Sexual selection: isn’t it romantic?

Callou, callay, it’s Smart Bitches Day!

Casting about for motivation for your main character? Is she looking for wit, wealth, or wicked good looks in her man?

Nope. What she really wants is a top-notch gene donor. Brains and beauty are indicators of high quality DNA, and wealth should improve the chances that their many babies will survive and breed unto the next generation.

So goes the theory of daddy-daughter team David and Nanelle Barash, who last year released their sociobiological interpretation of literature, Madame Bovary’s Ovaries. Sexual selection, a key element of Darwinism and a centerpiece of the Barashes’ thesis, refers to traits which may not necessarily be adaptive but help to attract mates. Think about a peacock’s iridescent tail feathers, which attract peahens and predators alike. Think about Porsches and Beamers and big fat gold chains hanging on the necks of certain rappers.

Not that any of you would be that shallow.

In some instances, the Barash method yields fresh ways of looking at things. From Denis Dutton’s Washington Post review:

. . . discriminating human females are central to the world of Jane Austen, whom the Barashes call “the poet laureate of female choice.” Selecting a good mate is Austen’s major theme. She is particularly adept at bringing out, against the vast intricacies of a social milieu, the basic values women seek in men, and men tend to want in women (shortlist: good looks, health, money, status, IQ, courage, dependability and a pleasant personality — in many different weightings and orderings). Not being a peacock, Mr. Darcy does not have iridescent feathers, but for human females his commanding personality, solid income, intelligence, generosity, and the magnificent Pemberley estate do very nicely.

Madame Bovary’s Ovaries has its flaws, which Dutton’s review illuminates nicely. I encourage you to read the whole thing. But it occurred to me that, flawed or not, the premise of Darwinian motivation for literary characters has, at the very least, comic merit.

A few ideas:

• One male suitor attempts to topple another by sending his lady love a faked lab report demonstrating that the rival male has a precariously low sperm count.
• To get noticed by an aloof beauty, a wealthy (think Bill Gates) geek sets up a contest for Best DNA of the Year. He bribes the judges, naturally. A witty but bald and short and slightly overweight molecular biologist becomes suspicious and uses statistical arguments to prove the fraud. The beauty and the molecular biologist go off into the sunset.
• You know how Law and Order keeps reusing the sperm donor plot? Arrogant fertility doc only uses his own sperm to create viable embryos for implantation, starts killing people who find out, yatta yatta. How about the distaff version? Arrogant female fertility doc uses her own eggs to create viable embryos, etc. Yeah, she harvests eggs from women, but destroys them. The Bush Administration finds out, makes it a federal case, and Bill Frist & Gonzo Gonzales team up to prosecute.

What’s that? No romance in that last one? Well, how about this. Our perp has been at it for the last 25 years. Unbeknownst to her, her handsome young defense lawyer is actually her son! And she falls for him! We’ll call it Oedipus 2020.

Yeah, you’re right. I don’t understand the romance genre at all.

D.

Walnut, February 13, 2006. Category: Books 'n' Authors, Sex, Writer's Life.

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