Degeneration and the Environment in Victorian and Edwardian Fiction

Abstract

This dissertation reveals that Victorian degeneration theory—a multivalent concept of individual and evolutionary decay best remembered as the motivation for eugenics—was based partly in fears about the influence of urban and tropical places on the British race and nation. Environmental formulations of degeneration theory asserted that cities and the tropics caused physical and mental degeneracy, while the British countryside promoted healthy racial development. This concept of environmentally-driven degeneration shaped the Victorian and Edwardians’ environmental practices. Environmental degeneration theory furthermore inspired a new kind of fiction wherein the physical environmental drives the degeneration or development of an individual or an entire community. By focusing on a selection of children’s and science fiction novels featuring this plot alongside childrearing manuals, medical texts, and other primary documents, this dissertation shows how such fiction disseminated environmental degeneration theory and helps us understand the racial and evolutionary anxieties that motivated British environmental praxis at home and in the empire.