Sexuality and Population: Female Agency in The Romance of a Shop Anonymous College

The Sexuality and Population debate is conspicuous in the plot of the novel The Romance of a Shop by Amy Levy. As the novel expands, the story remains mostly in relation to the main components of the debate, as outlined by Grant Allen and Havelock Ellis. The purpose of female empowerment, however, is motivated by social eugenics for a better population in the historical debate, and is fueled by basic female agency in the novel. Nevertheless, both intentions yield the positive results of more well-rounded offspring through eugenics. Levy shows the positive effects of eugenics with half of the Lorimer sisters: Gertrude and Lucy both have the privilege of birthing children, whom we can predict have a bright future ahead with Lucy’s “excellent training” and Gertrude’s child, who will inherit “his father’s scientific tastes, or the literary tendencies of his mother” (193). Meanwhile, the half of the Lorimer sisters who do not scrutinize their suitors end up fruitless or deceased. While Allen and Ellis maintain that women should be educated and encouraged to assume moral responsibility for their sexuality to promote social eugenics, Levy’s novel encapsulates this argument by developing half of the Lorimer sisters as independent...