‘True women’ were expected to be pious, submissive and interested only in domesticity. They lacked passion and were not interested in sex, even after marriage. Procreation was a marital duty to be performed as part of the sacred oath, but with no relish or enthusiasm. Darwin’s theory of sexual selection chimed with these ideas. But it was perilously controversial nevertheless, far more so than natural selection. As we discovered in the last chapter, female choice was its Achilles heel. Giving such evolutionary agency to the fairer sex stuck in the throat of the Victorian patriarchy and made
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