And now for something completely different...

This is a novella by Eliza Haywood (c. 1693-1756), and it was published in 1725.

I learnt of it via The Conversation's Nicola Parsons, who tells us that Haywood, as well as being a stage performer, was a prolific writer, and "closely associated with the then-emerging genre of the novel". She authored The Female Spectator, the first periodical for women actually written by a woman; wrote political fiction, domestic novels, plays, and critical pieces; and translated from French into English. She also ran a pamphlet shop where she sold her own work, alongside that of others. She was popular in her day. The sales of Love in Excess (1719) were exceeded in the first half of the 18th century only by those of Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels.

I had never heard of Haywood, but people who know say she was a significant literary predecessor of Jane Austen's. Her life story is a bit of a mystery, and even its basic elements remain contentious.

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You can see Fantomina's subtitle (and its tantalizing expansion) here:


The original title page

I love the opening of this piece: "A Young Lady of distinguished Birth, Beauty, Wit, and Spirit, happened to be in a Box, one Night at the Playhouse; where, though there were a great Number of celebrated Toasts [belles], she perceived several Gentlemen extremely pleased themselves with entertaining a Woman who sat in a Corner of the Pit, and, by her Air and Manner of receiving them, might easily be known to be one of those who come there for no other Purpose, than to create Acquaintance with as many as seem desirous of it."

The capitalization might strike us as Trumpian (albeit way more consistent), but it seems 17th-century English texts often used upper case for nouns (just as German still does).

Anyway, intrigued by the success, popularity, and freedom of what were effectively sex workers, our Young Lady decides to "dress herself as near as she could in the Fashion of those Women who make sale of their Favours". And sure enough, in this guise she instantly attracts "the accomplish'd Beauplaisir", whom she'd seen in more respectable circles, but of course with much greater social distance. He's very keen to press on with the relationship. So keen, in fact, that she has to put him off with a story about her "Obligations to a Man who maintain'd her". But they agree to meet the following night.

And, in fairness, our young lady is very keen, too. She reserves some lodgings for the tryst. But she still depends on "the Strength of her Virtue" to carry her through unscathed.

As we will discover again and again in this story, however, consent is not really a thing in the 17th century... Even when she tells Beauplaisir she is not a courtesan, he does not back off: "In fine, she was undone; and he gain'd a victory, so highly rapturous, that had he known over whom, scarce could he have triumphed more."

It's a complex picture, though, and our heroine is definitely not without agency here. She's ashamed; and she's terribly humiliated when he tries to pay her; but she is still attracted to him, and wants him to visit her the following day. She won't reveal her real identity, but tells him she's called Fantomina. And she very cleverly covers her tracks: "She had Discernment to forsee, and avoid all those Ills which might attend the Loss of her Reputation, but was wholly blind to those of the Ruin of her Virtue; and having managed her Affairs so as to secure the one, grew perfectly easy with the Remembrance, she had forfeited the other. -- The more she reflected on the Merits of Beauplaisir, the more she excused herself for what she had done." She looks forward, then, to "the Prospect of that continued Bliss she expected to share with him".


Eliza Haywood

Beauplaisir is perhaps not the sharpest tool in the box. He is still encountering her in her real persona, and is often "amaz'd at the prodigious Likeness between his little Mistress, and this Court Beauty". But he tumbles to nothing.

And so the story proceeds. Beauplaisir -- a typical man, in Haywood's eyes at least -- starts to tire of what he has now become used to: "The rifled Charms of Fantomina soon lost their Poinancy [sic], and grew tasteless and insipid."

But now Fantomina is in a bit of a bind. She really likes the feckless Beauplaisir, and doesn't want to give him up. So her next ruse is to disguise herself as a servant in the employ of the lodging house he will use on his upcoming travels. She's lucky, because at the time, the only two men staying in the inn are "an old Gentleman, who had lost the Use of his Limbs with the Rheumatism", and "her belov'd Beauplaisir; so that she was in no Apprehensions of any Amorous Violence, but where she wish'd to find it." The implication is very clear: Female servants are fair game.

