ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Edmund Burke's texts from perspectives opened up by Mary Wollstonecraft's perceptive critique of them and then turns that critique back onto Wollstonecraft's own texts. In this way, it may prove possible to understand some of the dynamics of the way Wollstonecraft's treatment of aesthetics, gender and politics is crucially implicated in the political positions it attempts to overturn. Burke's representation of beauty draws on contemporary figurations of luxury and of the feminine as at once irresistibly alluring and physically and politically dangerous. When in the presence of 'such objects as excite love and complacency', the observer is affected 'with an inward sense of melting and langour'. Burke seeks to impress on his readers that the 'atrocities' enacted at Versailles represent a revolution not only in politics but in manners: 'the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day' is 'a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions'.
