Using black feminist theory and African American studies to read Victorian culture, Impossible Puritieslooks at the construction of #x1C;Englishness#x1D; as white, masculine, and pure and #x1C;Americanness#x1D; as black, feminine, and impure. Brody#x19;s readings of Victorian novels, plays, paintings, and science fiction reveal the impossibility of purity and the inevitability of hybridity in representations of ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and race. She amasses a considerable amount of evidence to show that Victorian culture was bound inextricably to various forms and figures of blackness. Opening with a reading of Daniel Defoe#x19;s #x1C;A True-Born Englishman,#x1D; which posits the mixed origins of English identity, Brody goes on to analyze mulattas typified by Rhoda Swartz in William Thackeray#x19;s Vanity Fair, whose mixed-race status reveals the #x1C;unseemly origins of English imperial power.#x1D; Examining Victorian stage productions from blackface minstrel shows to performances of The Octoroonand Uncle Tom#x19;s Cabin, she explains how such productions depended upon feminized, #x1C;black#x1D; figures in order to reproduce Englishmen as masculine white subjects. She also discusses H.G. Wells#x19;s The Island of Dr.

Moreauin the context of debates about the #x1C;new woman,#x1D; slavery, and fears of the monstrous degeneration of English gentleman. Impossible Puritiesconcludes with a discussion of Bram Stoker#x19;s novella, #x1C;The Lair of the White Worm,#x1D; which brings together the book#x19;s concerns with changing racial representations on both sides of the Atlantic. This book will be of interest to scholars in Victorian studies, literary theory, African American studies, and cultural criticism.