Eugenics Was Wrong Even When It Got It Right
By Maren Linett,
Nursing Clio
| 01. 17. 2023
Ann Leary’s 2022 novel The Foundling follows a young white woman, Mary Engle, who in the 1930s lands a job as secretary to Dr. Agnes Vogel. The fictional Dr. Vogel is the founder and director of the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age, an institution based on many real-life institutions, including one where Leary’s grandmother once worked. Nettleton State Village is meant to incarcerate “feebleminded” girls and women from puberty to menopause in order to prevent “defective” offspring. The Foundling offers a sharp critique of Nettleton State Village and by implication, its real-life counterparts. As the novel shows, many of the women locked up in eugenics institutions were not actually intellectually disabled, and Leary alerts readers to this ahead of time in her author’s note. The novel ascribes the presence of nondisabled women in the institution to three causes: the sexism, racism, and corruption of eugenic practice.
Leary uses the character of Lillian, a childhood friend of Mary’s, to demonstrate eugenics’ intertwined racism and sexism. Lillian—whom Mary grew up with in a Catholic orphanage—is incarcerated at Nettleton...
Related Articles
By Emily Beitiks, Guest Contributor
| 02.09.2024
The 1932 kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son was called the “crime of the century” at the time, and has inspired more and less plausible theories about what really happened ever since. The San Francisco Chronicle has recently covered a new wave of interest in the case, based on retired judge Lise Pearlman’s 2020 book that builds on a theory that’s been around for decades: that the celebrity aviator himself was implicated, and the man executed for the...
By Leigha McReynolds, Tor | 09.19.2023
The 2011 X-Men franchise prequel, X-Men: First Class, briefly featured a mutant named Darwin who could adapt to any circumstances. For example, when he stuck his head in a fish tank he grew gills. Now if you’re a history...
By Kelly Hayes, Truthout | 07.20.2023
It’s really important for people to understand what this bundle of ideologies is, because it’s become so hugely influential, and is shaping our world right now, and will continue to shape it for the foreseeable future,” says philosopher and historian...
By Nick Schager, The Daily Beast | 06.23.2023
Poster for King of Clones (Netflix documentary) via Wikipedia
Cloning is, at heart, about the fear of death and the desire to defeat it. Consequently, biologist and researcher Dr. Hwang Woo-suk’s breakthroughs in the field made him not only a...