Bernard Mandeville’s “A Modest Defence of Publick Stews”: Prostitution and Its Discontents in Early Georgian England ed. by Irwin Primer

Abstract

246 Notorious highwaymen such as Jack Sheppard (1702–1724) and Dick Turpin (1705–1739) and Jonathan Wild (1683– 1725), about whom sensational biographies , enthralling novels, and thrilling plays were written, while not instrumental in shaping the modern gentleman, were celebrated as representatives of nonconformity. Most famously, William Harrison Ainsworth’s Rookwood (1834) turned Turpin into ‘‘a boys’ adventure hero.’’ But alongside these real-life criminals whose masculine behavior is appropriated, and in some ways commended , in popular print culture, Ms. Mackie draws usefully on eighteenthcentury fictional sources of the rake, including Clarissa and The Mohocks (1712). She devotes a large part of her discussion of the rake to Clarissa’s Lovelace, at once attractive and charming but also ‘‘a pathetic and destructive psychosexual basket case.’’ Ms. Mackie compares the rake to a glamorized demon defined by his ‘‘sexual prowess.’’ Conversely, the pirate, whose masculinity lies outside his sexuality, is defined by his behavior and performance. Lastly , her study focuses on the criminal characters found in the famous novels, Caleb Williams, Evelina, and Sir Charles Grandison, all of which bring together the criminal and the gentleman, in order to ‘‘articulate their proximity and indict their necessary collusion.’’ This book convincingly historicizes the ways in which the eighteenth-century gentleman was engendered in the wake of these romanticized criminal masculinities. These appear in contemporary popular culture: the celebrated Robin Hood and his contemporary incarnations, such as Johnny Depp’s eighteenth-century pirate in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean films. Boswell, Ainsworth, Defoe, Burney, Gay, Richardson, Burke, and Godwin are drawn on, as Ms. Mackie synthesizes the works of contemporary critics and scholars of gender and sexuality. Matthew McCormack’s Public Men: Political Masculinities in Modern Britain (2007) would have enriched Ms. Mackie’s research at the very least. At times, this study suffers from an excess of signposting and would have benefited from clearer definitions. ‘‘Masculinity ’’ and ‘‘manliness’’ are used synonymously . Nonetheless, it is an important contribution. Perhaps the perfect aphorism to end on is what Ms. Mackie herself says: ‘‘The perfect gentleman is the perfect criminal.’’ Sarah Elizabeth Fanning University of Exeter Bernard Mandeville’s ‘‘A Modest Defence of Publick Stews’’: Prostitution and Its Discontents in Early Georgian England, ed. Irwin Primer. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp. vii ⫹ 208. $80; $28 (paper); $14.97 (Kindle). Mr. Primer’s edition of A Modest Defence (1724) reads more like a monograph about the text than an edition of it, given not only the 32-page Introduction , but also his 47-page essay called ‘‘Commentaries,’’ as well as the extensive , contextualizing footnotes and the exhaustive critical Bibliography. Two versions of A Modest Defence are included , as well as paratextual materials and appended texts from later and pirated editions (the latter by the infamous Edmund Curll). Mr. Primer reprints early reviews of the pamphlet, and, in his ‘‘Commentaries,’’ he reviews the contemporary readings of A Modest Proposal . A Modest Defence of Publick STEWS: or, An ESSAY upon WHOR- 247 ING (1724) was published anonymously , Mandeville simply being ‘‘the likeliest person to have written this work.’’ And, as Mr. Primer effectively argues, it does not in fact present a coherent argument for legalizing prostitution so that it may be monitored by the government , as the extended title proposes it will. Mandeville’s ‘‘defense of his plan seems intentionally flawed.’’ This text, as he effectively demonstrates, is an elusive ‘‘combination of jest and earnest,’’ making it impossible to tell whether the plan it offers is seriously proposed or merely an occasion for lewdness on the part of the ‘‘PHIL-PORNEY’’ who signed its dedication. He is certainly right to argue that the ‘‘sexual imagery’’ deployed in this pamphlet ‘‘becomes a satiric gesture, a weapon against those who would repress the irrepressible.’’ In ‘‘a lively and carefully crafted piece of literary prose,’’ Mr. Primer argues , the rhetorical structure of A Modest Defence adheres to classical forms of oration. Mandeville’s pamphlet is also a web of paradoxes, beginning with its title : ‘‘After all, how ‘modest’ can a ‘modest defense’ or apology for houses of prostitution be?’’ Mr. Primer elucidates this text by, for the first time, properly categorizing its genre as a ‘‘mock oration,’’ and a...