How Eighteenth-Century Women Fended-Off Sexual Violence by Writing and Talking: A Study of Four British Novels by Delarivier Manley, Jane Barker, Eliza Haywood, and Samuel Richardson by Jan M. Stahl (review)

Ms. Stahl surveys a broad range of crimes committed against women: "I use the terms aggression, violence, and abuse interchangeably to account for a wide range of behaviors that female characters experience and that are portrayed as victimizing, such as sexual coercion, physical assault, forcible confinement, and verbal attacks." By expanding her definition of sexual violence to include seduction, physical and verbal abuse, and female imprisonment, however, Ms. Stahl has diluted the focus of her short volume. While each of these topics is worthy, Ms. Stahl never fully acknowledges the many ways in which early modern understandings of rape differ in fundamental ways—legally, socially, culturally—from early modern understandings of domestic violence or emotional abuse. That Ms. Stahl relies frequently for support on studies of modern psychology—"My approach has been influenced by a body of work appearing in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century"—also limits her study's effectiveness; too heavy a reliance on contemporary social science creates anachronism and elides recognition of the ways in which early modern psychology may be foreign to our own. Ms. Stahl's volume would be improved by deeper engagement with prior scholarly work on the eighteenth century.

In her first chapter, Ms. Stahl contrasts the Charlot and Delia episodes of Manley's New Atalantis, both of which feature women preyed on by male guardians. While Charlot dies loving her rapist, "a testimony to the self-destructive nature of a woman's naı¨ve and passive devotion to the whims and caprices of an abusive, inconsiderate, and inconstant lover," Delia takes control of her destiny and becomes a writer who "survives and thrives." Comparative readings of the two characters are not especially new, and Ms. Stahl overlooks, for example, Ellen Pollak's work on familial incest. Additionally, Ms. Stahl does not adequately acknowledge the differences between the two situations. Delia is undeniably victimized by Don Marcos, but she is the victim of sexual deceit, not rape, and early modern cultural narratives surrounding rape differed from those surrounding seduction and bigamy. Attention should have been paid to the political nature of the text.

In her second chapter, Ms. Stahl turns to Jane Barker's Exilius, calling Clarinthia remarkable for ignoring the patriarchal expectation that women be silent and for publicizing her father's incestuous assaults. Later, in forgiving her father, Ms. Stahl argues, Clarinthia plays out one of the "fantasies of forgiveness" common among modern trauma survivors. To depoliticize the text in favor of modern psychological analysis, however, is to overlook much of Barker's intent, as rape imagery was very common in discussions of the Glorious Revolution's legitimacy. Additionally, while Clarinthia's speech is certainly disruptive of patriarchal norms, it is not unique in works of the period. Victims of rape and attempted rape in early modern literature are often given license to be voluble, less constrained by silence once chastity is gone. Similarly, Ms. Stahl suggests that Clarinthia may be seen as "unworthy of marriage to a great hero because of her status as an immoral man's daughter," but it was a truism in rape narratives that the truly virtuous woman would always escape sexual assault. Clarinthia's worth is confirmed by her rapist's failure.

In chapter 3, Ms. Stahl treats Alovisa and Camilla in Haywood's Love in Excess as parallels of one another. Where Camilla is able to parlay "controlled and composed" letters into successful marriage with the man she loves, Alovisa's "uncontrolled verbal outbursts" cannot win her D'Elmont's love. Ms. Stahl's reading of Camilla, that she "recreates herself in accordance with acceptable romance conventions," is her most effective moment of analysis, but her argument about Alovisa...