The Practice of Quixotism: Postmodern Theory and Eighteenth-Century Women’s Writing by Scott Paul Gordon

Abstract

41 SCOTT PAUL GORDON. The Practice of Quixotism: Postmodern Theory and Eighteenth-Century Women’s Writing. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006. Pp. xviii ⫹ 240. $65. In early modern England, when reason contemplating Nature had virtually supplanted faith contemplating Revelation as the touchstone of truth, it was hoped that, finally, certainty of knowledge was within reach. Yet as Mr. Gordon explains, the prerequisite for direct experience of Nature was that the mind purge itself of what Bacon called idols, internalized forms drawn from tradition, and free itself from what Locke called fetters, ‘‘other mens Opinions’’ and the ‘‘Pastor.’’ Only then might reason apprehend reality passively and truly, as in a mirror. Eighteenth-century writers, however, raised serious doubts about this epistemological project. Those who perceived reality through internal filters were depicted at the time as quixotes. In ‘‘orthodox’’ quixote stories they would end by finally opening their eyes and seeing reality directly. But in ‘‘unorthodox’’ stories, which Mr. Gordon emphasizes here, readers would be trapped in quixotic visions and persuaded that preconceptions were well nigh inevitable. Recent critics are mistaken, he thinks, when they present Arabella, the heroine of Lennox’s Female Quixote (1752), as a feminist whose quixotism is a strategy to resist her father’s authority. Comparing Lennox’s work to quixote narratives written fifty years later by Edgeworth, Hamilton, Tenney, and Barrett—stories that replicate the Female Quixote’s formula —Mr. Gordon shows Arabella as an ‘‘orthodox’’ quixote who finally opens her eyes. Critics take the wrong tack when they stress ‘‘the content of Arabella’s quixotism,’’ the romance tradition where women had power, and ignore the ‘‘structure’’ of the novel, in which Lennox undercuts Arabella repeatedly to reveal her perceptions as aberrant. What seems to clinch Mr. Gordon’s argument is that Edgeworth and Barrett read the story just as he does. In Sarah Fielding’s David Simple (1744), the virtuous hero is incapable of discerning hypocrisy. Although Fielding shows discomfort with ‘‘suspicion,’’ she licenses it when ‘‘accurate observation’’ of another’s behavior has shown that something is wrong. Yet Simple never opens his eyes, even when ‘‘almost infallible proof’’ is offered him, for no evidence is ever sufficient for him to judge another harshly. Fielding thus undercuts the usefulness of direct experience for anyone choosing to view others through an internal lens. Mr. Gordon contends that when critics read Mary Wortley Montagu’s response to Swift’s ‘‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’’ (1730) as an ‘‘orthodox’’ quixote story, they fail to notice its form. Whereas Swift occupies ‘‘a privileged epistemological position ’’ above Strephon in the satire and creates a ‘‘reality effect’’ by his quasi-scientific anatomy of Celia’s room, Montagu responds by trapping Swift inside a Restoration genre. She tells the story of how he visited a prostitute, found himself impotent, and then lashed out at the woman in angry satire. She thereby explodes the ‘‘reality effect ’’ of his satire by giving it the form of a libertine lament on sexual dysfunction: ‘‘No critic has before enrolled Montagu’s poem in the genre of the Restoration ‘imperfect enjoyment’ or ‘disappointment’ poem as developed by Etherege, Behn, Wycherley and Rochester.’’ 42 Mr. Gordon discusses two works beyond the Scriblerian’s purview, Sophia Lee’s The Recess (1783–1785) and Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). In both, the general epistemological ‘‘difficulty of knowing others and even myself’’ (quoting William Godwin) is highlighted; in the latter, the practice of quixotism is seen as salutary and spiritualizing. By the end of the century, Mr. Gordon concludes, we have arrived at the opposite pole of Bacon’s project to achieve a passive, mirror-like experience of reality. Replying to recent critical theory, according to which all human beings are quixotes incapable of seeing the surrounding world except through ‘‘cultural lenses of which we are largely and necessarily unaware,’’ Mr. Gordon in the final chapter defends agency and argues that we need not be blindly gripped by our beliefs. We can surely be self-conscious quixotes who take responsibility for preconceptions and ‘‘actively’’ shape the world we ‘‘ostensibly find.’’ He sets his analysis of these quixote stories against an impressive panorama of eighteenth-century works. From his reflections—a...