ELC Saunders #1, Notes on American Classics (2018)

Although this blog is primarily about the novel A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, I have also started adding entries regarding the practice of Evolutionary Literary Criticism (ELC), which is more or less the application of evolutionary psychology to literature. I begin here a short series of entries commenting on a recent monograph in the field, which is:

Saunders, Judith P. American Classics: Evolutionary Perspectives. Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2018.

Saunders' collection of essays does not begin with a theory chapter, which I find unfortunate. Saunders does not lay out her framework for analysis. If one spends too much time on theory, one may never get around to applying it, but this volume has the opposite problem. For those who would like to read this book but who are new to evolutionary psychology, I would recommend The Evolution of Desire by David Buss. Buss explores the evolutionary selection pressures on intimate relationships, a common topic in literature. Saunders relies heavily on Buss's text, as her footnotes demonstrate.

I do have to say, I like this collection. My own ELC studies often focus too narrowly on a small set of concepts, such as the heroic altruistic punisher. Saunders studies a wider range of literature than I have, and she applies a wider range of concepts. Kudos.

This month's discussion: In chapter six of the book, Saunders demonstrates that Edith Wharton repeatedly used the theme of competitive female sexual strategies. I have not applied that concept before, and I have read enough Wharton that I could have seen it myself. Briefly, women will try to foil female rivals who are competing for the same men.

The drive to do so may be irrational: the woman who does the sabatoging may herself be infertile, and her efforts may mean that the male of the story fails to reproduce at all. In Ethan Frome, Zeena prevents her husband from starting a relationship with Mattie, even though Zeena seems incapable of having children, while Mattie is described in terms that suggest that she is fertile. Applied to Ethan Frome and other Wharton texts, Saunder's analysis based on female sexual strategy is, if I may say, fruitful.