The Trauma of Gender: A Feminist Theory of the English Novel.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-JUL-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Modern Humanities Research Association

The Trauma of Gender: A Feminist Theory of the English Novel. By HELENE MOGLEN. Berkeley and London: University of California Press. 2001. x+216 pp. $45; 28.50 [pounds sterling] (pbk $16.95; 10.50 [pounds sterling]). ISBN 0-520-22588-0.

In The Trauma of Gender and The Domestic Revolution Helene Moglen and Eve Tavor Bannet adopt fundamentally different feminist perspectives to aid their examination of eighteenth-century literature. For Moglen, the trauma of gender relations is caused by a 'pornographic' fetishizing of 'gender difference and the power relations by which that difference is organized'. Tavor Bannet argues that the dissimilarity between men and women, and their contributions to society, cannot be magnified enough. Despite this, Moglen and Tavor Bannet share a perception of the eighteenth-century novel as a problem-solving genre that was developed to negotiate the effects of radical social and economic change, specifically, new models of male and female behaviour.

In The Trauma of Gender...

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