Charles Robert Bree

©Warren Nunn

If the majority of modern scholars are to be believed, no 19^th century man really spoke out in favour of the many and varied capacities that women possess, particularly in relation to their ability to match men in academia.

We are told something along the lines that particularly among 19^th century academics, sexism was entrenched and women were basically patted on the head and told to go away and have children and look after their husbands.

There is a great deal about that scenario that is true but it is also important to acknowledge the existence of any voice that spoke up for women, particularly when it was a man and particularly when he articulated sound and uplifting arguments more than 140 years ago.

There is such a voice from 1872 and it belongs to British zoologist and physician Charles Robert Bree, a man who published two landmark books that were point-by-point rebuttals to Charles Darwin’s hypotheses.

Bree’s writings have been largely ignored in what is now a radically different academic landscape where anyone who denies Darwin is treated poorly and described as a pseudoscientist and is rarely even given a voice. In fact there is downright hostility and laws are in place to ensure that Darwin deniers have little or no voice.

Among Charles Robert Bree’s impressive academic output were two books that directly answered Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (John Murray, London, 1859) and The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (John Murray, London, 1872).

Bree countered both Darwin’s works with Species not transmutable, nor the result of secondary causes. Being a critical examination of Mr. Darwin’s work entitled “Origin and variation of species” (Groombridge, London, 1860) and An Exposition of Fallacies in the Hypothesis of Mr Darwin (Longmans, Green, & Co., London, 1872).

Bree’s works are available free online, so there is no doubt about what he wrote and the manner in which he addressed Darwin’s claims. Both books are scholarly and scientific.

It is in An Exposition of Fallacies in the Hypothesis of Mr Darwin, that Bree articulates a high view of women and wrestles with Darwin’s concept that dominant males pass on that dominance.

Bree believed Darwin was actually saying that men were more highly endowed mentally than women. Bree wrote that this “assumes that at adult age the two brains, male and female, are physically different to the degree of rendering it impossible for the female brain to attain as high a pitch of reasoning as the male”.

Bree went on to reason:

“Such an assumption as this can easily be proved to be as false as the statement that it would be necessary so to educate women that they might transmit their educated qualities to their female children.” (p.237)

Bree wrestled with what women faced at that time:

“Women are destined to different walks in life from men. They are not educated as a rule to master science or dead languages—neither are they exercised in mathematics.” (p.237)

He then nailed his argument with the following:

“But to say they could not were they required master these subjects is falsified by the most ordinary knowledge of women and the positions they do and might hold in the intellectual world.” (p.237)

Bree then pointed to the academic achievements of Mary Somerville (nee Fairfax) a Scottish science writer who studied mathematics and astronomy.

“Few men have written more eloquently and well upon the deep subject of astronomy than Mrs. Somerville.” (p.238)

And to further underscore his point about her mental capacity, Bree continued and even stressed the word educated:

“Nay, I will go further and say there are few men who could be educated to surpass her.” (p.238)

Bree could not have made the point more strongly in that mental acuity has nothing to do with gender.

And he was far from finished. He cited the skills of several French women including artist Marie-Rosalie Bonheur (known as Rosa Bonheur), and writers Anne-Louise Germaine Necker (known as Germaine de Staël) and Stéphanie Félicité du Crest de Saint-Aubin (known as Madame de Genlis). As well, he mentioned English poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans.

“In art have we not the inimitable Bonheur; and what men ever wrote more beautiful and real poetry than Mrs. Hemans, or better prose than Madame de Stael or De Genlis?” (p.238)

“The science of medicine has been hitherto closed to women, but we have recently seen them surpass many men in their collegiate examination.” (p.238)

“One of the best works in the French language upon one of the most difficult subjects in medicine is written by a Frenchwoman.” (p.238)

Bree also references how women were being recognised in England:

“Have we not seen women lately elected for their high mental qualities to the highest Educational Board in the United Kingdom?” (p.238)

Bree also rejected Darwin’s speculation that sexual selection explained why women were generally physically smaller than men and that better education would mean their female offspring would be smarter. (Descent of Man, p.565)

Bree also argued against Darwin’s notion that because women have “sweeter singing voices”, they had developed them to attract the opposite sex. (Descent of Man, p.573)

It was anathema to Bree that Darwin should refer our “best and noblest attributes to a bestial origin”. (An Exposition of Fallacies in the Hypothesis of Mr Darwin, p.240)

Bree showed that he in no way considered man superior to woman on an intellectual level and illustrated to his contemporaries and to those of us now reading these words that all men were not as some say they were.

The struggle for equality is ongoing and there is no doubt that women have not been appreciated in the workplace as they should have been, especially with regards to salary.

However, they have not been without men to champion their cause; men like Charles Robert Bree who base their understanding on the fact that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

There is much more that can be written about Charles Robert Bree and the powerful and lasting impact he had on science and academia.