The Legacy of Boadicea. Gender and Nation in Early Modern England (review)

236 Reviews Mikalachki, Jodi, The Legacy ofBoadicea. Gender and Nation in Early Moder England, London and N e w York, Routledge, 1998; paper; pp. xi, 202; 14 b / w illustrations; R.R.P. US$16.99. Although not for the uninitiated, The Legacy of Boadicea is an access and well researched analysis of the literature surrounding the origins of Early Modern English nationalism. Jodi Mikalachki challenges traditional interpretations of Elizabethan nationalism as 'a straightforward celebration of native history, topography and legends' (p. 3). She centres her discussion on the nationalist project to recover England's native origins. Early Modern nationalists searched for a pre-Roman past; what they found was a native savagery unacceptable to their conception of a civilised nationalist identity. These early writers worked towards reconstructing the ancient British past in a w a y that provided a more civilised foundation for the nation. For Mikalachki, 'Early Modern visions of the nation were centrally concerned with exorcising the savage femininity so vividly apprehended in native origins' (p. 16). Whereas historians traditionally emphasise the political debates manifest in Early Modern nationalist literature, Mikalachki analyses the cultural debates about gender. Nationalist ideology changed over the period from one based on land to a nationalism located in the political structure. H o w e v e r Mikalachki points out that contemporaries overwhelmingly associated the land with female iconography whereas the political structure was imagined as male. She places her literary analysis in the historical context of debates over the nature and role of w o m e n . Concerns over maternal breast-feeding, maternal infanticide, religious prophesy and wifely subordination all contributed to the gradual exclusion of female iconography and legitimate female sovereignty in nationalist literature. Mikalachki argues that the construction of nationalist identities took place in an environment obsessed with gender roles. Therefore nationalist literature inevitably incorporated aspects of the contemporary debates about the role of w o m e n . By putting familiar nationalist works such as Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and Shakespeare's King Lear and Cymbeline back into their original context, she demonstrates their respective roles in these debates. Through the Leviathan, Mikalachki explores the rising political ideology of the social contract. She argues that the social contract did not Reviews 237 challenge patriarchal gender control and that the Leviathan promoted an exclusively masculine ideal of the nation-state. The Leviathan only mentions w o m e n or female personifications thirteen times. Yet the standard and understood iconography of the land and the nation was overwhelmingly female. Mikalachki analyses first w h y Hobbes purposely excluded most standard feminine iconography and then h o w he sparingly did use it. She finds Hobbes only used female personifications in ways that discredited female political power. In contrast to the Leviathan, Mikalachki presents his contemporary Margaret Cavendish and her book The Description ofa New World, Called the Blazing World. Cavendish crea an Hobbesian government with two significant alterations. First, she based political obedience on love, not fear. Second, she gave w o m e n full political citizenship. Hobbes's exclusion of w o m e n did not go unchallenged, then or now. Mikalachki's analyses of Shakespeare's King Lear and Cymbeline deal more explicitly with the role of w o m e n in topographical and historical nationalism. Lear signifies the pre-Roman history of uncivilised Britain. Mikalachki argues that the topographical confusion in Lear mirrors the political chaos caused by unchaperoned female rule. By altering and elaborating the original Leir story, Shakespeare promotes the idea of native origins as brutal, savage and overwhelmingly feminine. In contrast to Lear, Mikalachki argues, Cymbeline shows Shakespeare redeeming native origins. She points out that most historians trace the connection between nationalism and sexuality back only as far as the eighteenth century. Mikalachki traces it back as far as the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. In Cymbeline she finds the need for male bonding and female subordination linked to Early M o d e r n understandings of native origins. In Cymbeline, the Romans rescue English native origins from female dominance and savagery and provide 'civilisation' in the form of a patriarchal government. In the last chapter...