Haywood's Fantomina: Youthful Ignorance Unrestrained

A Simple Reflection

By completing Fantomina before reading any of the introductions or supplement articles, I was able to attempt understanding how readers in 1725 may have initially reacted. Of course, I can't deny that I already have preconceived notions regarding eighteenth-century literature: it can be wordy, strict social customs depending on class, race and so forth. However, Fantomina fascinated me throughout the entire story. Not only is the story material itself rather provocative for the mid-1720s, it's pretty stunning even in today's "anything goes" western society.

I imagine Haywood had some pretty harsh feelings towards most men. Certainly in the time of frequently handwritten words (instead of text messages) and mandatory social courtesies, I believe she might have thrived on the idea of people working the Victorian system to their advantage or unintended disadvantage as in the case of Fantomina herself.

As the story unfolds, I immediately gathered from the narrator's tone that young Fantomina wanted to be able to flirt, but her social class blocked that. Her curiosity couldn't be satiated without taking on a disguise and holding her prized affections for Beauplaisir. When the man's true intentions are perceived, Fantomina takes on more disguises as if to experiment with him while also trying to fulfill her growing desires for him. The whole self-orchestrated circus ends abruptly for her upon her mother's arrival and later: the baby girl.

In particular, I enjoyed the names used for the characters in Fantomina. They are fun with both phonetic and descriptive purposes. Beauplaisir can be broken up into two French words: beau-beautiful, plaisir-to like, or be liked. The name Widow Bloomer made me crack up, all I could think was, "Mrs. Bloomer, yep, hope she can bloom well for Beauplaisir". Of course, I could be completely mistaken but I wouldn't be surprised if, after further research into Haywood's style, I find that she purposely played with certain words or names to increase awareness of her writings' intentions.

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Haywood and Behn-revisionist history?

Having finished "Fantomina" and Oroonoko, I understand why Janet Todd's introduction to Behn's novel cautions the reader against interpreting Behn's work through a postmodern viewpoint. Approaching either work from a postfeminist, postcolonial viewpoint leads the reader to adopt a skepticism that obscures what is valuable in both readings.

For example, I had difficulty reconciling the ending of "Fantomina" with the assertion that Haywood's protagonist is exercising an unusual amount of freedom. As a consequence of Fantomina's affair(s) with Beuplaisir, she is left with an illegitimate child. It would seem to me, the postmodern reader, that despite the arguable "freedom" she had enjoyed, it is Fantomina and not Beauplaisir who is left with the consequences of their illicit affair.

In the beginning of "Fantomina," Haywood describes the young lady as having "distinguished Birth, Beauty, Wit, and Spirit" (Haywood 227). Her gifts seem to be doing her little good, as she can only use them to their fullest extent after abandoning her identity as a well-born noblewoman. By rejecting this identity and adopting one of a lower-class prostitute (although possibly higher-class within the caste system of prostitution at the time), Fantomina is free to exercise all of her attributes in pursuit of Beauplaisir.

Haywood makes several generalizations regarding the nature of men and women, of whom Beauplaisir and Fantomina serve as a sort of embodiment. Haywood writes that "he (Beauplaisir) varied not so much from his Sex as to be able to prolong Desire, to any great Length after Possession: The rifled Charms of Fantomina soon lost their Poignancy, and grew tasteless and insipid" (Haywood 233). Fantomina is then still the pursuer, as she employs several different ruses in order to continue enjoying the attentions of Beauplaisir. Fantomina has "constancy," as Haywood puts it. She is unable to be satisfied with anyone but Beauplaisir, while he is the exact opposite, constantly craving novelty and growing quickly tired of Fantomina's various disguises.

In the end, however, it is Fantomina who is packed off to the convent, although if the footnote is to be believed, that might not be such a bleak fate, and possibly more of a vacation.

Behn's Oroonoko presented me with the same quandary. How am I, the modern reader, to reconcile Behn's description of Oroonoko as seemingly possessing both the best attributes of European and "savage" cultures, with the fact that he himself caused the enslavement of many of the characters introduced later in the story?

In the character of Oroonoko, it seems that Behn has created a hybrid of what she considers the best qualities of both cultures. Oroonoko is well-learned and articulate, with courtly manners, but also has a sort of Edenic quality that Behn attributes to those living in the "state of nature" that she finds the natives in. Even his appearance, as described by Behn, has a sort of hybridity to it, blending attractive European features with a "perfect ebony or polished jet" (Behn 15). Interestingly, the picture on the cover of the Penguin Classics edition of Oroonoko looks nothing like this description.

However, it seems to be this nobility of character that is Oroonoko's downfall, as he makes the mistake of taking the ship's captain, and later the governor, at their word, with dire consequences.

