CUNNING AUTHORS AND BAD READERS:
GENDERED AUTHORSHIP
IN LOVE IN EXCESS
BY
MEGAN BRUENING
A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
English
May, 2015
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Approved By:
Jessica Richard, Ph.D., Advisor
Claudia Kairoff, Ph.D., Chair
Sarah Hogan, PhD.
DEDICATION
To Paul, Judy
And Ken
ii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract
iv
Introduction
v
Chapter One
1
Chapter Two
23
Chapter Three
47
Conclusion
73
Work Cited
81
Curriculum Vitae
85
iii ABSTRACT
Although the works of eighteenth-century novelist Eliza Haywood have attracted
scholarly attention in the past several decades, the number of thorough analyses of her
individual works remains low. This thesis aims to help fill this gap by providing a close
reading of Haywood’s first novel, Love in Excess (1719). Exploring the concept of
narrative production (specifically of erotic intrigue), the novel reveals connections
between discourses of authorship and gender. Male and female characters, along with the
narrative voice, employ the same strategies to author texts that engage the reader’s
desires. Variations in these strategies are linked to but not determine by the author’s
gender. I argue that the masculine prerogative of property rights inhibits the male
authors’ ability to effectively read and author texts. In contrast, women authors are more
adept at manipulating texts (including that of their bodies) to attract readers and achieve
their desires. Drawing attention to the process of authorial production forces the reader to
examine his role in the production of discourse that inherently victimizes women. I
conclude by describing how Haywood’s first work connects to her later novels and what
implications these connections have for eighteenth-century novel studies as a whole.
iv INTRODUCTION
The original title page of the novel Love in Excess (1719) does not bear the name
of its author. The first words the reader encounters are not written by the author, but by
the publisher William Chetwood. Eliza Haywood, the author of Love in Excess, is
infamous amongst scholars of eighteenth-century literature for leaving little biographical
information to future generations. Her legacy is not biographical, but literary: she
produced more than 40 novels in her lifetime, along with a women’s periodical, several
plays, translations, and moral tracts. In Love in Excess (her first novel) and in history,
Haywood attracts attention by disappearing into her fiction. The paradoxical presence and
absence of an author figure was common in eighteenth-century novels, but Haywood
seemed particularly interested in exploring the definition of authorship in her first novel.
Divided into three volumes, Love in Excess tells the story of the French Count D’Elmont,
who strides and bumbles through erotic intrigues involving him as the seeker or object of
desire. The novel presents many characters that author stories of seduction: they tell
stories through written text, through speech, and through their bodies to to obtain their
desires and engage their readers. Some are successful authors, effectively seducing the
reader by appealing to his/her desire for sex or knowledge. Other authors fail however at
reading the narratives of others or creating their own.
Haywood’s text makes a clear connection between authorship and the effective
reading of signs. I use the term ‘reading’ broadly as the interpretation of signs that
compose a story. Characters author seduction through many kinds of signs. For the
characters in the novel, the use of these signs always has a clear goal. Usually the
v author’s goal is the display of power, self-control, and the possession of knowledge or of
another character. For the narrative of signs to succeed, the signs must be interpreted
correctly as reflective of the author’s desires. In Haywood’s novel men consistently fail
to accurately read narratives authored by women. The women however accurately read
male desire and manipulate it through authorship of a seduction narrative. This is not to
say that men always fail at creating and reading narratives or that women always succeed.
The text pointedly presents authors of both genders whose narratives achieve mixed
success. But the female authors possess self-consciousness as authors rarely achieved by
their male counterparts. In addition Haywood creates an authorial persona expressed
through the narrative voice with a similar type of self-consciousness.
This analysis raises the question: what makes male characters fail as readers and
authors? Love in Excess posits that contemporary standards of masculinity hinder men
from successfully reading and authoring narratives of desire. More specifically, the novel
critiques the masculine prerogative of possession. The protection of property rights and
the male exercise of authority were great concerns for Englishmen living in “an anxious
age constantly worried over perceived threats of arbitrary power and continually
occupied with Lockean ideals of moral government, with the controversies and scandals
of the Walpole regime, and with repeated rumors of Jacobite uprisings” (Beasley 217).
The men in Love in Excess are obsessed with maintaining their right to possess property
(including women). This obsession prevents accurate reading of female desire and the
creation of narratives that their readers can enjoy. Instead the male authors design
narratives to ensure their sexual gratification at any cost to the women involved.
Haywood’s text is aware of how authorship and reading are inherently politicized by their
vi proprietary activities. Authoring and reading are acts of ownership: as authors the
characters create an imaginary commodity, and through reading characters take a
narrative and make it their own through unique interpretation. These acts of textual
ownership play out in different ways in part due to the gender of the author-character.1
Women are shown to be effective authors of seduction because they are effective readers
of male desire, but authorship entails risks for both sexes. Love in Excess does not offer
solutions to the problems of defining authorship or masculinity. The novel’s focus on
gendered authorship opens a discursive space in which the reader can explore the
political and ethical underpinnings of textual production and consumption.
Before continuing, I will establish what the terms ‘gender’ and ‘author’ mean in
this paper, and what these concepts meant to Haywood’s readers. My understanding of
gender is built upon the theoretical work of Judith Butler (who in turn is indebted to the
work of Michel Foucault).2 According to Butler, gender is a social construct constituted
by and through performativity, which is “ not as a singular or deliberate ‘act,’ but, rather,
as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects it names”
(xii). The physical body does not determine gender, instead sexed bodies only become
legible through discourse: a gender identity is constituted through participation in
culturally-specific ways of thinking, speaking, acting etc., and this participation
perpetuates the discourse that initially lays down gender categories. This concept
seemingly shuts down the possibility of individual agency, but Butler explains,
The paradox of subjectivation (assujetissement) is precisely that the subject
who would resist such norms is itself enabled, if not produced, by such norms.
1
As I will explain in the following chapters, wealth and social status play a role in these
enactments, but all of the characters are aristocrats and the differences in wealth are not great. 2
I am not the first to connect Haywood’s portrayal of gender to Butler; see Helen Thompson 125.
vii Although this constitutive constraint does not foreclose the possibility of
agency, it does locate agency as a reiterative or rearticulatory practice,
immanent to power, and not a relation of external opposition to power. (xxiii)
Haywood enacts this constrained agency in her novel, using clichéd plots of aristocratic
courtship to rearticulate concepts of gendered authorship and property. Butler adds there
is no subject ‘behind’ performativity; rather the performance is how the subject becomes
intelligible. I will experiment with this idea and see how it bears out in Haywood’s novel,
examining the appearance and disappearance of female subjects. My agreement with
Butler’s ideas ends with her incorporation of psychoanalysis in outlining heterosexual
relations. As many scholars note Butler’s interpretation of Freudian principles is
problematic; the method is ahistorical and therefore incompatible with my thesis that
Haywood’s author persona and characters are participants in a specific historical
discourse of literary production and property politics. What I take from Butler is the idea
that gender is not fixed, not determined by but correlated to physical sex, and that it can
be manipulated within cultural power structures. Gender is here understood as discursive
practices that make bodies and behaviors legible in the heteronormative cultural context
of the eighteenth century.
While modern readers tend to associate gender in the eighteenth century with
rigid binaries, there were intense debates over what it meant to be masculine or feminine,
a man or a woman. Paula McDowell comments that print played a crucial role in these
debates: “Over the course of the eighteenth century in England, models of subjectivity
and political subjecthood shifted, and notions of sexual difference were increasingly
codified, dispersed through print, and consolidated across social boundaries” (187). This
viii codification however took a long time, and definitions of the self were unstable at the
time Love in Excess was published. Contemporary periodicals like The Spectator express
anxiety over the definition of masculinity, and it is a commonplace that the eighteenth
century developed an effeminate man of sentiment (Backscheider “Category” 41-2). But
in the early eighteenth century the aristocratic male was still a symbolic standard of
masculinity, enacting a gender identity focused on the concepts of “possession and
penetration:” men owned property and penetrated intellectual issues in the public sphere
(Backscheider “Category” 53). As the word penetration indicates, gender was
inextricably bound up with sexual capacity and role in sexual relations. Potency, the
ability to create life and to exert power over that life was supposedly the sole domain of
men. Obviously, since power was a key component of claiming a masculine gender, the
power to own property was important as well.
Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, Or the Natural Power of Kings (1680) is one of the
most influential articulations of the connection between masculinity and property. In his
tract Filmer defends the divine right of kings arguing it is derived from the paternal right
that patriarchs (going back to Adam) have over their children: “And indeed not only
Adam but the succeeding patriarchs had, by right of fatherhood, royal authority over their
children” (6). Using the family as an analogy for the state, Filmer implicitly reveals how
a man’s identity rested largely on his exertion of power over his property, including his
family, over which he has the power of life and death (16). He elaborates,
The father of a family governs by no other law than by his own will, not by
the laws or wills of his sons or servants. There is no nation that allows
children any action or remedy for being unjustly governed; and yet for all this
ix every father is bound by the law of nature to do his best for the preservation of
the family (35).
To a modern Western audience this authority is blatantly open to abuse, as Filmer
assumes that every man will interpret the vague ‘law of nature’ as a mandate for
kindness. I cite Filmer not to suggest that Haywood directly models her male characters
after this theory, but to point out that masculinity was in part constituted through the
exertion of power over property including women and children.
Like men, periodicals and conduct books gave women constant advice on how to
be correctly perform their gender. Citing the popular Sermons to a Young Woman by Dr.
James Fordyce, Jane Spencer reports such books “set out in considerable detail what a
good and amiable woman is: obedient, modest, gentle, and formed to be man’s
companion” (16). Vivian Jones adds, “In these texts, young women are taught ‘natural’
femininity in terms of negation and repression – silence, submission, ‘abstinence or
continence’” (15). As with masculine penetration, the word abstinence indicates how
womanhood was connected to sexual activity or the lack of it, and was expressed in the
feminine ideals of chastity and modesty. The emphasis on modesty and chastity reveals
social concern or anxiety over the protection of a woman’s virginity, her most valuable
commodity. And, once this commodity is ‘purchased’ or obtained by a man, the woman’s
sexuality is his property. As Spencer remarks, “In eighteenth-century conduct books for
women, we see the doctrine of women’s special purity being used to reinforce their
position as men’s property” (110).3 The presence and popularity of tracts on the
3 Catherine Ingrassia argues in Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century
England: A Culture of Paper Credit that “With the change in the nature of value systems,
property became increasingly unreal” (5). While I will explore the idea of the female body as
property in relation to seduction stories, it is intriguing to consider how this argument could relate
x definition of gender indicate that these traits were not ‘natural:’ they had to be cultivated
through repeated performances that defined physical bodies and bodily actions in specific
ways. This understanding of the direct link between gender and sex had obvious
ramifications for authorship. Spencer succinctly states, “Women were defined by their
sexuality: and so were women writers” (32). Because women were defined by their
reproductive role, the act of writing, of reproducing part of the author’s self or mind,
became a sexual act and the published text became an illegitimate child. Catherine
Gallagher elaborates on this connection explaining, “The woman who shared the contents
of her mind instead of reserving them for one man was literally, not metaphorically,
trading in her sexual property” (23). This connection helped give rise to the association
between prostitution and the female authoring of fiction, especially scandalous erotic
fiction written by authors like Haywood and her contemporaries Aphra Behn and
Delarivier Manley.
In my thesis I use the term ‘author’ broadly to describe an individual who
consciously creates a story, composed of signs, intended for interpretation by a reader. In
Haywood’s case I do not argue she wanted readers to interpret the novel as a whole in a
specific way, but rather leaves the text in an ambiguous or ambivalent state. In the case of
the character-authors though they construct narrative with specific goals in mind. What
makes Haywood and her characters similar is how both use narrative techniques common
in contemporary novels to seduce the reader through the arousal of desire (for sex or
knowledge). Ros Ballaster notes this parallel is common in amatory fiction: “Seduction
narratives provide a peculiarly complex instance of this process in that their content and
to contemporary anxiety over the preservation of virginity and the accurate identification of
virginal status. xi their form appear to mirror each other. The telling of a story of seduction is also a mode
of seduction” (“Seductive” 24). In addition to using similar techniques as contemporary
novelists, the characters also participate in activities that parallel the publication and
marketing strategies of the novel market.
The professional English novelist emerged in the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries, and it was not a career for the faint-hearted. Authorial ownership
was largely unheard of at the time Love in Excess was published because authors did not
own copyrights to their texts and received little profit from publication. Jonathan Brewer
describes, “In practice the bookseller usually purchased an author’s copyright in return
for backing its initial publication, the intellectual property being assigned ‘from hand to
hand for valuable considerations’” (116). The author did not receive subsequent profits
from sold copies. In summary, being an author did not include owning textual property,
at least not for very long. It is unsurprising that with little control over textual property
and often with limited financial resources that authors required a network to publish their
works. Brewer provides an apt image of the marketplace when he says, “Business thrived
but was confined to a community in which nearly everyone was personally acquainted
and in which a short walk was all that was necessary to complete a deal” and “the maze
[the marketplace] was not difficult to enter but easy to get lost in, and the author needed
both guides and a map” (120, 121). In addition to a select community of publishers and
artisans, authors formed close, collaborative groups; Haywood herself was a member of
the famous Aaron Hill circle. Love in Excess explores the necessity, desirability, and
hazards of networking in the field of textual production.
xii The final facet of authorship I want to address is the issue of readership, or whom
novelists were writing for in the early eighteenth century. Although difficult to gage,
there is a general trend of increased literacy from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries,
and it is agreed that literacy rose more quickly in wealthier groups (aristocracy,
merchants, etc.) than among the poor and in cities rather than in the country (Brewer
141). But as David Oakleaf notes “Although literacy rates were increasing in the
eighteenth century, relatively few people could read and even fewer could afford to spend
shillings on books” (7). In scholary studies of female novelists there is a trend to discuss
the female audience for novels, but literacy rates for women were still rather low (Brewer
141). While it is true that publishing rapidly expanded, and that literacy rates rose, it is
not true women were consuming Haywood’s early novels on a massive scale. While
many scholars affirm Haywood ‘addressed’ her novels to women it is “Only much later
in Haywood’s career, with the Female Spectator (1744), could a significant portion of her
writing be said to be directed at female as opposed to male readers” (Warner 91). The
majority of her early readers would have been male, and probably financially successful
men if they could afford novels and had leisure to read them. Gallagher insightfully notes
that the development of the novel and its various subgenres required a kind of education
for these readers stating, “readers had to be taught how to read fiction, and as they
learned this skill (it did not come naturally), new emotional dispositions were created”
(xvii). The novel allowed for a new kind of psychological depth unachieved in earlier
romances; readers had to learn how to assess this depth and interpret it, which is exactly
what the characters within Haywood’s novel try to do (and in the case of men often fail).
xiii Though knowledge of Haywood’s personal life is limited, it is clear she
understood how to manipulate the figure of the author.4 Beginning her public career in
1715, Haywood acted, wrote plays, novels, and translated numerous texts for over three
decades. Her first novel was one of the most popular books in the first half of the century,
rivaling Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Defoe’s Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Oakleaf
7). Thanks in part to the late eighteenth and nineteenth century rejection of ‘scandalous’
female authors, the difficulty of accessing her works, and the low status academia
accorded to ‘popular’ literature of the early eighteenth century, Haywood remained
largely unread and unstudied up until the 1960s. John Richetti broke significant ground
with his Popular Fiction before Richardson: Narrative Patterns 1700-1739 (1969).
Richetti studied mainly criminal and romance narratives, arguing these works represent a
schism in religious and secular thought. He labeled such fiction as ‘fantasy machines’
that cater to the reader’s voyeuristic desires. While important for beginning the
discussion of popular fiction, Richetti downplays the work of female novelists including
Haywood and Manley, ignoring their potential complexity based on his low opinion of
their style. Many scholars later took up Richetti’s discussion of popular fiction but noted
the plurality of meaning in ostensibly cliché texts, and gave greater consideration to
works written by women. But some of these scholarly discussions were still restricted by
efforts of categorization. Jane Spencer’s 1986 The Rise of the Woman Novelist from
Aphra Behn to Jane Austen and Janet Todd’s 1989 The Sign of Angellica: Women,
Writing and Fiction, 1660-1800 provided valuable and much-needed compilations of
information on a range of eighteenth-century female authors. Both Spencer and Todd
4
For the most current biography of Haywood see Christine Blouch’s article “Eliza Haywood and
the Romance of Obscurity.”
xiv however force the authors into specific ideological categories (Spencer insists on
identifying each as a subversive feminist, and Todd categorizes two centuries of authors
into three categories based on novel content), instead of acknowledging the
contradictions and inconsistencies within the authors’ careers and even within individual
texts.
Scholarship on Haywood and her contemporaries surged briefly in the 1990s and
early 2000s, reflecting a greater emphasis on historical contextualization and in some
isolated cases, the influence of psychoanalysis. Ballaster’s Seductive Forms: Women’s
Amatory Fiction from 1684-1740 (1992) traces the development of the amatory novel in
England, and asserts this genre allowed women authors to identify with their suffering
heroines and to comment on politics through the veil of erotic fiction. Using Freudian
concepts of narcissism and fantasy-fulfillment, Ballaster invites readers to consider a
much-maligned genre as a form with political and psychological depth, but ultimately the
psychoanalytical frame reduces the texts to personal acts of female protest, ignoring how
the novels work with and against patriarchal ideologies. Catherine Gallagher, notably in
her book Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace
1670-1820 (1995), frames her analysis of several female authors within a discussion of
contemporary economic practices. Gallagher notes a correlation between the no-bodies of
women’s authorial personas and the immateriality of an emerging capitalist marketplace.
Gallagher traces formal textual techniques to marketability and subversive critique,
though unfortunately she does not extend her analysis to Haywood. Paula Backscheider
has contributed numerous works to the field of novel-studies, producing Popular Fiction
by Women, 1600-1730: An Anthology (1996) with Richetti and authoring dozens of
xv articles on Haywood and her contemporaries. Similarly to Gallagher, Backscheider
contextualizes her analyses through historical research. What makes Backscheider’s work
unique is her insistence on the duality of politics and sexuality in women’s writing, and
her firm assertion that women’s writing of the early eighteenth century does not
constitute a separate, escapist tradition from the literary world of men.
All of these scholars implicitly critique the formation of the canon of English
novels and are thusly intimately connected to scholars who define the novel form itself.
