Misogynous Economies: The Business of Literature in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Laura Mandell's Misogynous Economies presents three themes. Her analysis focuses on the business of literature and the business of reading in the eighteenth century. However, a study of Mandell's text itself reveals an unstated third theme: critical reading in the twenty-first century depends as much on thorough knowledge of an era and its literature as it does on thorough knowledge of relevant theoretical approaches.

In Mandell's analysis, misogyny forms the link between the business of literature in which the text is a marketable object that promotes or critiques capitalism, and the business of reading, in which a return on the reader's investment in the text solidifies the work as canonical, commodifiable literature. Mandell identifies such literature as the saleable product of what she terms sadistic reading. She draws on psychoanalytic theory to link the economies of desire that arise in the commodity culture of capitalism with an interpretation of canonicity that depends on a text's literariness, that is, the opportunities offered to the reader to assume multiple textual identities. Such a quality is the essence of what Mandell terms sadomasochistic reading. Both reading strategies are enhanced or stymied by the figuration of woman in the text.

The argument is as innovative as it is complex. Two aspects of the argument demonstrate Mandell's command of her subject and her placement of her work in the larger context of critical reading. One is that the close readings of select eighteenth-century texts, as well as concepts such as sadistic versus sadomasochistic reading, draw heavily on literary theory but also rely on the study of socio-cultural phenomenon. The other is that the interpretations given in each chapter also address overarching questions posed by feminist theorists. The results of both advance the development of feminist theory and the techniques of critical reading as well as an understanding of eighteenth-century texts. I offer examples from two chapters: chapter two, Capitalism and Rape: Thomas Otway's The Orphan, and chapter five, Misogyny and the Canon: The Character of Women in Anthologies of Poetry.

In linking the rise of capitalism with theories of reading, Mandell presents an analysis of Thomas Otway's The Orphan by using Rene Girard's theory of the scapegoat and Marcel Mauss' theory of the gift to relate the depictions of business with the economy of women's virtue. The interesting slant in her theory is its focus on the similarity of the emotions behind the desire to acquire capital or women and the application of desire to strategies of reading. Her discussion of business relations in feudal versus capitalist society, as well as the 1720 South Sea Bubble crisis contemporaneous with Otway's play, form the socio-cultural backdrop for a discussion of rape in Otway's text. The by now familiar reading of women as exchange objects established in essays such as Gale Rubin's "The Traffic in Women" is enhanced by the application of the gift economy.

Mandell uses Mauss's concept of potlatch or total self-expenditure to illustrate the spending to bankruptcy that motivated two historical events central to her argument. In order to illustrate spending for its own sake, she cites both the trend of people spending beyond their means to keep up appearances (halted by the 1563 Act of Apparel), as well as the South Sea Bubble - a pyramid scheme that fed on itself. According to Mandell's interpretation, in the capitalist system in Otway's text, men compete for a woman as a prize that ultimately serves as a medium of exchange - an exchange violently terminated in her rape by one of the competitors. Sadomasochistic pleasure of expenditure in pursuit of and identification with the object of desire while disavowing such identification unsuccessfully culminates in the sadistic pleasure of taking a prize from a rival.

What Mandell terms the scapegoating of the directors that halted the South Sea Bubble finds its parallel in Otway's play in the raped woman's suicide, but cannot halt the sadomasochism of the reader's identifying with the heroine yet disavowing that feeling that generates the text's literariness. The underlying point of feminist theory in the chapter addresses the question of power in representations of rape as an erotic as opposed to a violent act. Mandell theorizes that "Power relations become eroticized as part of the cultural work of promoting relations among capitalist entrepreneurs" and if the reader does not sympathize overmuch with the violated heroine, her body is used to establish "sadistic capitalist relations" (38).

In chapter 5, Mandell challenges feminist theory to move beyond what has become, especially to detractors, a reductionist and easily dismissed idea that women's writing is interesting just because it is done by women, and prove women's writing has the aesthetic value, the literariness that characterizes universally highly regarded men's writing. Mandell traces the historical development of the anthology as the province of immortal male authors while female authors are relegated to miscellanies. From rhyming dictionaries to volumes of collected works, Mandell's claim is this: "canonical knowledge is produced by the abjection of carnal knowledge (in all senses of the term) from the field of literary pleasure" (126). She draws on all of her previous theoretical arguments to suggest that the transcendence of male poets depends on the displacement of "mortal flesh" onto female poets and its resultant misogyny: "It is because women are equated with the material that a forgetting of and disgust with women poets underwrites canon formation itself" (127). Mandell presents Anna Letitia Barbauld, subject of chapter 6, to show that female authors can write their way out of misogyny directed at them, and set up an alternate aesthetic to the canon that barred them because of their sex.

Mandell constructs an elaborate theoretical framework, using social cultural evidence to support her reading of misogyny in the selected texts. Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection forms the backbone of Mandell's argument, supported by additional theories in each chapter, such as Girard's scapegoating and Mauss' gift from literary theory, as well as psychoanalysis, such as D. W. Winnicott's idea of potential space. At times, the theory requires a bit too much explanation to make the connection with misogyny as in chapter 2 where an explanation of Girard's theory of scapegoating supported by Mary Douglas's theory of pollution rituals is long and detailed enough for the reader to lose the point. Similarly the number of theorists Mandell cites can be overwhelming to a reader who is not so theoretically sophisticated, although attractive to a reader who is interested in theory but may not be as knowledgeable about the eighteenth century.

Ultimately the strong presence of literary theory and the equally strong knowledge of the literature and culture of the eighteenth century suggest the direction of critical reading for the twenty-first century. Literary theory is not only a helpful tool for gaining insight into the texts of an era; it is also a topic of discussion. The author must be able to analyze the theories he or she has already used to present the texts of an era to the reader and use them to construct a new theory. This new theory will offer the reader a strategy for critical reading of texts from many eras or an insight on the nature of critical reading itself. In this case, misogyny as a way to gain access to a text goes beyond the reader's predisposition and does not validate misogyny as a socio-cultural or a textual concept, but points out that insights can be gained by exploring misogyny in a way that differs from the established feminist perspective.

Mandell offers a new perspective on what has become an entrenched view of the role of misogyny in Augustan satire and provides a paradigm for examining the texts of that era and other eras. Indeed, by means of her penetrating examination of the hatred of women, through the wide lens of socio-cultural and economic trends of the era, Mandell posits misogyny as a necessary element to the dynamics of the era rather than defining it simply as a stereotype of the age. And her skillful blending of knowledge of the age with knowledge of theoretical texts provides the reader with a view of the subject matter that is both comprehensive and thought provoking.