Darwin, Shakespeare, and Madame Bovary's Ovaries

Great Literature as a Gateway to the Mind that Evolution Built

Photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

One of my favorite books, written by evolutionary psychologist David Barash and his daughter, Nanelle Barash, has a title that makes me smile: Madame Bovary’s Ovaries. The subtitle hints at the Barashes’ intent: “A Darwinian Look at Literature.”¹ The little book, of course, puns on Gustav Flaubert’s 19th-century novel, Madame Bovary, concerning the life of a bourgeois French woman, bored with her marriage, who seeks solace in multiple affairs. These sexual exploits do not end well.

The Barashes contend that Mme Bovary can best be understood in the context of the times and the biological urges she inherited from her ancestors. That idea, of course, originated with Charles Darwin, who taught that natural selection favors biological changes that help organisms thrive and reproduce, pushing adaptive traits into the next generation. Those same biological forces, however, when they careen out of control, can cause unhappiness and reduce one’s chances of becoming an ancestor.

This concept has also been called “survival of the fittest” by some, but not by Darwin, who detested the phrase. More important for our purposes, Darwin’s ideas about natural selection extended into the realm we now call psychology because they have shaped not only our physical traits but our behavior and minds. However, it took nearly a century and a half for the new science of psychology to catch up with Darwin by creating the field of evolutionary psychology.²

And now the Barashes are extending Darwin’s psychological ideas even further: into literature, which they suggest is a great place to start if you want to deepen your understanding of mind and behavior. And that’s where the Bard comes in, say the Barashes:

Anyone wanting to get a sense of human nature in, say, the Bronze Age can do no better than to excavate among the words of Homer, or for the Elizabethan Age, Shakespeare.³

But, they note, the greatest of those writings were not just about the ancients or mere characters created in the writers’ minds; they are about ourselves. We can speak of Othello or Falstaff or Rosalind in the present tense because they weren’t just creatures of the 1500s; they are us!⁴ So, too, are Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Rhett Butler, Cinderella, John Steinbeck, and many others.

In our book, Psychology According to Shakespeare, Phil Zimbardo and I follow the Barashes, proposing that Will Shakespeare was a proto-psychologist whose “common-sense” understanding of biology, mind, and behavior anticipated both Darwin and evolutionary psychology by giving us tales centered on the very urges of “nature” that most often get people like Madame Bovary in trouble. Moreover, we are all voyeurs in the sense of wanting to see what happens when others tangle with their evolution-based urges—a secret that Shakespeare and all the other great writers intuited.

Consider the recurring literary theme of infidelity. The Iliad, for example, is an epic poem describing the denouement of a ten-year war fought over Helen, a married woman who ran off with another man, Prince Paris of Troy. Similarly, the Greek play Medea tells of a woman who kills her children for revenge on a husband who had cast her aside for another woman. And so it goes in Boccaccio’s Decameron, in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and down to the present day in the Sondheim musical, Into the Woods, where Prince Charming and the Baker’s wife share a one-night stand.

One of the Bard’s favorite variants on the theme of infidelity involves cuckoldry and its frequent consequence of wounded male pride and revenge. The term comes from the French word for the cuckoo bird, known to deposit its eggs in other birds’ nests to be hatched and raised.⁵ From an evolutionary standpoint, cuckolding also presents the possibility that a man may be unwittingly wasting his resources on a child with another man’s genes.

Knowing that it also makes for good theater, Shakespeare used the word “cuckold” in 17 of his plays, while the threat of being cuckolded is a prominent feature in Cymbeline, Othello, The Winter's Tale, Much Ado About Nothing, and Troilus and Cressida.⁶ Hamlet, too, may have worried about cuckoldry, but with an interesting Shakespearean twist: Just how long had the relationship between his mother and Claudius been going on? Could Claudius have been his father?

Another interesting problem noted by evolutionary psychologists centers on gender differences in sexual responsiveness—particularly the notion that women tend to be careful—even reluctant—breeders, while men tend to be more promiscuous (not always, of course: we’re talking about averages here). But why might those general tendencies be true? Evolutionary psychologists tell us that such gender differences arise from the differing optimal reproductive strategies for males vs. females. Males with sufficient opportunity and stamina are capable of impregnating a female (mayhap two!) almost daily. On the other hand, women can procreate only at intervals of more than nine months. Accordingly, it pays off (biologically) for a man to have sex as often as possible with as many mates as possible.