All of the works mentioned rest on certain assumptions as to the kind of books these
women created, and these assumptions have been outlined and questioned by a large
group of scholars. Turning away from the work of A.D. McKillop and Ian Watt, Lennard
Davis’ Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel (1983) stresses that blurring
between fact and fiction is the trademark of the novel (though he says Haywood’s works
lack this ambivalence) (122). Sadly Davis pays no attention to the issue of gender,
neglecting the contributions of women novelists and focusing only on DeFoe, Fielding,
and Richardson. Shortly after Davis’ book appeared, Michael McKeon published his
famous The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 (1987). McKeon argues the novel
resulted from the dialectical interaction of two crises: one of epistemology (what he calls
‘questions of truth’) and one of social categorization (‘questions of virtue’). Although
McKeon claims his book is revisionary in its understanding of the history of the novel,
like Davis and theorists of the 1950’s, he fails to recognize the impact women writers had
on the development of the novel form. In a needed feminist intervention, Nancy
Armstrong’s Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (1987) shifted
focus to women writers and readers of the novel. Armstrong links the development of the
xvi novel to the emergence of a middle class, specifically arguing the image of the domestic
middle-class woman gained significant cultural currency during the eighteenth/nineteenth
centuries. The domestic novel constituted this power. Although the work is commendable
for its feminist focus, Armstrong completely glosses over the early eighteenth century,
pulling almost all of her primary texts from the 1750s or later, a time period where
historians and literary scholars agreed there were significant cultural shifts in the
construction of femininity; therefore Armstrong’s work leaves unresolved the vexing
issue of how women novelists like Haywood (who dealt largely with aristocratic
characters and settings for the first 2 decades of her career) and early novels (like those
written by DeFoe for instance) can be part of the novel’s trajectory.
Many scholars have contributed to my understanding of Haywood’s novel. I
mention these specific works because they represent influential trends in the fields of
novel and women’s writing studies, revealing shifts in academic theory and providing
paradigms more recent scholars have imitated, rejected, or modified. My thesis will build
off the works of these scholars, especially those who employ a historicist framework in
their research, like Gallagher and Davis. At the same time my thesis will reject a
psychoanalytical interpretation of the novel (employed by Richetti and Ballaster) because
I believe such an approach narrows our understanding of literature, reducing text to a
involuntary expression of unconscious desires, and the Freudian premises psychoanalysis
entails are in my view intensely problematic for a feminist and historicist reading of the
novel. I will approach Haywood’s novel as a product and participant of many types of
interconnected discourse, following the Foucaultian model of power that scholars like
Armstrong employ. And obviously, unlike earlier scholars I will analyze how gender
xvii operates in the concepts of authorship and the novel. In doing so I will take up
Backscheider’s position to argue that male and female writings are part of the same
‘tradition,’ or ‘history’ of the novel, and I will contextualize Haywood’s novel within the
works of her male and female contemporaries.
The early eighteenth century was a time of expansion of the printed word in
general but also witnessed an impressive increase in the number of female authors
working in all forms and genres of literature. Haywood is often paired with
playwright/novelist Behn and novelist Manley; together these women form the ‘Fair
Triumverate’ as they were called in the eighteenth century. All three women were known
for producing scandalous works of fiction, though Behn and Manley’s works feature
more obvious contemporary political connotations. Karen Hollis nicely sums up the trio’s
central similarity and difference saying, “[Haywood’s] fiction shares with that of Behn
and Manley a politicizing of heterosexual romance, but where these predecessors
emphasize the relation between sexual and national politics, Haywood underscores the
gendered politics of print culture” (44). As Gallagher illustrates in Nobody’s Story, Behn
and Manley were experts at creating authorial bodies that constantly disappeared and
reappeared in text, crafting elaborate origins for their tales and cultivating engaging
celebrity personas, offering their own personal lives for narrative consumption (like
Manley does in The Adventures of Rivella) and by constantly referencing their authorial
roles (like Behn did at the beginning and end of many of her plays). Haywood does not
incorporate biographical information into her authorial personas, and Love in Excess
lacks an origin story. Compared to those of Behn and Manley, Haywood’s persona is
much more distant and impersona here. Other contemporaries include Jane Barker and
xviii Penelope Aubin. Barker wrote the famous Love Intrigues (1713), a novel of erotic
intrigue that features many traits Haywood’s author-figures would exhibit, such as the
uniquely female “double vision” (where women can see their selves from within and
know how others see their selves simultaneously). Barker’s Intrigues was “Perhaps the
first English novel by a woman writer about a woman with inclinations to be a writer,”
and so is aligned with Haywood in her clear novelistic exploration of authorship
(Backscheider and Richetti 82). Aubin is known today for the exoticism of her texts like
The Strange Adventures of the Count de Vinevil (1721). Characterized as formula fiction
with explicit pious purpose, Aubin’s work confirms the idea (worked out in Haywood’s
novel, particularly through the narrator) that didacticism and popular appeal (achieved
through the authorship of the foreign, unusual, or even immoral) was not so bizarre as
modern readers find it today. In terms of male contemporaries, Daniel Defoe shared equal
popularity with Haywood (and Aubin) in the 1720s (Backscheider and Richetti x). Defoe
published his famous Robinson Crusoe the same year as the first volume of Love in
Excess, and as different as the two texts are, both authors became important in
experiementing with the new novel form. Defoe’s later works like Moll Flanders (1722)
and Roxana (1724) would parallel some of Haywood’s novels in creating scandalous
stories with strong, sexually experienced heroines. Defoe’s novels however typically
feature the hero/heroine as the first-person narrator, and so the authorial persona of the
novelist is much more obscure, at least until Defoe came forward to explain or defend his
novels in essay form. Compared to Haywood, Defoe’s authorial persona is much more
distanced from his texts. Throughout my thesis I will come back to these novelists,
xix comparing their works to Haywood’s in order to understand more fully how her strategies
of authorship compare with contemporary standards.
For the remainder of this thesis I will devote one chapter to each of the novel’s
three volumes. Chapter 1 focuses on Alovysa, who cunningly employs many textual
strategies to create a narrative that will seduce D’Elmont. This chapter will also include a
brief discussion of what Davis calls the novel’s “Prestructure,” or the material that sets up
reader expectations. Chapter 2 will also briefly cover its own unique Prestructure. The
majority of Chapter 2 however is concerned with the failed plots of D’Elmont and his
friend the Baron D’Espernay; their failures powerfully bring the issues of property and
ownership into focus, as does the decline of Alovysa, who after becoming the ‘property’
of D’Elmont fails as a reader and author of desire. Chapter 3 concentrates on the
comparison drawn between D’Elmont, who while presenting himself as a proficient
author continues to make interpretive blunders, and the clever author Ciamara. This
chapter also examines the development of an authorial persona as expressed through the
narrator. Although this persona is glimpsed in Volume II, it reaches its peak of
development in Volume III, and so I will discuss it in the third chapter. Throughout my
thesis I will recognize the contradictions within the novel in terms of how gender
discourse is deployed and critiqued in each volume. Paul Hunter observes, “Traditional
novelistic theory…does not like to hear the multiple discourses in novels or recognize the
presence of competing modes within individual works” (29). But this is exactly what my
conclusion will do. My conclusion will consider the broader ethical implications of the
novel’s critique of gendered authorship, exploring how the text subverts and affirms
contemporary notions of patriarchal property. I will also examine how Love in Excess
xx fortells the multiple, competing discourses that Haywood would perform throughout her
lengthy and productive career.
xxi CHAPTER ONE
In Factual Fictions Davis describes how eighteenth-century novels have a unique
“Prestructure” that sets up expectations for the reader in terms of content, style, purpose,
and authorial responsibility or ownership. Love in Excess is no exception to Davis’
general observation, though its Prestructure (consisting of the title page and prefatory
letter) is short. Although Haywood’s name is not on the titlepage, Chetwood’s letter
indicates the novel has an author. Many eighteenth-century authors present themselves in
the Prestructure as editors, translators, or discoverers of manuscripts; Defoe for instance
opens Moll Flanders with a narrator who claims to merely dictate the words of the
heroine. In The New Atalantis Manley presents an extensive genealogy for the novel,
presenting herself as an editor of a piece that has previously been translated several times.
Haywood does not accept authorial responsibility by including her name, but the lack of
textual genealogy bluntly declare the novel’s fictional status, unlike contemporary works
that deliberately blur the boundary between fact and fiction in the Prestructure. The full
title of the novel (Love in Excess; or The Fatal Enquiry) stresses the importance of
reading, curiosity, and the desire for knowledge but also indicates such desire can have
severe consequences. Dramatic and eye-catching, the title hints that the creation of
romantic intrigue can lead to excessive and dire consequences (a hint that is fully
illustrated in Volumes II and III). In order to witness the fatality hinted in the title, the
reader must patiently work through the entirety of the novel. So the title encourages
continued reading by the promise of dramatic action revealed over time. Following the
title is a brief poem by George Granville, Baron Lansdown:
In vain from Fate we fly,
For first or last, as all must die,
1 So ‘tis as much decreed above,
That first or last, we all must love. (33)
The poem suggests love makes all equal or at least similar through universal experience.
In turn, this claim to universality suggests that all readers will appreciate this theme
because all are destined to love; this is an interesting claim because many scholars argue
that novelists of the eighteenth century experienced anxiety over connecting with
individual and impersonal readers. Sarah Prescott for example claims, “This anxiety is a
direct result of the mainly urban and anonymous readership created by an impersonal and
diverse metropolitan literary culture” (39). William Warner argues novelists had to deal
with a new kind of “general reader” who “does not have a specifiable identity, such that a
novelist would know in advance how to move her or him” (89). The choice of poem
however indicates that Haywood or Chetwood assumes that the novel is addressing a
kind of mass readership. And the choice of poem displays a recognition and acceptance
of the challenge to possess broad appeal to a range of readers.
Immediately following the title page is Chetwood’s prefatory letter dedicating the
text to Mrs. Anne Oldfield, a successful actress and literary patroness who scandalized
polite society by her liaisons with aristocratic men. This choice of patron heightens the
exciting scandal of the novel: not only is the author a “young lady,” but its readership
also includes transgressive women of the stage (35). But Haywood is not directly
connected to this scandalous patron: through the medium of text Chetwood offers himself
as a buffer between the public and Haywood by withholding her name and by placing
himself literally at the front the novel.5 But this letter also allows Haywood (or Chetwood
5 Booksellers were often seen as cold businessmen who took advantage of authors, but Brewer claims, “The bookseller was first and foremost a businessman, but this did not mean that
2 to establish his client) to establish the novelist as a mysterious (and therefore interesting)
figure who can move behind the scenes of the text, and the letter establishes a humble
cover Haywood can work under to create subversive critiques. Chetwood writes, “I shall
think my self very happy if I could have it to say the reading these following lines had
filled up the chasma of one of your vacant hours” (35). As a young author Haywood is
dependent upon the goodwill of her patron and the public: Chetwood does not hope that
the book will sell well, but that Oldfield will read it and recommend it to others.
Haywood is not at the mercy of the market as much as requiring the support of a network
of patrons who can promote her text. Cheryl Turner elaborates, “Indigenous prose fiction
was a relatively young genre and women writers were regarded with uncertainty and
disapproval by many. Under these circumstances, until a writer had clearly established a
demand for her work, associations would be sound business practice” (89). Begging for
association with Oldfield, Chetwood refuses to make any claims as to the novel’s merit.
As David Oakleaf explains, “Only in a moment of ladylike boredom, the compliment
suggests, would so august a figure seek amusement in so humble a work” (Footnote 35).
While the title and poem suggest the novel will be dramatic, the letter intimates there is
not much ‘substance’ to the plot and that it can be read easily for entertainment.
Volume I includes the narratives of several author figures, both male and female.
I choose to focus on the character Alovysa because she expresses self-consciousness
about her authorial status. She is aware of how she can manipulate written texts and the
text of her body to create an erotic narrative that will intrigue D’Elmont, a narrative that
he had no regard for authors and their work, any more than the professional author had no regard
for the content of his work as long as it turned a profit.” (35). 3 in turn also engages the interest of the novel’s reader.6 The other central female character
Amena, the innocent girl who falls for D’Elmont’s charms, writes several short notes, but
she does not try to make a cohesive narrative and is much more passive in her motivation
to write. Specifically she only writes in response to an event, not to make events happen
as Alovysa does.7 This difference is important because it demonstrates that authorial
desire and the ability to create a narrative is not a ubiquitous female trait. Like the
culturally condoned qualities of femininity, the traits of authorship have to be learned and
tested.
Alovysa begins the novel in an advantageous position of financial independence
that is rare for a woman and even more rare for women authors. She is “a lady descended
(by the father’s side) from the noble family of D’La Tours formerly Lord of Beujey, and
(by her mother’s) the equally illustrious house of Montmorency. The late death of her
parents had left her co-heiress (with her sister,) of a vast estate” (38). This introduction
reveals how Alovysa’s subjecthood is thoroughly enmeshed in a patriarchal system based
on patrilineal notions of property. Readers do not learn about Alovysa’s personality, but
about the status of her parents with her father taking precedence before her mother. In
essence the first thing readers learn about Alovysa is her economic value. Although
Alovysa owns a ‘vast’ amount of property, she is introduced through criterion that
identifies her as valuable property for a potential husband.
D’Elmont is also introduced as a kind of commondity by being described as a
desirable mate for all the women in the French court. Although the novel claims
6
Note: The spelling of Alovysa’s name varies throughout the novel; for the sake of consistency I
will use this version for the entirety of my paper and I have modernized several spellings.
7
Amena does write long letters after her disgrace: I do not have time to fully address her authorship, but it
is intriguing how her ability to express herself eloquently through prose only happens after she has been
released/abandoned by social restrictions of the court.
4 D’Elmont as its protagonist, Alovysa ignites the plot with her authorial activities: her
catalyst function signifies how the female author can remain unnoticed (by choice or by
necessity) behind the figure of the patriarch. The narrator explains Alovysa conceives of
“a thousand” ideas to inform D’Elmont of her passion, but it is only writing that
“probably might let her into the secrets of his heart, without the shame of revealing her
own” (39). Alovysa believes text can act as a kind of buffer between her and scandal (an
idea Chetwood’s letter introduces) because it allows her to privately and anonymously
express her feelings where a public declaration would be socially condemned. In this way
Alovysa tries to displace her self through text. Alovysa’s anxiety also highlights, for the
novel reader, the transgression of her creator (Haywood) because “The novelist commits
the fallen maiden’s crime: she breaches the discursive decorum that forbids women to
express their desire” (Oakleaf 15). In addition, assuming the role of anonymous author
allows Alovysa to take up an external position of observation; by not ‘committing’
herself to the page, Alovysa is a free agent who is able to observe D’Elmont from a safe
distance. But the language of the quote indicates the narrator is hedging this assumed
authority: the words “probably” and “might” hint that Alovysa’s textual schemes may not
succeed. This insecurity lies in how the reader will respond to the text.
Alovysa’s first letter is clear in its instructions to read both written text and the
bodies of women as signs composing a single narrative of a devoted, submissive woman,
but one who is importantly anonymous. Withholding her name is not simply an act of
protection but also of sensual provocation because “The woman’s letter/body is…more
erotic because more concealed than that of the man” (Ballaster “Seductive” 62). Alovysa
makes herself more tantalizing by withholding total access to her self. Addressing the
5 count Alovysa writes, “Resistless as you are in war, you are much more so in love. Here
you conquer without making an attack, and we surrender before your summons” (39).8
What is striking about this letter is Alovysa’s total textual submission to D’Elmont: she
assumes an assertive position by declaring her affection first, but from this position
makes a statement of submission. D’Elmont is declared a conqueror, by definition a
person who owns what he desires. A summons is an order to appear in court, martial or
civil, so when Alovysa identifies D’Elmont as the agent of that summons she places him
in a position of legal authority. He even has the power to defeat the gods, because Cupid
“lays down his arrows…and begs a friendly treatment” (39). Again, the word treatment
(OED defines it as the negotiation or settlement of terms) associates this romantic
intrigue with the exchange and management of property. Alovysa ends the letter by
instructing D’Elmont to look for the enamored author that evening and notes, “I am
confident you have too much penetration” to misidentify the writer (39). After sending
the letter Alovysa spends all day “placing her jewels on her clothes to the best
advantage,” and practices various facial expressions until she is “armed with lightnings”
and ready for battle (40, 41). Alovysa uses her body and her material wealth to continue
the narrative she started, using the same military metaphors. These activities or “putting
the body on display,” Armstrong argues, also act as “a display of aristocratic power”
(75). Alovysa does not only craft an appealing body but also a social identity that
D’Elmont can read. She is not afraid to manipulate her sexual appeal and social status to
attract D’Elmont’s attention. What may seem like a stereotypical depiction of a shallow,
8
It is interesting that Alovysa employs the third-person here; it is not exactly a strategy that
protects her identity, as a first-person pronoun would not give anything away. Perhaps it is a
compliment to D’Elmont, indicating how he conquers all women.
6 dressy woman must also be considered as an act of agency where women have little to
manipulate other than their physical selves.
But Alovysa’s initiation into authorship is not calm: what may appear to modern
readers as excessive concern for her reputation reveals how authors had to negotiate a
fine line between disclosure and revelation of information. The difference I make
between disclosure and revelation is simple: disclosure is only partial, and while an
author can disclose information she can simultaneously withhold it in order to tantalize
readers. Revelation on the other hand is the total exposure of all information that usually
occurs at the denouement of a story. The constant process of withholding and revealing
pieces of information, constantly deferring sexual or intellectual dénouement, is a
trademark of amatory fiction (Ballaster “Seductive” 35).9 In Aphra Behn’s The History of
the Nun (1689) for instance, the heroine Isabella is told her first husband is dead, only to
have him return after she has remarried, and almost succeeds in murdering both husbands
without retribution, until a character arrives at the last moment to clear everything up.
Although this may seem too dramatic to compare to this Haywood’s novel, the constant
process of plans being circumvented and remade on the basis of disclosure is the same.
Alovysa seeks to entice D’Elmont by disclosing her passion while withholding her name.
This is (like the absence of Haywood’s name) simultaneously a move for protection and a
strategy to engage the reader’s curiosity similar. When Alovsya writes D’Elmont a
second time and prepares to sign her name, she destroys the draft exclaiming, “To pieces
then…with this shameful witness of my folly” (44) Alovysa knows that by materializing
9
Armstrong argues the regulation of information was a woman’s domestic duty (91). I cannot
comfortably apply this domesticity to Haywood’s text, but it would be interesting to see if this
idea of regulation can be traced back from the later works Armstrong analyzes to earlier works of
the century.
7 her desire in physical, textual form, she makes herself vulnerable to reading/interpretation
by whoever gets the letter. Her concerns emphasize the “vulnerability of the material text
and its corollary, female sexual agency” (Hollis, 44). She decides however, writing
“‘twill be some easement to my mind” (45). Alovysa has no control over the
consumption of the letter, but writing allows her to take control of her desires by putting
them to paper and this exercise of autonomy is psychologically useful.
