Effeminate Edmund Burke and the masculine voice of Mary Wollstonecraft

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the gendered and nationalist rhetorical strategies Mary Wollstonecraft used in her work The Vindication of the Rights of Man which was written as an open letter of response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France . While a number of scholars note Wollstonecraft’s adoption of a masculine voice in her systematic feminizing of Burke, this article also pays attention to the ways in which Wollstonecraft impugns Burke with the taints of being crypto-Catholic, Irish, and quasi-French. We notice how Wollstonecraft’s masculine voice is rational, combative, righteously passionate, middle-class, patriotically English and critically Protestant. We compare the fashioning of Wollstonecraft’s voice with contemporary political caricatures of John Bull and the cartoon depictions of Edmund Burke that appeared as Wollstonecraft was composing her VRM. Wollstonecraft’s VRM gained her considered attention and her critique of Burke’s character, (and what this article claims is her misreading of his aesthetic treatise), have been remarkably influential even to the present day. The characteristics of the distinct voice created in Wollstonecraft’s first Vindication are also evident in her second and more famous Vindication of the Rights of Woman. However, the rhetorical commitments entailed in Wollstonecraft’s public voice created challenges for her arguments in the second Vindication that demand careful attention.     

Identification of fetal blood stains by radioimmunoassay of alpha 1-fetoprotein.

Radioimmunoassay of alpha 1-fetoprotein(AFP) for medico-legal identification of fetal blood stains using a commercial kit is described. The AFP content in fetal blood stains on filter paper ranged from 21--320 ng/9 mm2. The protein was detected in stains of adult blood and retroplacental blood in only negligible amounts. Aging of the blood stains did not influence the values up to 1 month. The method is simple and sensitive enough for application to medico-legal-practice.     

Assessment of edema fluid distribution in the brain

The technique is proposed allowing quantitation of brain edema and typing of liquor distribution in different parts of brain tissue. In combination with other assays this test can determine a variant of tanatogenesis, detect cause of death and duration of the terminal period. The method application is illustrated by the study of brain hydration in mechanical strangulation asphyxia. It is shown that this death is associated with hypohydration of cerebral structures, especially pronounced in the cortical compartments.     

The specificity of injuries inflicted by shots made from remade and self-made guns with silencers

Discussed in the paper is a complex forensic medical evaluation of injuries inflicted by shots made from a variety of hand guns with silencers. An experimental study denoted the specificity of close-distance entry wounds at shots made from remade or self-made guns with silencers; the quantitative and qualitative differential diagnostics was possible in such cases.