The Darwinian Landscape of Sylvia's Lovers

This chapter considers how Sylvia's Lovers applies some of the bleakest implications of Darwinian tropes to human society. In November 1859, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was first published; in that same month, Elizabeth Gaskell travelled to the Yorkshire coast to find inspiration for the novel project that ended up becoming Sylvia's Lovers . I argue that Sylvia's Lovers reflects Gaskell's first significant grappling with evolutionary theory's implications. Although Darwin tried to emphasise a more positive view of evolutionary processes in Origin , natural selection could be interpreted pessimistically by focusing on the violence inherent in the theory, particularly the selection of only a handful of organisms to survive and reproduce. Gaskell took to their logical, if nihilistic, conclusions such Darwinian tropes as the adaptation of organisms to their often harsh and destructive landscapes. In so doing, Gaskell demonstrates the bleakness of a Darwinian worldview and the despair Darwin's Origin could invoke in its readers by applying the theory's consequences to a social vision that emphasises environmental determinism and the indifference of nature.