Critique de Choice
By looking at the words and spaces available to women in the Restoration theater, Kreis-Schinck (English literature and gender and cultural studies, Univ. of Heidelberg, Germany) examines women's roles in the plays of Aphra Behn and Suzanne Centlivre in relation to each other and in the context of their male contemporaries. In so doing, she also effectively and engagingly surveys the social, political, and economic status of women from the mid-17th to the early-18th century. Kreis-Schinck closely analyzes the plays, examining Behn's and Centlivre's attempts to redefine women's roles as wives, widows, and lovers; women's options in divorce, separation, and sexual affairs; and the relationship during this period between education and women's independence. In discussing the last, Kreis-Schinck provides a coherent, contextual analysis of Mary Astell's works on marriage and education. As a survey of late early-modern attitudes toward women by both women and men, Kreis-Schinck's work compares favorably with Margaret Ezell's The Patriarch's Wife (1987) and Constance Jordan's Renaissance Feminism (1990). With chapter divisions designated as acts and scenes, the book provides a lively, intelligent, often witty analysis of Restoration women. All academic, professional, and large public collections. D. Aldrich-Watson University of Missouri--St. Louis