Empowering the Feminine: The Narratives of Mary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796-1812 (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 111 or even an inanimate object that passes among members of society recording its impressions. I did not realize how many such novels there are, and Bellamy's discussion is enlightening. On the other hand, I do not think she proves her case that these texts "encouraged a far more extensive analysis of the economic and social base of the commercial state than was possible within more anthropomorphic works" (p. 125). Indeed, is it not Bellamy's point that novels—about people!—try to sort out conflicts within the "commercial state"? Sandra Sherman University of Arkansas Eleanor Ty. Empowering the Feminine: The Narratives ofMary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796-1812. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. ? + 224pp. $45; £33.75. ISBN 0-8020-4362-3. Even after more than a quarter-century offeminist criticism, potentially important women writers remain "undiscovered." A name like Jane West's may arouse only vague associations with a multitude of mediocre female scribblers, or, at best, the slightly less vague notion that its possessor held conservative, boring political and social opinions. Eleanor Ty has now rescued three previously neglected women who wrote in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Focusing on the prose of West, Mary Robinson, and Amelia Opie, she attends both to the ideological work performed by this writing and to its literary accomplishment. By virtue of its detail and its conviction, her study will surely convince at least some readers that its subjects have been unjustly neglected. Ty has chosen the particular writers at issue here partly because they appear more conformist in their attitudes than do the "revolutionary" novelists she discussed in her previous book, Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s. Although all three react more or less directly to the life and work of Mary Wollstonecraft, they do not openly endorse her principles. Instead, Ty argues, they explorethe possibilities ofempowering the female subject by glorifying traditional "feminine" values. Their rhetoric draws on the sentimental and Gothic traditions; their plots emphasize the plight of the seduced maiden. But they also pay close attention to problems of filial relations, and by investigating the power of the ties between daughters and fathers, daughters and mothers, they expose unexpected complexities in familiar plots. Indeed, unexpected complexity is what consistently attracts Ty's attention. She demonstrates persuasively that no simple ideological or rhetorical label will suffice to define the accomplishments of the writers who interest her. Mary Robinson, who experimented as actress, poet, novelist, playwright, and autobiographer, also had a notorious if brief career as mistress to the Prince of Wales. A famous beauty, she attracted the attention of such painters as George Romney, Thomas Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, all of whom painted her portrait. In her popular Memoirs, she describes herself as actress, narrates her 112 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 12:1 affair with the Prince, and reports on clothes she has worn in various situations. In other words, she represents herselfin stereoptyical feminine terms, employing also the opposed stereotype of good mother, but neglecting her actual accomplishment as a writer. But in Thoughts on the Conditions of Women, and on the Injustice of Mental Subordination, probably written about the same time, she articulates her views, as Ty puts it, "from the position of the 'thinking' woman" (p. 34), offering forceful feminist analysis. And in her novel Walsingham, Robinson imagines a woman living much of her life in male disguise, then uses this plot device as a means to investigate male and female positions in society. The False Friend, a disillusioned work that should be read, Ty suggests, not as realism but as an almost phantasmagoric vision of its times, exposes the vulnerability of the female situation, imagining a series of patriarchal monsters who prey on women. The Natural Daughter employs autobiographical material in its study of heroines of sensibility, one of whom struggles for financial and social independence. In short, Robinson, although fully aware of her audience's desires and demands, proved adept at devising strategies to articulate a genuine social critique—while yet representing "femininity" in familiar forms. Ty's analyses of West and Opie likewise discover evidence of social criticism in the guise of...