As a reader D’Elmont personifies the risks an author takes when writing and
publishing text. He makes assumptions based on his personal, social identity that lead
him to misinterpret the texts he reads. When he receives the letter he is unsurprised “his
own perfections” should inspire passion, but he has received so much female adoration he
is “at a loss as much as ever” in identifying the authoress (40). Instead of focusing on the
attractions of the lady who writes the letter, D’Elmont focuses on the personal charms the
letter flatters. Reading the letter inspires “the joy which naturally rises from the
knowledge ‘tis in ones power to give it,” and this joy in turn makes him “consider a
mistress as an agreeable, as well as fashionable amusement, and [he] resolved not to be
cruel” (40). D’Elmont does not feel any explicit sexual desire at this point. Instead the
letter incites the desire to exercise the apparent control he holds over an intriguing
woman and the desire to take part in a socially acceptable erotic endeavor. He exemplfies
what Ballaster calls the “rapacious selfishness of male desire,” and confirms a point
Haywood will make in many of her stories like Fantomina and The City Jilt, namely that
“Male sexual passion is exploitative, end-directed, and short-lived” (“Preparatives” 55-6).
D’Elmont constructs himself as an authority figure who can benevolently give relief to a
distressed female, and the letter, with its military and legal language of conquest and
8 property, supports this positioning. This coincidence cannot be underemphasized.
Alovysa does demonstrate agency and power through authorship, but her text works
with/in traditional patriarchal structures that easily appeal to D’Elmont because they
elevate his potency and authority. With that said, D’Elmont makes assumptions about the
authoress that Alovysa does not anticipate. It is implicit that Alovysa’s ultimate goal is
marriage because of her constant concern for her reputation: she wants to remain
available to D’Elmont by keeping her virtue and reputation intact. But D’Elmont does not
read the letter as an initiation of courtship that will lead to marriage. He assumes the
authoress will become his “mistress,” who as an object of ownership entails certain
practices that will add to his fashionable status in the court. He infers he will sexually
possess the author and this possession is encouraged and condoned by social norms of the
aristocratic male.
While these attitudes may be troubling for a modern audience, D’Elmont’s
reading causes him to make public mistakes that require rectification on Alovysa’s part.
Looking for the author at a ball, D’Elmont helps the young Amena from her carriage and
“perceived [her hand] trembled, which engaging him to look upon her more earnestly
than he was wont, he immediately fancied he saw something of that languishment in her
eyes, which the obliging mandate had described” (42). D’Elmont epitomizes the maxim
that “Readers are always to some extent unpredictable free agents” (Backscheider
“Revising” 17). Through D’Elmont, Haywood makes a very modern point about
authorship and reading: the intentions of the author quickly become irrelevant after
publication because the reader can interpret the text in unpredictable and various ways. It
does seem odd that D’Elmont immediately assumes Amena is the authoress when he
9 previously states that many women have shown signs of desire. Juliette Merritt suggest,
“Although correctly discerning Amena's desire, D'Elmont misdirects his gaze and fixes
upon the first woman he sees” (136).10 Stressing the ‘first’ quality of Amena, Merritt
implies that D’Elmont’s desire (either for sex or power) is so strong that he impatiently
interprets the text of the female body to fit his fantasy of an erotic narrative. He
immediately “resolved on the beginnings of an amour, without giving himself the trouble
of considering the consequences” (42). This is one of the more blunt observations the
narrator offers on D’Elmont’s selfishness and also indicates how D’Elmont intends to
step into an authorial role by beginning a romance. But as an author he is ethically
unaware (perhaps by choice) of how his narrative will harm the ‘characters’ he plans to
direct.
When Alovysa writes to remedy D’Elmont’s mistake, she abandons metaphorical
flourishes and focuses on her personal station in comparison to Amena’s. She writes,
“Heaven when it distinguished you in so particular a manner from the rest of mankind,
designed you not for vulgar conquests” like “Amena, when one, of at least an equal
beauty, and far superior in every other consideration, would sacrifice all to purchase the
glorious trophy” (45). There are several significant stylistic changes in this letter. First,
the tone and rhetorical complexity of the letter has changed. Instead of elaborate
metaphors and fairly smooth prose, the letter is composed of fragments connected only
by commas, creating rambling sentences that take time to untangle. In the first letter
Alovysa tried to displace her self from the text to protect her reputation, but in this letter
the style betrays her perturbed state of mind. Alovysa believes her letters will intrigue
10
From my viewpoint misdirection is a kind of misinterpretation, but I use Merritt to emphasize the general
hastiness and impatience of D’Elmont’s interpretation.
10 D’Elmont by withholding certain information, but her text reveals more than she perhaps
intended. In addition, the confused syntax requires the reader (D’Elmont) to read more
carefully, just as he must read women more carefully if he is to identify the author. The
letter presents an implicit challenge to D’Elmont’s reading abilities, and suggests that
readers must be conditioned to interpret complex texts over time. Second, unlike the first
letter that emphasizes D’Elmont’s power over others, Alovysa shifts agency away from
her beloved. It is “heaven” that “designed” D’Elmont for a specific romantic plotline: he
is a passive figure in schemes authored by the divine. The emphasis on design ironically
underlines the multiple layers of authorship at work here: D’Elmont is trying to author a
seduction narrative based on incorrect reading, Alovysa is trying to rewrite their
combined narrative, and at another removal Haywood is the ultimate author designing
these characters and their actions. These layers of authorship help reveal how “Central
motifs of her fiction—misdirected communication, interruption just before the moment of
sexual climax, accidental detours of action…gets woven into the workings of the plot”
(Warner 114).
Finally Alovysa is more blunt in reference to her body and its
desirability, and is equally blunt in emphasizing her superior social statement. As part of
this reference she places herself in a position of property-owner, the one who will gain
the trophy (either D’Elmont’s body or his love) through an economic transaction.
The only ostensible reason that Alovysa changes her writing style is the
appearance of a rival, but the shift also points to an important lesson about marketability
– one that Haywood knew well. Scholars have long speculated why Haywood began
publishing ‘novels of virtue’ beginning with The Adventures of Betsy Thoughtless in the
1740s, and marketability is usually cited as the most likely reason for the change: “It is
11 often pointed out that Haywood had good commercial sense and knew how to take
advantage of the fads in the literary marketplace. Her engagement with topical events,
trends in fiction, and the press is sustained and easy to document” (Backscheider
“Shadow” 93). I will return to this argument in my conclusion, but for now it is enough to
note that Haywood’s first female protagonist and author-figure shows adaptability in
terms of style, revealing that Haywood already recognized the need for professional
authors (perhaps especially for women, whose reputation in the marketplace was so
precarious) to change according to the inclinations of the reader.
Alovysa however is not subtle in directing her reader’s desires. She concludes the
letter commanding, “Continue then no longer in willful ignorance, aim at a more exalted
flight, and you will find it no difficulty to discover who she is that languishes” for
D’Elmont (45-6). This is an ironic command because D’Elmont is not willfully ignorant
but simply a bad reader, however this is the most tactful way for Alovysa (who is aware
of his poor interpretive abilities) to ask that he reread her narrative. Upon receiving the
letter D’Elmont realizes his mistake, but decides “he had said to many fine things to
[Amena] to be lost, and thought it as inconsistent with his honors inclination to desist”
(46). D’Elmont has started a narrative in which his honor is at stake, honor that clearly
does not include the chivalrous treatment of women, but elevates the assertion of
masculine prowess and potency. He is worried about his reputation and social standing
like Alovysa, and believes the seduction of Amena will coincide or improve his honor
because such a seduction would confirm his sexual and social abilities.
After authoring letters that D’Elmont fails to correctly read Alovysa becomes a
new kind of author by arranging narratives of intrigue through the manipulation of
12 characters. When D’Elmont tries to seduce Amena their tryst is interrupted: fearing her
father’s anger and for her reputation, she asks D’Elmont to escort her to the house of her
“friend” Alovysa. In response to Amena’s arrival Alovysa quickly manipulates those
around her to continue the seduction of D’Elmont. Sending for Amena’s father (Monsieur
Sanseverin) Alovysa tells Sanseverin of his daughter’s foiled intrigue, “which she
heightened with all the aggravating circumstances her wit and malice would suggest…the
old man believing all she said as an oracle” (64-5). She speaks to him as a wise friend,
offering to send Amena to a convent – a plot “typical of the Southern European tales and
the Spanish comedy of intrigue, which Haywood and her generation knew well”
(Backscheider “Caveat” 23). Although unoriginal, Alovysa’s authorial plans achieve her
desires and engage sympathetic curiosity for Amena, making readers wonder how her
fate will compare with the heroines of similar stories. Alovysa makes Sanseverin
“promise…to act by my advice” and keep all information relating to the scandal to
himself (64). She is the god-like author who directs people’s movements and most
significantly establishes authorial control over scandalous information by determining
who can disclose what and when. Though absolute in her control, Alovysa is fluid in her
presentation of her self. When Sanseverin leaves and D’Elmont arrives “she threw off her
dejected and mournful air, and assumed one all gaiety and good humor” (65). Alovysa
creates a different persona for everyone, designing different versions of her self and new
stories for each character. Once again she demonstrates adaptability by crafting an
authorial persona and narrative for different readers.
But Alovysa cannot accomplish the creation of a scandalous intrigue alone:
authorship is not an isolated occupation as Alovysa’s reliance on her servant Charlo
13 shows. After D’Elmont’s mistaken courtship of Amena, Alovysa calls for Charlo, “who
being the same person that carried the letter to D’Elmont, guessed what affair he was to
be concerned in, and shut the door after him” (43). Despite Alovsya’s precautions, at
least one other person knows about her narrative plans and understands that maintaining
secrecy is key to maintaining power. Alovysa needs Charlo to deliver her letters and
make them available for consumption while protecting her authorial identity. He later
brings Alovysa ‘intelligence’ of D’Elmont’s affair with Amena, giving her the materials
she needs to write her second letter. And he acts directly as her agent in separating
Amena and D’Elmont:
[Alovysa] was already informed of part of this night’s adventure for the
cunning Charlo who by her orders had been a diligent spy on Count
D’Elmont’s actions…had watched him to Monsieur Sanseverin’s garden, seen
him enter, and afterwards come with Amena…[he] ran home and brought his
lady an account…at this news, made her promise the fellow infinite rewards if
he would invent some stratagem to separate them… (61)
Charlo’s stratagem is to cry fire, waking Amena’s household and alerting them to her
absence. Alovysa’s authorship gives her power, but she cannot exercise it without the
help of others. An engaging seduction narrative requires the assistance of a community of
individuals who can alternate between positions of subservience and power (Alovysa is in
some regards in Charlo’s power because he knows her secrets, but she has financial and
social power that he lacks). Prescott notes this presence of a community is often
underemphasized in Haywood studies: “this sociable and integrative element to women’s
literary production has often been downplayed in favor of a model of the professional
14 female author as solitary, embattled and exclusively driven by commercial and economic
motives” (16-17). While the relationship between Charlo and Alovysa cannot be
described as sociable, the former’s involvement simply emphasizes how an author –
especially a woman author – cannot publish texts for male consumption by herself.
When D’Elmont finally untangles the plot, he remains unaware of his agency in
the production of narrative and uses Alovysa’s narrative to bring himself into a position
of respectable ownership. After abandoning Amena and finding out Alovysa’s secret,
D’Elmont “[regrets] his being the author of Amena’s misfortunes” (67). For a moment
there is hope of self-awareness, that D’Elmont will understand how his mistaken reading
of female text has led to intense distress. But the moment does not last: “The pleasure the
discovery gave him of a secret, he had so long desired to find out, kept him from being
too much concerned at the adventure that occasioned it” (67). This is not just a comment
on the superficiality or selfishness of male love: it implies a provoking question about the
ethics of reading and a reader’s desire. The desire to know, to satisfy curiosity, is the
driving force behind reading in Love in Excess, and in contemporary fiction in general
curiosity is connected to a gendered desire for power. The works of Manley for instance
also “curiosity-sexual, political, and visual expresses man's desire for domination”
(Benedict 199). D’Elmont’s attitude subtly asks the reader to question the moral
implications of curiousity and the desire for power, suggesting that the gratification of
desire leaves objects of desire (namely women) in a vulnerable position that cannot be
thoroughly recognized or addressed by curious male readers searching only for the
possession of [sexual] knowledge.
15 D’Elmont does acknowledge his poor reading skills and begins “accusing himself
of intolerable stupidity” for not recognizing Alovysa as the author (67). But he still reads
narrative with a mind set on the acquisition of property. Breaking the novel’s narrative at
this point is the story of D’Elmont’s brother, the Chevalier Brillian who relates how he
has fallen in love with Alovysa’s sister Ansellina. After listening D’Elmont tells his own
story, summed up as “The letters he received from a lady incognito, his little gallantries
with Amena, and the accident that presented to his view, the unknown lady in the person
of one of the greatest fortunes in all France” (75). It is hard for modern readers to
consider his affair with Amena as “little gallantries,” since they casue her to lose her
family and place in society. D’Elmont easily reads the intrigue to his advantage, making
it part of a narrative that favors his actions. And he does not consider Alovysa in the light
of a lover, as she wished, but identifies her as a generic person and as a sum of money.
Readers are presented briefly with a narrative that parallels but also competes with
Alovysa’s in terms of its ‘truth.’ D’Elmont does not consciously lie about the events, but
to the external reader they appear biased and therefore not entirely truthful. Ballaster
writes the “Interpretation of the ‘signs’ of love and their truthfulness or duplicity
becomes a field of conflict in these female-authored texts, a conflict that is recognized
throughout as deeply implicated in the struggle for political and literary authority
between the two genders” (“Seductive” 25-6). Alovysa constantly struggles throughout
Volume I to make D’Elmont interpret her signs properly and then D’Elmont assumes a
kind of literary authority by retelling the story to his brother. As Ballaster points out there
is certainly a struggle to control the meaning of the romantic signs and of the properties
and bodies involved. But it is more of a one-sided struggle for Alovysa; she alone frets
16 over interpretation while D’Elmont has a brief moment of self-awareness before
blissfully and indifferently assuming control of the narrative, bringing the story to a close
through a socially advantageous marriage. The struggle for political and literary authority
that Ballaster describes is here a conflict only in the minds of women, because men
presume to have total authority and control over others.
Consulting together the brothers “ended with a resolution to fix their fortunes
there” (75). While most of the novel focuses on the plots of one woman, here we have
men engaged in an exchange that affirms the patriarchal order where the husband owns
the wife and her property. The narrator is candid about D’Elmont’s motives, stating
“Ambition was certainly the reigning passion in his soul, and Alovysa’s quality and vast
possessions, promising a full gratification of that, he never so much as wished to know, a
farther happiness in marriage” (76). This is not a harsh observation: the narrator does not
clearly condemn D’Elmont for his actions, and indeed at the time arranged dynastic
marriage amongst aristocracy was only beginning to be criticized (Todd 25). Toni
O’Shaughnessy Bowers claims that in the works Haywood’s of earlier contemporaries
(namely Behn and Manley) “the ideal and most passionate sexual relationship is the
extramarital affair, free from the blighting considerations of property,” but in Love in
Excess Haywood presents affairs and marriages that are ruined by D’Elmont’s
“considerations of property” (53). D’Elmont rejects marriage to Amena on the basis of
his shallow feelings and on her small dowry, and his marriage to Alovysa is motivated
entirely by the prospect of owning vast property. As Haywood will demonstrate
repeatedly throughout the novel, there is no relationship that is devoid of political and
financial discourse. This may sound cynical, but it could also be interpreted as realistic.
17 Declaring his intentions to Alovysa, “He soon put it in her power to oblige him” by
encouraging Ansellina to accept Brillian (77). D’Elmont assumes the position of power
outlined by Alovysa in her first letter, where he generously dictates how she can serve
him.
Reflecting on the whole of Volume I it is easy to see how Alovysa’s experiences
parallel and comment on the institution of authorship in the contemporary novel market.
Emily Hodgson Anderson argues author heroines like Alovysa
[T]ake up their roles to achieve expression, gain the potential to embody—not
merely their author’s experiences—but their author’s approach to authorship.
As they do so, the sense of performance expands from a theatrical act located
within the novel to the theatrical act of novel-writing, itself (12).
Alovysa’s authorial activities draw the reader’s attention to the experience of writing, but
if Anderson’s assertion is true then Alovysa’s villainous attributes have troubling
consequences for the ethical image of the authorship. Throughout the Volume Alovysa is
described as “jealous,” a “too absolute mistress,” and a “cruel woman” (42, 43, 61). She
stops at nothing (except the revelation of her name) to achieve her desires, exhibiting a
ruthless ambition at the expense of Amena who is “little versed in the art of
dissimulation, so necessary to her sex” (46). Dissimulation or the concealment of one’s
thoughts is necessary to female survival: Alovysa’s letters and narration of intrigue
effectively walk the line between disclosure and revelation, allowing her to achieve her
desires. In short, Alovysa is a ‘good’ author in the context of the eighteenth-century
marketplace for amatory novels. She is capable of reading people and creating narratives
that cater to their desires while serving her own interests, and she is adaptable when it
18 comes to producing new texts. The question remains though, are readers directed to
respond negatively to Alovysa’s author status because of her morally reprehensible
actions? And do her actions cast a negative light on female authorship as a whole?
To formulate an answer to these questions readers must consider Alovysa’s
motivation and ask if Haywood and Alovysa are situated differently as authors to their
texts. Several scholars argue that Alovysa’s motivation for textual production is based on
the need to control the process of self-definition, something typically denied to women in
the eighteenth century. Merritt writes Alovysa “is motivated primarily by the need to
exert some influence over her destiny” (138). This may seem like an oxymoronic
statement given Alovysa’s powerful, independent socio-economic position and her
willingness to submit to D’Elmont’s wishes, but the text does suggest the desire for
control is at least part of her motivation. Before writing to D’Elmont, Alovysa would
“fall into ravings, sometimes cursing her own want of power, sometimes the coldness of
D’Elmont” who fails to be inspired by her beauty, of which she is very proud (38).
Alovysa turns to authorship because she has no other way of expressing herself and of
controlling the development of the sexual identity that is typically managed by a paternal
figure. On the other hand, Alovysa is explicitly motivated by pride and to maintain her
superiority she attempts to destroy her rival Amena by removing her from the narrative
plot. While readers may be disgusted by her ruthlessness, they may (especially in the case
of modern readers approaching the text from a feminist perspective) acknowledge and
appreciate the desperateness of Alovysa’s attempts to define her self and the course of her
life. Alovysa does not only want to possess D’Elmont but also prove possession of her
self through the successful seduction of the Count.
19 Alovysa is positioned in relation to her textual productions in a very different way
than Haywood, disallowing readers to draw a direct parallel between the ethics of the
former and the latter. The author of Love in Excess is distanced from the text, and while
this distance is not unusual in eighteenth-century novels, it is achieved in an atypical way
within the text itself. Contrived as some of the plot events are, the text rejects the
presence of an omniscient author-figure. When Amena flies to Alovysa’s house for
instance, the event is called “a whimsical effect of chance,” not the choice of a plotting
author who wants to appeal to readers by creating dramatic chaos (61). The text rejects a
causal relationship between the “young lady” described in Chetwood’s letter and the
events of the story. In Alovsya’s case however, she consciously causes and links events
together in a plot line of her choosing. Of course the reader knows that the novel does
have an author and the comparison between Alovysa and Haywood’s authorial persona is
closer than the text superficially claims.
