This book maps a vast landscape in its analysis of these developments. Pritchard, derives from a sharpened sense of the private/ public divide new understandings of sexual difference transformations in notions of personal identity and the new philosophy’s interest in ways of seeing. The intensity of cultural debates, for Mr. ‘‘Outward appearances’’ conveys two meanings, speaking both about women’s bodies (as objects of scrutiny) and their circulation in the public sphere of Restoration London. Outward Appearances : the Female Exterior in Restoration London. Emily Bowles Lawrence University WILL PRITCHARD. Harol suggests that the concept of virginity is far from an unmarked ideal it is, in her interpretation, a highly mediated, constructed state, conditioned by and a condition of the patriarchal discourses related to marriage and sexuality disseminated by print media. Although she briefly mentions Jane Sharp and Behn, an entire chapter on the gendering of signifying practices surrounding virginity could have added a fascinating counterargument (or perhaps a supplement) to her materials. Instead, the novel’s analysis of virginity begins where the medical profession’s frustrations begin. Harol) assimilated the medical discourses antedating it. Moreover, by concluding with a discussion of ‘‘Clarissa ’s exceptional infertility,’’ she suggests that virginity serves as something inimitable and impossible engendering nothing, observable and measurable only (if then) in its absence, the virgin body becomes a sign in the midcentury novel that has not (according to Ms. Perhaps most groundbreaking: she has playfully and provocatively constructed a study of virginity that does not seek to explain or taxonomize it but that instead allows virginity and its metonym the hymen to retain their changeability and contingency. Harol’s theoretical acumen distinguishes her scholarship. Her early references to Lévi-Strauss and Engels could have been complemented and extended with a mention of Gayle Rubin ’s feminist revision of their analyses of kinship structures, but Ms. In her careful theoretical groundwork, there are echoes of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Julia Kristeva. Harol foregrounds the hymen’s signifying power. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ĩ5 as medicine loses interest in virginity, we see an obsession, in literature, with virgins.’’ Describing virginity and the hymen as products of discourse, Ms.
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