Anne K. Mellor. Mothers of the Nation: Women's Political Writing in England, 1780-1830.(Book Review)

Publication: Studies in Romanticism

Publication Date: 22-DEC-02

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2002 Boston University

Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000. Pp. 172. $39.95.

In a captivating section of Mothers of the Nation, Anne Mellor describes a board game called "The Delicious Game of the Fruit-Basket, or Moral and Intellectual Dessert" (1822). In this game, players must proceed from prison to the "Muse of learning." The game is designed for both sexes but features women prominently and in significant ways. As one moves through the game, women are shown in vignettes attending chemistry lectures, educating children in a national school, and leading a march through the streets under the banner "Female Benevolent Society." To win, a player must marry, produce "a contented and well-fed family," learn the Bible, help the poor, and gain wisdom (11). The fruit-basket game "testifies to women's participation in the public sphere," according to Mellor, serving as a small-scale model of the book's arguments about romantic era female writers. Mellor labels these writers' contributions as collectively demonstrating "moral virtue and an ethic of care" (11)--"a belief that the needs of every member of the family politic must be met and that in any cultural or political crisis that demanded resolution, the fewest possible people should be hurt" (104).

Recent feminist literary studies of the romantic period have implicitly and explicitly debunked the notion that women were excluded from the public sphere, as defined by Jurgen Habermas. Mellor continues that important project, focusing on writings by Lucy Aikin, Jane Austen, Joanna Baillie, Anna Laetitia Barbauld,...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.