Fatal Desire: Women, Sexuality, and the English Stage, 1660–1720 by Jean I. Marsden (review)

174 the charge of young girls in The Governess , written for a young audience, with The Cry’s self-educated Cylinda, who embodies the negative clichés of female education to be found in the fiction of Smollett, Francis Coventry, or Henry Fielding. For Ms. Auffret-Pignot, Cylinda is an exception in the author’s work, where knowledge is usually presented as the source and instrument of female emancipation. David Simple’s Cynthia anticipates by some thirty years changes in the perception of female learning. ‘‘Woman and Power’’ argues that Fielding combines a conformist discourse with one of protest, a double voice typical of a muted group within a dominant culture (Elaine Showalter is a major influence ). Like Claudine Hermann’s ‘‘tongue snatchers,’’ Fielding did not wish to be identified as a woman writer , Ms. Auffret-Pignot cogently argues. ‘‘Feminism’’ is then discarded as an anachronistic and inadequate term, in opposition to Deborah Downs-Miers and Moira Ferguson’s characterizations of Sarah Fielding. Ms. Auffret-Pignot finally shows that the author was not a forerunner of Mary Wollstonecraft: although her life somewhat contradicted what she wrote, she was not a visionary. Profoundly influenced by Latitudinarism , her writing presents female power as mainly ethical power; the seeds of protest to be found in David Simple were not allowed to germinate in her later work. There are a thorough Bibliography and an Index. Une romancie ̀re’s learned and sober qualities reflect the author it studies. Anne Bandry Université de Haute-Alsace JEAN I. MARSDEN. Fatal Desire: Women , Sexuality, and the English Stage, 1660–1720. Ithaca: Cornell, 2006. Pp. 216. $45. In Fatal Desire, Ms. Marsden traces the critical role women played in late seventeenth/early eighteenth-century English theater as playwrights, actors, and spectators. The ‘‘she-tragedy,’’ which she defines as a subgenre that ‘‘focuses on the suffering and often tragic end of a central, female figure,’’ became the form playwrights used to invoke an emotional response and to forward a political agenda. As the political message became prioritized over female sexuality, the popularity of the ‘‘shetragedy ’’ came to a close; this indicated the important role the genre played in satisfying the audience’s desire for the ‘‘spectacle of female distress.’’ Ms. Marsden discusses the turn-ofthe -century theatrical debates, best characterized by the writings of Collier, and the roles women played as both object within the plays and subject within the audience. While anti-theater texts like Collier’s feared female subjects because they could embody unchecked sexual desire, women were at least acknowledged . Next she explores the representation of female sexuality in Wycherley ’s The Plain Dealer (1676/77) and Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife (1697). In The Plain Dealer the mask of false modesty only serves to cover up wanton female desire, while in The Provok’d Wife, a sympathetic female character’s unhappy marriage serves as a justification for contemplating acting on unfulfilled sexual desire. Beginning in the 1680s, the authors of ‘‘she-tragedy’’ were most interested in exploring the pathos behind female spectacle and sexual titillation. Authors such as Southerne (The Fatal Marriage, 1694) and Congreve (The Mourning Bride, 1697) successfully combined 175 sexuality and suffering, the end result being a universal appeal to both men and women. ‘‘She-tragedies’’ began to take on a political function in society, as they reinforced the importance of a stable British nation that hinged upon controlling female sexuality and virtue. Plays by Pix, Trotter, and Manley demonstrate a diversity of thought about the position of women. Pix’s Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks (1696) most clearly imitates the ‘‘shetragedies ’’ written by her male counterparts , while Trotter moves away from the conventions and presents women who are in control of their sexuality. Manley makes an even more decisive protofeminist move by never staging female distress; instead she makes men the subject of the sexual gaze. With the image of Queen Anne as a powerful female ruler, playwrights began contriving their tragedies with the more political intention of promoting a national virtue. This coincided with a dip in the number of new ‘‘she-tragedies ’’ written. One playwright who did remain active during the first part of the century...