Mary Beth Rose. 2002. Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. xvi + 139 pp. ISBN 0-226-72573-1. $15.00.

  1. Mary Beth Rose's ambitious book attempts to define a shift from 'masculine' to 'feminine' heroics in the early modern period by arguing that an alternative heroism of endurance and suffering emerges to counter the eroding heroism of masculine violence.

  2. The book opens by considering despotic attempts to monopolize all types of heroism in Marlowe, Jonson, and Shakespeare. Rose argues that Marlowe and Jonson are famous for 'marginalizing and erasing – optimally completely excluding – the female', but that this 'proves unsuccessful and, indeed, impossible' (2); so instead of completely ignoring the feminine, their heroes must appropriate feminine heroic paradigms. Tamburlaine, for instance, effeminizes himself through his emphasis on public display, while also attempting to hold every male subject position. Rose describes how Tamburlaine fashions himself as father, son, god, god's favourite, god's rival, and god's lover (a 'feminine' position) providing an interesting example of a multi-faceted masculinity. This paradigm is also applied to Ben Jonson, whom Rose characterizes as like Marlowe in his 'pessimism about heroics' (15), with heroes who 'occupy all subject positions at once, thus annihilating all objects' (16). Here Rose focuses on the Celia scene of Volpone, where the hero plays roles from sick old man to mythological lover. (Rose does not consider how far seduction might be a special case, enhancing the likelihood of role-play and effeminization.) The chapter closes with a very brief and somewhat unconvincing consideration of Shakespeare, whose heroes are said to contrast with Jonson's and Marlowe's in eschewing the feminine and equating male heroism to 'violent death [and] murder' (25).

  3. In chapter two, 'Gender and the Construction of Royal Authority in the Speeches of Elizabeth I', Rose argues that Elizabeth, like Marlowe's and Jonson's heroes, cultivates masculine and feminine subject roles, but, '. . . unlike other Renaissance heroes with similar goals, she survives' (25). Comparing the survival rates of real people against tragic heroes in this way seems unhelpful, and comparing their heroic strategies is here equally so. It becomes characteristic of the book to set fictional male characters against real early modern women without considering how such different character formations might affect the conclusions. Choosing Elizabeth as a subject seems to provide an even bigger problem: given her difficult position as female monarch, it is not surprising that she employs male and female rhetorics of power. Rose easily establishes that Elizabeth pursues this multi-gendered approach, but considering Elizabeth's vast corpus of surviving works, evidence is narrow and often repeated (e.g. at pp. 33, 44; 34-5, 46; 35, 37; 36, 45; 36-7, 39; 40, 46; 44, 47).

  4. Chapter three sets several alternative visions of female heroics against the totalizing heroism of Elizabeth. Rose argues that self-expression for women of non-royal rank is pre-determined by tensions between their public and private roles, so that any public interaction is 'largely confined to the family history' (57). Margaret Cavendish eschews this narrow positioning by developing a selfhood detached from the men around her, but ultimately Cavendish does not fully articulate a private female self because she attacks 'other women's attempts to excel verbally' (64). Rose considers Ann Fanshawe to be a more successful negotiator of feminine heroics, even though Fanshawe's purpose seems simply 'to memorialize her excellent husband for her son's benefit' (65). Because Fanshawe lives through the turmoil of the Civil War, her life becomes 'an engaging and dramatic story' (69-70) of cross-dressing, prison breakouts, flights to France, and fights with Turkish pirates, all in devout service to her husband. Here the female identity of family devotion intersects unusually with 'male heroics of action' (70). Rose next considers Alice Thornton, who is shown to be a more typical female heroine, yet one who also 'construct[s] herself as a hero of endurance' (70). The final writer discussed in this chapter is Anne Halkett, who differs from the other women by actively positioning herself as heroic. First she strives to marry a man against the wishes of her family and community, and when that project founders, she conducts an affair with a married man (though he, in part, tricks her into it). With her private world at odds with public approval, Halkett articulates an active and unified female self that challenges the typical insistence that a woman's public and private life are inseparable.

  5. Rose's final chapter considers the rise of heroics of endurance in Milton's Samson Agonistes, Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, and Mary Astell's Some Reflections upon Marriage. Rose follows a common stance on male heroism by arguing that military prowess was a disappearing virtue in the period. This is borne out ambiguously in Samson Agonistes, as Rose persuasively argues. On the one hand, Samson represents the real quest of his life as 'not military conquest, but marriage' (91), and his ultimate heroism stems from his endurance. On the other, his heroic death ultimately eclipses his feminine suffering. Rose suggests that Oroonoko's heroism is similar to Samson's, especially in the position of enslaved former military hero. Oroonoko differs in that his oppression becomes amplified through the females of the narrative, who contribute to a sense that 'male dominance based on physical strength [is] a figure for all oppression' (107). For Rose the female narrator in Oroonoko is ultimately complicit in this system of male aggression because of the weakness inherent in her female subject position: she wants to help Oroonoko, but her gender prevents her from doing so. The chapter closes with a consideration of Mary Astell, who clearly attacks 'the supposed superiority of male strength with unspeakable, classist glee' (110).

  6. The central premise of Rose's book is that 'feminine' endurance begins to displace 'masculine' active valour. This portrait of active versus enduring heroism is not new (most famously these are two of the options in Hamlet's 'to be' speech), but Rose adds a slight twist to the argument by gendering these roles. Gendering endurance entirely as feminine, however, is obviously questionable in the light of contemporary Christian and neo-Stoic influenced masculinities. Also problematic is the unbroken chronology of the proposed shift. Pericles, for instance, is far more concerned with enduring suffering (for both Marina and Pericles) than with valour, and it's easy to come up with other examples of early heroic endurance and late martial heroism. The inclusion of such counter-examples might have made a stronger book. Although some of this short book's readings (like those of Tamburlaine and Samson) are insightful, overall it oversimplifies the period's cultures of heroism.
EUGENE GIDDENS
ANGLIA POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE
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