The negative characterization of Alovysa, and the weak rejection of authorial
responsibility on the part of Haywood, makes the reader think about why authors create
the narratives that they do. Alovysa has selfish motives in creating a seduction intrigue
that causes ruin to others, but this narrative is what the eighteenth-century novel-reader
wants to consume. The reader is the object and subject of the novel, the interpreter of and
participant in novelistic intrigues.11 Without Alovysa, the plot would stall; even though
D’Elmont is the hero, he is incapable of performing intrigue himself. In a way Alovysa is
the engine of the volume, and she produces a narrative that readers (both within and
without the novel) want to read. Warner remarks of amatory fiction in general, “The
11
I draw this idea from Davis’ articulation of the buyer of newsbooks: “Further, just as we have seen with
ballads, the news depends on the fact that the newsbook buyer is both object and subject, both reader of
events and participant in those events” (73).
20 intriguer’s machinations, consolidated into a scheme, become the plot’s engine. The
scheme entails a sadistic flattening of the social field and its agents which, in turn,
assures the cynical superiority of the intriguer” (96). The fall of Amena and the
ruthlessness of Alovysa stress that the production and consumption of novelistic
pleasures come at a price, one that is heavy for women in particular. In order to seduce
readers, to engage them through a text that will cater to their desires while serving those
of the author, women authors must go beyond the boundaries of normal behavior while
maintaining some kind of covert identity that allows them to write. The novel’s authorfigure may be more obscure than that of Alovysa, but both create a narrative that
inevitably entails the restriction of women in order to create an intriguing erotic narrative
that will appeal to a mostly male audience, who like D’Elmont are pleased to have their
masculine authority and property rights confirmed.
Alovysa is a fascinating author-figure who demonstrates how women can
consciously work within patriarchal structures of the court and of the novel marketplace
to appeal to male readers while flattering and fulfilling their own personal desires.
Consistently characterized as a jealous schemer who ruins the life of a sympathetic girl,
Alovysa’s exciting, engaging success as an author force the readers to examine their own
desires as consumers of intrigue; after all, “Depicting the process of innocence
challenged, corrupted, or preserved, had a vigorous ideological basis and considerable
market appeal” (Turner 45). Readers must consider how they, like D’Elmont, participate
in the production of narrative that inherently leaves women vulnerable. Hunter
elaborates, “Manley and the early Haywood are anxious to expose the private sides of
public figures and dramatize the hypocrisy of the rituals and claims of modern life while
21 exploring the ruthless insensitivity to categorical victims cast by the roadside” (38).
Although D’Elmont is not a public figure, he easily stands in the text as a symbol of male
aristocratic patriarchy constantly cited and reinscribed in cultural discourse, a discourse
that also allows for the thoughtless victimization of women like Amena. D’Elmont’s poor
reading and indifference to his role in the production of seduction narrative demonstrate
how reading is a skill that must be learned, and this educational process can be hindered
by gendered expectations of possession and property. D’Elmont’s slow progress as a
reader and his quick development as an author of intrigue is the main subject matter of
Volume II, to which I now turn.
22 CHAPTER TWO
Volume II of Love in Excess continues the plot of D’Elmont’s adventures, and
affirms and complicates concepts of authorship enacted in Volume I. The title page of
this volume includes Haywood’s name, declaring “Mrs. Haywood” as the author. It is
likely that either Haywood or Chetwood placed Haywood’s name on the second volume
due to the positive response the first volume received. From a historical/biographical
standpoint Haywood’s marital status remains unclear, but “the appellation ‘Mrs’ was also
a customary, courtesy title given to or adopted by single women to denote their dignity
and maturity” and would indicate to a contemporary reader that the author is a socially
experienced woman (Turner 100). This implication of experience becomes explicit
through the rising presence of a critical narrative voice. The potential for authorial
criticism and even subverstion is also predicted by the poem on the title page. Extracted
from Dryden’s translation of Chaucer, the poem fortells the advent of social and civil
chaos:
Each day we break the bond of humane laws
For love, and vindicate the common cause.
Laws for defense of civil rights are placed,
Love throws the fences down, and makes a general waste.
Maids, widows, wives without distinction fall,
The sweeping deluge love comes on and covers all. (81)
In terms of contemporary contexualization, placing this poem on the front-page links the
novel and its author to a traditional canon of male English authors (including Dryden and
Chaucer). Similar to its Volume I counterpart, the poem rejects love as a peaceful
experience. Love preceds subversion, the destruction of political rights and the markers
of property (fences). Love causes women of all stations to fall into sexual experience and,
if outside of marriage, into social exclusion. But Amena’s ‘fall’ from social grace in
23 Volume I excites readerly sympathy, and this in turn informs how readers could interpret
the poem. Falling into sexual experience through intrigue may be exciting, but the
content of Volume I and the ominous quality of the poem suggest that the remainder of
the novel will be concerned with the negative consequences of seduction narrative. The
author of romance becomes an agent of social and personal chaos and by putting her
name on the page directly under the poem Haywood associates her authorial self with this
subversive role.
The title page is followed by several puffs or poems that praise the novel and its
author. These poems were typical marketing devices and were first used in the theater to
‘puff up’ the reputation of the playwright. The theatrical origin this novelistic trope
shows not only the connection between the literary developments of the theater and
novel, but emphasizes how authorship is an act of performance: the puffs set up roles for
the author to play in the text. To a modern reader the praise may seem exaggerated, but
“what a writer most needed was reputation; from this all else, including financial
independence, followed” and so praise was crucial to a novelist’s career (Brewer 139).
The first poem is by Richard Savage, a poet and playwright who was (for a time) a friend
of Haywood and so his puff demonstrates how authors worked together to survive in the
market.12 Savage’s poem argues Haywood’s work exemplifies the powers of language.
The novel’s “Soul-thrilling accents all our senses wound…For such descriptions thus at
once can prove / The force of language, and the sweets of love ” (82). He even states
Haywood has earned “The myrtle’s leaves,” the conventional symbol of poetic
achievement. Savage does not focus on the novel’s content but on Haywood’s style,
12
Haywood and Savage (who possibly had children together) had a falling-out in 1724. He wrote
derogatory verses about Haywood afterwards.
24 suggesting Haywood’s claim to authorship rests on her ability to manipulate language.
The second puff is by an anonymous author who places great emphasis on Haywood
herself. The author describes how he disbelieved in the power of love (especially in
women) until “YOU [Haywood] a champion for the sex appeared!” (83). Now, the author
writes, “I feel that fire / YOUR words alone can paint! YOUR looks inspire! / Resistless
now, love shafts, new pointed fly winged with YOUR flame, and blazing in YOUR eye”
(83). The capitalization shows how the poet elevates the person of the author above the
novel itself. Her words inspire passion but so does her physical body: this may seem
oxymoronic since Haywood is not specifically described but considering how text stood
in for the female body and its reproductive capacities, the emphasis on Haywood’s
physical attractions is not surprising. In addition,
The most common marketing strategy used by the print trade was to conflate
the woman novelist with the amatory themes of her fiction. Various
commendatory poems connect the women novelist’s literary abilities with her
representations of passion. (Prescott 69)
While Savage focuses on the text, the anonymous poet focuses on the woman as part of
her text and theme. Together the puffs illustrate the paradoxical absence and presence of
the novel’s author figure that constantly appears and then recedes into the text. The puffs
also show how women writers like Haywood, once they obtained celebrity status, became
a “text, artifact, and subject” that could be manipulated in the marketplace (Backscheider
“Novel’s” 7). In Volume II Haywood introduces a narrative voice that acts as an external
commentator, and this external position is achieved at least partly through the public
objectification and idealization of her authorial persona in print.
25 The plot of Volume II begins with D’Elmont as reader, a role that allows him to
achieve a degree of self-consciousness he lacked in Volume I. D’Elmont falls in love
with his ward Melliora, and upon experiencing genuine passion he re-reads his past
behavior in a new light: “It was in these racks of thought, that the unfortunate Amena was
remembered, and he could not forbear acknowledging the justice of that doom, which
inflicted on him, these very torments he had given her” (90). D’Elmont is placed in a
passive position like Amena where he feels desire but cannot express it. This similarity of
passivity forces him to recognize and lament his agency in the narrative of Amena’s
downfall, where he previously rejected his involvement. But then, “he looked on
[Alovysa], as indeed she was, the chief author of Amena’s misfortunes” (90).13 While
acknowledging his involvement he still shifts agency or authorship completely onto
Alovysa, which is unfair considering how he tried to seduce Amena after knowing she
was not the letter-wrtier, and without considering her desires or reputation. D’Elmont
then receives a letter from Amena bitterly condemning him for his actions and declaring
her intention to become a nun. But before doing so, she begs for one last word from him.
D’Elmont “read it over several times, and found so many proofs in it of a sincere and
constant affection, that he began to pity her, with a tenderness like that of a relation, but
no more” (92). D’Elmont is a more experienced, thoughtful reader: he reads carefully
multiple times and interprets the text as indicative of the writer’s desires, not just as
flattery of his own. Reading the letter also allows D’Elmont to achieve a more nuanced
emotional state, recognizing the different kinds of tenderness and desire that exist.
D’Elmont manifests what some scholars identify as the central effect of the novel form:
13
I am not sure why the narrator agrees Alovysa is the chief cause of Amena’s problems: if Alovysa had
not interfered after her first letter Amena probably would have been seduced and abandoned by D’Elmont;
there would be no happy ending for Amena in either case.
26 through the novel “The number of possible narratives, ways of understanding and
describing oneself increased enormously; the issue of who or what one was was rendered
much more complex” (Brewer 158). Reading Amena’s letter enables D’Elmont to
imagine his responsibility in her narrative decline and expand his personal understanding
of desire and love.
But D’Elmont has much to learn as his attempts at authoring intrigues show.
Although D’Elmont becomes more proficient at reading written texts he still cannot read
female bodies accurately, interpreting everything as conducive to the gratification of his
desire for sexual possession. At Alovysa’s suggestion D’Elmont decides to move to his
country estate, the solitude of which is favorable to his plans for seducing Melliora.
Choosing this particular setting also emphasizes D’Elmont’s power as a domestic
patriarch; as Armstrong notes the site of aristocratic authority “was the country manor
house” (71). The setting of the house gives D’Elmont complete access to its inhabitants,
and also provides Melliora a recognizable social identity to read when interpreting
D’Elmont as a subject. Melliora, aware of his passion and of her own, tries to leave but
“he so artfully managed his endeavors, between the authority of a guardian, and the
entreaties of a friend, that she was at last overcome” (106). Like Alovysa in Volume I,
D’Elmont assumes several guises in order to act out the narrative he wants. It takes him
time however to formulate his plot: “D’Elmont after having formed a thousand fruitless
inventions, at last pitched on one, which promised him, an assurance of success” (114). It
is important to note the similarities and differences between D’Elmont’s situation and
Alovysa’s: neither can initially decide how to express and gratify their desires, but
Alovysa turns to the authorship of text first because it offers (in theory) protection of her
27 identity. D’Elmont does not need to be so modest or covert. He manages to get a key to
the servant’s staircase, which leads from the garden to Melliora’s room. He sneaks in
while she sleeps, and “was sometimes prompted to return and leave her as he found her”
until she cries out his name during a dream (116). The narrator steps in to comment,
If he had now left her, some might have applauded an honor so uncommon,
but more would have condemned his stupidity, for I believe there are very few
men, however stoical they pretend to be, that in such a tempting circumstance
would not have lost all thoughts, but those, which the present opportunity
inspired. (116-7)
This passage feature the novel’s first use of the first-person pronoun: it emphasizes the
voyeurism of the scene because it reminds the reader there are external eyes (namely
those of the narrator and the reader) watching and judging the scene, just as D’Elmont
watches Melliora in a private moment of sleep. While the narrator does not explicitly
condemn D’Elmont’s behavior, she does not overtly applaud it either. Instead, she makes
a comment on social norms of masculinity, pointing out that although men are expected
to protect female virtue (especially the virtue of women in their household) there is a
much greater emphasis on and allowance for the exertion of masculine sexual energy
even if it is against female desire.
Despite his attempts, the Count does not succeed in bringing his narratives of
seduction to fruition and he is constantly denied consummation. Superficially his
schemes fail because Melantha interrupts them, but the novel works through more
profound issues in these failures. D’Elmont reads Melliora as his property, disallowing
her a complex subjecthood and understanding of her own desires. It is not surprising that
28 D’Elmont should conceive of Melliora as property because her father (Monsieur
Frankville) gives her to him as a ward. On his deathbed Frankville says,
[I]f you will promise to receive her into your house, and not suffer her artless
and inexperienced youth to fall into those snares which are daily laid for
innocence, and take so far a care, that neither she, nor the fortune I leave her,
be thrown away upon a man unworthy of her, I shall die satisfied. (85)
Frankville shows genuine concern for his daughter, but he is also concerned about her
“innocence” (virginal status) and her fortune. Spencer explains, “The daughter’s virginity
was an asset to be handed over to a financially and socially suitable husband, and the
wife’s fidelity ensured that property passed only to legitimate sons” (Spencer 109). The
irony of the request is poignant, since D’Elmont was the snare that ruined Amena’s
innocent reputation and value as a commodity in the marriage market. This irony
underlines how patriarchal systems that are supposed to protect women also allow the
victimization of women at the hands on men. Melliora understands this danger and the
narrator laments the vulnerability of her situation saying, “Indeed there never was any
condition so truly deplorable as that of this unfortunate lady; she had just lost a dear and
tender father…her brother was far off, and she had no other relation in the world” (88).
The narrator recognizes “The status of women was derived largely from that of their
presiding male, whether father or husband, and thus considerable changes in
circumstances could occur upon the death of their parents, or upon marriage” (Turner,
61). Melliora is left totally in the power of D’Elmont, and she finds him “dangerous to
make use of” because she immediately detects his desire for her (88). In some of her later
novels, such as The Fortunate Foundlings, Haywood’s heroines have the opportunity to
29 escape their lusty guardians, but Melliora is given no option. Her safety and danger lie
within the limited and double standard constructs of patriarchy, which she must learn to
inhabit.
Melliora does make her resistance known through intellectual discussions of love
and though D’Elmont does not absorb what she says, the reader can glean insights from
her conversation. Describing his ideals of love and friendship, D’Elmont declares true
love is “that, which has no reserve, no separate interest, or divided thoughts, that which
fills all…What can love do more than yield everything to the object beloved?” (110). The
sentiment seems romantic, but in the context of a heteronormative eighteenth-century
relationship it implies complete absorption of the female by the male. According to
D’Elmont the partners can have no independent thoughts or interests; in short someone’s
unique subjecthood is lost. And again, in the historical context of the novel, it is women
who yield everything in love, not men (this is proved by D’Elmont himself in Volume I,
who gives nothing to but expects all from Amena). He goes on to tell Melliora, “Your
hand…your lip, your neck, your breast, your all – all this heaven of beauty must be no
longer in your own disposal – All is the prize of friendship!” (110). Breaking her into
bodily fragments, D’Elmont does not conceive of Melliora as a holistic being, but as
objects that he can use for his pleasure (and he proceeds to do so by kissing the items
mentioned). Moreover he is explicit in taking control away from Melliora, who is “no
longer” allowed to have her own body at her command but must give this property to her
‘friend’ D’Elmont.
Considering Melliora as property, D’Elmont tries to incorporate her against her
will into a seduction narrative that affirms his masculine authority. This incorporation
30 entails a crucial misreading, in which D’Elmont reads desire as the equivalent of consent.
Pinning her against her bed, D’Elmont rejects Melliora’s pleas, arguing
I cannot – I must not…what, when I have thee thus! thus, naked in my arms,
trembling, defenseless, yielding, panting with equal wishes, thy love
confessed, and every thought, desire! What could’st thou think if I should leave
thee? How justly would’st thou scorn my easy tameness; my dullness,
unworthy of
the name of lover, or even of man! – Come, come no more reluctance…damp not the
fires thou hast raised with seeming coyness! I know thou art mine! All mine! (117).
D’Elmont is aroused by Melliora’s vulnerability, signified by her nakedness and
trembling, and reads this vulnerability as availability for possession. Hearing Melliora
speak of him in an erotic dream, D’Elmont assumes that her unconscious expression of
desire is the same as conscious consent to sexual activity. These misreadings of
Melliora’s body and desire support his ideal of masculine penetration and possession. He
interestingly places the burden of defining his masculinity on Melliora saying she would
find him unmanly if he desisted, when it is clear to the reader that she wants nothing else.
His words indicate how deeply one gender is defined through discourse with the other .
And finally, in a now familiar rhetorical move, D’Elmont shifts the agency of the
narrative onto Melliora, claiming she has coyly aroused his desires. The “idea that a
woman could perform attitudes of love was not a new one in the eighteenth century, as
the character of the coquette figures prominently in both eighteenth-century fiction and
conduct literature” (Anderson 30). D’Elmont substitutes cultural character archetypes for
actual human beings. Despite the experience he gains through reading Amena’s letters, he
still misreads the text of the female body to suit his possessive wishes and rejects his
31 authorial agency in violently forcing a narrative onto female characters.14 When Melliora
brings up how his seduction could have negative consequences he exclaims, “By
Heaven…I will this night be master of my wishes, no matter what tomorrow may bring
forth” (117). As in Volume I, D’Elmont gives no thought to the victims or general
outcome of his narratives. And again, in this erotic moment he emphasizes his authority
and power over Melliora.
D’Elmont also underlines the connection between masculinity and authority
through his interactions with Alovysa and the Baron D’Espernay. Deeply regretting the
distress he caused, D’Elmont writes to Amena expressing his regret and his discontent
with marriage. In a typical intrigue move Alovysa takes the letter from a servant
(reminding the reader of the necessity and danger of a network) and upbraids her husband
for its contents. When she later apologizes, “he (like most husbands) thought it best to
keep up his resentments, and take this opportunity of quelling all the woman in her soul,
and humbling all the little remains of pride that love had left her” (104). D’Elmont
demonstrates how domestic masculinity is performed through psychological
manipulation that induces Alovysa to adopt a position of submission. Although the
concept of absolute domestic patriarchal authority was not an unproblematic one,
D’Elmont defines himself in relation to Alovysa as a master to a subservient woman.
D’Elmont’s confidant, the Baron, expands on this performance of masculinity by
claiming that when individual men fail to assert authority over women (mainly through
sexual conquest) the cultural discourse of manhood is degraded as a whole. He firmly
14
Katherine Anne Ackley brings up an interesting point worth considering as modern readers compare their
responses versus those of contemporary readers to D’Elmont’s actions: “The psychological availability of
violence, in combination with deeply held attitudes about women’s submissive nature, normalizes violent
aggression against women” in early eighteenth-century fiction (217).
