Madame Bovary's Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature (Hardcover)

by David P. Barash (Author), Nanelle R. Barash (Author), Nanelle R. Barash (Author) "Othello isn't just a story about a jealous guy..." (more)
Key Phrases: male sexual jealousy, female infidelity, kin selection, Madame Bovary, Jane Austen, Holden Caulfield (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
One can only imagine the kitchen table conversations that inspired evolutionary psychologist David Barash and his daughter Nanelle (an undergraduate at Swarthmore) to collaborate on this witty and insightful book. Their explicit goal is to apply the basic principles of sociobiology (think Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene) to the study of literature. Thus, they say, we can better understand Othello as "a story about a jealous guy" if we know that males tend to be particularly afraid that their mate might have been impregnated by another, thus suckering them into expending resources on a child who doesn't carry their genes. By the same token, we can read Jane Austen's novels as detailed depictions of the cost-benefit analysis inherent in female mate selection. This conceit actually works quite nicely—the Barashes' writing is easy and ironic, as if they themselves take it with a grain of salt, and sociobiology benefits from being cast as an interpretive lens rather than the ironclad, coldly calculated truth that leaves many of its opponents feeling nervous about being nothing more than "gene machines." From its irreverent title to the last paragraph, the result is a surprisingly lighthearted romp through both literature and the animal kingdom, aimed at a casual reader who's interested in either or both. Agent, John Michel at the Howard Morhaim Agency. (May 3)

From The Washington Post
Human nature, evolved over millions of years and present in our genes, expresses itself not only in bedrooms, boardrooms and battlefields but in creative human pursuits, including literature. This, anyway, is the premise of an amusing, if over-ambitious, book by psychologist/zoologist David P. Barash and his college-student daughter, Nanelle.

The Barashes line up exemplary works of fiction from Homer to Saul Bellow alongside the major claims of evolutionary psychology. The prehistoric origins of human conduct and desires, so the idea goes, should be able to tell us something about the conduct and values of characters in fiction. The results are mixed: Some of the Barashes' explanations are far-fetched, but others have the power to jolt us into an altered view of familiar literary stories and characters.

Among the authors' best insights is their description of Jane Austen's fiction in terms of sexual selection theory. Darwinian evolution depends on natural selection: Unfit individuals die off in a hostile environment, while the survivors pass their fitness on to descendants. But for Darwin, there is also a second, parallel and quite distinct process that drives evolution: sexual selection.

The heavy, cumbersome peacock's tail, far from helping the bird survive, is a distinct hindrance, making peacocks more prone to being eaten by predators. This remarkable tail is a product not of natural, but of sexual selection: Peahens choose to mate with peacocks sporting the most gorgeous feathers, which indicate both healthy genes and the capacity to produce offspring with more gorgeous feathers, increasing the likelihood that the mother's gene line will survive into the future. By making discriminating mating choices over thousands of generations, it is actually peahens, and not their males, who by their choices have bred the peacock's tail.

Likewise, discriminating human females are central to the world of Jane Austen, whom the Barashes call "the poet laureate of female choice." Selecting a good mate is Austen's major theme. She is particularly adept at bringing out, against the vast intricacies of a social milieu, the basic values women seek in men, and men tend to want in women (shortlist: good looks, health, money, status, IQ, courage, dependability and a pleasant personality -- in many different weightings and orderings). Not being a peacock, Mr. Darcy does not have iridescent feathers, but for human females his commanding personality, solid income, intelligence, generosity and the magnificent Pemberley estate do very nicely.

Cinderella is used to exemplify the well-known research of Martin Daly and Margo Wilson showing that children are statistically at much greater risk of murder or abuse by stepparents than by biological parents. In this connection, the Barashes also discuss Sarah Hrdy's study of the way dominant male langur monkeys kill the infant offspring of rivals before mating with the infants' mothers. In real life we may all know plenty of loving stepparents, but as the Barashes explain, historical statistics are sadly on the side of the European folk-tale tradition with its stereotype of the wicked stepmother.

The battles of elephant seals are brought to bear on the rivalry between Agamemnon and Achilles. The Barashes use evolutionary principles to explain the tragic outrage of Othello in a world whose double standard treats straying women much more severely than philandering men. A discussion of John Steinbeck's portrayal of male friendship in Of Mice and Men follows a clear and pertinent analysis of reciprocity among animals. This includes a fascinating account of the process by which a vampire bat unsuccessful in a hunt can coax a well-fed fellow bat into vomiting up a meal of blood. That too is friendship, maybe, though I learned from this book more about vampire bats than about Steinbeck.

