Modes of Discipline: Women, Conservatism and the Novel after the French Revolution by Lisa Wood (review)

Abstract

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 eighteenth-century London. Chapter 2, 'The Chimera of Woman? hood', re-examines Wollstonecraft's familiar debate with her two main adversaries, Burke and Rousseau. The next chapter, 'For the Love of God', is probably Taylor's most original contribution to Wollstonecraft scholarship. Taylor makes a convincing argument for the crucial importance of religion in Wollstonecraft's ideas about eros and creativity.Wollstonecraft's posthumous career is traced in an epilogue. The second section explores in six chapters Wollstonecraft's role as a revolutionary propagandist and her engagement with various radicalisms, with a keen perspective on the tensions between French and British versions of revolutionary radicalism. The final chapter, like the closing chapter on religion in the firstsection, is another highlight, lucid in argument and very engagingly written. It addresses The Wrongs of Woman; or,Maria as a representation of future feminist possibilities, complicated by a strong analysis of the working-class Jemima, 'Wollstonecraft's angriest literary creation' (p. 241). This magisterial study is the carefully crafted result of two decades of work; it demonstrates an excellent command of Wollstonecraft's oeuvre, and it is formidably informed about competing intellectual and ideological systems in the eighteenth cen? tury. Taylor's work is living proof that research which is carefully developed over the years, as opposed to the hurriedly rewritten dissertation-book produced against tenure and research assessment deadlines, is just so much better. Victoria University of Wellington Heidi Thomson Modes of Discipline: Women, Conservatism and the Novel after the French Revolu? tion. By Lisa Wood. (Bucknell Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture) Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2003. 189 pp. ?32. ISBN 0-8387-5527-5. In Modes ofDiscipline Lisa Wood argues persuasively fora scholarly focus on the no? vels of so-called English conservative women writers ofthe decades following 1789, chiefly Mary Brunton, Laetitia Maria Hawkins, Elizabeth Hamilton, Hannah More, and Jane West. Although, as Wood points out, critics tend to privilege the 'radical' English writers ofthe 1790s such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Hays, those writ? ers she terms 'loyal conformists' greatly 'outnumbered revolutionaries and radicals' (p. 31). Wood examines the attempts by More and West to promote the virtues of female domesticity and piety in order to support a wider thesis that the reactionary backlash had far-reaching connotations forthe form and content of literature in Eng? lish. Wood argues with impressive lucidity and focus, and her stringent approach renders what is, at times, difficultliterary theory superbly clear. Modes of Discipline is particularly original on More, and the light it sheds on more minor writers such as Jane Porter is most welcome. The author's conviction that such writers are cru? cial figures in the history of literature corresponds to increasing effortsto evaluate MLRy 100.3, 2005 791 English literature of the Revolutionary period outside the precincts of the useful, although occasionally limiting, tag of 'Romantic'. As Wood notes, with characteristic assurance, the 'values of Romanticism?individualism, solitude, passion, imagina? tion, nonconformity?tend to conflict with prevalent ideologies of femininity of the period, or the material circumstances of women's lives'. From the pursuit of such principles, women writers are 'almost necessarily excluded' (p. 20). Wood pays particular attention to the narrative voice that her writers adopt in their novels, and, although sensitive to the nuances inherent in political terminology, largely defines a conservative approach as one that supports anti-radicalism and endorses 'containing female activity within a redefined domestic...