32 argues masculine passivity will “injure the dignity of our sex in general” (113).
Haywood’s works often feature “heartless seducers” like the Baaron, whose “only society
is a masculine one, and they perform for each other” (Backscheider “Category” 35). The
presence of the Baron provides an additional impetus for D’Elmont’s seduction narrative:
impressing and bonding with other men. The relationship between the Baron and the
Count reveals how the importance of homosocial interaction when defining individual
gender. D’Elmont uses women to define himself, but also relies on other men to clarify
the standards of masculinity that he must support.
The Baron is the most masterful author in the volume, manipulating narrative to
obtain his desires though like D’Elmont his seductions ultimately fail. Black reports “The
Baron is an archetypal figure for the kind of masculine desire Ballaster discusses, a
master of "designs" and "artifice,” committed only to "the gratification of his wishes”
(215). The Baron is “a figure of narrative productivity” and his capacity and motivation
for narrative production are linked to his gender (215). The Baron possesses several skills
that make him a clever author of seduction, but perhaps the most important is his ability
to intuitively withhold or reveal tantalizing information. While Alovysa dreads stepping
over the boundary between disclosure and revelation in Volume I, the Baron confidently
uses this boundary to entice readers. When the Baron is first introduced, D’Elmont tells
him of his passion for Melliora. The narrator addresses the reader remarking,
But the Baron, who had designs in his head, which he knew he could not by
any means be brought to succeed, but by keeping the Count’s passion warm,
made use of all the artifice he was master of, to embolden this respective lover, to
the gratification of his wishes. (113)
33 Like Alovysa the Baron is a master of artifice. He creates different narratives and
authorial positions for various readers: for D’Elmont he is a helpful friend and for
Alovysa he is a devoted confidant when he actually has destructive plans for both. The
Baron’s position in relation to D’Elmont parallels the position of the novel’s author to the
reader. To keep the story going the novelist and the Baron constantly engage the reader’s
interest by withholding information while simultaneously telling the reader he does not
know everything yet. Many scholars have noted how this kind of textual stimulation is
connected to sexual arousal in contemporary and modern criticism. Barbara Benedict
remarks “Simply reading about sexual matters seemed equivalent to stimulating sexual
response” (196). But the interaction between author and reader in Love in Excess is more
complex as Black argues:
This kind of game played across a shared awareness represents a match
between canny readers and a self-conscious writer, the stakes of which are the
gratification of a desire not defined exclusively as sexual. Trading sex for secrets
characterizes the narrative economy of the text: a canny seduction of a knowing
reader, pitting narrative inventiveness against the reader's desire not simply for
orgasm but for play. (218)
D’Elmont does not consciously participate in this economy because he does not know the
Baron’s authorial motives, but the reader is certainly aware of his motives and the
novelist’s desire to give pleasure through text. Similarly to how Davis describes the
suspension of disbelief sparked by the novel’s claims to reality, the reader of the
seduction narrative ‘plays along’ with the author-figure to have an entertaining textual
experience.
34 As the volume proceeds the Baron creates separate narratives to please D’Elmont,
Alovysa, and himself. Throughout the volume he demonstrates a keen ability to identify
the desires of his readers and to adapt his narratives accordingly. Engaging the interest of
D’Elmont is simple: the Baron promises to help his friend seduce Melliora, explaining “I
have a contrivance in my head, that cannot fail to render all her peevish virtue frustrate
and make her happy in her own despite” (136). The Baron does not need to use text to
author his scheme because due to his masculine social power he can easily and openly
command multiple people. He plans to host a party and offer D’Elmont’s family lodging
for the night, when he will lead the Count to Melliora’s unlocked room. Like D’Elmont,
the Baron shifts agency away from himself when authoring a narrative. The focus of the
contrivance is Melliora, who has made herself unhappy with peevish and prudish
behavior. The plot goes as planned, and when D’Elmont asks how he can thank his friend
the Baron replies, “In making…a right use of the opportunity I give you, for if you do
not, you render fruitless all the labors of my brain, and make me wretched while my
friend is so” (139). Once again the Baron displaces authorial responsibility by claiming
the intrigue’s end depends on the reader (D’Elmont). The Baron recognizes the role of
the reader in producing narrative, even when D’Elmont as reader does not. The act of
authoring seduction plots brings these two men together in a kind of homosocial bond;
this issue of homosocial bonding is developed more intensely in Volume III.
The Baron also crafts a plotline for Alovysa, who is obsessively suspicious of her
husband since finding Amena’s letter. The Baron, who wants to seduce Alovysa, easily
reads the situation and offers himself as a friend who is angry with the Count for his
infidelity. The narrator relates, “But he wanted not cunning to disguise his sentiments,
35 and approaching her with a tender, and submissive air, entreated her to tell him the cause
of her disorder” (134). Like Alovysa, the Baron is skilled at adapting his personal address
and position for each reader. He significantly places himself in a position of humble
submission to encourage Alovysa’s trust and appeal to her desire for control, just as she
does in her first letter to D’Elmont. The Baron admits he knows the name of D’Elmont’s
lover, but refuses to disclose it because such an action would be dishonorable. The
Baron’s silence in the name of homosocial honor exemplifies a common thread in
Haywood’s texts that “report on what seems to be a secret fraternity that condones forms
of force and fraud” (Backscheider “Caveats” 27). The Baron is willing to break this
fraternal bond, but not in a direct verbal manner. Instead, the Baron explains, “you shall,
though not at this moment, you shall have greater proofs than words can give you –
ocular demonstration shall strike you dumb” (135). Arousing but deferring the
satisfaction of Alovysa’s curiosity, the Baron pulls a classic move in the amatory genre
by promising to make his reader a voyeur of private erotic scenes. The author of Love in
Excess is not so explicit, but this is essentially what she is doing throughout the entire
novel as well.
The Baron’s authorial skills however do not bring any narratives to completion:
while Alovysa succeeds in her plot to marry D’Elmont in Volume I, none of the Baron’s
stories succeed. He fails because he misreads how female characters value different
desires, assuming that the desire for knowledge or sex outweighs or nullifies the desire
for self-control and moral behavior. Discussing female desire with D’Elmont the Baron
argues, “Women are taught by custom to deny what most they covet, and to seem angry
when they are best pleased” (113-4). While this argument (particularly the second clause)
36 serves the Baron and D’Elmont’s plans to forcibly seduce women, the first clause is true
as Alovysa’s experience in Volume I proves. The Baron’s degradation of female honesty
reveals how social expectations of modesty provide men a convenient discourse to justify
their disregard for female consent. Of course the Baron does not adopt such an arrogant
attitude when addressing Alovysa, but presents himself as a humble lover. She however
is not fooled by his protestations of friendship and she “knew his drift well enough”
(141). In order to satisfy her jealous curiosity Alovysa allows the Baron to hope for a
sexual conquest, inspiring him to continue creating narrative. She even allows him some
liberties with her body, “which she affected to permit with a kind of an unwilling
willingness” (147). Like the Baron, who withholds information for power, Alovysa
withholds total access to her sexualized body to get what she wants. At the same time, her
“unwilling willingness” reinforces the Baron’s belief that women outwardly deny what
they want; as with her letters to D’Elmont Alovysa conforms to gender norms in order to
appeal to men.
Alovysa however, is loath to give the Baron what he wants, namely full sexual
possession of her body. His narrow focus on possession and the supposedly covert lust of
women blinds him when considering how female characters prioritize their desires. After
his first scheme fails, the Baron tells Alovysa he will give her the name of the rival, but
begs “do not, oh charming Alovysa think me mercenary, if I presume to set a price upon
it, which I confess too high, yet nothing less can purchase” (147). The Baron sets their
relationship, as Black maintains, in the context of an economic exchange: the price of the
Baron’s disclosure is his purchase or possession of Alovysa’s body. This emphasis on
exchange is unsurprising given the novel’s historical context:
37 [I]n the early eighteenth-century English economy, a man’s world [was]
becoming newly oriented toward trade, commerce, capital, and profit. Under
these conditions, it is perhaps not surprising, as Williamson observes, that
amatory fiction’s men are predatory and selfish, its women always on the
defensive and fearful of abandonment.” (O’Shaugnessy Bowers 63)
Alovysa pretends to agree to the exchange, “But the Baron was as cunning as she, and
seeing through her artifice, was resolved to make sure of his reward first” (147).
Although focused on his goal, at this point the Baron is a good reader. Unlike D’Elmont
in Volume I he easily identifies Alovysa’s desires and tries to manipulate them to his
advantage. When she forcefully rejects his advances, he “was not enough deluded by her
pretence of kindness to be much surprised” (148). However, he is surprised by what
Alovysa says: she explains that she still loves her husband, and her love and loyalty to
him outweighs her curiosity. The narrator reports, “She spoke these words with so much
scorn, that the Baron skilled as he was in every art to tempt, could not conceal the spite
he conceived at them” (148). The masterful author is taken aback by the honest, loving
loyalty of Alovysa. He misread her in assuming that Alovysa’s desire for power and
control (which would come through knowledge) is greater than her desire for D’Elmont
or for moral conduct. As throughout the entire volume, the Baron simplifies the situation
of women, generalizing what they feel and how they act, glossing over complexities of
feeling those Alovysa displays. When his reading of Alovysa (and of women in general)
is contradicted he declares, “That happy fair unknown, whose charms have made you
wretched, shall undiscovered, and unguessed at, triumph in these joys, you think none but
your Count can give” (149). Unable to assert his masculine authority through sexual
38 conquest the Baron asserts his control by reminding Alovysa of his authorial role, of his
ability to withhold tantalizing information. He connects this authorial ability to male
potency, plainly stating, “that if he could not have her heart, nothing but the full
possession of her person should extort the secret from him” (154). Backscheider argues in
Revising Women that the texts of Haywood and her contemporaries were “revisionary”
for how they “figured men’s treatment of women into the determination of their
goodness. Thereby, the novels took steps toward the redefinition of ‘masculine’ and of
the sex-gender system” (“Novel’s” 7). The Baron’s villainous role is certainly supported
by his disregard for Melliora’s consent and his treatment of Alovysa, but the interactions
between the Baron and Alovysa complicate this simple moral figuration. D’Elmont
insists on sexual possession of Melliora just as much as the Baron insists on possessing
Alovysa, and yet the Baron is a villain in a way D’Elmont is not. Alovysa is just as
cunning and ruthless as the Baron in Volume I, and perhaps more importantly, Alovysa
agrees twice to the Baron’s schemes, offering her body as payment for his secrets. The
volume does not offer a new code of masculinity: rather the text points out how men and
women are trapped in a discourse of gender that turns men into predators and intelligent
women like Alovysa into ‘willing’ sex objects in order to gain some kind of power or
agency in their personal lives. Translating this issue of gender discourse into the realm of
authorship through its depictions of author-figures, the novel also shows how individuals
as readers continuously author this discourse by demanding and consuming it through the
production of literature.
Before analyzing the conclusion of Volume II and its implications for novel
reading, I would like to address the issue of Alovysa’s poor readership. In Volume I
39 Alovysa is an intelligent, ambitious woman capable of reading and manipulating others to
achieve her own desires. In Volume II however, she consistently misreads D’Elmont’s
desire and remains oblivious to his seduction of Melliora in her own house. When she
reads D’Elmont’s letter to Amena in which he laments his marriage, “her passions
swelled, ‘till they got at last the entire dominion of her reason” (95). Alovysa acts the part
that critics of the novel believed all women would assume, that of a reader inspired to
rash action and passionate feelings by inflammatory text. She however calms herself,
judging (correctly according to the narrator), “Man is too arbitrary a creature to bear the
least contradiction, where he pretends an absolute authority” (96). Her successful efforts
counter the argument that “Women… are less able to temper their passion, because they
are offered no other form of social power or diversion” (Ballaster “Preparatives” 57).
Clearly women are capable of self-control because they recognize that by tempering their
passions they can achieve domestic despite the false assumption that men are the absolute
rulers. Pretending to be calm, Alovysa fools D’Elmont into thinking their marriage is
stable. Once again through the reading of D’Elmont’s desires Alovysa creates a narrative
to suit his needs and his ‘pretended’ power in the household. In this case however, the
narrative leaves her desires entirely neglected and it is not long before Alovysa reaches
her psychological limits.
After D’Elmont confronts Alovysa for stealing his letter, she demonstrates a
complete inability to detect the seduction narratives taking place in her home. Arguing
over the letter, Alovysa states “Tis well indeed…that anything can make you remember
both what you are, and what I am” (99). D’Elmont replies, “You…have taken an
effectual method to prove yourself a wife…since you are pleased to assert your privilege,
40 be assured, I too shall take my turn, and will exert the – husband!” (96). The pair does not
accuse each other of improper conduct based on a romantic relationship or love: the basis
of their accusations is a normative understanding of gender. Alovysa casts herself and
D’Elmont not as individuals but as roles (what she is and what he is – namely a wife and
husband). D’Elmont asserts Alovysa is fulfilling the stereotypical role of the nagging
wife, and he is turn will assert his role as an authoritative patriarch, a role emphasized by
the separation of the word “husband” (and its accompanying exclamation point) from the
rest of the sentence. The significance of these roles in defining gender should not be
underemphasized: in the case of men, “men’s governance in the household was deemed
one important route to early modern manly honour” (Harvey 4). In both volumes
D’Elmont can use women to confirm his honor and masculine identity, but Alovysa is not
free to do so. Alovysa becomes a ‘bad’ reader once she has been totally reinscribed as
D’Elmont’s wife and therefore his legal property. In Volume I, Alovysa occupied a
separate, external position from which she could observe and direct other characters.
Merritt explains, “The privileges of spectatorship are not within Alovisa's grasp, perhaps
because she never truly escapes her position on the object side of the look. In trading on
her desirability, she compromises her autonomy” (139). As a wife in Volume II, she is
legally/socially subsumed in D’Elmont and she cannot author her own story, nor can she
accurately read others because she is blinded by the need to maintain control over
D’Elmont.15 This need for control is manifested in her jealousy, which prompts her to
outbursts of passion and even violence against D’Elmont. Alovysa’s decline as an
independent agent parallels that of many heroines in contemporary women’s fiction,
15
Anderson suggests, “sex exposes a woman, physically and emotionally, in a way that destroys the
potential for future dissembling” (31). But Alovysa’s sexual contact with D’Elmont is never specified, and
Ciamara certainly disproves this point in Volume III.
41 where “women show the unsettling ability to move from victimization to aggression”
(Backscheider and Richetti, xxiii).16 At one point Alovysa declares, “All France shall
echoes with my wrongs!” (128). Her primary means of aggression are revealing private
family information, an act that is distinctly out of line with wifely duties because
“Women’s unacknowledged domestic and private heroism is to restore order and beauty
to the world; in other words, they are to clean the linen, rather than display it in public”
(Ballaster, Seductive, 163). Admittedly, Alovysa’s decline may be attributed to more
practical narrative concerns. In other words, Alovysa’s character may have changed to
suit the exigencies of the plot and make the narrative more dramatic. If this is true
however, and Alovysa’s character is only a plot device, the text’s sympathetic treatment
of her situation seems unnecessary.
In an ironic twist Alovysa becomes a figure of sympathy and her failure to read
D’Elmont and Melliora produces a darkly comic effect. At the beginning of the volume
all three main characters (D’Elmont, Melliora, Alovysa) are trying to hide their true
feelings: “All made it their whole study to deceive each other, yet none but Alovysa was
entirely in the dark” (97). The narrator constantly describes how D’Elmont and Melliora
are barely able to disguise their sentiments, but they totally fool Alovysa, a clear-sighted
author and reader in Volume I. Venting her grief to Melliora at one point by lamenting
the decay of D’Elmont’s charms, she fails to notice how “Melliora was too sensibly
touched with this discourse, to be able presently to make any answer to it, and she could
not forbear accompanying her in tears” (128). It is obvious to the reader that Melliora
knows feels the full force of these charms and feels guilt at causing Alovysa’s distress.
16
Haywood’s story “The City Jilt” dramatizes this shift even more: the story is about a young woman name
Glicera who after being seduced and abandoned successfully tricks and humilates an older, richer man.
42 Alovysa however is too caught up in her own grief to stop and read Melliora’s emotive
clues that reveal her love for D’Elmont. The reader is now, compared to Alovysa, in the
position of authorial power: the reader knows information that Alovysa does not. This
dramatic irony is comic in a subdued way, and the narrator clarifies that Alovysa is to be
at least slightly pitied. She is consistently called a “poor lady” whose experience will be
incomprehensible due to “the greatness of her sufferings” (105, 133). When she requests
the Baron’s help a second time and he requires the possession of her body, the narrator
relates,
It would swell this discourse beyond what I design, to recount her various starts
of passions, and different turns of behavior, sometimes louder than the winds she
raved! Commanded! Threatened! Then, still as April showers, or summer dews
she wept, and only whispered her complaints now dissembling kindness, then
declaring unfeigned hate… (154-5)
Alovysa is still deceitful because her kindness is only feigned and her desire for power
and control is still strong (as evidenced by her commands and threats). But the fact that
the narrator claims the emotional experience is beyond the limits of novelistic discourse
reveals the intensity of her suffering. The excess of her own passions is Alovysa’s
punishment; her experience cannot be described fully or even condensed into full
sentences (note the short exclamatory phrases). Her excess of love (either for D’Elmont
or for control) is fatal. It expands beyond the plans of the narrator/novelist, cutting
language into fragments and destroying Alovysa entirely.
The tragic ending of Volume II, including the accidental deaths of the Baron and
Alovysa (the latter dying at the hand of her husband), seems rather unexpected. Unlike
43 Volume I, the scandalous narratives of seduction the male protagonists participate in end
in death – why? It should be noted that D’Elmont’s first intrigue does end in a kind of
death for Amena: her honest reputation is killed and by becoming a nun she buries herself
in a religious tomb, so for all narrative purposes she is dead to the world. Volume II
presents a literal death where a woman loses her peace of mind and life as a result of
masculine intrigues. When D’Elmont begins authoring a seduction narrative with Amena
he does not consider the consequences. Similarly, he and the Baron do not consider how
their intended victims will respond to their advances. Their obsession with sexually
possessing women and in turn confirming their masculinity, inhibits their ability to think
ahead and consider how the narratives will end and more importantly, blinds them to the
possibility that their women readers will change the narrative by responding to it (as
D’Elmont did when responding to Alovysa’s letter-narrative in Volume I).