It is easy to make fun of animal analogies, but in fairness, the Barashes are mostly modest and persuasive in drawing their comparisons. Nevertheless, despite the authors' enthusiasm for their subject, there is a curious flatness to Madame Bovary's Ovaries.

First, the Barashes tend to pick and choose literary evidence as it suits their case, a procedure generally verboten in research psychology. They provide an adequate, if unsurprising, evolutionary explanation of Emma Bovary's adultery (a female searching for better genes). But what about another important event in the story, Emma's suicide? Maybe there is an evolutionary explanation for suicide as a solution for a person cornered in an intolerable social situation, but it's not hinted at here.

At the same time, the authors also now and then claim for evolutionary psychology more than the evidence warrants. Catcher in the Rye is a tale of youthful alienation and rebellion. Parents, we're told, push their children around, and "it makes perfect sense that adolescents in particular are prone to fight back." Such conflict is bound to occur between "every young individual and the adult world that he or she must learn to negotiate." Fine, but platitudes about Holden Caulfield's rebelliousness hardly need validation by Darwin, and none is given here. The Barashes have slipped into doing the most ordinary brand of criticism without seeming to realize it.

In fact, Madame Bovary's Ovaries is less a Darwinian look at literature than a discussion of evolutionary psychology that happens to trawl through fiction for examples. If readers don't know The Grapes of Wrath or the Iliad firsthand, they'll likely have seen the movies or read the Cliffs Notes, which will be good enough. The authors might as easily have clipped crime or human interest stories from last month's newspapers, except that fiction normally supplies interior monologues or narratives that reveal motivations. This is a plus if you're trying to explain how evolved psychology works.

But by reducing literature to a convenient collection of anecdotes and case studies, the Barashes fail to engage broader features of an expressive and communicative art. There is nothing here about literary style, tone and the crucial interaction between authors and their audiences. From both a human and aesthetic perspective, literature does not just report on what happened but shows us how individuals make sense of what happened. It is about the beliefs, attitudes and modes of perception that distinguish us from each other.

Literature also serves the human craving for novelty and surprise, including twists and shocks that go against our normal, evolved expectations and desires. The Barashes' approach can explain the vicarious pleasure we might get in following the choices and indecisions of a Jane Austen character as she settles on her man. It can explain any story of a mother who fights to protect her children from danger. But it has more trouble with the likes of a Medea, who murders her own children to satisfy her consuming hatred for their father. The family story of Jason and Medea is one of the most revoltingly entertaining soap operas in literature, exactly because it perverts all expectations of a mother's normal conduct toward her children.

David and Nanelle Barash wisely insist that they are not trying to provide the decisive framework to explain literature. They give us a few of the patterns of human behavior that contemporary science can explain, showing that reproduction, survival and social reciprocity are bread and butter topics of the fiction we love. Yes, Sophocles, Shakespeare and Flaubert knew the human race at least as well as any psychologist. The science in this book comes out better than the literary criticism, but classic literature remains, as ever, the ultimate winner.

Reviewed by Denis Dutton
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press (April 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385338015
• ISBN-13: 978-0385338011
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #915,260 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "It's been a long time coming . . . " **, June 2, 2005

By	Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Literature, it's said, holds up a mirror to life. If our image of life is flawed or blurry the reflection will be hardly better. We are only now beginning to understand how life, especially human life, actually works. The Barashes, drawing on literature and the new science of evolutionary psychology, demonstrate that much of literature may be explained by biology. Instead of literature depicting limited or skewed views of morality or other ephemeral concepts, it can use universals applicable to all humanity. And that means the most enduring literature, no matter unconscious the author might be of Darwin's natural selection, still rests on evolutionary foundations.

The authors, a father-daughter team, have scoured a wide range of literature, from Shakespeare through Tolstoy to Mark Twain, in demonstrating which human characteristics are best portrayed in fiction or drama. They are quick to insist that biology is not "the" tool for analysing writing, but is "a" tool. One which should be used more often and given more attention than it has. They show how Othello, a play whose characters have been adapted to endless variations, is at heart, about male jealousy. Nature teems with examples of manifestations of this basic trait, from the physical to the behavioural. Scientific publications present countless examples from insects to elephants.

