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The Business of a Woman: The Political Writings of Delarivier Manley by Ruth Herman (review)

Charles Paulet, Duke of Bolton (a philandering sort, but besotted with her) and never went on the stage again; she submerged her talents in a Yorkshire palace knitting, while the Duke went hunting every morning. After his wife died, he married Fenton in 1751, and when the reformed Duke died, the dutiful second wife took a lover, who became heir to her fortune. Ms. Hilton takes such biographic details and shapes them into a believable narrative that reaches beyond specialists. Sympathetic to Fenton and her dilemma with the theater public at her feet, Ms. Hilton’s unromantic feminist view argues that her shrewd decision was based on safety and comfort. Fenton ‘‘was terrified by the prospect of poverty.’’ In the eighteenth century, the acting profession was considered vulgar and declassé; the Duke offered Fenton security, even luxury. Although Ms. Hilton defends Fenton’s choice, there was a downside to the bargain. First, as a mistress she was routinely called ‘‘whore’’ by the Duke’s estranged wife, and second, she chose a lonely and boring Yorkshire existence far, far from the excitement of London’s theater world. Not accepted in his social world, she had only occasional visits to Bath and London. Rich and titled ladies routinely cut her. Still, the Duke gave up brothels. This book is psychologically speculative. Ms. Hilton had no letters, memoirs, diaries to know what Fenton was thinking, but she used theater history, sociology, criminal accounts (for example, the machinations of thief-taker Jonathan Wild and escape-artist Jack Sheppard, the real life analogues to the characters in the opera) to good effect. Yet she is not always careful. For example, she contradicts herself by asserting at one point that Augustan England was practically a police state, but at another point she characterizes London as a ‘‘hunting ground for criminals—a dark, complicated warren of a city whose commercial wealth was expanding while the gap between rich and poor increased, with no police force and an inefficient judiciary. . . .’’ Nevertheless, this is a definitive and readable account of Lavinia Fenton. Arthur J. Weitzman Northeastern University