The tragic ending also serves to draw attention to the novel-reader’s role as an
agent of curiosity and this role’s ethical implications. Leading up to the two deaths,
suspense is heightened over and over again as more characters become embroiled in the
conflict and the Baron and D’Elmont craft new strategies to seduce Alovysa and
Melliora. This heightening effect is supposed to engage the reader’s curiosity, and
“Whether plots are known in advance or are only disclosed as they unfold, the reader’s
suspense derives from wanting to know if the scheme will succeed” (Warner 113). And
the deaths also create a kind of cliffhanger moment, where the reader wonders how the
romance between Melliora and D’Elmont will end. Hammond reminds modern readers,
“Narrative suspense, to a modern taste so cumbersomely managed, is a boldly
experimental device, leaving the reader breathless with excitement at what might be the
44 outcome of this dammed-up desire” (225). If this desire for curiosity motivates the novel,
then the reader must consider how his desire is part of that narrative. After all, desire
drives textual production. Black explains,
At moments when Haywood offers occasions for the reader's self- consciousness
as an agent of curiosity, novels could be said to become the self-consciousness of
the market, part of the discourse in which the pleasures of novelty are offered not
just as objects to be consumed but as terms in which to think, terms with which
readers may understand what they do as readers. (225)
Dying at the hand of her reader (D’Elmont), Alovysa silently but powerfully declares that
readers fuel the creation of cultural roles and narratives that may give pleasure and power
to some but often entail the injury and dispossession of others.
Scholars analyzing Love in Excess have accurately noted the novel is concerned
with the education and reform of D’Elmont, and Volume II exemplifies this process but
also its slow development. Continuing the intrigue with Amena after its “end” in Volume
I, Haywood gives D’Elmont a further opportunity to develop his skill at reading and
textually responding to the writing of women. Immediately following this development
with the seduction of Melliora however demonstrates that D’Elmont remains a bad reader
in crucial ways. Misreading the female body, D’Elmont interprets desire as consent and
uses cultural stereotypes of female desire to frame his interpretations even when he is
loudly presented with contradicting behavior. He and the Baron read the female body as
property that can be exchanged and owned that affirms their masculine authority, power,
and communal bonds. The exchanges between the Baron and Alovysa affirm the
significance of disclosure and adaptability in assuming an authorial persona, but both are
45 handicapped in their narrations by gender norms. The Baron incorrectly assumes women
prioritize the desire for control and curiosity above everything else, and Alovysa’s
abilities as a reader are debilitated by her subsumation into D’Elmont through marriage.
By the end of the volume the multiple narratives of multiple charactes descend into chaos
and death. Placing the reader in a position of knowledge and pointedly making parallels
between the novelist’s techniques and those of the characters, Volume II encourages
readers to recognize their participation in a textual economy of readerly desire and
authorial production, while also recognizing the serious consequences this economic
system has especially for those in positions of little social power (i.e. women).
Admittedly, this recognition requires a nuanced reading of the volume’s end. The final
volume places even greater responsibility on the reader’s skills to understand the
meanings the novel has to offer.
46 CHAPTER THREE
Volume III was originally published with Volume II, so its Prestructure is very
short in comparison to its predecessors but there is a unique emphasis on the narrative
position of Volume III. In other words, the titlepage emphasizes this volume will end the
plots started in Volumes I and II. Under the title is the phrase, “The Third and Last Part”
(161). A short quote from the epilogue of Thomas Southern’s play The Spartan Dame
follows: “Success can then alone your vows attend, / When worth’s the motive,
constancy the end” (161). Like the subtitle, the poem stresses how this volume will end
all narratives and notes the conclusion will be happy for characters that are constant in
their behavior and vows. The main preoccupation of readers has been following the twists
and turns of the almost never-ending plots of various characters, and in the first two
volumes the plots are wrapped up suddenly in the span of a few pages. The subtitle and
poem of Volume III suggests this volume will feature a greater emphasis on the happy
results of these plots, but this is not the case. Volume III is full of complicated and
extensive intrigue; the only central difference is the setting (Rome). Placing an emphasis
on denounment in the titlepage however performs several functions. First, it reminds
readers how the author withholds information throughout the text. The author knows how
the book will end, and gives readers only a vague to encourage them to continue reading
and discover all that has been ‘hidden.’ Second, the emphasis separates or distinguishes
the volume from its predecessors: in Volumes I and II the lovers are kept apart, but the
Prestructure implies they will now be brought together. Finally, the Prestructure suggests
that constancy will be rewarded not only in the characters, but in the readers as well. The
reader will be rewarded with a happy ending by remaining constant and reading all the
47 novel’s parts. The promise of this reward is important because the final volume of Love
in Excess requires particularly careful reading partially due to its formal characteristics.
Volume III features a prominence of letters and a focus on letter writing. There
are of course letters in the preceding sections: Volume I and II contain four and five
letters respectively, but Volume III contains eighteen. At several points the plot consists
only of characters writing letters to each other. This prominence is unsurprising because
“The love-letter was perhaps the most popular and ubiquitous fictional device of the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth-century in both England and France” (Ballster
“Seductive” 61). As an intensely personal form of communication, the letter acts as “an
opening into consciousness” of the author and this in turn means the novel-reader (who is
not the letter’s intended recipient) is “above all a voyeur, getting pleasure from invading
another’s consciousness, and thus by analogy the body, without taking any of the risks of
an actual encounter” (Ballaster “Seductive” 62). The plethora of letters emphasizes the
voyeuristic quality of the reader, but also the exhibitionist quality of the novelist. After all
“The other side of voyeurism is exhibitionism, and readers would never get their view if
novelists were not determined that they should have it. The insistency of writers in the
early eighteenth century matches the curiosity of readers in a way that allows something
quite new” (Hunter 38). Volume III illustrates this new relationship between the novelist
and the novel reader. The excess of letters, some unsigned or misdirected, also allows
Haywood to create a more complex intrigue than in the previous volumes. Readers
(including D’Elmont) have to read carefully in order to make sense of the plot. The
number of letters signifies advancement in readerly skill: the novel’s readers must learn
to interpret a greater number of texts more quickly than they did in Volumes I and II.
48 Similarly, although D’Elmont is still a flawed reader/author he reads and writes letters
more fluently than he used to.
Volume III constantly stresses how D’Elmont has changed since the beginning of
the novel and while he is sometimes egocentric, his reading of women’s texts (bodily and
written) is the most poignant demonstration of personal change. Similarly to how he
laments his impact on Amena in Volume II, D’Elmont reflects on Alovysa’s death in
Volume III with sorrow. Her death “was too great a shock to the sweetness of his
disposition to easily be worn off,” and “drew some lamentations from him, more sincere,
perhaps, than some of those husbands, who call themselves very loving ones, would
make” (163). Sliding in a critique on the insincerity and deceit of men the narrator
indicates D’Elmont’s sensibilities, which formerly recovered so quickly from
disappointment, have deepened beyond the prescribed norms of masculinity. This
alteration is confirmed by the fact that “Ambition, once his darling passion, was now
wholly extinguished in him by these misfortunes” (163). D’Elmont no longer pursues any
action or woman for the sake of enhancing his reputation or wealth. He also continues to
feel sympathy for women who experience unrequited love. Once alerted to the passion of
the Italian noblewoman Ciamara, the Count reflects, “The remembrance of what he had
suffered thus agitated, in the beginning of his passion for Melliora, made him extremely
pity the unknown lady” (172). But, he goes on to doubt “that there was a possibility for
woman, so much stronger in her fancy, and weaker in her judgment, to suppress the
influence of that powerful passion; against which, no laws, no rules, no force of reason or
philosophy, are sufficient guards” (172). D’Elmont recognizes similarity of romantic
feeling and desire between the two sexes, but he still rejects the idea that women are
49 capable of managing their passions. Allowing for the sincere and complex feelings of
women, D’Elmont still relies on generalized stereotypes of the irrational, emotionally
unstable woman. His thoughts are ironic because the previous volumes are full of
instances where he makes poor, irrational decisions based on imagined intrigues that
never succeed. While D’Elmont’s transformation is not complete, the gradual quality of
his development as a character and education as a sensitive man make the narrative feel
more realistic.
A significant development in D’Elmont’s journey occurs at the beginning of
Volume III where he defines himself as a mentor to a fledgling male author. Saving the
life of Monsieur Frankville, Melliora’s brother, D’Elmont becomes his close friend and
the two spend the rest of the volume working out seductive intrigues. At first, Frankville
is concerned D’Elmont has tarnished Melliora’s reputation, but the Count puts Frankville
at ease by giving him “the whole history of his adventures” (185). D’Elmont however is
selective in his storytelling: he begins with “the time of his gallantry with Amena, to the
misfortunes which had induced him to travel, disguising nothing of the truth, but some
part of the discourse which had passed between him and Melliora” when he surprised her
in bed (185). D’Elmont is now experienced at storytelling, and he exhibits that special
authorial trait of withholding tantalizing information. Although Frankville is not aware of
this partial disclosure and therefore cannot gain any pleasure from a curiosity to know
more, the novel’s readers can enjoy knowing more than the character does. The narrator
explains D’Elmont’s selective storytelling is due to his consideration for Melliora’s
honor, which prevents him from relating “anything of her, which modesty might not
acknowledge without the experience of a blush” (185). When D’Elmont tells his story to
50 Brillian in Volume I, he does not consider how Amena would be affected by his act of
narration. But his experience with Alovysa shows him how far a narrative (written or
spoken) can go, and how the interpretation of this narrative can lead to negative
consequences. At the same time D’Elmont’s scruples reinforce how scandalous the novel
is because the reader is always privy to scenes that elicit blushes, signals of offended
modesty or of covert sexual experience (Ballaster “Seductive” 166).
Frankville in turn tells the narrative of his affair with Camilla, and when he loses
hope of marrying her D’Elmont steps in to mentor his friend and see the narrative
through to the end. Offering to take a letter to Camilla, D’Elmont says it is unlikely “that
I shall not be able to assist her invention to form some scheme, for both your future
happiness” (203). D’Elmont does not intend to author Frankville’s intrigue: he states he
can “assist” Camilla’s in forming a plot and plays a similar role as Charlo by carrying
texts to other characters, helping an author’s plot move forward. These actions suggest
D’Elmont understands how women are capable of crafting narrative plots (though they
need men to execute them) and that authors of either sex need a network to bring a
seduction narrative to completion. Frankville shows D’Elmont all of the letters he reads
and writes and the Count instructs him as to how to interpret the text of women. For
instance, when Camilla harshly criticizes Frankville for what she believes is infidelity,
Frankville is reasonably worried he has lost her love. But the narrator comments, “It was
now D’Elmont’s turn to rally, and he laughed” at Frankville’s fears, “which he imagined
causeless” (222). D’Elmont’s interpretation of Camilla’s text influences how Frankville
reads and writes. But D’Elmont is not a faultless mentor: when their plan to bring
Camilla and Frankville together backfires, D’Elmont is deeply troubled that “he had it not
51 in his power to give him any advice in any exigency so uncommon” (229). D’Elmont
(and his mentee Frankville) cannot adapt their plans in response to obstacles like those
that Alovysa or the Baron face; it is only when Violetta intervenes that the narrative they
started can continue.
Throughout his mentorship of Frankville, D’Elmont demonstrates that he still has
much to learn as a reader by constantly misinterpreting texts whose meaning is
transparent for the novel reader. At the beginning of their acquaintance Frankville comes
to D’Elmont accusing him of kidnapping Melliora, who has disappeared from her
convent. Upon hearing the news,
…that which gave him [D’Elmont] the most stinging reflection was, the belief
that Melliora had forsook the monastery, either because she thought of him no
more, and was willing to divert her enfranchised inclination with the gaieties
of the town, or that some happier man had supplanted him in her esteem. (184)
Melliora’s conversation and hobbies in Volume II contradict D’Elmont’s belief that she is
frivolously spending time in town. And his fear of her faithlessness has absolutely no
grounds. Instead of accurately reading the event as a kidnapping and therefore
involuntary on Melliora’s part, D’Elmont projects motives onto her disappearance based
on his insecurities and belief in the disloyalty of women in general. Later, when
D’Elmont tries to deliver a letter to Camilla and is greeted by the amorous Ciamara he
mixes the women up, though it is obvious to the reader (based purely on Camilla’s
letters) that the former would never be faithless. D’Elmont’s stereotypes of women
continue to check his accurate reading of intrigue narrative.
52 Volume III details the intrigues of many women, namely Camilla, Ciamara, and
Violetta. I choose to focus on Ciamara because as an author figure she is most conscious
of how she creates a narrative that will seduce and be consumed be male readers. Like
Alovysa, Ciamara is also aware of how her physical self acts as another type of text she
can manipulate for the purpose of creating an erotic narrative. It is important to recognize
in Ciamara’s case the ability to author intrigue is not only linked to gender and her socioeconomic position, but is also significantly linked to her national identity as an Italian.
Italians were known in England for their passionate, rash behavior, and were consistently
associated with deadly political and erotic intrigue.17 Ciamara’s passionate letters,
dramatic plots, and eventual suicide fit in with the expectations of contemporary English
readers. In addition to the bold Ciamara, Volume III prominently features the voice of an
opinioned narrator who stops the plot to discourse on topics of love or gender for pages at
a time. I do not argue that the narrative voice is the voice of Haywood as a historical
individual but rather that the narrator voice acts as an outlet through which Haywood can
express the authorial function of discursive technique. As an author, Haywood helps
perpetuate many types of interconnected discourse, but she also critiques them. The
narrative voice is a tool Haywood uses to funnel this discursive function into the plot of
the novel. Ciamara however, does not critique contemporary norms but rather
manipulates them to her advantage.
The fact that Ciamara manages to maintain an intrigue with D’Elmont despite his
disinterest indicates her sophisticated authorial abilities, which are linked to the same
strategies deployed by Alovysa in Volume I and the Baron in Volume II. Once again,
17
Love Intrigues (1713) by Jane Barker exemplifies these stereotypes, as do the later Gothic novels of
Anne Radcliffe (A Sicilian Romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho).
53 secrecy and the careful disclosure of information are crucial. She initially approaches
D’Elmont through text, writing him a short anonymous note addressing him as “The
Never Enough Admired Count D’Elmont” (166). Like Alovysa, Ciamara flatters the
Count as a universal conqueror. She signs herself as “Your most Passionate and Tender
(but ‘till she receives a favorable Answer) Your unknown Adorer” (166). Ciamara is
explicit in setting the terms of the ‘exchange’ of erotic intrigue. She will reveal her name
and gratify D’Elmont’s curiosity if he gives her his affection in return (it later becomes
apparent that his sexual body is sufficient, but that is not quite so clear here). While she
calls herself an adorer or worshiper of D’Elmont, Ciamara is the one who will decide
how the narrative will continue (compare to Alovysa who waited for D’Elmont to make
the next move by ‘discovering’ her love). Ciamara is aware that women “seem always on
the verge of being real or cultural capital and available to men” and she uses this
awarenesss to market herself to D’Elmont without any qualms – she seems happy to be
taken as a sexual object of desire and nothing else, demonstrating “how internalized such
thinking is” (Backscheider “Caveats” 39).
Ciamara’s ability to withhold and reveal information at the correct time is also
connected to her adaptability, a key quality of a successful author. Like Alovysa in
Volume I, Ciamara is an independent noblewoman that possesses substantial wealth.
Ciamara uses her wealth and station to constantly change the tactics she hopes will
seduce D’Elmont. After her letters fail to elicit the response she desires, Ciamara
(covered by a veil) walks by him after mass, dropping “an Agnus Dei set round with
diamonds at his feet” (170). When D’Elmont tries to follow the unknown woman, “she,
who knew well enough what she had done, left the walk where the company were” and
54 “stood looking on the water, in a thoughtful posture” (170). Covering her face, carrying a
sacred object (albeit one that excessively displays her wealth), and adopting a specific
carriage, Ciamara tries to convey a modest/devout/humble personality that differs from
the coquettish tone of the letter. She changes her self and uses physical objects to try and
alter the narrative of seduction in a way that will appeal to D’Elmont. Of course, the
adaptation does not succeed in luring the Count. Ciamara tries the same strategy again in
the famous scene where she appears in the place of Camilla, in a room that “might fitly
be a pattern, to paint the palace of the Queen of Love by” (206). The room has “colored
silk, intermixed with gold and silver” depicting erotic Greek myths, crystal candelabras,
and cupids holding crushed velvet over a couch (206). Although the room was not
designed to entice D’Elmont specifically, Ciamara’s appearance is: “her desire of
pleasing…had made her add all the aids of art,” so she is covered with rich fabrics, large
jewels, and a veil “so thin, that it did not, in the least, obscure the shine of her garments;
or her jewels” but only her face (207). By covering her face, Ciamara protects her
individual identity, but by dressing herself so elaborately and by receiving D’Elmont in a
rich room room, she advertises her social identity as a wealthy woman. The narrator, by
drawing attention to the artificiality of the room and Ciamara, implicitly argues that
Ciamara has turned herself into a luxurious object intended for visual and sexual
consumption. This self-objectification does not mean that Ciamara loses agency, but on
the contrary
Merely by assuming a position as subject (both the central subject of the
narrative and the possessor of active sexual subjectivity), even if that position
is ironized, amatory fiction’s desiring women threaten traditional male
55 prerogatives based on female subjugation and objectification, and provide space
for readers to imagine something new. (O’Shaugnessy Bowers, 58)
Ciamara’s actions allow readers to imagine not only a sensually fantastic environment,
but also a system of gender relations where power is not absolutely held by men.
Ciamara’s agency and control is also demonstrated through her manipulation of a
network that carries out her narrative plans. In typical Italian fashion Ciamara employs a
bravo, or hired murderer, to deliver her letters. Although the bravo’s appearance is
“comical,” his manner is threatening (168). Refusing to deliver D’Elmont’s reply the
bravo explains, “My orders were to bring your self, not a letter from you, nor do I use to
be employed in affairs of this nature, but to serve one of the richest, and most beautiful
ladies in Rome, who I assure you, it will be dangerous to disoblige” (169). It is
significant that while text can stand in for the female body or psyche, it cannot do so for
the male D’Elmont: his textual body is no substitute for his physical self because he is
free to display and give his body in a way that women are not. In addition the bravo
explains that he is not usually employed in affairs of this nature (namely courtly
intrigues) but does so at the request of his employer. Ciamara has the power to
manipulate people (including dangerous male criminals) to do whatever she desires. The
bravo’s insistence on the danger of angering Ciamara and her choice to send a man to
fetch D’Elmont emphasize her power and her willingness to go beyond the norms of
female seduction (like sending anonymous letters) to get what she wants.
