“Evolution,” from Sonnets and Songs, by Emily Pfeiffer, 1880 CE.

By identifying an inchoate ‘hunger’ rather than the reproductive drive as the engine of evolution, the Victorian poet Emily Pfeiffer seems to anticipates the contemporary theorist Elizabeth Grosz whose essay “Darwin and Feminism: Preliminary Investigations into a Possible Alliance” (2005) who finds potentially feminist themes of ‘indeterminacy,’ and a directionless drive for ‘self-overcoming’ in Darwin’s work. Why might women draw emphasize different elements of Darwin’s thought than men do? Do Darwinism and feminism, as you understand them, harmonize or clash? Evolution HUNGER that strivest in the restless arms Of the sea-flower, that drivest rooted things To break their moorings, that unfoldest wings In creatures to be rapt above thy harms; Hunger, of whom the hungry-seeming waves Were the first ministers, till, free to range, Thou mad’st the Universe thy park and grange, What is it thine insatiate heart still craves? Sacred disquietude, divine unrest! Maker of all that breathes the breath of life, No unthrift greed spurs thine unflagging zest, No lust self-slaying hounds thee to the strife; Thou art the Unknown God on whom we wait: Thy path the course of our unfolding fate. Source: Emily Jane Pfeiffer, Sonnets & Songs (London: C. Kegan Paul, 1880), full text via Googlebooks.