SOURCE: Elshtain, Jean Bethke. “Feminisms and the State.” Review of Politics 53, no. 4 (fall 1991): 735-38.

In the following review, Elshtain contrasts stylistic elements of MacKinnon's Toward a Feminist Theory of the State with Mary Lyndon Shanley's Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England.

It is by now de riguer in feminist theory circles to repudiate what is called dichotomous reasoning. But I must begin with a stark dichotomy, for these two volumes [Toward a Feminist Theory of the State and Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England] differ as the night to the day. Where Shanley's is an exercise in meticulous scholarship, moderation, and an openness to dialogue, MacKinnon's is a torrent of proclamatory certainties.

Shanley moves in on concrete problems, seeking to unravel the complexities of changing laws governing divorce, married women's property, infanticide, protective labor legislation, child custody, wife-abuse, marital rape, and the like. MacKinnon...