Walsingham, and: A Letter to the Women of England and The Natural Daughter (review)

REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS305 Mary Robinson. Walsingham, ed. Julie A. Shaffer. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2003. 559pp. US16.95; CDN19.95;UK8.99. ISBN 155111 -299-X. Mary Robinson. A Letter to the Women ofEngland and TL· Natural Daughter, ed. Sharon M. Setzer. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2003. 336pp. US15.95; CDN18.95;UK8.99. ISBN 1-55111-236-1. That Mary Robinson, poet, actress, and novelist, has regained her standing as a seminal writer of the Romantic period is evidenced by more dian fiftyfive articles and books produced about her in the last decade. Readers now have ready access to three more Robinson works through the Broadview Literary Text Series. Broadview's welcome edition ofMary Robinson's Selected Poems (ed.Juditii Pascoe, 2000) is nowjoined by recent editions oftwo ofher literary works and a polemical piece: WaUingham, TL· NaturalDaughter, and A Letter to tL· Women ofEngland. Building upon its well-earned reputation as a press that provides easy, affordable access to primary texts, Broadview clearly establishes itself as the primary source of Robinson's oeuvre. Julia A. Shaffer and Sharon M. Setzer continue the Broadview tradition of sound editorial practices. Both editions provide die now familiar elements of the Broadview Literary Series, namely contemporary critical reviews, chronology, a scholarly introduction, and a selection of appendices to contextualize die work. Of the two editions, Setzer's has the clearer and more accessible style. She relates A Letter to the Women ofEngland and TAe Natural Daughter to the Wollstonecraftian tradition ofwomen's rights in late 1790s Britain.Juxtaposing Robinson's polemic—with its strong criticism ofthe sexual double standard— widi her novel uncovers the ideological positioning of TL· NaturalDaughter's plot Setzer's precise attention to detail diroughout is evident dirough her correction ofRobinson's birthdate. The discrepancy between what is generally taken as Robinson's birthdate (27 November 1758) and Setzer's assertion of27 November 1756 arises, we learn, from an error (perhaps deliberate) in Robinson's own Memoirs when cross-checked widi "die date recorded in the Register ofBaptisms at die church ofStAugustin die Less in Bristol" (11). How fitting that a woman renowned for her role-playing and concerned with appearance should have dropped a couple ofyears in her own Memoirsl The chronology helpfully reminds or informs the reader of major events pertaining to the French Revolution or to influential characters in Robinson's life. Setzer's choice of appendices (Robinson's tributes to the Duchess of Devonshire, excerpts from the MorningPost, Richard Powhele's Unsex'dFemales, and Wakefield's Reflections on ^Present Condition of^Female Sex) is clear and consistent with her introductory essay. The footnotes are informative for the intended audience ofeidier "die readerwidi a particular interest in Robinson or the general reader relatively unfamiliar with eighteenth-century life and literature" (38). 306 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION17:2 Shaffer, in her edition, focuses upon die importance of role-playing in Robinson's life and literary works as she assumes roles variously as daughter, actress, mother, wife, poet, and novelist. On die stage and dien as a writer, Robinson uses cross-dressing to shed herfemale gender and enter die male's body and space with its accompanying social, legal, sexual, and political powers. Shaffer's appendices provide fascinating material on fictional and factual cross-dressers in the late eighteendi century. There is, however, a looseness between introductory comments and later development of subsequent material. For example, Shaffer cites Hannah Snell (the same Snell of Norfolk that contemporary novelist and poet Amelia Opie excitedly records having met) as one of diose women "who went to war tojoin their husbands, highlighting diat diey did so out oflove" (16nl). The fuller story in appendix B informs us that Snell, abandoned by her husband when pregnant, pursues her errant partner when the infant dies, more out of revenge dian a desire for reconciliation, "for there are no bounds to be set eidier to Love,Jealousy, or Hatred, in die Female Mind" (520) ! En route she becomes an accomplished soldier, and when her husband is executed for murder before she can meet him she happily continues on her new life patii. Similarly, while Shaffer's introductory essay addresses some of die transgressive possibilities of Robinson's...