Authority in Scientific Discourse

This excerpt is from the article “On the Wing” in All the Year Round which comes after The Moonstone installment. This portion of the article compares carrier pigeons, tumbler pigeons, and roller pigeons, in what is arguably a patriarchal form of thinking that inherently privileges Carrier pigeons in a binarizing comparison of their structures and abilities. The article cites a “Mr. Brent” as the scientific authority on the subject. In the Victorian period the scientific domain was regarded as a man’s domain, the “men of science” at the exclusion of women (Barton 83). The patriarchal claim on science can be seen as facet of the Victorian Separate Spheres notion of gender, placing women in the domestic sphere and men in the public and scientific sphere. Societal ideas surrounding gender inequality can also be tied to chapter XV of The Moonstone. Sergeant Cuff admits of Rosanna that “she understands the detective virtues of sand as well as I do”, but, because this runs the risk of suggesting an equality between men and women, Sergeant Cuff quickly reperforms traditional gender roles that would have him admit some fault or inferiority in Rosanna’s plan by adding, “but hasn’t she been in rather too great a hurry to tread out the marks thoroughly?” (Collins 123). Because in the Separate Spheres view on gender in the Victorian era, it would not have been acceptable to have a woman thoroughly outsmart a male detective, and this scene arguably conforms to such views.

Works Cited:

Barton, Ruth. “’Men of Science’: Language, Identity and Professionalization in the Mid-Victorian Scientific Community.” History of Science, vol. 41, no. 131, 2003, pp. 73-119. Sage, doi:10.1177/007327530304100103. Accessed 01 Dec. 2019.

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone, Oxford, 2008.

“On the Wing.” All the Year Round 29 February 1868: 1. Print.