The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

Abstract

REVIEWS degree to which they might be said to precipitate the Other (A) as God. Hamlet offers perhaps the most striking example of this phenomenon. Hillman defines the protagonist as the “self-speaker par excellence” (19), and comments that the play itself “occupies the centre of this book” (107). Certainly references to the play are densely scattered, but more sustained discussion is sketchy and tends to revolve around competing theories of sub­ jectivity, and the deployment of other works, used intertextually, to resolve specific issues. The formal conclusion of the book as a whole consists of Hill­ man’s attempt to locate Hamlet “at the intertextual intersection of Marie de Gournay and Montaigne” (275). These, however, are quibbles. Hillman’s subject is important, and he tack­ les it with both flair and a due sense of that importance. This is not, perhaps, a book that many will want to devour at a single meal, but it is certainly one that anyone concerned with medieval and early modern drama will need to take into account. It is filled with original and frequently provocative insights; since many of the texts he considers are the less familiar ones, the fresh perspective on subjectivity and its representation he brings to bear may help to restore them to a more appropriate prominence. Hillman’s flair is stylistic as well; as befits his subject he speaks himself elegantly to emerge as a wry, dry, intelligent voice given to amusing asides and witty throw-away lines. Not untypical is his observation that “the most profound contribution of the 1602 Additions to The Spanish Tragedy is to constitute the God that Hieronimo is driven to replace as less of a ‘prick’, more of a phallus” (128). This work shows every sign of being the first stage of a protracted and more detailed engagement with the topic that he here surveys so widely; it would be agreeable to think so, but whatever the case, it is certain that students of early modern drama, whatever their critical orientation, have already much to thank Hillman for. p e t e r a y e r s / Memorial University Mary Wollstonecraft, The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman, D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf, eds. (Peterborough: Broad­ view Press, 1997). 488. $12.95 paper. Broadview Press has issued another useful textbook in its Literary Texts series. This edition of Wollstonecraft’s Vindications, first published in the early 1790s, is edited by the renowned team that produced Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for Broadview. Frankenstein is supposed to be the novel most frequently taught in undergraduate courses, according to booksellers, and the significant volume of sales of the edition by Macdonald and Scherf demon­ strates its high ranking as a school text in North America. 475 ESC 24, 1998 The same degree of thoughtfulness and care that is evident in the Franken­ stein edition is manifested in The Vindications. While there are a number of competing editions, especially of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, this edition contextualizes the works more fully than the others. I was pleasantly surprised to find, for example, in Appendix A an excerpt from The Life of Olaudah Equiano entitled “The Revolutionary Moment.” The inclusion of a selection from this slave narrative, published in 1789, gives a different, more immediate texture to Wollstonecraft’s arguments on the issue of the slave trade. In her Vindication of the Rights of Men addressed to Edmund Burke, Wollstonecraft vehemently disagrees with his view that “an abolition of the infernal slave trade would not only be unsound policy, but a flagrant infringe­ ment of the laws ... that induced the planters to purchase their estates” (86). She argues: “But is it not consonant with justice, with the common prin­ ciples of humanity, not to mention Christianity, to abolish this abominable mischief?” (86). Wollstonecraft’s appeal to emotion, to common humanity is understandable given that we are told she had favourably reviewed The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano for the Analytical Re­ view (8 ). The excerpt from Equiano’s narrative describes “cruelties of every kind” perpetrated on slaves — rapes of young African girls, beatings, mutila­ tion, brandings...