Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination by Barbara Taylor (review)

Abstract

MLR, 100.3, 2005 789 I suspect, though, that Adam's chief claim to modest recognition derives from his contributions as secular essayist in the new medium of newspaper publication. With admirable care, Franklin assesses Adams's role in producing, collaboratively with Matthew Adams and Mather Byle, the notable Proteus Echo series of essays that ran in the New-England Weekly Journal between 1727 and 1728. Particularly drawn to comment on literary style and theory, Adams wrote pieces reflecting polite cultivation and sociability. His contributions were occasionally witty,and consistently more urbane than soulful and God-haunted Puritans ofthe firstgeneration could have countenanced. Thus, Adams usefully illustrates the era's general shifttowards polite secular culture. Or, as Franklin sums things up, 'He reflected and contributed to the changing cultural realities of the 1720s' (p. 14). And unlike some better-known figures (including Edwards and Franklin) who lived during this period of crucial transition, Adams combined ministerial and secular identities in a single person. The Other John Adams is clearly written, thoroughly researched, and judicious in its assessment of technical matters such as the degree of verbal adaptation that Adams introduced into his translations. Although the book's subj ect matter and approach will not attract general readers, social historians and students of colonial-era writing can profitfrom the information presented here, particularly in the third chapter, devoted to Adams's essays. University of Connecticut John Gatta Mary Wollstonecraftand theFeminist Imagination. By Barbara Taylor. (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism) Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 2003. xvi + 331 pp. ?45; $65 (pbk ?16.95; $23). ISBN o521 -66144-7 (pbk 0-521-00417-9). The title of this superb book is unfortunate, and Taylor herself suggests a better option in the introduction: 'This book is a study of Mary Wollstonecraft's radi? cal imagination, particularly her feminist imaginings' (p. 4, emphasis added). Woll? stonecraft's status as an icon of modern feminism has led to restrictive ideological readings which do not evoke the complexities of her historical context. Moreover, these readings obfuscate the contradictions, usually potential challenges to a femi? nist agenda, in Wollstonecraft's responses to the pressures of her milieu. Taylor is the firstone to address the historical complexities of Wollstonecraft's often intensely personal expressions of radicalism without reducing them in one way or another so as to accommodate a twentieth-century feminist paradigm. Wollstonecraft's paradoxi? cal relationships with various forms of eighteenth-century radicalism are the main subject of this book. In addition to her discussion of Wollstonecraft's place amidst the revolutionary intelligentsia ofthe 1790s and the commercial world of professional writing, Taylor also provides us with an exhaustive treatment of Wollstonecraft's complex relationship with rational Protestant Nonconformity. Taylor uses the term 'imaginings' carefully; she wants to draw attention to the word's ambiguity: 'its dual reference to conscious, reasoned creativity [. . .] and to the implicit, often unconscious fantasies and wishes that underlie intellectual innovation' (p. 4). Taylor's subtle understanding of Wollstonecraft's incongruous intellectual and emotional life constitutes the real genius of this critical study. Neither a con? ventional intellectual history nor a biography, this is a meticulous exploration of 'the pressures [Wollstonecraft's] life and times exerted on her thought, and her imagina? tive responses to these' (p. 4). No other study offerssuch a penetrating, sympathetic portrait of Wollstonecraft, warts and all. Insecure, jealous, often misogynist, but also idealistic, passionately committed to people and causes, Wollstonecraft emerges 79? Reviews neither saint nor sinner, just gloriously and fallibly human. Taylor is a sharp and generous reader of Wollstonecraft's character, of her writings, and of her times. The two main sections of the book draw on a wide range of Wollstonecraft's writ? ings, and most chapters centre around one work which most convincingly embodies a set of particular issues, but one never feels that a particular model of thought is rigidly imposed on a text. In 'Imagining Women' Wollstonecraft's larger ideological context is explained, while 'Feminism and Revolution' focuses more narrowly on the context of utopian radicalism. The firstsection starts,predictably enough, with a dis? cussion of Wollstonecraft's literary and philosophical endeavours in the professional world of print in...