The chapter "The Key to Jane Austen's Heart" is about "what women want," and why. There's far more involved than Helen Hunt's ambition to be a successful manager or Freud's lack of answering his own question. The situation rests on finding the right mate. Like male jealousy, females of the species have a strong vested interest in what kind of male they select. Unlike males, females of many species, especially we primates, make a heavy investment in the reproductive process. For human females, there's the long gestation period, need for assistance during upbringing of the offspring and indication of long-term support. One of Darwin's great insights is that while males may do much posturing prior to copulation, it is the females who ultimately accept or reject the male's advances. This situation is reflected in the title of the book. While a female may accept one male for some aspects, she may wander afield searching for others for different reasons. Even a male bird seeking food or other mates may return to the nest to find himself displaced. Whose chicks will he be feeding?

Once offspring have been produced, a whole new spectrum of behaviours is unleashed. How many stable households have been disrupted by parent-offspring conflict? Twain's Huckleberry Finn, with no mother and a dysfunctional father, moves from one surrogate family to another. None beat him, reject him nor judge him, but he leaves them all, closing his narrative with the intent to "light out for the territories". As children mature, they develop their own agendas. From the "terrible twos" to the stresses of adolescence, parent-offspring conflicts reflect the stress of developing individuality, which may only be fulfilled by flight.

We've waited a long time for the insights provided here. Although the Barashes aren't the first to attempt this technique, this book is clearly the best effort made to date. The authors explain every factor clearly, there's no need for the reader to have a degree in zoology. Preconceived notions of what literature is about, however, should be placed in a tightly locked container. There are new and challenging ideas here and every fiction reader should consider them. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

** Thanks to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Toward Consilience, June 25, 2005

By	DancesWithAnxiety "chewtoy to the Fates" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews

This book muddles cart and horse: at times, evolutionary theory is explained by reference to literature; at times, literary productions are explained by reference to evolutionary theory. The book is as apt to go on an explanatory tangent featuring wasps or gorillas as on one featuring Othello or Emma. This tends to blunt the book's argument, but the defect is not fatal. I would recommend the book more for its explanations of evolutionary theory than for its insights into literature, but there is plenty of each.

Note that the subtitle, "a Darwinian look at literature," is accurate so long as "look" is understood to mean "survey" rather than "perusal." This book examines so many literary works (I counted over 150 in the index) in the light of evolutionary theory that it tends to breeziness. Still, it makes for an interesting and provocative read, if an odd one in places.

To wit, with surprising frequency, the book claims that the deeds or thoughts of a fictional character can be understood as the workings of natural selection or other Darwinian dynamics. No, fictional characters are not the products of natural selection, but rather of human beings, who are. This elision allows the authors to avoid or undertreat a number of interesting lines of inquiry: What is the adaptive value of literature? How, if at all, does it relate to the adaptive value of language generally? Given that human beings are an inveterately fiction-creating species, which aspects of our biological nature do we tend to present faithfully in literature, which do we tend to distort, and why? (And is there a Darwinian explanation for the pattern?) What, in Darwinian terms, can we make of a number of persistent characters, themes, and figurations that would seem to touch on biology: witches, extraterrestrials, life after death, spirits and ghosts, immortals and gods, robots and automatons, human-animal hybrids including sentient animals? Heck, why is the floppy-haired innocent in horror movies always a boy named Timmy, Joey, Bobby, or another name ending with the hard "e" sound?

This book may indeed herald a promising new approach to literature, but the detail work remains to be done. This is a further step toward the "consilience" between science and humanities that E.O. Wilson proposed in his book by the same title, but there are many more to take.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Truly Novel Approach to Literature, May 5, 2005

By	Y. Altman - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Don't let the fact that Madame Bovary's Ovaries is a fun read fool you; the ideas contained within will forever change the way that you read fiction. Barash and Barash have managed to cogently describe their clever new way to analyze literature. It makes so much sense, you'll ask yourself "why didn't I think of that". In fact, you'll wonder why generation upon generation of English Lit. professors failed to pick up where Darwin left off.

I think it's safe to say that just about any lover of literature will enjoy a fresh perspective of their old favorites after reading Madame Bovary's Ovaries.