Sex and Science in Jack London’s America

Abstract

English-language developments in sexual science were tied to literary communities from their earliest incarnations, as sexologists like Havelock Ellis and Marie Stopes also wrote novels and plays, and literary writers like George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Radclyffe Hall wrote fiction that can be read as extending and complicating, as well as adopting, the language and ideas of sexological discourse. Like their British counterparts, American writers of fiction developed a wide range of responses to the theories of sexologists, as well as those theories’ political implications. London and his contemporaries not only referenced the research of sexologists but also adjusted and challenged the assumptions of the field as they spread it to new audiences, creating and spreading knowledge about human sexuality.

Early surf fiction and the white worldview

“…In that book, four years after publishing the original version, 'London changed the words "black Mercury" to "brown Mercury" and "burnt black by the tropic sun" to "burnt golden and brown by the tropic sun"' (Moser, 2008, p. 335). London (or at least his editors, with whom he must have agreed) was clearly aware of the racial issues involved in his description of the surfer, since we know he wrote at other times about comparative racial capabilities and eugenics (see Craig, 2017).…”