SOURCE: Boos, Florence. “The Anatomy of Culture.” Women's Review of Books 9, no. 2 (November 1991): 26-7.

In the following excerpt, Boos lauds Showalter's “eclectic virtuosity” in Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin-de-Siècle but finds shortcomings in her ambiguous use of the term “anarchy” and her treatment of class issues and AIDS.

Each of these three books treats late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century attitudes towards women's sexuality, health and physical capacities. All three focus on men's more than women's actions and beliefs, document repellent forms of sexist and gynophobic regimentation with horrific examples and note ways in which the constrictive patterns they describe remain with us Patricia Vertinsky and Ornella Moscucci modulate and focus their outrage with the aid of careful historical method, Elaine Showalter with irrepressibly eclectic virtuosity of arrangement and presentation. …

The style of Elaine Showalter's Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin-de-Siècle contrasts...