Plotting Women: Gender and Narration in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Novel by Alison A. Case (review)

Abstract

the Worldto create Relations among Mankind;and Solitude is an unnaturalBeing to us' (p. 4I). In fact, Steele attributes these words to a fictitious female correspondent,in a paperwhich attemptsto account forthe popularityof'Women's Men'. The ability to endure solitude is implicitly equated with a discrete, independent, essentially male identity. Edward Young uses typically masculinist language in NightThoughts: 'O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought, I Lost to the noble sallies of the mind, IWho think it solitude, to be alone' (iii. 6-8). Soubrenie notes here only the paradoxicalironywherebyeighteenth-centurypoetry 'se donne tous les moyens de ruiner ce qu'elle construit' (p. 29I). The domestic spaces in which ladiesendured so much lonelinessremain uncharted. Frequentreferences to the visual arts demand illustration.Soubrenie's keen eye for emotional geometry enables her to form an exciting synthesisbetween the sister arts of poetry, painting, and landscape gardening: 'Apres la ligne verticale de l'ascension, ou du plongeon thietrical dans les flots tumultueux, apres les lignes horizontales de l'infini de la mer, l'homme du XVIIIe siecle revient donc a un parcours sinueux, tout en courbes et en detours' (p. 202). Do these horticultural sinuositiesreflectdoubts about the dangers of solitude, 'si attrayantea la premiere vue' (p. I95)? Gifted with imaginative sensitivityand formidableacumen, Soubrenie reads her chosen texts on their own terms without losing critical balance. As she reveals the creativeenergyof Young'sJightThoughts andThomson's Seasons, contrastsCowper's effortsat communication with Smart'sobsessivestrugglefor expression,illuminates Matthew Green's heroic endeavours to view his own depressionwith detachment, findsa niche forJames Hervey'sprose meditations,unpacksthe ironiesof Cowper's Castawayand rescues Richard Savage's 'watry Grave' from the realm of cliche (pp. 163, 181), she inspiresrenewed interestin a group of authors,some of whom, even among eighteenth-centuryspecialists,are often littlemore than a name. UNIVERSITY OF READING CAROLYN D. WILLIAMS PlottingWomen. Gender andNarration intheEighteenthandNineteenth -Century British Novel. By ALISON A. CASE. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia. 1999. X+ 223 pp. $37.50. The title of Alison Case's book is misleading. PlottingWomen is not about women plottersat all;indeed, the book'scentralargumentdenieswomen thisrole. The only 'plottingwoman' is Case herself,who awardsthe technique of'feminine narration' the status of a literary convention, while at the same time arguing that it lacks coherence and meaning, has no moral authority, and cannot stand on its own within a text. The depressingconclusion of PlottingWomen is that the epistolaryor diary-writingheroine who tells her own tale, who is able to write 'I' with such compelling immediacy, has no adequate voice of her own. Since 'feminine narration'takes place in the immediate present, its narratorscannot 'shape' their own stories retrospectively, draw moral conclusions from past events, or 'plot' theirown futures.Worse,the 'femininenarrator'requiresthe helpof a male 'masternarrator 'or a male pseudo-editor,someone who can plot andpreach,fora narrative to functionproperly. Case's starting-point assumes that eighteenth and nineteenth-century authors accepted a prevailingethic of passivefemale virtue, and that theirreadersexpected literarytexts to supportthis kind of virtue. Any 'artfulness'on the part of a female character, Case maintains, undermines the virtue of the feminine narrator, thus risking the loss of reader sympathy. So, from Case's perspective, Defoe has no the Worldto create Relations among Mankind;and Solitude is an unnaturalBeing to us' (p. 4I). In fact, Steele attributes these words to a fictitious female correspondent,in a paperwhich attemptsto account forthe popularityof'Women's Men'. The ability to endure solitude is implicitly equated with a discrete, independent, essentially male identity. Edward Young uses typically masculinist language in NightThoughts: 'O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought, I Lost to the noble sallies of the mind, IWho think it solitude, to be alone' (iii. 6-8). Soubrenie notes here only the paradoxicalironywherebyeighteenth-centurypoetry 'se donne tous les moyens de ruiner ce qu'elle construit' (p. 29I). The domestic spaces in which ladiesendured so much lonelinessremain uncharted. Frequentreferences to the visual arts demand illustration.Soubrenie's keen eye for emotional geometry enables her to form an exciting synthesisbetween the sister arts of poetry, painting, and landscape gardening: 'Apres la ligne verticale de l'ascension, ou du plongeon thietrical dans les flots tumultueux, apres les lignes horizontales de l'infini...