Novel Approaches to Lesbian History by Linda Garber (review)

Abstract

nineteenth-century novel, Before Borders does not address the dramatic shift in thinking about national allegiance that occurred at this time as the concept of citizenship began to compete with, and in some cases replace, that of subjecthood. The novel creates subjects, but does it create citizens? The distinction between subjects and citizens or between feudal allegiance and democratic participation raises the spectre of those who were excluded from national belonging. DeGooyer acknowledges that even the most liberal seventeenthand eighteenth-century thinkers questioned the extension of British naturalization law to include non-white, non-European, and non-Protestant peoples. Novels arguably were more liberal, but DeGooyer avoids discussing literary naturalization and racial difference with the exception of the white protagonist’s use of blackface in Frances Burney’s The Wanderer (1814), focusing instead on religious difference in Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753) and Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington (1817). DeGooyer aims her argument about the novel’s formal abilities to naturalize at canonical authors (if not canonical works) for strategic reasons: namely, to emphasize that questions of mobility and allegiance were not a fringe concern for eighteenth-century writers. Yet, in doing so, she misses the opportunity not just to complicate an argument that rests primarily on the experiences of elite white Protestants, but also to examine early instances of a problem that continues to plague debates about naturalization today— racial prejudice. Before Borders takes risks and boldly explores big ideas at a time when working conditions for literary scholars often function like borders, constricting the possibilities of intellectual enterprise. Its unevenness is perhaps an effect of its disciplinary border crossings, as it returns us to a time when law and literature were not the disparate fields they are today.