I must admit I was constantly taken aback by the plain speaking of this book... There's obviously a climate of non-consensual sex. But there's also an acknowledgment of female desire. I guess I'm much more familiar with literature from the 19th century, where the mood is generally austere and prudish where female sexuality is concerned.

Anyway, here we have dopy old Beauplaisir, again besotted by his newest discovery (she's calling herself Celia this time). And the language is very out there: "His wild Desires burst out in all his Words and Actions: he call'd her little Angel, Cherubim, swore he must enjoy her, though Death were to be the Consequence, ... held to his burning Bosom her half-yielding, half-reluctant Body, nor suffered her to get loose."

Of course, the inconstant Beauplaisir tires of Celia too. And -- yes, you've guessed it -- our ever-resourceful heroine embarks on "a third Plot". This time she's the distraught Widow Bloomer. Donning mourning clothes and doing her hair differently is all that's needed to pull the wool over the terribly easily confused eyes of Beauplaisir, and history repeats itself.

If you're rolling your eyes at the improbability of all this, then Haywood is one step ahead of you: "It may, perhaps, seem strange that Beauplaisir should in such near Intimacies continue still deceiv'd: I know, there are Men who will swear it is an Impossibility, and that no Disguise could hinder them from knowing a Woman they had once enjoy'd. In answer to these Scruples, I can only say, that besides the Alteration which the Change of Dress made in her, she was so admirably skill'd in the Art of feigning, that she had the Power of putting on almost what Face she pleas'd, and knew so exactly how to form her Behaviour to the Character she represented, that all the Comedians at both Playhouses are infinitely short of her Performances: She could vary her very Glances, tune her Voice to Accents the most different imaginable from those in which she spoke when she appear'd herself."

So there you go. In later centuries, Fantomina would have been a brilliant movie actress...


I'm not good at identifying early 18th-century architecture, but some of Newark's Market Place would have been around in Haywood's time

Our heroine now embarks on a daring juggling act, interacting with Beauplaisir both in the guise of Fantomina (sending him "a long Letter of Complaint") and the Widow Bloomer. A comparison of his replies reveals (as though she didn't know) what a two-timer he is. She's angry, but self-congratulatory: "I have outwitted even the most Subtle of the deceiving Kind, and while he thinks to fool me, is himself the only beguiled Person."

Fantomina/Celia/Bloomer is in love with him no more, but he still has his uses, and "she found the Means of gratifying the Inclination she had for his agreeable Person, in as full a Manner as she could wish".

Predictably, Beauplaisir tires of the Widow Bloomer as well. So our mistress of disguises comes up with one last outrageous project. Its ingredients: Secretly contracted servants; a magnificently furnished house which she hires by the week; and a love letter (signed Incognita) begging for an assignation. Our would-be Don Juan can't resist a missive that's both mysterious and amorous: "There is a Charm in your Lines, which gives too sweet an Idea of their lovely Author to be resisted. -- I am all impatient for the blissful Moment... Your everlasting Slave, Beauplaisir."

Our noble lady is delighted with her renewed triumph ("O that all neglected Wives, and fond abandon'd Nymphs would take this Method!"), and receives him in a darkened room, with her face covered by a black velvet mask. He's a bit miffed by this, and resolves not to return. She continues to entertain him as Fantomina and the Widow Bloomer, but she can see he's tiring of both.

She's just wondering how to create another scenario when her long-absent mother returns, obliging her "to put an immediate Stop to the Course of her whimsical Adventures". And that's not all. Fantomina is pregnant... Ah, we think, what a shame. This is always the pay-back when women have fun. She conceals the pregnancy from her mother for a while, but obviously the truth will out.

Who's the father, Mum wants to know. Beauplaisir, says the daughter. Fetch him instantly! And the hebetudinous hero is taken aback in a wonderfully comic fashion: "All the Idea one can form of wild Astonishment, was mean to what he felt: -- He assur'd her, that the young Lady her Daughter was a Person who he had never, more than at a Distance, admir'd." But said daughter spits out the whole story. "And 'tis difficult to determine, if Beauplaisir, or the Lady, were most surpris'd at what they heard; he, that he should have been blinded so often by her Artifices; or she, that so young a Creature should have the Skill to make use of them."

