van der Woude, Joanne

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   University of GroningenGender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650-1800 by Ruth Bloch and Democracy,Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American Literature by Paul Downes.van der Woude, JoannePublished in:American LiteratureIMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite fromit. Please check the document version below.Document VersionPublisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordPublication date:2004Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research databaseCitation for published version (APA):van der Woude, J. (2004). Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650-1800 by Ruth Bloch andDemocracy, Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American Literature by Paul Downes. AmericanLiterature, 76(3), 603-605.CopyrightOther than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of theauthor(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons).The publication may also be distributed here under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the “Taverne” license.More information can be found on the University of Groningen website: https://www.rug.nl/library/open-access/self-archiving-pure/taverne-amendment.Take-down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediatelyand investigate your claim.Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons thenumber of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum.Book ReviewsGender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650–1800. By Ruth H. Bloch.Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. 2003. x, 225 pp. Cloth, $55.00;paper, $21.95.Democracy, Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American Literature. By PaulDownes. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. 2002. xii, 239 pp. $55.00.The recent flurry of transatlantic scholarship would seem to have resituatedearly American studies in a trans- or postnational context. Yet in the eye ofthe storm, two recent books defy this new critical trend. Firmly focused oncultural developments in the post-Revolutionary United States, Ruth Blochand Paul Downes both argue for the importance of previously overlooked fac-tors for subject formation and early nationalism in the new republic. Seekingto (re)introduce the concepts of gender and monarchism into the equation,Bloch and Downes rely on readings of literary and legal texts as well as othereighteenth-century cultural practices. Though different in methodology andtheoretical underpinnings, these studies engage many of the same issues andpose similar interventions in the field.Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture is a collection of Bloch’sarticles written from 1978 to 1994, arranged as chapters, with the addition oftwo previously unpublished pieces. Despite this unusual format, all the chap-ters cohere beautifully around the premise of ‘‘the overwhelming symbolicsignificance of gender and family as sites of both individual identity forma-tion and collective socialization’’ (1). Bloch is more interested in broad reli-gious and economic developments than in national histories; therefore, shediscusses the origins of nineteenth-century, white, middle-class views of gen-der by looking back to colonial developments and, even further, to changesin the position of women brought about by the Reformation. Though Bloch’ssweeping view of gender and gender roles from the sixteenth to the nine-teenth century is perhaps overly general, it effectively introduces and informsher argument about the early United States.Methodologically, Bloch objects to the hegemony of Marxist and material-604 American Literatureist theories in women’s studies, advocating instead a ‘‘culturalist’’ approachin which gender is seen as a symbolic quality that is ‘‘at least as much aboutinterconnectedness as [it is] about power’’ (40). Bloch’s first chapter offersan incisive critique of prevailing trends in feminist theory, including psycho-analysis and poststructuralism. Her own counter—or culturalist—approachis perhaps better explained by the ensuing readings than the foundationalbelief that ‘‘gender is embedded in wider systems of meaning’’ (40). Some ofBloch’s chapters (‘‘American Feminine Ideals in Transition: The Rise of theMoral Mother, 1785–1815’’ and ‘‘Republican Virtue: The Gendered Meaningsof Virtue in Revolutionary America’’) are already classics of the critical canon.Others, in particular chapters 4 and 8, that concentrate on the public-privatedichotomy are equally insightful.In chapter 4, Bloch considers the ways in which colonial courtship lawsinfluenced and prescribed an increasingly private process. Seventeenth-century American laws punished fornication, elopement, and courtship with-out prior consent of the father or the master much more severely than didEnglish laws, thus reinforcing patriarchy and asserting parental control overthe emotional attachments of children (81). The practice of suing for breach ofpromise or for seduction also became particularly popular