Olive's Vision: Evolution, Pragmatism, and Radicalism in The Bostonians.

The Bostonians , despite frequent framing of it as a non-radical or even anti-radical novel, contains within it a pattern of disruptive evolutionary change. I argue that the novel's concept of evolution is not linear and gradualist, but rather overwhelming and radical, befitting the Pragmatist conception of Darwinian evolution supported by the James brothers. Change itself is not abhorrent to the narrative, and Basil Ransom's desperate attempts to prevent and reverse change are largely ineffectual and absurd. What is abhorrent is only supporting utopian, hyper-individualist concepts of change that satisfy self-aggrandizing ends, as Olive Chancellor does. Only when she loses Verena, I argue, does Olive awaken from her possessive solipsism and participate in a non-elitist way in the democratic, communal process of social transformation. This evolutionary process is chaotic and unpredictable, revising and challenging old convictions, but it organically creates powerful change that extends beyond the expectations of any singular individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]