Considering Ciamara’s adaptability, her network, and control over information, it
may seem surprising that her narrative plot to seduce D’Elmont fails. Her central failing
parallels that of the Baron: Ciamara fails to accurately read how the Count (and men in
56 general) categorically values desires. Furthermore her inflated consciousness of her social
power and value as a sexual object make D’Elmont’s refusals (based on love and not on
social ambition) incomprehensible. When he fails to respond to her first letter, Ciamara
writes to demand “Is it thus, that you return the condescension of a lady?” (167). Like
D’Elmont in Volume I, Ciamara connects scandalous intrigue with a system of
aristocratic behavior and values. Delaying to write a response, D’Elmont insults Ciamara
by failing to give her the romantic attention her station requires. She goes on to argue,
“there are within thy breast, some seeds of hidden fire, which but want the influence of
charms…for I flatter my self tis in my power to work this wonder” (167). Ciamara is so
confident of her influence that she neglects to consider her appeal may not be universal,
or that every man may not be a willing reader of her intrigues. She also interprets
D’Elmont’s body as consenting to her affections and plans: describing their encounter
outside the church, Ciamara claims “I perceived in my charming conqueror’s eyes, a
growing tenderness, sufficient to encourage me to reveal my own” (176). The reader
knows though, because the narrator frequently mentions it, that D’Elmont only feels pity
for Ciamara. By interpreting D’Elmont’s body as desirous, Ciamara subtly shifts agency
away from herself arguing that it is acceptable to reveal her passion because D’Elmont
‘revealed’ his first. Even though Ciamara is in a position of social and authorial power,
she is restrained by social precepts regarding courtship. At the same time, her desire for
possession of D’Elmont is distinctly unfeminine according to contemporary standards.
Ciamara declares, in a phrase echoing D’Elmont’s conversation with Melliora, “He must
– he shall be mine!” (176). This possession of D’Elmont is intimately linked with the
affirmation of Ciamara’s own power. When D’Elmont explains he is in love with
57 Melliora and cannot return Ciamara’s love, the latter is deeply offended: “She was by
nature extremely haughty, insolent of her beauty…and this open defiance of her power,
and acknowledging another’s, had she been less in love would have been insupportable
to her” (210). The italics in the line proclaim Ciamara’s obsession with power; by
controlling others Ciamara implicitly references her own strength and influence. By
refusing to acknowledge Ciamara’s influence and seduction narrative (except for one
occasion that I will address), D’Elmont is challenging Ciamara’s conception of herself as
a powerful, attractive woman. Taken in this light, her extreme emotional responses seem
slightly more reasonable. Constructing a seduction narrative allows Ciamara to exercise
authorial control and create a holistic, powerful subjecthood, but when D’Elmont refuses
to participate in that narrative this created selfhood is threatened. Taken even further,
Anderson declares “These authors define themselves through the practice of authorship,
so that what is expressed by these texts is finally a desire for authorship, a desire for
expression itself” (12). When D’Elmont shuts down the exchange of letters and narrative,
he closes off one of the only avenues of expression available to women in a (according to
Ciamara) strict society. Lashing out at D’Elmont, Ciamara questions his masculine
potency, revealing her belief that the assertion of sexual power is of the utmost
importance to a man, an assertion D’Elmont’s loyalty to Melliora contradicts. Ciamara
bluntly tells him, “You…can want nothing but the will to make me the happiest of my
sex – But this is no time for you to give, or me to receive any proofs of that return which I
expect” (178). Ciamara believes the only reason D’Elmont will not engage in her
seduction narrative is if he lacks the ability (the will) to sexually please women. And
Ciamara expects this ability from D’Elmont, as she explains she anticpates proofs of will
58 at a later date. The italicized words emphasize that Ciamara characterizes D’Elmont
based on his will/his ability to give her pleasure. After failing to entice D’Elmont,
Ciamara exclaims, “Are you that dull, cold Platonist, which can prefer the visionary
pleasures of an absent mistress, to the warm transports of the substantial present?” (224).
She defines immediate gratification of sexual desire as more important than faithfulness
or loyalty on the part of men. She goes further to say, “Married – betrothed, -- engaged
by love or law, what hinders but this moment you may be mine” (224). Despite being at
the top of the social ladder, Ciamara completely disregards the boundaries set by society
concerning monogamy in sexual relationships. And she expects D’Elmont to do the same.
D’Elmont however consistently rejects Ciamara’s advances in ways that reveal
his growth and failures as a reader and writer of intrigues. After receiving both of
Ciamara’s anonymous letters, he is “willing to put an end to the lady’s trouble, as well as
his own…and without giving himself much time to think,” writes a civil response that
firmly rejects her advances (167). The fact that D’Elmont considers Ciamara’s feelings as
well as his own in trying to end the narrative is encouraging because it demonstrates a
less selfish attitude than what readers previously observed. On the other hand, the
thoughtless way in which he writes indicates that he does not give Ciamara’s narrative
the consideration it requires: he assumes the affair can easily be ended and forgotten, but
the language of the letters, especially Letter II, reveals Ciamara’s pride will not accept a
terse rejection. When Frankville asks D’Elmont to write an obliging letter to Ciamara to
access to her home (where Camilla resides) the Count hesitates out of sympathy for the
noblewoman. The narrator reports, “His generous heart, averse to all deceit, thought it
base and unmanly to abuse with dissimulation the real tenderness the lady had for him”
59 (218). Recognizing and respecting Ciamara’s feelings does D’Elmont credit and once
again shows how he has grown as a character when in the past he repeatedly ignored the
feelings of the women he tried to seduce. In addition he rejects the use of deceit, which
he frequently relied on in the past. As worthy as D’Elmont’s scruples are, it is important
to note that at Frankville’s urging he overcomes them to write the letter and help his
friend. Maintaining the homosocial bond with Frankville is more important than being
honest in his relations with Ciamara. As with Volume II, which featured the bond
between the Baron and the Count, Volume III presents a world where individual men
may have ‘honorable’ goals or intentions towards women, but are persuaded and
motivated by values derived from homosocial conversation and conventions. The novel’s
narrator sometimes disputes these conventions in extensive moments of commentary.
The voice of the narrator is clear and strong in Volume III, which is surprising
given the reticent presence of a narrative persona in Volume I. Throughout Volume III
the narrator stops the plot to speak on larger conceptual issues underpinning the novel
such as heteronormative love and desire. These interruptions were commonplace in the
eighteenth-century novel:
If novels seldom fall into intense directives that become….simple verbal
harassment, they still contain a generous sprinkling of passages, sometimes
put into the mouth of a character and sometimes offered through the author’s
own persona, in which simple, direct, and plain statements of value are openly
set apart from any pretense of storytelling or objectivity. (Hunter 232)
The narrative voice strongly critiques contemporary understandings of love and desire in
a straightforward didactic tone, complicating the generic categorization of Haywood’s
60 novels (and the intrigue novels of Behn and Manley among others) as pure sexual
titillation. Warner correctly and succinctly states, “Formula fiction is rife with didactic
messages,” and in Love in Excess these messages can be normative and subversive (114).
Due to the length of the narrator’s ‘asides’ it is difficult to give them the full analysis they
require, but I will select a few key didactic moments to examine what kind of authorial
persona is created through the passages and how they affect the reader’s understanding of
authorship and gender. At the beginning of the volume the narrator describes how
Melliora consents to write to D’Elmont and remarks,
When we give ourselves the liberty of even talking of the person we have once
loved, and find the least pleasure in that discourse, ‘tis ridiculous to imagine we
are free from that passion, without which, the mention of it would be insipid to
our ears, and the remembrance to our minds; though our words are never so cold,
they are the effects of a secret fire, which burns not with less strength for not
being dilated…Love, is what we can neither resist, expel, nor even
alleviate…Liking is a flashy flame, which is to be kept alive only by ease and
delight…Love creates intolerable torments! unspeakable joys! raises us the
highest degree of happiness, or sinks us to the lowest hell of misery.” (164-5)
One of the more striking things about this passage is the fact that the narrator uses the
second-person perspective, including the reader in her musings and judgments with
repeated use of the word “we.” This usage emphasizes how the reader is part of the
narrative because he/she participates in the discourse of love and pleasure that the novel
itself participates in as a whole. The use of “we” also hearkens back to the prefatory
poems that describe the universal effects of love: the reader is drawn into a community of
61 people who have similar opinions and experiences after reading the novel up to this point.
The private experience of the reader is validated “by ennobling it, creating a privileged
community of desiring subjects: “we” lovers, “we” readers” (Oakleaf 17). And this
community includes the author.18, 19 As to the tone of the passage, the narrator is
forthright, as the strong word choice (e.g. “ridiculous”) and the dramatic syntax and
punctuation indicate. Concerning the content the narrator makes several crucial points
about the strength of love. Love can exist secretly, and individuals can (like novelists)
disclose but not reveal their true sentiments. The passage also implicitly argues that social
boundaries set on love in terms of its conception and expression are unenforceable and
generally useless in individual life, making readesr question why these boundaries are
valued and discursively perpetuated. Going even further the narrator explains love
exceeds the power of language because it produces “unspeakable joys.” This inability of
representation is referenced frequently in Volume III. Overall the passage declares that
love is excess(ive) because it exceeds boundaries set by individuals, society, and even the
powers of language.
On other occasions the narrator is even more blunt in addressing the reader and
society in general. Before Frankville tells his story to D’Elmont, the narrator
contemplates,
Methinks there is nothing more absurd than the notions of some people, who
in other things are wise enough too; but wanting elegance of thought,
18
Gallagher notes that Behn also constructed a close relationship between her authorial self and the
audience in accordance with theatrical connoctations (11).
19
Interestingly Hunter argues “Partly because of social and architectural changes and partly because of the
dynamics of print, readers of novels from the beginning tended to read in solitude, and novels from the
beginning presumed to be dealing with one reader at a time rather than with a communal audience” (40).
Perhaps Haywood’s novel is too early or experiemental to fit into Hunter’s analysis.
62 delicacy, or tenderness of soul, to receive the impression of that harmonious
passion [love], look on those to be mad, who have any sentiments elevated
above their own, and either censure, or laugh, at what they are not refined enough
to comprehend. These insipids, who know nothing of the matter, tell us very
gravely, that we ought to love with moderation and discretion…that we should
never place our affections, but where duty leads, or at least, where neither
religion, reputation, or law, may be a hindrance to our wishes. Wretches! (186)
While including the reader in her judgment, the narrator starts with a personal statement
(I/me thinks). The narrator is not an objective, moral voice but a subjective persona with
strong opinions, proving how Haywood’s “narrators can be stung to outrage” by the
hypocrisies of society (Backscheider “Caveats” 27). As with the previous quote the word
choice is strong in condemning those who do not acknowledge the power of love,
expanding on why some are incapable of participating in the universal or at least the
novel-reader’s experience of love. This incapability stems from personal insensitivity –
an argument exemplified by D’Elmont himself in Volume I, who laughs at his brother’s
melancholy love-sickness and shows no sincere tenderness toward Alovysa or Amena.
The narrator rejects the idea that people can exert agency in choosing the object of their
desire, and suggests therefore lovers should not be held accountable to the rules set by
societal institutions.
As radical as the narrator’s opinions may seem, there are points where she
confirms patriarchal notions of power and honor. Throwing herself at D’Elmont, Ciamara
disrobes and the narrator adds,
63 Though it was impossible for any soul to be capable of a greater, or more
constant passion than his felt for Melliora, though no man that ever lived, was
less addicted to loose desires…yet, he was still a man! and, ‘tis not to be
thought strange, if to the force of such united temptations, nature and modesty
a little yielded; warmed with her fires, and, perhaps, more moved by curiosity,
her behavior having extinguished all respect, he gave his hands and eyes a full
enjoyment of all those charms… (225)
The emphasis on the word “man” hints that the reader should forgive D’Elmont for his
infidelity because he is only acting in line with contemporary notions of masculinity and
giving into the universal desire of curiosity. It is interesting to note that what supposedly
encourages D’Elmont is that he no longer has respect for Ciamara (her bold advances
make him consider her as a courtesan). Men set standards for what constitutes feminine
respectability, and then use the transgression of these standards as justification for their
behavior. This tacit approval of D’Elmont’s actions should not be too surprising, as
Backscheider argues, “From her earliest publications, Haywood seems to have had an
ironic self-consciousness about narrative voice that admits near-parody,
metacommentary, deconstruction, and ironic double commentary into her texts”
(“Caveats” 28). Hunter adds, “The shades of irony in eighteenth-century prose—almost
all of them delicately discovered in the service of a distinct didactic function—still have
never been matched” (232). The narrator verbally affirms D’Elmont’s constancy while
creating a strong image to the contrary; juxtaposing this constancy and erotic curiosity
subtly shows the contradictory quality of behavioral standards for men.
64 This strain of metacommentary is also expressed through constant references to
the inability of the author to properly describe the emotions of characters. Frequent
phrases signaling this inability include, “It is impossible to represent,” “all endeavors to
represent…would be in vain,” and “words were too poor to express” (179-80, 183-4/261,
250). These are perhaps surprising reflections for an author-figure, but they show a
complex consciousness about the way language functions in society as a medium of
personal expression. Although Love in Excess has much to say about contemporary
understandings of reading, writing, gender, and property, it admits that its medium of
communication (language) is faulty and cannot accurately depict real feeling. This gap
between language and experience was a topical issue in intellectual circles, and Davis
describes anxiety over the “alienation of language” and what this meant for readers (145).
Davis explains, “What writers of the time seem to have been faced with was a threat to
the mechanism of signification” (150). Creating and interpreting a form of text that had
claims simultaneously to novelty, originality, and sometimes realism and didacticism,
novelists and readers had to work out “a new relationship between language, text, and
“lived” experience” (Davis 213). Haywood’s narrator does not reconcile these three
concepts in a harmonious relationship, but simply admits language and text fall short of
conveying actual experience. All that text and language can do is provoke thought and
inspire readers to imagine the experience for themselves.
At several points the narrator places the burden of representation on the reader.
For instance the narrator claims, “Those who have experienced the force of love need not
to be informed what joy, what transport swelled in the heart of Monsieur Frankville”
(218). The joy is “a surcharge of ecstasy, as sense can hardly bear” (218). Readers are
65 implicitly called on to fill in the gaps of the narrative that language cannot fill. Catherine
Ingrassia elaborates, “Reading a novel, like investing in a speculative financial venture,
demanded readers’ imaginative participation in a narrative that could potentially be a
vehicle in which early modern subjects could reinvent themselves and envisage their lives
differently” (2). In this particular case though, the readers who can most fully participate
in the narrative are those who have been in love. This knowledgeable reader is not
handicapped by a surplus of intense and indescribable feeling because he has experienced
the sensation himself and can recognize its parallel in the text. While this is a position of
privilege for the reader, it is also a position of responsibility (one that is also forced on
every reader when he encounters a claim concerning the inability of language). Ingrassia
also argues,
At multiple points [Haywood] withdraws from the narrative and forces her
reader to supply the details, the ideas, or the consequences of the situation at
hand…Such coercive participation in the text, while perhaps a symptom of
Haywood’s limitations as an author, forces readers the invest in the story and
to expend emotional and imaginative currency. (88)20
The fates of Amena and Alovysa implicitly push the readers to consider their role in the
creation of novelistic narratives of intrigue, but by leaving ‘blanks’ in her descriptions in
Volume III the narrator more explicitly makes the reader recognize how they help
produce narrative by incorporating their own experiences into their textual
interpretations.
20
I cannot agree with Ingrassia’s argument that these moments are indicators of Haywood’s personal
“limits” as an author, because such declarations of inability are common in contemporary fiction.
66 In the end the narrative voice is the only authorial figure left standing because all
author characters fail in their narrative schemes. Ciamara’s failures drive her to suicide,
Frankville does not author his marriage but is directed by the female authors
Camilla/Violetta, and D’Elmont’s happy ending is achieved by a chance encoutner. In an
instance of authorial action reminiscent of divine intervention, all the principle characters
accidentally come together under one roof and in the space of several pages clear up all
misunderstandings and the couples are united in happy marriage (Davis 108). Some
scholars claim Melliora is the author of this happy ending; Oakleaf calls her “the
Prospero who engineers a return to social order entirely in accord with her desires” (20).
Kidnapped by the Marquess de Saguillier, she secretly meets D’Elmont and says, “I hope
to have the power to own my self all yours, nor can the scheme we have laid fail of the
effects we wish, if no discovery happens to postpone it” (259). In one line Melliora sums
up the central characteristics of authorship the rest of the novel explores. Authorship is an
act of ownership: creating this intriguing plot allows Melliora to recognize her status as
property but also her ability to manipulate the terms of her ownership. Noting that she
does not work alone (“we” includes her friend Charlotta), Melliora confirms how the
creation and publication of text is never a solitary affair. And finally, Melliora recognizes
the importance of secrecy and the authorial control of information. This summation,
while nicely highlighting the emphases of this thesis, also shows how contemporary and
modern readers should at this point recognize the commonalities between the many
intrigues they have read. The reader does not need to know the full details of Melliora’s
plot because she references the characteristics of intrigue that have been repeated
throughout all three volumes: without knowing the specifics, the reader knows Melliora
67 and Charlotta have together conceived of a clever plot, without the knowledge of men,
and it will be published in a dramatic way that places them in positions of sociallyacceptable submission to men. While this may seem repetitious to modern readers,
Hunter reminds us “The pleasures of repetition and the comforts of familiarity are seldom
given their due in sophisticated literary theory” and readers would probably appreciate
knowing what was about to happen in a story where expectations are constantly
circumvented (235).
Unlike many of the intrigues authored in the course of the novel Melliora’s plans
succeed. Her success is due to her planning, but it must be admitted that it is probably
also due to the fact that Haywood either needed or wanted to end the novel in a succinct
manner that would satisfy readers. Telling the Marquess that she will marry he who
deserves her, Melliora arranges for all the characters to gather and declares, “This day
shall give me to him who best deserves me; but who that is, my brother and Count
D’Elmont must determine…all power of disposing my self must cease; ‘tis they must,
henceforth, rule the will of Melliora” (261). Like Alovysa in her first letter, Melliora sets
herself up in a position of authority in order to immediately defer to the authority of men.
Her submission may seem odd given her strong resistance to D’Elmont’s advances in
Volume II. She constantly asserts her own ability and power to “dispose of her self” and
opposes her will to remain virtuous against D’Elmont’s will for possession. As to why
Melliora may be submissive, it could once again be the fact that the novel is at its
endpoint and it could not be happy without Melliora’s consenting love for the ‘reformed’
D’Elmont. Or, it could be that her imprisonment leads Melliora to consider D’Elmont in a
new light, or that she feels free to love him now that Alovysa has been deceased for some
68 time. Readers are never given clear insight into Melliora’s submission and this obscurity
tells modern readers a few things. First, by pairing all the characters so quickly, Haywood
clearly indicates that this heteronormative, domestic situation is what readers expect to
see. As long as this expectation is met, internal psychological motivations are not so
important (this is enforced by the disturbingly quick and easy reconciliation of the
faithless Marquess and the loyal Charlotta). Also, by setting herself up in this position of
willing submission, Melliora keeps her motives hidden because they are unasked for. She
retains control over her inner self by negating the desire for readers (D’Elmont, the
Marquess, and the novel’s reader) to ask about her thoughts/feelings because they are
given a satisfactory ending. This deception should not be taken as willing selfvictimization at the hands of patriarchy:
These stories of courtship and marriage offered their readers a way of
indulging, with impunity, in fantasies of political power that were the more
acceptable because they were played out within a domestic framework where
legitimate monogamy – and thus the subordination of female to male – would
ultimately be affirmed. (Armstrong 29)
Melliora decides how her romance narrative will end, and the power and ability to make
this decision should not be deprecated because her choice is to participate in normative
discourse.
