The Age of Insects: Gender, Class, Race and the Experience of British Entomology in the Long Nineteenth Century
According to John Lubbock, well-known politician and man of science, the long nineteenth century was the Age of Insects, with unparalleled interest in insects across the British Isles and empire. Thus far, histories of British entomology have mostly been dominated by questions of professionalisation. But what happens if we shift the focus to experience? Specifically, the thesis explores three aspects of experience: senses, morals, and emotions. Within their experiences, practitioners of science felt constant tension: for example, between the enjoyment of beauty and objectivity, or the way anxiety and disappointment often existed alongside pleasure. I ask how people negotiated these tensions and argue this was done by self-fashioning, managing emotions, and the development of a special, entomological gaze. The moral and emotional economies of entomology were shaped by a dominant streak of middle-class gentility, which upheld an ideal of the ‘true’ entomologist, defined by a gentlemanly character. This is showcased in debates of the late nineteenth century, which deemed the over-collecting of butterfly species ungentlemanly: those who displayed such ungentlemanliness were publicly shamed. Examining virtues and emotions is necessary for understanding why people practised science; entomology was a moral occupation, but it was also, simply, pleasurable. Emotions act as a connecting medium for scientific communities, and are the glue that holds those communities together. Even objectivity, ostensibly the absence of emotion, is thus revealed to be a method of managing emotions. For example, Margaret Elizabeth Fountaine, an independent butterfly collector, revealed different emotions in different texts: in her public articles, she distanced herself from sentimentality by using narratives of objectivity and imperialism. Her private journals, meanwhile, became an outlet for the feelings of guilt and shame she felt at times when killing butterflies, as well as her great love for them. Objectivity was not contradictory to love and guilt, just expressed in different spaces and texts. Self-fashioning played a large part in practitioners’ experience. Bound to contemporary social structures, entomologists could nonetheless stretch them through creative self-fashioning. The structures this thesis is most concerned with are those related to class, gender, and race. For example, women were mostly marginalised from science, but some crafted personae which made it acceptable for them to take part in the entomological community. The concept of the ‘entomological gaze’ is used to describe how entomologists were taught to observe. Viewing the world through a magnifying glass, this was a dissecting gaze preoccupied with distinction, race and classification. It often seeped into everyday life colouring the way entomologists viewed others. This tendency was fully manifested when travelling entomologists encountered local people and viewed them as entomological specimens. That non-Europeans were thought incapable of developing the entomological gaze shows how deeply racialised it was. This gaze was also directed inwards, as analysed in the chapter about Bruce Frederic Cummings, who in his journals turned himself into his own bug. Throughout this thesis, I address the physicality of science and of scientific practitioners. Hands-on interaction with nature was deemed necessary to truly learn, which was why, even as species were disappearing, many entomologists believed novice should keep collecting. The physical aspects of entomology were also important to some women, such as Fountaine, who found freedom in her movement and clothes while collecting around the empire. On the other end of the spectrum were those who felt physically inhibited by the science. Cummings, for example, lived with multiple sclerosis, and his experience of being constrained in body, space, and time was analogous to his sense of being constrained at the British Museum, where he worked but was unable to acquire a higher status and more interesting work (and especially the ability to work beyond entomology) because of his class and lack of higher education. At the core of this thesis are the intimate, sensate, and emotional histories of practitioners navigating the hierarchical structure of the entomological community, specifically the categories of gender, class, and race. Using the community as a focal point and juxtaposing broader analyses (Chapters 1, 2, and 6) with micro-histories (Chapters 3, 4, and 5), results in a history that is both broad and intimate. An understanding of the emotional and moral economies of science is necessary both for understanding how communities formed and operated, and for learning about individual experience.
Disability, Empire, Gender, History of entomology, History of science, Nineteenth century, Race
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