Mediating Identities in Eighteenth-Century England: Public Negotiations, Literary Discourses, Topography ed. by Isabel Karremann, Anja Müller (review)

Noting that questions about mediation are implicit in much critical theorizing about identity, Ms. Karremann and Ms. Müller intend that their collection of thirteen essays illuminate the connections between “historically specific identities and the media available at the time.” It does so, but only partially, since three chapters alone seem effectively to reflect a focus on identity. Ms. Karremann’s “Found and Lost in Mediation: Manly Identity in Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year” reads Defoe’s fiction not as a commentary on the efficacy of mankind’s ability to manage and make sense of chaos but as a narrative about identity. In H. F.’s narrative, she convincingly argues, Defoe constructs an ideal of “middle-class urban manliness” that he simultaneously undercuts with contradictory plot elements and narrative strategies which question the efficacy of this ideal as “a pattern for all to follow.”

A manly ideal that “promises social and moral leadership both during the immediate crisis and beyond” is articulated in H. F.’s account of the middle class’s success in managing the plague. But, Ms. Karremann argues, H. F. is writing a history, not a sermon, and the generic demand for the accuracy and objectivity that would make his account useful contains information that raises questions about the efficacy of this ideal.

She points to the corpses that litter city streets and the middle class’s inability to contain the dangers posed by an ignorant, reckless lower class as evidence that, contrary to H. F.’s assertions, the plague management effort was a failure. His effort to maintain his identity in the text, she argues, is also a failure. He presents himself as an objective observer and an exemplar of middle-class “Godly manliness,” but his changing attitudes and a religious faith tainted by economic concerns and doubt show he is neither. Nor can he control his own text. In Ms. Karremann’s view, H. F.’s drive for objectivity introduces contradictory discourses about the truth of the plague into the narrative, thereby creating an unruly, contradictory text that enacts the chaos of the crisis and highlights H. F.’s inability to control even his own account.

In “Owning Identity: The Eighteenth-Century Actress and Theatrical Property,” Felicity Nussbaum shows how eighteenth-century actresses transformed identity into the first significant property a woman could own in her own name. For this transformation she examines the successful career of the celebrated Catherine “Kitty” Clive. Clive exploited the theatrical custom of allowing actors and actresses a proprietary interest in particular roles so that the characters, in a sense, became the property of the actors. Taking advantage of this, she blended her putative personality with the characters’ thoughts and emotions, so that her portrayals mixed the personal and generic. This blend transformed Clive’s roles into what Ms. Nussbaum calls a “performative property,” a “unique performance” that only she could create, and thus it became “intangible but negotiable property.” What particularly appealed to audiences and increased the marketability that made her an asset to Garrick, Ms. Nussbaum suggests, was the opportunity for audiences “to speculate about what portion of the inner consciousness of the actor was shared with the character.”

As the author of afterpieces, Clive also contributed “to the formation of a peculiarly Irish female identity that is distinct from the stereotypical native Irish servant or the blustering, drunken Teague figure.” She, Nussbaum concludes, “skillfully mediated identities—her own as well as diverse national, class, and gendered identities—to contest reigning assumptions regarding virtue, property, and commerce.”

Drawing on the groundwork laid by Linda Colley and W. J. T. Mitchell, Michael Meyer’s “The Panoramic Gaze: The Control of Illusion and the Illusion of Control” analyzes domestic landscapes, such as Robert Barker’s, to show how they constructed an identity of the British as a people who could absorb regional...