The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race, and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century by Felicity Nussbaum

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

154 presents a subtle interpretation of ‘‘plebeian fashion,’’ arguing that ‘‘[C]ustom and consumption were often allies.’’ He uses financial records of the Latham family in Lancashire from the 1720s to the 1760s and those from anotherfamilylater in the century, as empirical evidence for the participation of laboring people in English luxury. These essays demonstrate the book’s scope, which includes chaptersonvasesandcottagearchitecture later in the period; they are illustrated by several of the 43 plates that usefully supplement the text. The ‘‘first interdisciplinary treatment of the history of luxury,’’ in the editors’ phrase, this volume deserves praise, focusing attention on a key concept and demonstrating how it permeated cultural life in England and elsewhere. It shifts attention from recent work on early modern consumer culture to a topic that is, as Sekora pointed out, as ancient as Eden. Pope’s Rape of the Lock and Epistles to Several Personsdeserve,butarenotgiven consideration. Nor is Swift mentioned once, despite his ridicule of luxury in Gulliver’s Travels. James E. Evans University of North Carolina, Greensboro FELICITY NUSSBAUM. The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race, and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge, 2003. Pp. xii ⫹ 336. $75; $27 (paper). Ms. Nussbaum’s book is original and significant in drawing extensive connections among representations of race, gender , and anomaly from the Restoration to abolition. (By ‘‘anomaly’’Ms.Nussbaum means disabilities, such as being blind, as well as physical and mentaloddities,such as being a eunuch.) She attends particularly to how these three categories are interrelated. ‘‘Anomaly and Gender’’ argues that defect is crucial to definitions of gender difference; ‘‘Race and Gender’’ examines how racial categories changed during this period and were inflected by constructions of British masculinity and femininity. Despite this structural division , Ms. Nussbaum suggests that all three kinds of difference transmogrify into each other, complicating notions of normality and humankind. Her study raises new questions: How are all of these categories related? How might considering those connections enhance our understanding of eighteenthcentury constructions of the human? Ms. Nussbaum’s objectives are ambitious , and she candidly acknowledges that ‘‘[s]ome readers may wish for a book on each of these topics, for moreattention to India or the South Pacific, or to the abolitionist debates, or for a more extended discussion of any one of the topics introduced . These worthy projects await further treatment but are beyond my scope here.’’ Her book is therefore best read as provoking questions and imaginative answers , a work that maps larger connections rather than probing particular issues . Sometimes this sweeping approach leads Ms. Nussbaum to elide important aspects and differences in her evidence. For instance, ‘‘Odd Women, Mangled Men: The Bluestockings and Sterne’’ compares how anomaly relates to gender and constructions of community in Tristram Shandy and the writings—chiefly letters—of the Bluestockings. Readers may be unconvinced by an argument that compares real women writing letterswith fictional men in a novel. Elsewhere Ms. Nussbaum seems in too much haste fully 155 to analyze her evidence, as in her discussion of theFrontispiecetoSoutherne’s Oroonoko (Edinburgh 1774), which pictures a white Imoinda clutching Oroonoko . Ms. Nussbaum observes that ‘‘the clawlike arm which she rests upon his shoulder is strangely piebald, as if to suggest her bestial affinity with the savage when she comes into contactwithherlover .’’ Yet a closer look at this image shows only stippling used to create shadow away from the sunlight, a technique used on Imoinda’s face and chest as well. Readers may wish for more careful readings . Ms. Nussbaum’s sketch of larger connections —the big picture of eighteenthcentury notions of the human—also prevents her from rendering that picture sharp and coherent. The book splitsunder the pressure of connecting so many ideas, with ‘‘Anomaly and Gender’’ and ‘‘Race and Gender’’ only tenuously connected. It also remains unclear whether eighteenth -century readers and writers saw the same connections as Ms. Nussbaum. She often speculates that they intuited suchparallels.Severaltimes,forinstance, she suggests that Haywood may have connected the lot of women (especially women writers) with that of the deafmute soothsayer Duncan Campbell,since both struggled to be heard and were considered ‘‘monstrous’’by their culture. Such speculations do not, however, bring...