There is however one tragic drawback to Melliora’s happy ending, and that is the
death of Violetta. Violetta, a fascinating study in of herself, allows the reader one final
glimpse into the problematic qualities of masculine reading and the production of
seduction narrative. Disguising herself as a page, Violetta enters the service of D’Elmont.
69 Even though D’Elmont “was strangely taken with the uncommon beauty and modesty” of
the boy, and the reader is given several hints as to the page’s identity (his inability to ride
for long periods for instance) the Count remains totally clueless until Violetta is on her
deathbed (241). While dying Violetta explains her love for D’Elmont caused her to give
up a life (and death) of “honor and innocence” in Rome, grieve her father to the point of
death, transgress gender expectations with a “shameless declaration” of love, and has
ultimately killed her (264). Violetta, like Amena in Volume I, is a moral and sympathetic
character. But because she cannot fit into the heteronormative couples set by novel she is
literally written out of the text through death. Her passion and the extreme means she
takes to follow D’Elmont are romantically attractive because of their intensity and
atypical quality. In short, Violetta’s text makes for great, entertaining reading. But this
intensity cannot be narratively sustained and what makes Violetta interesting makes it
impossible for her to exist in the novel. Her death makes readers question the cost of such
an intense passion that cannot exist in real life, but is nonetheless desired for as
entertainment. After her death, “Count D’Elmont for some time was inconsolable, even
by Melliora” and delays his wedding until after Violetta’s funeral (266). A few sentences
later, D’Elmont is married, as are all the ‘good’ characters that appear throughout the
novel. Placing Violetta’s death right before this happy ending, Haywood ends on a
poignant note. She gives readers the happy ending they desire, but not without reminding
them of the cost of this socially normative conclusion.
Finishing the novel with an ending that fulfills the reader’s desire for satisfied
curiosity and plot closure, Haywood’s third volume is a complex and perhaps
contradictory text containing threads of subversion and submission to cultural norms
70 governing gender relations. D’Elmont’s dramatic change from an insensitive libertine to a
considerate gentlemen is emphasized throughout the volume, but the novel takes care to
show how the hero is still at times over-confident and thoughtless in his reading of
womens’ texts. By acting as a mentor to Frankville, D’Elmont reinforces his development
and reinscribes the role that homosocial bonds play in determing how individuals enact
gender norms. In opposition to these struggling male authors, Ciamara is a formidable
force of authorship in the volume, employing the same strategies of authorship used by
men and women in the previous volumes. Her adaptability and networking are
unparalled, but her reading of how men prioritize their desires and her own desire for
power or control causes her narratives of seduction to fail. The only two author figures
who succeed in bringing their narratives to completion are Haywood as expressed
through the narrative voice and Melliora. The increasing presence and vehemence of the
narrative voice expresses a greater confidence in addressing a community of readers
united by their ability and their responsibility to participate in the production of text.
Through this narrative voice the text makes a more blunt critique of contemporary
discourse, but also confirms patriarchal understandings of property. Melliora’s final act
of authorship participates in this confirmation as well, asserting herself in order to be
placed under the power of her brother and husband. Although all the couples are happily
reunited, Haywood does disturb the mood for a brief but important moment by using
Violetta’s death to remind readers of the cost of authoring romantic intrigue. In addition,
Violetta’s death reveals “only their own individual integrity—and not always even that—
can save from utter destruction the” women of the novel (Beasley 227). To prevent the
71 stereotyping and victimization of women caused by the production of seduction intrigue,
the change of individuals is not enough. Larger discursive trends must take place.
72 CONCLUSION
Separated into volumes and as a whole, Love in Excess resists a uniform
interpretation or the framework of one interpretive ideology. Supporting and subverting
patriarchal assertions of male superiority, the novel is a complicated performance of the
discourses of gender and authorship. Although presenting author-figures of both genders,
the text most consistently and ultimately confers the most successful authorship onto
women, who demonstrate unique self-consciousness of their selves as desirable property
and as text that may be read. In addition women are shown to be proficient at reading
male desire for possession and authority, in opposition to men whose reading frequently
misinterprets the desires of women. Conferring brief success however to male and female
characters, Haywood’s novel implies the ability to author text is not determined or
guaranteed by gender. The strategies of an author may be linked to his or her gender, for
instance women make use of written text to protect their reputations and manipulate their
bodies as texts. The success of an author however is not decided by gender, but rather the
author’s ability to learn and deploy specific skills.
The disclosure of information (relating to the author’s identity and intentions as
well as the plot), the ability to adapt narrative according to reader expectations or desires,
and the power to command a network are repeatedly shown to be crucial in the creation
of a narrative that effectively engages the interest of the reader whose desire or curiosity
will spark the production of more text. Contrary to contemporary debates over the ability
of women to become ‘real’ authors, Love in Excess reveals that men and women use the
exact same strategies to author seduction narrative and are also equally exposed to the
same risk of misinterpretation, either in their interpretations of the reader or the reader’s
73 interpretation of their text. In the same way, the novel presents women who misinterpret
the desires of men and not only men misreading women. However, the type of
misreading performed by men is framed within a cultural discourse of masculine property
that entails the perpetual subjugation of women. The voice of the narrator helps draw the
reader’s attention to the existence of this discourse, while also highlighting the novel’s
layers of authorship that in turn reveal how the novel as a whole is a commentary on the
process of authoring and reading text. One of the central effects of this novelistic selfconsciousness is the implicit demand for readers to examine how their desires for erotic,
seductive fiction participate in the perpetuation of cultural narratives of gender that
victimize women and encourage predatory behavior in men.
The negative effect of this narrative and discourse on men is a subtle point, but an
important one nonetheless. The narrator, especially in Volume III, frequently references
the sweet and tender nature of D’Elmont. These references clash with the lustful and
assertive behavior of D’Elmont in Volumes I and II. In all three volumes though,
D’Elmont is explicitly motivated by social modes that are cited and reinscribed by his
male friends like the Baron and Frankville. D’Elmont, who according to the narrator is
genuinely kind, is conditioned to aggressively assert his desires at the cost of female
agency. In a nuanced analysis the novel claims that the entire cultural discourse of gender
and gender relations not only victimizes women, but also molds men into selfish
predators. I am not suggesting, and I do not think the novel is either, that women are any
less victims because the system negatively affects men. Rather the text points out that the
cultural discourse of gender, if changed, will positively benefit both men and women.
74 And D’Elmont proves this discourse, at least at an individual level, can be modified or
rearticulated.
Numerous scholars note how the main thread of Love in Excess is D’Elmont’s
progress from a libertine to a man of sentiment. Although his power as a patriarch never
changes, his attitude toward women becomes more nuanced and respectful. And his
transformation is achieved through acts of reading. As he reads more narratives authored
by women, D’Elmont learns to individually recognize women as complex agents even
though they are still culturally considered property. D’Elmont is the perfect example of
the novel reader, the man who becomes more intellectually sophisticated and emotionally
mature through the continuous consumption of narrative designed to inspire questioning
and sympathy. This design is achieved particularly through the ways that encourage the
reader to identify with both male and female characters that alternate as subjects and
objects of desire. Because D’Elmont does not entirely change in terms of how he
conceives of women and of gender relations, his story suggests that the rearticulation of
cultural discourse is a continuous process and one that is not necessarily be dramatic in
its changes.
Haywood’s text does not propose a radical alteration of contemporary political
systems as relating to property, nor does it suggest a profoundly different (compared to
contemporary views) understanding of the heterosexual relationship between a man and a
woman. This lack of radical message is common in many works of amatory fiction.
O’Shaughnessy Bowers explains, “Their challenges are not radical, programmatic, or
sustained; they tend to capitulate to existing power arrangements. Yet intimations of
resistance remain latent in acts of collusion” (71). The novel does insist on the ability of
75 women to exercise creative authority over their selves and on the recognition that gender
relations are inherently politicized. From reading and writing love letters, to domestic
disputes, to sexual activity, the interaction between men and women is always a struggle
(or in more positive instances, negotiation) for power to define the meaning of a body,
event, or text. And it is worth remembering that this political conflict was not an abstract
concept, but a very immediate reality for women. Commenting on the patriarchal
tendencies of Locke, Eve Tavor Bannet writes, “For Locke and for the ladies, power and
domination still wore the all-too-human face of a particular governor—a tyrannical king
or lord, a domineering father or husband. It was the enforceable whim of people one
knew” (35). Haywood’s novel emphasizes the personal nature of this political conflict
through its concentrated look at the interaction between D’Elmont and Melliora in
particular, and it also proposes that broad cultural change begins in the lives of
individuals.
It is a tendency of modern scholars to categorize female writers as idealists,
rebels, or realists/survivalists based on the overall outlook of their texts. Scholars often
ask if these writers idealize the situation of their gender through text, rebel against it, or
portray the realities of womanhood with the implicit assumption that nothing can be done
or that all women can do is survive in an oppressive patriarchy. As I already stated, Love
in Excess resists a reading that can reduce it to a single purpose or outlook. The
significance of this resistance cannot be understated. In many ways, Haywood’s novel
can fit into all three categories. The female author characters, especially Alovysa and
Melliora, learn how to express themselves within patriarchal structures and could thus
exemplify the ‘realist/survivalist’ outlook. Ciamara, with her impressive strength
76 represents an effort at rebelling against the patriarchy, and the tragic deaths of Alovysa
and Violetta could be read as an outcry against the oppressive power of men. At the same
time, D’Elmont’s transformation, the neat pairing of couples and the removal of all
obstacles (including the death of several characters) seems more like a fairy-tale than
reality. Haywood’s potential motivation for crafting the novel in this multi-faceted way is
impossible to know, and if modern readers take their cue from authors within the novel,
the author’s intentions are irrelevant in the face of reader interpretation. I will venture to
claim however that by combining these viewpoints of rebellion, survival, and idealistic
hope that Haywood’s work recognizes the complexity of the situation of women in the
eighteenth century, acknowledging in particular that individual situations and cultural
concepts or stereotypes will always be at odds.
By providing a close, detailed reading of Love in Excess this thesis has done what
few, if any scholars have done for Haywood’s first novel. Laying out the consistent
authorial strategies employed by Haywood and her characters also allows readers and
scholars to make conceptual connections between her early and later works that are so
often opposed in current scholarship. Although this is slowly changing, there was and
still is a tendency to separate Haywood’s works into two distinct periods or genres.
Haywood’s early works (roughly those written up through the 1740s) are firmly
categorized as erotic or amatory intrigue, and in the second half of her career the
‘reformed’ Haywood wrote moral works of sentiment, following the marketing trend
started by Richardson’s Pamela. In her history of the English novel (The Progress of
Romance) Clara Reeve attributes the change in content to Haywood’s moral conversion,
though many scholars now consider the change to be a reflection of Haywood’s
77 knowledge and manipulation of trends in the print market. I do not dispute this argument
concerning Haywood’s market savvy, but, based on the conclusions I came to in the
process of writing this thesis, I want to expand on and complicate the so-called dramatic
change in Haywood’s career.
Although Haywood’s later novels may seem completely different from her earlier
works, some traits remain constant. Specifically, the traits that remain are those explored
and highlighted in Love in Excess and that relate to the practice of novel authorship. In
Haywood’s later (post 1740) work, there is still a clear sense that the relationship
between the novelist and the reader is grounded in the desire for knowledge and the novel
consists of gradual disclosures on the part of the author. The Fortunate Foundlings
(1744) for example is full of cliffhanger moments, where the narrator ‘leaves’ the hero or
heroine in a precarious position, waiting to divulge their fate for several chapters. The
novel ends, like Love in Excess, with the quick reconciliation of all characters and
revelation of real identities: the hero and heroine discover at the last moment that their
guardian is actually their father, and achieve social legitimization as a result. Even Betsy
Thoughtless (1751), usually considered the herald of Haywood’s entry in moral novel
writing, includes extraordinary and dramatic events that revolve around the disclosure of
information and provocation of curiosity. For instance Betsy unwittingly makes friends
with a prostitute and is almost tricked into marriage by a man faking death. As this
summary indicates, Haywood continued to successfully market novels using the same
techniques of disclosure displayed in Love in Excess.
When it comes to the issue of authorial responsibility or agency, Haywood’s
approach became varied and complicated throughout her career. Along with this variation
78 in authorial ownership, there is an increasing complexity of authorial presence within the
novels. At times her novels have origin stories like the works of Behn or Manley.
Fortunate Foundlings is supposedly composed by a group of editors who gathered letters,
memorandums, and accounts to create the narrative. Some publications have no prefatory
material at all, including Betsy Thoughtless and The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessame
(1753). Sometimes readers are addressed directly, like in her periodical The Spectator
(1744-6), or The Invisible Spy (1754), which is narrated in the first-person and begins
with letters readers have supposedly left the writer. These differences demonstrate first
that Haywood, though known today as a writer of formula fiction, frequently
experimented with the framing and structuring of text, and with the position of the author.
Furthermore, the variety of these examples convey what this thesis and what Love in
Excess have already shown, namely that adaptability was key in maintaining success in
the marketplace. There is one important consistency in Haywood’s later works and that is
the presence of her name on the title pages of almost all her novels following the
publication of Love in Excess. Clearly, reputation was of the utmost importance in the
print market and Haywood (or her publishers) was willing to capitalize on the popular
author-figure established in her early work. Although Haywood kept information relating
to her personal life surprisingly well hidden (compare to the voluntary self-exposure of
Manley) she was willing to take that transgressive step and expose her name. Perhaps the
burden of social transgression was more bearable after the success promised by the
popularity of Love in Excess or perhaps it was simply necessary. As all the authors,
particularly the female authors, of Love in Excess show, disclosure of the self is always a
79 risk of authorship and sometimes it is better not to resist but accept disclosure and
therefore gain some control over the terms of the discovery.
Tracing the presence of this theme of authorial strategies does more than link
novels that are disparate in content. The consistent appearance of these elements reveals
how, regardless of changes in the marketplace, writers like Haywood were constantly
renegotiating their professional self-definition and the relationship between the novelist
and the reader. Haywood’s works demonstrate that for the majority of the century there
was never a time where the concepts of authorship or novelistic writing were stable. This
instability, while daunting to examine, also allows for greater freedom in terms of
connecting and comparing various authors of the century. If eighteenth-century novelists
were concerned with the development of authorship, as Haywood’s works suggests, their
strategies could be compared across the boundaries of content and genre that so often
limit the discussion of novels, especially those written by women. It is my hope this
thesis demonstrates how rich Haywood’s novels are and how much fruitful analysis they
can bear. If such close analysis is applied to a greater number of Haywood’s works, then
readers and scholars will have a greater opportunity to understand how the idea of
authorship connects eighteenth-century texts in an expansive network of novelistic
experimentation.
80 WORK CITED
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--. “The Shadow of an Author: Eliza Haywood.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 11.1 (1998):
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84 CURRICULUM VITAE
Megan Bruening
Office Address
Department of English
Wake Forest Univserity, Tribble C201
Winston-Salem, NC 27106
Home Address
534 Scholastic Court
Winston-Salem, NC
(240) 620-4208
[email protected]
Education
2015 (Anticipated)
2014
M.A., English Literature, Wake Forest University
Thesis Director: Dr. Jessica Richard
B.A., English Literature, Roanoke College
Thesis Director: Ken McGraw
Employment History
Spring 2011-Spring 2013
Fall 2010-Spring 2011
Roanoke College English Department Student
Assistant
Roanoke College Writing Center Tutor
Teaching Experience: Wake Forest University
Teaching Assistant: Responsible for planning and teaching two classes,
holding individual paper conferences, some grading:
English 150 Contemplating the Environment: Medieval and Modern
English 310 The Medieval and the Modern World
Academic Awards, Honors, and Grants
2009-2011
2010-2012
2012
2012
2013
2013
2014-15
Dean’s List (3.5+), Roanoke College
President’s List (4.0 GPA), Roanoke College
Pamela H. Simpson Scholar (Scholarship for Virginia Oxford
Program), Roanoke College
Matthew M. Wise Scholarship (Outstanding Achievement in
English), Roanoke College
English Senior Scholar, Roanoke College
B.A. in English with Honors, Summa cum laude,
Roanoke College
Full Scholarship, Wake Forest University
Tentative Master’s Thesis
In the last several decades many scholars have reexamined the canon of
Eighteenth-century British literature in order to question the position of female authors in
the time period. Investigating the definition of authorship through feminist and historicist
85 lenses, scholars have inevitably also reexamined the definition of the novel form and its
popular subgenres including amatory and seduction fiction. Eliza Haywood, one of the
most popular novelists of the Eighteenth century, has received little critical attention of
late, and previous scholarship on her works focused mostly on her short story
“Fantomina” and her novel of quasi-virtue Betsy Thoughtless. My thesis will analyze
Haywood’s first and most popular work, Love in Excess, using recent scholarship on the
Eighteenth-century female author and the amatory novel as a contextual framework. I
will specifically examine gendered models of authorship presented in the novel,
comparing and contrasting the techniques characters deploy to author scandalous
intrigues (which always involve text), while also investigating how the text develops an
external, authorial persona expressed through the narrative voice. Portraying male and
female authors whose ‘fictions’ enjoy widely various degrees of success, my thesis will
shed light on how a female author in the Eighteenth century conceived gender in relation
to the concept of authorship. My paper will also address formal issues of the seduction
novel, and question what this form contributes to the idea of the author.
Fields of Interest
Eighteenth-Century British Fiction
Women Writers of the Eighteenth Century
History of the Novel
Gender and Sexuality Studies
The Gothic Novel
Romantic Aesthetics
Conference Papers
“Reimagining Authorial Position in Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess”
MadRush, Harrisonburg, VA. April, 2011.
“Reawakening Female Control in Courtship.”
Sigma Tau Delta Convention, New Orleans, LA. March, 2012.
“Producing Text and Desire in The New Atalantis.”
Sigma Tau Delta Convention, Portland, OR. March, 2013.
“Accessories to and of Power: Object Gender Performance in Beowulf.”
North Carolina Medieval and Early Modern Studies Colloquium,
Durham, NC. February 2014.
Panel Chair
“Gender and Control in Eighteenth-Century British Literature”
Sigma Tau Delta Convention, Portland, OR. March, 2013.
Affiliations
86 Phi Beta Kappa
Alpha Chi
Sigma Tau Delta
Xi Theta Chi
Alpha Lambda Delta
References
Susan Harlan, Assistant Professor of English
Department of English, Tribble Hall C111
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem, NC 27106
[email protected]
Jefferson Holdridge, Professor of English
Department of English, Tribble Hall C104
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem, NC 27106
[email protected]
Gillian Overing, Professor of English
Department of English, Tribble Hall C210
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem, NC 27106
[email protected]
87