A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

editing of a volume of new Canadian poets,in the tradition of Al Purdy's Storm Warningvolumes. The enthusiasm of both Purdy'sbrief foreword and the editors' introductionfor the quality of the work in general seemsexcessive in light of much that follows, butthe volume is worth its price for the range ofpromising new poets it introduces to a widerCanadian public and for the new territoriesthey open up: Evelyn Lau's gripping representationsof the emotional life and materialconditions of a sex worker, Mark Cochrane'schallenging evocations of latent homosexuality,and Heather McLeod's figuration ofthe mapless condition of some contemporaryInuit life are noteworthy exemplars.So is there one poet in particular towatch? For me the clear answer is MichaelCrummey. Like the other poets in this volume,he still has much to learn about thepossibilities of form, but the maturity ofvision and acuity of image in"Rivers/Roads" stand out:Consider the earnestness of pavementits dark elegant sheen after rain,its insistence on leading you somewhereA river is less opinionatedless predictableit never argues with gravityits history is a series of delicatenegotiations withtime and geographyGood, Bad and RealWomenMona ScheuermannHer Bread to Earn: Women, Money, and Societyfrom Defoe to Austen. UP Kentucky US$29.00George Holbert TuckerJane Austen The Woman, Some BiographicalInsights St. Martin's Griffin $19.99Reviewed by Barbara DarbyBoth Scheuermann and Tucker positionthemselves as antithetical to recent criticalapproaches. Scheuermann's target is criticswho emphasize the weakness and confinementof eighteenth-century fiction's femalecharacters rather than reading what theauthor wrote about them. John McAleer, ina Foreword to Tucker's book, praises thefact that "faddist criticism" can no longerobscure "Jane Austen's true image," whichTucker now provides. Scheuermann's"images of women" approach is valuablefor its concentration on female characterswho demonstrate financial acumen, selfdirection,and creative responses to problems.The painstaking archival research thatunderlies Tucker's observations about JaneAusten is admirable, but its contribution toour picture of Austen is ultimately unclear.By Scheuermann's account we should not"arbitrarily limit our images of women towomen authors." However, she also assertsthat "images of women in novels by womenare not obviously different from the imagesin novels by men," so the need for a correctiveis not always obvious. Defoe is praisedfor his financially capable women, whileRichardson and Fielding's images are condemnedas conservative or stereotypical.The radical novelists—Holcroft, Godwin,Bage, and Inchbald—present women whoare the intellectual equals of their malecounterparts. Wollstonecraft, by contrast,"condemn[s] characters to ... helpless dysfunction."According to Scheuermann,Austen's characters demonstrate her acceptanceof the social status quo.Scheuermann's subordination of gender toclass produces revealing comparisonsbetween male and female characters. Attimes, however, she seems dismissive ofgender-specific experiences of social, legal,or familial inequality. Indeed, for example,Scheuermann notes that it was "notunusual for very large sums of moneyeither to be controlled by a woman or tocome with her as her marriage portion,"but lamentably makes no distinctionbetween these financial situations.173