In contrast, a woman’s best strategy—again, from the biological perspective of producing as many children as possible—is to save her sexual favors for the healthiest. wealthiest, most powerful mates. Since she is also more likely to be saddled with the burdens of child care, it pays for her to scrutinize potential mates not only for their means but for their willingness to protect and provide for her and her children.⁷

These opposing tendencies can lead both to unhappy lives and interesting theater. How so? A man’s biological desires for many mates (and therefore many children) may lead him merely to pretend a preference for monogamy—until his mate finds him out and seeks revenge, as we noted in Medea. Shakespeare helps us visualize this issue in Much Ado About Nothing, when Hero thinks that Claudio has had sex with another woman on the night before their marriage. It is especially interesting in Much Ado that Beatrice immediately comes to her friend Hero’s aid, demanding of her own lover, Benedick, that he kill Claudio.

Not all evolutionary psychology is about sex, however.⁸ Some of it focuses on dominance and aggression, as we see in the Henriad tetralogy, spanning the English Wars of the Roses. Done successfully, of course, aggression does usually mean more opportunities for sex and pushing one’s genes into the future. But aggression carries its risks, as we learn from Macbeth, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, and Hamlet.

What are some of the other evolution-based urges that can get people in trouble (or make a good theme for a play)? They include greed, pride, gluttony, or even mere survival. Indeed, all seven of the legendary Deadly Sins can lead to distress, especially when carried to extremes. To paraphrase Mae West, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!” And, although we never find Shakespeare using the term “Seven Deadly Sins,” we do find him personifying each one: ⁹

• Wrath is Coriolanus, Hamlet (at the end of the play), and nearly everyone in Titus Andronicus;

• Avarice is Edmund and Shylock;

• Sloth is Falstaff and his pal, young Prince Hal;

• Pride is Iago, Macbeth, Richard III, King Lear, and perhaps even Malvolio;

• Lust is Angelo and, in a much less serious vein, Falstaff again;

• Envy is Richard III, Caliban, and Iago again;

• And Gluttony is Falstaff, one more time.¹⁰

According to Professor Joseph Carroll, King Lear shows us other facets of evolutionary psychology. Carroll interprets the play in terms of universal aspects of human nature that abhor such things as hypocrisy (think: Edmund) and the killing of one’s family members (Cordelia). By “universal” he means characteristic built into our genes and our brains by evolutionary pressures. Universals, in this sense, do not necessarily apply to everyone but rather to people in every culture.

He also interprets the play as Shakespeare’s exploration of a world gone wrong without divine intervention—without “a just providence watch[ing] over the fate of individuals.” There is no beneficent Jesus protecting the characters in Lear, nor any Satan or impetuous Olympian god stirring up trouble amongst us humans. Says Carrol:¹¹

Within the framework of evolutionary theory, life is a mechanical and blindly developing process. More organisms are born in any generation than can survive and reproduce; organisms vary in the traits for survival and reproduction; the organisms that possess more favorable variations reproduce at a higher rate and also transmit their more favorable characteristics to their offspring. This simple causal sequence entails no cosmic purpose for the evolution of life. Nor does it entail a divine source for human motives and values. From an evolutionary perspective, if people wish to justify ethical values, they can look for justiication only within a purely human context.

Does this mean that Madame Bovary had no one to blame but herself? I don’t think so. As my friend and collaborator, Phil Zimbardo, used to say, that is simply blaming the victim. He would point out how we often attribute behavior we disapprove of to a few “bad apples” when we should be blaming a “bad barrel.” Or, to put it another way—as Dr. Zimbardo also did—much undesirable behavior is caused by a bad system, rather than a bad person.

Finally, I should tell you that, unlike its namesake novel, Madame Bovary’s Ovaries has a happy ending, in which the Barashes advise us:

. . . In calling attention to Madame Bovary’s ovaries, we have no wish to ignore the rest of her anatomy, not to diminish her as a person, as a creation, or even a metaphor. Rather . . . reading makes more sense and is also more fun when informed by modern science’s current knowledge of biology and of human nature. We come to expand the appreciation of literature, not to limit it. Human nature pulses inside every writer and, when artfully communicated, is understood by every reader, because it is so deeply shared. It is the breath and beat of living organisms embodied in an organic world of sex, blood, food, fear, anger, love, hopes trees, animals, air, water, sky, rocks, and dirt. Now that biologists have begun clarifying their perspective on what it means to be human, it is time to look for it—for ourselves, in the deepest sense—where it has always been in our greatest, most resonant stories.

