Book Reviews

MARY SHELLEY &; FRANKENSTEIN; THE FATE OF ANDROGYNY by William Veeder. (The University of Chicago Press, 1986), Cloth, $22.50

THE FEMALE MALADY: WOMEN, MADNESS, AND ENGLISH CULTURE, 1830–1980 by Elaine Showalter. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 312 pp., 29 illustrations.

PATRIARCHAL STRUCTURES IN SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMA by Peter Erickson. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1985) xii + 209 pp. $22.00

RECLAIMING A CONVERSATION: THE IDEAL OF THE EDUCATED WOMAN by Jane Roland Martin. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); ALMA MATER: DESIGN AND EXPERIENCE IN THE WOMEN'S COLLEGES FROM THEIR 19TH‐CENTURY BEGINNINGS TO THE 1930s by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. (New York: Knopf, 1984); IN THE COMPANY OF EDUCATED WOMEN: A HISTORY OF WOMEN AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA by Barbara Miller Solomon. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).     

Book Reviews

This paper examines the significance of historically sedimented military practices for conservation in contemporary Guatemala. During a 36-year civil war, the military represented the lowlands as dangerous jungle that had to be tamed to justify its counterinsurgency campaigns, thus positioning the jungle's inhabitants as suspect citizens or potential insurgents. Also during the war, international conservationists coalesced to successfully lobby for a protected areas system that enclosed one-third of Guatemala's territory. This paper argues that this transnational conservation alliance, comprised of international conservation agencies and national elites, evokes the violence of scorched earth counterinsurgency. The use of jungle and forest discourses in successive territorial projects produces a racialized landscape that connects a violent past to a violent present. In recent years, jungle discourses have articulated advocacy for increased militarization to fight the ‘war on drugs’ in protected areas. As such, I argue thatconservation agencies and the military are complicit in reproducing social inequalities, often through violent exclusions.     

Book Reviews

Brenda Webster, Paradise Farm. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.

Helen Wilcox, ed. Women and Literature in Britain 1500–1700. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Catherine B. Burroughs, Closet Stages: Joanna Baillie and the Theatre Theory of British Romantic Women Writers. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.