ It is important to notice the danger of a metaphorical use of the terms “Natural Law” and “Survival of the Fittest”, which were applied to justify the superiority of the dominant class, explain the predatory nature not only of animal but of human life and demonstrate the inevitability of competitive capitalism in its contemporary form.⁷ Furthermore, the term served not only to validate social stratifications within the US, but was used to explain a natural “right” of the superior race to conquer and occupy foreign nations – hence it came to form the basis of imperialism.

[...]

1 Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000-1887,1888 (New York: Dover, 1996).

2 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899 (New York: Sentry Press, 1965).

3 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics, 1898 (New York: Dover, 1998).

4 Geoffrey M. Hodgson, “Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class and the genesis of evolutionary economics,” Founding of Institutional Economics: The Leisure Class and Sovereignty, ed. Warren J. Samuels (London and New York: Routledge, 1998) 170.

5 It is understood that the concept of civilization is in itself a dominantly anglo-saxon or eurocentristic concept, and is therefore implicitly excluding less ‘developed’ cultures or races. A close analysis on the importance of race for class and gender relations and discriminations can not be done in this essay.

6 Maureen L. Egan, “Evolutionary Theory in the Social Philosophy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman,” Hypatia Vol.4, Number 1, Spring 1989: 105.

7 Stephen Edgell, “The Conspicuous Conservation of Leisure Class Culture,” Veblen in Perspective: His Life and Thought (London and Armonk, New York: M.E.Sharpe, 2001) 112.