Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith ed. by William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson (review)

221 gin was visiting on the poor—outcry elicited and directed by Fielding’s ‘‘Inquiry into the Late Increase of Robbers’’ (January 1751) and Hogarth’s ‘‘Gin Lane’’ (February 1751). Because of the Act, production of gin fell from seven million gallons in 1751 to four and a quarter million in 1752, the lowest level in twenty years. Hogarth accompanied ‘‘Gin Lane’’ with another print, ‘‘Beer Street’’; indeed, he wanted ‘‘Beer Street’’ to be viewed first. It portrays prosperous if somewhat portly Londoners drinking native English ales while taking a break from (but not leaving) their work. Hogarth felt that ‘‘Beer Street’’ made ‘‘Gin Lane’’ more shocking and, therefore, more likely to have the impact he wanted. His work and his art were not about ‘‘Gin Lane’’ alone. As for Hogarth, so for Fielding. Mr. Rawson successfully jolted the complacent world of Fielding studies forty years ago, but he did not take us much further in our understanding of how Fielding’s narrators work, how his figures convey his meaning. For all the emphasis that he and his followers give to the plays, they are remarkably insensitive to Fielding’s nuanced and persistent commentaries on prose forms, particularly Romances and Newspapers, between which he, confidently and calculatedly, writes. Given the nature of academic criticism—the need to ‘‘overturn’’—this 2008 ‘‘tribute ’’ likely portends ‘‘new’’ attempts to see Fielding whole, to get beyond the dismissal of order (be it religious, political, or literary) that Mr. Rawson enforces. The day for our discussing ‘‘Palladian structures’’ perhaps has passed forever, but some critics may try to return Tom Jones to a central place in the Fielding canon. Perhaps some, trying to get to that ‘‘bloody edge’’ contemporary tenure and promotion require , will describe Fielding’s ‘‘happy endings,’’ not as gratuitous excrescences, but as expressions of the moral basis of his art. The essays are listed in Contents, p. 306. Brian McCrea University of Florida Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith, ed. William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. Pp. x ⫹ 219. $99.95. The thirteen articles in this densely packed volume attempt to free Astell from being pigeonholed as a ‘‘first feminist’’ and to recontextualize her work ‘‘in the thicker contexts of the history and philosophy of her time.’’ Gracefully acknowledging the earlier feminist recovery work, this collection moves past benchmark labels to position Astell within the discourses of power, authority, and spirituality in her lifetime . Mr. Kolbrener and Ms. Michelson turn their attention to the intellectual and religious issues on which Astell published. Using as their basic premise the Cambridge School historian Quentin Skinner’s observation that ‘‘texts are concerned with their own questions, and not with ours,’’ the essays address Astell’s writing on theology, contemporary politics, and metaphysics. In their recontextualizations, however, contributors differ. Sharon Achinstein uses Astell’s religious writings to look at her thoughts on social 222 and marriage contracts, and to trouble our model of women’s participation in supposedly separate and distinct ‘‘public/private’’ spheres. Mark Goldie’s essay on Astell and Locke continues this push to reframe Astell’s concept of the social contract as shaped by her theological beliefs as well as her political ones, while Corrine Harol suggests that Astell ‘‘prefigures a version of the liberal subject that differs quite a bit from Locke’s and . . . anticipates the theory of positive liberalism that is hinted at by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.’’ Hannah Smith’s contribution shifts the emphasis on A Serious Proposal from a work primarily concerned with women’s education; she places it in the context of the 1690s’ social movements for the reform of manners, which, she believes, ‘‘transcended party boundaries and sectarian differences, encompassing Jacobites and Williamites, Anglicans and Dissenters alike.’’ Melinda Zook argues against the grain of critics who are determined to find early radical feminists by reading Astell alongside Aphra Behn as ‘‘prototype ‘Tory feminists,’’’ two staunch defenders of social order who believed that ‘‘the preservation of the traditional order against its enemies was more pressing than attacking the treatment of women.’’ Looking at Astell’s construction of ‘‘friendship’’ first in her Letters with John Norris and then in its evolution in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies...