Description
Book SynopsisThe general category of 'woman' muddles the binaries between mother and whore, self and Other, center and periphery."-from the Introduction
Trade ReviewScholars of the emergent empire in the 18th century should see sexuality in terms of feminism's internal structures and its 'Othering'. Nussbaum discusses polygamy in African narratives and in England, examining Mary Wollstonecraft's work, Anna Falconbridge's narrative of her voyages to Sierra Leone, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's description of her timein Turkey. She also looks at prostitution, romance, sati, and a variety of other subjects found in travel literature, thereby providing a view of both the Englishwomen and the Other woman... Nussbaum succeeds in making the 'ideological working of empire and Englishwomen's complicity within it more legible. Choice Self-consciously exemplifies what a feminist new historicism would look like; Nussbaum's introduction and opening two chapters technically but clearly lay out a fresh approach to eighteenth-century writing about the self and to autobiography in general. -- Mitzi Myers Women's Review of Books An exemplary model of political criticism. -- Shawn Lisa Maurer Eighteenth-Century Fiction
