Taming Don Juan, Being Don Juan: The Tragic Feminism of Haywood's "Fantomina"

I stated so in a response to Alana's post, but one of the more striking aspects of "Fantomina" was the curious ending. While I found the story quite comical, the ending brought a dose of seriousness that caught me by surprise. From the moment her mother comes back into town the mood shifts drastically and the final moment comes rushing to a close. This first astounded me, but it provided me a helpful context for interpreting the actions of the piece.

At first I was prepared to view Haywood's novella according to John Richetti's terms, that is, "where sexual freedom and mastery of her male lover are temporarily and subversively achieved by the heroine's clever machinations" (Richetti xvi). I failed to register the key word "temporarily" in first reading that statement. But, as I said in my comment, the ending's transformation of the story's sexual freedom and subversiveness seems to ring false. The Fantomina that we have come to know, more or less, is utterly weak and dejected when her mother returns. It's almost pathetic. In fact, the reader is forced from her viewpoint and Haywood writes the last pages largely from the mother's side. Where are the "clever machinations" now? Fantomina gives up.

Upon further reflection, though, I began to interpret the story according to the actual ending rather than according to how I thought it would have ended. The clever "machinations" of Fantomina are cast in quite a new light according to how she feels she must act when her mother returns. Beauplaisir's ultimate rejection of her is quite conceivable - given the choice of marrying any one of his old affairs would have been difficult enough, but all of them at once is I'm sure overwhelming. And it was this bit of comic realization on my part that unified the work for me. From the beginning of "Fantomina," Haywood criticizes men and their loose and insincere dealings in love. Her subsequent relation of a tale wherein a woman constantly reinvents herself to keep the man she loves interested in her reveals the darker themes of Haywood's work. For though Fantomina is willing to reinvent herself for his amusement, she finally decides that men, and Beauplaisir particularly, "still prefer the last Conquest, only because it is the last" (Haywood 240). She even feels she has "outwitted even the most Subtle of the deceiving Kind," that he is "the only beguiled Person" (Haywood 239). But she ultimatly deceives herself into believing she could maintain his interest by constantly playing a variety of parts for him. Her failure to obtain him in the moments before childbirth signifies her inevitable failure in this quest. In this sense, "Fantomina" is quite tragic. She tries to keep the man she loves by any means she can, and in cutting to the root of the problem she still finds it impossible. There is a kind of tragic irony in even the title of the work. For Fantomina is not her real name, but the first of her fake names. I will leave that thought here, but I think there is certainly something further to be discussed there.

In terms of her guises themselves, Fantomina moves first from a prostitute, to a country maiden, to a widow, to a mysterious socialite temptress. In each successive case, Fantomina improves the social status of her personalities, and withholds more from Beauplaisir's advances. Beauplaisir, for his part, changes the forwardness of his actions according to the social status of his paramours. When Fantomina incarnates her final guise, she seems to have inhabited her in a higher social sphere than Beauplaisir, for he becomes her possession finally. But even in this case, as the others, though she is masquerading she seems to forget Beauplaisir's own masquerades of fidelity - she merely laughs at them in disbelief, but falls for it each time. Certainly each of them is enjoying the pleasure of trying to outwit the other. And though we witness the elaborate nature of Fantomina's attempts, it is ultimately difficult to claim her as the victor. Fantomina, through her disguises, cannot escape her own passion for Beauplaisir. And though she is much more capable and unrestrained than her contemporaries have been portrayed, the social system has been set in such a way that even when a woman can move freely between any social status and constantly change identities, she remains socially repressed in a way a man will never be. Beauplaisir has the many affairs under his own name with no secrecy but that of his own infidelity. Everything else may be known to the world and he will not suffer for it. But though Fantomina is capable of such action, too, she is stunted by her society, and even if she finds masterful ways around it, she is doomed to her biology and social status.