in early America.Bloch’s readings of eighteenth-century trial manuscripts reveal the ascen-dancy of sentimentalist ideology in the judges’ verdicts and their open expres-sion of sympathy for the female victim, especially in the case of one ClarissaHarlowe Boynton (no joke). Bloch convincingly argues that such cases show‘‘the influence upon the law of wider cultural changes in the understandingof gender’’ (101), thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of her culturalistapproach. All Bloch’s chapters are worthwhile and, together, they form anexcellent collection that is greater than the sum of its parts.In Democracy, Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American Literature,which won the 2003 MLA prize for a first book, Paul Downes argues thatmonarchism was not only an oppositional defining force but also a persistentcharacteristic of revolutionary ideology and early American democratic dis-course. He sets out to prove that ‘‘displaced or translated elements of monar-chic political culture can be found at work in key revolutionary ideas and con-structs’’ (5) by reading the works of Crèvecoeur, Brockden Brown, and Irving.Though Downes shares part of his textual corpus with Bloch (most notablyBenjamin Franklin’s autobiography), their studies differ in methodology andfocus. Downes repeatedly cites the political theories of Ernesto Laclau andseems to accept the hermeneutics of deconstruction. He does not fully articu-late his interpretative paradigm, however, and at times the citations of Derridaseem obfuscating or simply out of context. Downes’s introductory explana-tions of revolutionary time and grammar and the link between sovereigntyand substitution are nevertheless very well formulated.The first (and best) chapter in the book considers the ritualized executionsBook Reviews 605of effigies of George III in 1776. Downes suggests that because the Ameri-can revolutionaries were unable to physically kill their King, they killed himmetaphorically, in repeated staged performances of regicide. The meaning ofthis spectacle depends on a shared acknowledgement of the symbolic powervested in a material representation of the king’s body. The revolutionariestried to subvert ‘‘the king’s privileged relationship to the order of the meta-phor’’ (42) in order to create a new economy of power between the politicalsubject and the material signifier. In a reading heavily influenced by MichaelWarner’s work, Downes claims that the brand-new Americans went on to con-struct their political subjectivity not on the hieroglyph but on the alphabeticsign. This chapter offers many excellent interpretations of race, patriarchy,and materiality in the context of the mock executions, and Downes succeedsin tying together a wide variety of texts to prove the residual influence of mon-archism on American democratic subjectivity.However, not all of Downes’s chapters are equally convincing. His cursoryconsideration of Irving, for example, does nothing to strengthen his argument,which can be difficult to follow because of his fragmentary and foreshort-ened style. Also, the choice of texts seems to reveal a particular penchant forthe dead white men, which goes unexplained. Fortunately, his afterword onCooper’s The Spy incorporates the previous interpretations into the bigger,monarchical picture. Like Bloch’s book, Downes’s study presents a valuablenew reading of American Revolutionary culture, and it stands as an exampleof the important work that remains to be done within the confines of Americanstudies and the geographical boundaries of the United States.Joanne van der Woude, University of VirginiaThe Artistry of Anger: Black and White Women’s Literature in America, 1820–1860.By Linda M. Grasso. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. 2002. xi, 249 pp.Cloth, $49.95; paper, $18.95.The Language of War: Literature and Culture in the U.S. from the Civil War throughWorldWar II. By James Dawes. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press. 2002. viii, 308 pp.$39.95.Despite this nation’s revolutionary beginnings, literary criticism has gener-ally failed to recognize the centrality of violence and dissent to U.S. culture.Violence occasionally consumes Hawthorne’s dream worlds, rage crystallizesin the figure of Ahab or is transferred onto rebellious slaves, and the UnitedStates has had to address its destruction of indigenous populations and theviolence and aftermath of the Civil War. Nonetheless, such violent literaryand historical interludes seldom disrupt the tight, well-ordered composition ofU.S. nationalism. But in a terror-obsessed present where violence has moved

Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650-1800 by Ruth Bloch and Democracy, Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American Literature by Paul Downes.

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Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650-1800 by Ruth Bloch and Democracy, Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American Literature by Paul Downes.

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