Reviews less, in the current period it is the dominant definitions that construct lesbians and gay men and lump them together and the present vitriolic backlash makes no distinction. To claim that gay men are the patriarchs and we the challenge to the patriarchy is to skirmish on the sidelines of the main struggle of the day. Mary Mcintosh

Consuming Fiction

Terry Lovell

London: Verso, 1987 £22.95 Hbk; £7.95 Pbk

It seems strange that the role of women as writers, readers and educators in the history of the novel has not before been subjected to systematic study. Fortunately Terry Lovell has undertaken this project in Consuming Fiction, thus filling a gaping hole in the sociology ofliterature. The questions Lovell asks concem the historical place of the novel in the national culture, its relationship to capitalism, the ruling class and bourgeois ideology, and women's part in the production, consumption and transmission of the novel as 'cultural capital'. Apart from the latter, these questions are the same ones Ian Watt addressed in his classic study, The Rise ofthe Novel. In a subtle critique of this book Lovell argues forcefully for a rewriting of the early history of the novel as commodity fiction (rather than as a retrospective construction of a 'literary tradition'), which includes the central part played by women as readers/consumers and writers/producers. Pivotal to this argument is a discussion of Gothic fiction, not only as a female genre but

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References (1981) Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present London: Junction Books. FARADAY, Annabel (1981) 'Liberating Lesbian Research' in PLUMMER (1981). FOUCAULT, Michel (1979) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction London: Allen Lane. JEFFREYS, Sheila (1985) The Spinster and her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880- 1930 London: Pandora. PLUMMER, Ken (1981) editor The Making of the Modern Homosexual London: Hutchinson. FADERMAN, Lillian

also as a genre of transgression and fantasy. It was this literature of fantasy which posed problems for Watt, because of his fixation on formal realism as the 'voice' of the novel-as-bourgeois-form. The Rise of the Novel could not account for, and therefore ignored, Gothic fiction. Lovell concludes from this that the ideological needs of capitalism are not necessarily and straightforwardly served in cultural production, as is too easily assumed in functionalist readings of the novel in relation to capitalism. Neither, however, are they necessarily resisted in women's fiction, Gothic or otherwise. Here Lovell takes issue with the recent vogue in feminist criticism to re-read women's writing, no matter how ostensibly conservative, as 'subversive'. The role of a bourgeois readership, whose notions of femininity were informed by class-interest, is left out of account in these contemporary re-readings. Lovell stresses ambivalence instead: Gothic fiction could 'neither be unambiguously subversive, nor unambiguously conciliatory' in relation to women's subordination. It had to challenge feminine conformity and contain such transgression at the same time. The overall contention of Consuming Fiction is that 'the question of sex and gender must be placed at the

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Feminist Review centre of an analysis of the literary system of production and consumption', and Lovell demonstrates convincingly how this can be done. Yet the centrality of class and gender is not enough. It is hard to credit the validity of, for instance, the chapter on education and the transmission of literary culture in Consuming Fiction, without race as a category of analysis. Surely the transmission of literary culture as 'cultural capital' cannot be discussed without even a mention of British cultural imperialism as practised, historically, through the colonial educational system. Consuming Fiction is important for its detailed and thorough critique of British Marxist cultural analysis in the NLR tradition. As a muchneeded attempt at dialogue between feminist and New Left accounts of the history of the novel it is only a

start: firmly entrenched in Marxist theory (Anderson, Nairn, Eagleton), Lovell does not engage much with feminist critical debates. This can be detrimental to her argument, especially when she discusses woman-towoman fiction and the politics of 'literariness'. Positioned against radical-feminist criticism which sees male conspiracy as the prime factor in the marginalization of women's writing, Lovell cannot account satisfactorily for the exclusion of womanto-woman fiction from the literary canon. Yet plenty of feminist work has been done in this area, notably on romantic fiction. Reading Consuming Fiction one can, at times, get the impression that Marxistfeminist criticism never happened and is yet to be invented.

Common Fate, Common Bond: Women in the Global Economy

international agencies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This in turn coincided with a new search for cheap labour in the industrialized countries, and led to far-reaching changes in the international labour market. Export-oriented industrialization involved large-scale production for export of light industrial consumer goods or agricultural produce. The neglect of subsistence agriculture resulted in the impoverishment or forcible eviction of vast numbers of peasants, who either emigrated to the First World or flocked to the urban areas in search of a living in the export processing industries or in prostitution. In many cases women came to be the primary or sole breadwinners. Foreign remittances became a major source of foreign exchange in the Philippines, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and in South Korea prostitution-tourism became part of planned economic development. However, the greatest number found work in the Export

Swasti Mitter

London: Pluto Press, 1986

The central theme of Swasti Mitter's book is the changing international division of labour within which women workers now play a crucially important role. Within the colonial division of labour, manufactured goods were produced by the 'mother countries' while raw materials were produced by the colonies. From 1947 onwards, many of the newly independent colonies attempted to industrialize, initially through a process of import substitution with strict controls on foreign exchange. These efforts were not always successful, and from the late sixties some of these countries turned to export-oriented industrialization, with the full approval of

Maria Lauret