Structures and Subjectivities: Attending to Early Modern Women by Joan E. Hartman, Adele Seeff

Abstract

MLR, 103.4, 2oo8 109I Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sagrario L6pez Poza provides a broader, historical overview of the Spanish emblem production, followed by some stimulating suggestions fornew research based on electronic editions. Ralph Deko ninck is less concerned with regional specificities thanwith the transnational practice of the Jesuits. Focusing on the relationship between symbols and meditation, Deko ninck emphasizes the pragmatic, rhetorical nature of Jesuit application of symbols. Daniel Russell concludes thevolume with a survey of new directions inFrench em blem studies, including thedevelopment of his own research from the analysis of for mal diversity tohis thesis of theemblem as a 'mode de communication' (p. I39),most fullydeveloped inhis Emblematic Structures inRenaissance French Culture (Toronto: Toronto University Press, I995). According toRussell, this new definition has ren dered the discussion about the relative value of text and image in the signification process redundant (p. 140). Even ifsome authors in this collection would probably disagree, thisprovocative perspective forms aworthy end to thisuseful volume. UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS ARNOUDVISSER Structures and Subjectivities: Attending toEarly Modern Women. Ed. by JOANE. HARTMAN and ADELE SEEFF. Newark: University of Delaware Press. 2007. viii+ 394 pp. $52.50. ISBN 978-o-874I3-94I-9. Structure and Subjectivities is an intriguing discussion of earlymodern women and gender, adopting a cross-disciplinary perspective which includes literature,history, art history, and musicology. It covers a broad geographical context encompassing the traditional focus on Europe and theWestern world, thus offering a worldwide perspective on the topic. The section 'Geographies and Policies' calls fora rethinking about binary divides. The idealized pictorial spaces of the Italian Renaissance city,and of femaleportraiture, are scrutinized inorder todiscuss theblurred boundaries between public and private, masculine and feminine (Adrian Randolph). Similarly, thepropelling force of female spirituality, inCatholic Europe, prompts a revision of the traditional distinction be tween religious and secular spaces, since sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious women operated within theconvent, aswell aswithin thehermitage, and thedomestic settingof theirhome (AlisonWeber and Craig A. Monson). This rethinkingofgender divides also concerns women's position in Italian economic life.Only by looking at areas such as reproduction, domestic and rural labour, and low-income work can we properly assess the full impact ofwomen's (and children's) work (JoanneM. Ferraro). 'Degree, Priority, and Place' challenges some of our main assumptions about oth erness, sex, and race. This is particularly important when we focus on areas of the world where Christianity was just 'amarginal curiosity' (p. 152). Chinese women's foot-binding changed between the fifteenthand seventeenth centuries, inconnection with market innovations, and with the co-operation of women who made and de corated their footwear, ultimately manipulating their bodies and the fascination for them (Dorothy Ko). In spite of the gender-unbalanced legal position of Ottoman women in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in law courts they enjoyed rights-regarding divorce and property issues-which fewof their Western counter parts possessed (Margaret R. Hunt). Back inEurope, printed discourses and images of same-sex female relations amounted not somuch to evidence of sexual desire as towomen's strategic claim to construct female political discourses in the emerging public sphere of the late seventeenth century (Susan S. Lanser). 'Built Environments' reconsiders relations between gender, space, and represen tations of the body. Thomas Jefferson'sMonticello house, and the hearth of his I092 Reviews Virginian plantation, serves as an example to discuss the ambivalent meaning of domestic space. Monticello was designed primarily to accommodate his own living and activities. Jefferson'sextended female familywho also lived in it-especially his well-educated daughter and granddaughters-understood this space as attractive and comfortable, as well as much too demanding and time-consuming tomanage, and therefore in conflictwith their intellectual hunger and desire for learning (Elizabeth V. Chew). In a different context, that of Renaissance Florence, female portraits of young women from prominent families, dressed with sumptuous clothing, bore an ambivalent meaning too.While calling for female visibility, they projected models of femininitywhich bore a distinctive meaning. They were signs of family status and wealth, which were fundamental for establishing useful family and marriage alliances. In the deeply patriarchal and highly mercantile Florentine system, elite women-their dowries and social capital-were constructed...