John Glendening has a good topic—the influence of evolutionary ideas on a few major novels in the late nineteenth century. He gives extended readings of Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau, Hardy's Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Stoker's Dracula, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. He also gives shorter accounts of Wells's The Time Machine, some of Conrad's early fiction, W. H. Hudson's Green Mansions, A. S. Byatt's Possession, Huxley's “Evolution and Ethics,” and a few passages from Darwin's writings. He acknowledges that evolutionary themes in the fictional works have already been much discussed. His rationale for discussing them again is that these novels “rarely if ever have been considered together as explorations or enactments … of the uncertainty and confused interrelationships that, fostered by nineteenth-century evolutionism, subvert ideas of order—tangling the web of Darwinian theory” (15). Now, over the past thirty years or so, most critics commenting on these novels have followed the general trends in poststructuralist theory. Accordingly, they have argued that in some fashion these novels, like all other novels, “subvert ideas of order.” Moreover, Glendening explicitly locates his work in the lineage established by Gillian Beer's Darwin's Plots (1983) and George Levine's Darwin and the Novelists (1988). That is, he locates himself in the lineage that envisions Darwin as a precursor to Derrida—a John the Baptist foretelling the advent of Indeterminacy. Glendening's rationale for his study thus reduces itself to the single word “together.” Others have discussed evolutionary themes in the novels from a poststructuralist perspective, and others have envisioned Darwin as contributing to the poststructuralist epistemic dispensation, but no one before has discussed just this particular set of novels in this particular context from this particular theoretical perspective.

Originality in topic and critical approach are not decisive criteria of value for a scholarly study. Thoroughness in research, lucidity of critical vision, incisiveness and cogency of argument—all those criteria are still in play. Good execution can make even an often played composition exciting and memorable. In his readings of evolutionary themes in his chosen texts, Glendening is industrious and methodical. He is less thorough in delving into the history of evolutionary theory, but still he makes a reasonable showing. He mentions Lyell and gives some attention to Lamarck and to Chambers's Vestiges of Creation. On the history of evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century, he references Bowler, Richards, Mayr, and Sulloway. In his theoretical formulations, Glendening works at the level of academic commonplace. Although affirming basic poststructuralist themes, he does not cite Derrida, Foucault, or other primary poststructuralist theorists. He takes his central theoretical terms at second and third hand. He invokes “chaos” as his own ultimate epistemic term but makes only vague and general reference to chaos theory. Like many poststructuralist critics, he mistakenly supposes that chaos theory, as a specialized field in mathematics, underwrites deconstructive notions of indeterminacy. He indicates that he has had some slight recent exposure to evolutionary psychology and has responded favorably to it. He is aware that adaptationist views of human nature conflict with poststructuralist ideas, and this conflict evidently makes him uneasy, but he leaves the issue in suspense, broached but undeveloped.

Since Glendening offers no original historical research and no original theoretical formulations, his claim on the reader's attention depends chiefly on the merit of his extended readings. Here his success is partial. He often has sensible and even perceptive things to say about the texts. Long stretches, though, consist only in analytic summary and paraphrase, not very interesting in themselves and reaching a point, a conceptual climax, only by invoking deconstructive formulas that are not always integral with the bulk of his exposition. The summaries depend for the most part on the analytic utility of ten terms derived from five supposedly binary oppositions: human/animal, modern/primitive, masculinity/femininity, progress/degeneration, and nature/culture. The conceptual climaxes depend on affirming that the paired terms are in some fashion both mutually exclusive and interdependent.

Glendening's central thematic formula consists in a tension between “order” and “chaos.” He argues that the mind “tends by its very nature toward the creation of an order that promises personal and social integrity” (31). That seems to be his own actual sense of things, and it accords well with his late and incomplete assimilation of an adaptationist view of cognition. He suggests, for instance, that language evolved to enable humans “to act jointly in accordance with generally accurate assessments about demanding and often dangerous environments” (192). Despite this and a few other such salutary observations, Glendening's commitment to poststructuralist theory leads him to invest ultimate conceptual value in terms such as “relativism,” “indeterminacy,” “contingency,” “randomness,” and “confusion”—terms that for him seem to function more or less as synonyms. In his reading, all the novels produce sensations of “confusion, uncertainty, and entrapment” (194). Dracula, in particular, seems “wonderfully confused” (121).

To be interesting as performance, interpretive criticism must posit some imaginative conception of a literary work and bring all its observations to bear on supporting and illuminating that conception. Glendening sometimes offers critical comments on the imaginative and aesthetic qualities of the works he discusses, but he does not formulate imaginative conceptions as central organizing principles for his critiques. Instead, he just works conscientiously at routine analytic summary, letting his historical and thematic arguments, such as they are, provide the rationale for his analysis. Consequently, although his readings are sometimes astute, they still fall flat as imaginative performance. In my view, he is at his best in his reading of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Through most of that critique, he ignores his theoretical commitment to confusion and follows an intuitive conviction that “Hardy's vision is artistically whole” (73). For that sort of old-fashioned humanist insight, his theoretical training provides no support, but in this case his instincts are sounder than his training.