When All Roads Lead to Empire

BOOK REVIEWS prevent the full development of some potentially interesting ideas. Bratton is allied with current modes of critical theory and sees elements of patriarchy in the plays and Freudian explanations to Pinero's character , and frequently combines the two points. Some convolutions ensue, as in the discussion of the sexual implications of Avonia Bunn in Trelawny where her period-costume crinolines become emblematic of Pinero's own "fantasy of the conquest of the world through theatrical success." More breathy and wild comparisons between society and the theatre foUow which would be more persuasive given a more controlled exposition. Unexceptionable aspects of the edition are the essay-style select bibliography and a chronology of Pinero's life (although this is briefer than in the other two editions and keyed mainly to the plays discussed in Bratton's introduction). Cast-lists of first productions are again provided but again some Christian names are omitted. The book is well printed with a most readable typeface; the plays are provided with line numbers which would help in the classroom. So, quibbles aside, Bratton's edition would be very welcome if there were no contenders; however, Rowell's is really the edition of choice. An ancillary question concerns the cost of Bratton's edition. As a paperback version it is acceptable, but in cloth it is really overpriced at $12.50 per play. This figure is considerable because Pinero's plays have been in the public domain for over ten years and complete Shakespeare editions cost about the same price. The best prospect would be a Rowell-like edition (or perhaps a Heinemann-based facsimile) which gives us at least half Pinero's output. ). P. Wearing --------------------- University of Arizona When All Roads Lead to Empire Kathy J. Phillips. Virginia Woolf against Empire. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994. xl + 267 pp. $34.95 DOES VIRGINIA WOOLF speak for the colonial subaltern? If asking such a question was unimaginable twenty or even ten years ago, it is to be expected today as the spread of postcolonial studies in Anglo-American universities has invited scholars to ask new questions of canonical modernist authors. Certainly the recent interest in empire and imperialism has brought new life to Conrad studies, and Joyce's career is currently being reexamined around the issue of race and his 119 ELT 39 :1 1996 status as a colonial subject. Now perhaps Woolf s turn has come. In 1992 Jane Marcus made what may be the first gesture in this direction in her essay "Britannia Rules The Waves," when she argued that Woolf s most stylized (i.e., her most modernist) novel is actually a biting critique of race and empire. Kathy Phillips's impressive new book would seem to be the next step in line, offering us a comprehensive study of the way Woolf depicts the British Empire in all of her novels. The Woolf that PhUlips describes is a far cry from the Bloomsbury guardian of civilization. Taking her cue from Marcus and Alex Zwerdling, PhUlips sees Woolf as an unappreciated political satirist whose novels expose a host of ills that accompanied the promotion and maintenance of British domination around the globe. This picture of Woolf is, first of all, one that credits Leonard Woolf, a civil servant in Ceylon from 1905-1911, with greatly influencing his wife's political ideas; PhiUips regularly quotes from his Empire and Commerce in Africa (1925), with the understanding that Woolf shared its information and opinions. Even more important to Phillips's outlook however is Woolf s own Three Guineas (1938), as this late essay articulates so many of the political insights that Phillips finds at work in even the earliest of Woolf s novels. Drawing upon such notions as "the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected" and "we cannot dissociate ourselves from [the Führer or Duce] but are ourselves that figure," Woolf—here anticipating the poststructuralist perspective of Althusser—is said to have understood empire as a widescale project of British domination that was sustained through mutually reinforcing social institutions, practices, and values that cut across the public/private divide. And because this imperial system worked best when individuals were unconscious...