The eighteenth century saw the birth of the concept of literature as business: literature critiqued and promoted capitalism, and books themselves became highly marketable canonical objects. During this period, misogynous representations of women often served to advance capitalist desires and to redirect feelings of antagonism toward the emerging capitalist order. Misogynous Economies proposes that oppression of women may not have been the primary goal of these misogynistic depictions.

Using psychoanalytic concepts developed by Julia Kristeva, Mandell argues that passionate feelings about the alienating socioeconomic changes brought on by capitalism were displaced onto representations that inspired hatred of women and disgust with the female body. Such displacements also played a role in canon formation. The accepted literary canon resulted not simply from choices made by eighteenth-century critics but also, as Mandell argues, from editorial and production practices designed to stimulate readers' desires to identify with male poets. Mandell considers a range of authors, from Dryden and Pope to Anna Letitia Barbauld, throughout the eighteenth century. She also reconsiders Augustan satire, offering a radically new view that its misogyny is an attempt to resist the commodification of literature. Mandell shows how misogyny was put to use in public discourse by a culture confronting modernization and resisting alienation.

Laura Mandell is assistant professor of English at Miami University of Ohio.

Reviews:

"The insightful, sleek prose . . . elucidates the 'emotional economies' concerning the emergence of capitalism in eighteenth-century Britain."--Eighteenth Century “A most intelligent and enlightening piece of work. . . . Mandell is extraordinarily skillful in dealing with extremely complex concepts with great subtlety and in describing their operation with clarity of precision."--Rose Zimbardo
“The blend of approaches Mandell uses is quite distinctive and fresh. No one else has explored this field with total familiarity with authors, texts, and issues with such remarkable authority and originality.”--Alan Liu
“An ambitious and fascinating book. . . . Asks important questions, to which it proposes thoughtful and provocative answers.”-- Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature
“Mandell’s ambitious and compelling study investigates literature’s relation to commerce and the business of literary production.”--South Atlantic Review
“A dense and highly engaging study covering little-known terrain, assessing the work of barely known women poets, alongside the ‘greats’ of the literary canon, and raising provocative questions about the uses of the tradition of misogynous writings during the eighteenth century.”--Ohioana Quarterly
“Its breadth is remarkable and its analysis is penetrating. . . . Mandell persuasively argues that the derogation of, and aggression against, women during the period are not incidental to a study of aesthetics and literary value but rather central to such an endeavor.”--Modern Philology“An important contribution for its enlightening intervention into feminist debates about literary history as well as the more general problem of the function of literature in the history of culture.”-- Journal of English and German Philology

"Mandell’s grasp of the broad sweep of the development, import, and various manifestations of misogynous writing in the eighteenth century commands respect.”--Age of Johnson