:Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution

Abstract

They erupt when norms are transgressed. They expose fissures within value systems. They threaten authority and sometimes stimulate political crisis, conflict, and change. They feed on publicity, driven by historically contingent cultures of communication. They pose uncomfortable questions about the nature and authority of public opinion, and about the blurred boundaries between public and private. Their meanings mutate as they are re-presented and appropriated. Scandals properly studied—one thinks of Cynthia Herrup's book on the Castlehaven affair, or of Sarah Maza's work on prerevolutionary French causes célèbres—can teach us a great deal about the past. Anna Clark's fascinating book explores English political scandals—ostensibly scandals about sex, but about much more besides—during the period 1760–1820. She uses these scandals to think creatively about some of the central issues of late Hanoverian political, cultural and gender history. Scandals, Clark argues, illuminate contemporary debates about monarchical and aristocratic authority, about the nature of empire, and about the place of public opinion. Scandals expose the limits of the so-called conservative patriotic consensus and grant new insights into major political movements. Scandals reveal contemporary opportunities for and anxieties about women's political agency and allow us to examine the complex intermeshing of political ideologies with discourses of gender and sexuality.