Emma Darwin: a great woman behind a great man

Abstract

In 1839, when Emma Wedgwood (18081896) married her first cousin, Charles Darwin, she was already 30 years old, almost a year older than her husband and an age at which a single woman was already considered a spinster. Emma came from a well-to-do family, and despite of living far from London, her home had an intellectual and quite liberal atmosphere. Josiah Wedgwood, Emmas father, had supported Darwin when he accepted the proposal to embark on the Beagle in a journey around the world. Emma herself was well-educated, both in England and in Paris and Geneve. The diaries she kept beginning at the age of 16 until a few days before her death, on 7 October 1896, reveal many details of the Wedgwood and Darwin family histories. They are also a valuable social record of prosperous middle-class intellectual life in England during the 19th century. Furthermore, they constitute a detailed register of the familys health, and especially of her husbands, whose frequent illness was the main reason for the Darwins move from London to the countryside. Emma was a religious woman, whereas Darwin had progressively lost his faith. His deep concern that his revolutionary ideas would offend Emmas sensibility may explain Darwins hesitance to publicize his ideas about evolution. Besides being a dedicated wife and mother, Emma was Darwins great friend and caretaker, as well as his secretary, maintaining her husbands correspondence with his friends and colleagues when his health prevented him from doing so. It is without a doubt that, if Charles Darwin was a great man, then Emma was a great woman.