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If you are enjoying these posts, please consider getting a copy of our book, Psychology According to Shakespeare, by Philip Zimbardo and me, published in 2024 by Prometheus Books and available at bookstores everywhere.

Here is a peek at the table of contents, showing the featured plays that illustrate each psychological topic:

Psychology According to Shakespeare

Prologue – Why Shakespeare and Psychology?

Introduction – Shakespeare’s Psychology and the Roots of Genius

Part I: Nature vs. Nurture

Chapter 1 – Nature-Nurture, Neuroscience, and the Brain of the Bard: The Tempest

Chapter 2 – The Ages and Stages of Man (and Woman): As You Like It

Part II: The Person vs. the Situation

Chapter 3 – Henrys, Humors, and the Psychology of Personality: Richard II – Henry V

Chapter 4 – Social Influence from Stratford to Stanford: Measure for Measure

Chapter 5 – Heroes Ancient and Modern, Major and Minor: Othello

Part III: Into the Mind

Chapter 6 – Sleep and Dreams: A Window into the Unconscious: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Chapter 7 – Mental Illness and Other Ill Humors: Richard III

Part IV: Reason vs. Emotion

Chapter 8 – Emotion, Motivation, and Elizabethan Love: Love’s Labour’s Lost

Chapter 9 – Reason, Intuition, and the Dithering Prince of Denmark: Hamlet

Epilogue – Psychology, Shakespeare, and Beyond

1. Barash, David P. and Nanelle R. Barash. Madame Bovary’s Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature. New York: Delacorte Press, 2005.

2. Psychologists date the beginning of their science to 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt established the first laboratory dedicated to studying “the elements of conscious experience.” Three years later, Darwin published the first book on evolutionary psychology (although he didn’t use that term); he called the book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. I must also give Sigmund Freud credit here for borrowing the ideas of his two fundamental instincts, eros (sex) and thanatos (aggression and death), from Darwin’s work, which was much debated in Freud’s day.

3. To be clear, the Barashes are not saying that Will Shakespeare or any of the other great writers of the past actually knew and understood Darwinian theory or evolutionary psychology’s explanations of gender differences. Rather, those luminaries and their audiences were attracted to themes that recur in modern evolutionary biology and psychology because our brains have been prepared by evolutionary forces to focus on those very ideas.

The point is that literary characters with lasting and universal appeal deal with the same existential issues that both our ancient and recent predecessors grappled with—issues that included survival, reproduction, raising families, and working with others. Some, of course, did so more successfully than others; what we call “tragedy” occurs when individuals do not handle their evolutionary challenges well, as was the case with Ms. Bovary.

4. . . . with apologies to Walt Kelly and his friend Pogo.

5. A cuckold is a man whose wife has had a sexual affair with another man. There is also a gender-opposite term, cuckquean, for a woman whose husband cheats. In this case, the problem (from an evolutionary standpoint) is that the husband may be squandering precious resources on the child of another woman.

6. St. Pierre, Ronald L. “The Forgeries of Jealousy”: Shakespeare’s Cuckoldry. PhD dissertation, University of New Hampshire Scholars’ Repository, 1982: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/1349/

7. I know! I know! This view may seem old-fashioned and somewhat sexist. On the other hand, these customs and pressures, in various forms, are the ones that have obtained in most human societies. Evolution cares nothing for the changing customs of the moment; evolution works over the long haul. Thus, says evolutionary psychology, these are the attitudes that natural selection has favored and likely “wired” into our brains. Consequently, many of our modern problems are caused by a brain that was “wired” for the Stone Age.

8. In another book, Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature (Oxford: 2012), David Barash has addressed many of the issues for which evolutionary psychology does not (yet) have all the answers. These include menopause, concealed ovulation, homosexuality, religion, and morality.

9. Feel free to add your favorites here. This is not an exhaustive list.

10. Professor Suzy Horton of Mesa Community College in AZ reminds me that the acronym WASPLEG is a good way to remember the Seven Deadly Sins.

11. Carroll, Joseph. An Evolutionary Approach to Shakespeare’s King Lear. In Critical Insights: Family (pp.83-103), John Knapp, Ed. EBSCO (2013). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282049242_An_Evolutionary_Approach_to_Shakespeare%27s_King_Lear.