Beauplaisir, in his first act of decency since we met him, offers to take care of the "new-born Lady". But his offer is refused. He visits, "but the old Lady perceiving there was nothing likely to ensue from these Civilities, but, perhaps, a Renewing of the Crime, she entreated him to refrain; and as soon as her Daughter was in a Condition, sent her to a Monastery in France, the Abbess of which had been her particular Friend. And thus ended an Intreague, which, considering the Time it lasted, was as full of Variety as any, perhaps, that many Ages has produced."

And that's the end. I felt really sad about our heroine's fate at first. Always the same old story... The woman is punished by nature (she can't get away with anything), and then by morality (she's packed off to a convent).

But this whole convent thing is quite ambiguous, it seems. According to a footnote to my text: "The role of the French convent in English literary and cultural imagination is complex. Elite young women might be educated in a convent before their marriage; the convent might also be a house of reformation; for some women, the convent offered an intellectual alternative to marriage in the company of other women. In the English protestant imagination, the French convent was often seen as an erotically-charged place. As Ana Acosta writes in Hotbeds of Popery: Convents in the English Literary Imagination, the convent 'provided a site for amorous encounters, forced and broken vows, sacrificed youth, and unrequited love'. Yet, the convent is also a specifically female community, where women lived, worked, studied, and conversed with other women outside of the male gaze."

As Parsons puts it: "Crucially, the narrative resists the moralistic ending a reader might expect and instead leaves room for these multiple possibilities. But the final word of Fantomina affirms the heroine’s, and by extension, the author’s, inventiveness... Rather than condemning the young lady, the narrative reframes her actions as pleasurable diversion, perhaps even something to be revelled in."



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The focus on a "sexually curious, identity‑switching heroine" from the 18th century, the sheer farce of lots of the scenes, and the outspokenness about the muddy boundaries between desire and consent in the context of a society primarily set up for male pleasure -- all these qualities make this a very worthwhile read.

And there's a lot to think about more generally. According to this really informative article, "Most of Haywood’s 1720s and 1730s work belongs to a genre now known as amatory fiction, which tells the stories of seduced women... Haywood put her own spin on the genre. Her ability to recreate in words the physical effects of love—sighs, languishing eyes, heaving bosoms—shaped her reputation as 'the great arbitress of passion.' But these stories are not simply erotica... Cast adrift in a brutal dog-eat-dog world, amatory heroines have two choices: plot and manipulate to survive, or become helpless victims of predatory lovers. In exploring this dilemma, amatory fiction poses important ethical and political questions about the treatment of women in society."

This is the connection with her much more famous successor: "Austen’s cyclical Eliza narratives in Sense and Sensibility owe a debt to the earlier highly patterned amatory plots of her predecessor Haywood, and each of Austen’s novels encodes and gestures towards the sort of seduction narratives that generated Haywood’s initial rise to fame. Haywood and Austen were dealing with many of the same ideological issues: the place of artlessness in a cynical world, the gendered double standard, the tension between passion and pragmatism."

Haywood was ignored throughout the 19th century and for much of the 20th. But her star is on the rise again: "Now, thanks to the feminist recovery project, Haywood is an established figure in eighteenth-century scholarship, and academics are engaging with every aspect of her work, unpicking the stories inherited from hostile eighteenth-century critics and tracing her untold afterlives in the eighteenth century and beyond."


Haywood also created a periodical called The Parrot, which "informed its readers (mainly male) that it is an enslaved creature, born in Java (Indonesia), captured, taken to Holland, sold to a French merchant, gifted to a widow, bought by a great philosopher, sold to a gentleman taking the grand tour, sold to a young girl and then finally to an English nobleman. This well-travelled parrot is then able to draw upon this wealth of cosmopolitan knowledge to offer his unique perspective on all that he observes in London. Through this medium, Haywood skewers the assumptions of her day to reveal their hypocrisies, failings, cruelty and contradictions"