Behn presents a series of contradictions. Oroonoko is so noble as to be unfit for slavery and to make those who have befriended him question the institution entirely; yet he has enslaved prisoners himself.

Behn and Haywood present a considerable challenge to the modern reader. Is Fantomina really exercising freedom, given that she bears the consequences of her affair? Can Oroonoko be read as an indictment of slavery if the titular character keeps slaves himself?

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How-To: Use This Blog

This blog will be dedicated to our weekly discussions and assigned posts. In order to see this blog at all, you need to log in. You should also have received an "invitation" to participate from me, at your Marymount email address; this invitation gives you instructions on how to obtain the Google account necessary for access to Blogger. It is all free--it just takes a bit of finger-work to set up.

Once you've successfully logged in to our weblog, you should note that you have been granted "author" status; that means that you can contribute to the blog, help create it and shape its direction. A large part of that collaborative writing will be your individual posts. Each student is required to make at least one substantial post per week, of no less than 500 words. This blog should provide a place for us to test ideas before we commit to them; explore unconventional or unexpected reading strategies; comment on important ideas developing throughout the term; and record our progress through the assigned material.

To make your posts, you may either create a new post or comment on another post. Each posting box has a couple of key features--a space for a title, a rich-text enabled composition box, and a space for post "labels" (think of them as index entries). Each of these three key spaces must be completed.

Titles should be interesting and informative. Think of it as practice for your formal essays. These titles also form the top-level archive entry system for our blog, so we need to be able to tell what any given entry is really about!

The composition box is rich-text enabled, meaning you can bold and italicize, spell-check, add links and pictures, change your font and colors, and so on, much as in Microsoft Word. Here you type the actual content of your weekly posts.

Labels are very important elements of this blog--these allow us to quickly search and organize by "subject heading," as it were. All your posts need to be labeled--you should always label by the last name of the author(s) you're working with (RICHARDSON, HAYWOOD, and so on), but you may add additional broad-subject labels as you see them evolving over time. For instance, if you're very interested in feminist theory and criticism, you might want to label any posts having to do with FEMINISM. As you complete your posts, you will begin to note that possible labels appear magically as you type them--you can accept these, or create new ones. See all the labels in the blog DASHBOARD.

Once you've completed your post, you should PUBLISH it; you can also SAVE it AS DRAFT, and come back later to finish it. You can have many different drafts going at once. You can also go back and edit any previous posts.

A final word on netiquette and classroom decorum

Unless it is necessary for your posts, please do not use any smileys or IM abbreviations. Please do not use all-caps, as in large chunks it is difficult to read and implies that you're YELLING! Please do be considerate of all your peers and their thoughts, as well as your instructor. While this is a space for critique and constructive criticism, it is not a space for flaming. If you are routinely inconsiderate, I will eject you from this blog and a large portion of your grade will be recorded as an "F." All posts must be completed in a timely fashion; late posts will be marked down. And finally, please consider this a semi-formal writing space; please do spell correctly and write in complete, grammatical sentences!

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Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (1688)

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf notably suggested that:

All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn...,for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she—shady and amorous as she was—who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you to–night: Earn five hundred a year by your wits.

Condemned as both a "punk" and a "poetess" (you should look the first word up in the OED if you're not sure how it's being used), she was the first woman author to make a living by the very "female pen" she describes in Oroonoko, the second text we'll be reading this term. Though many of you may have already encountered during your undergraduate career, we will be paying particular attention to the text as an early representative of the modern novel in addition to the complexities of its ideological positions. Information on Behn's biography and cultural/historical context is available via the Literature Resource Center, accessible both to the right of this page and on our Blackboard site.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. Behn seems to take up a large part of the beginning of Oroonoko with elaborate physical descriptions of both Oroonoko (Caesar) and Imoinda. What do these descriptions suggest to you? Why do you think the narrator describes Oroonoko and Imoinda this way? How are the other slaves described? What are the differences in these descriptions from those of Oroonoko and Imoinda?
2. Who is the narrator of Oroonoko? Is she a character in the novel? What do you imagine her position in society to be? What do you think her attitude toward slavery is? How do you know? Do there seem to be contradictions in her attitude? What are they? How does she characterize her relationship to Oroonoko—and what do you think it actually is?
3. Throughout this novel, the narrator carefully foregrounds issues of accurate representation. Pay attention to the places where the narrator mentions lying, vow-breaking, promises, the historical truth, and her ability to represent the story accurately—or at all. Where does the narrator reference tale-telling, and under what circumstances? Why is the narrator telling this tale? How might names and naming play into this? Throughout the text, consider who has the ability to name—things, people, and so on.
4. In Oroonoko, “wit” and “learning” are frequently discussed. Which characters are explicitly described as witty or learned? How does the text seem to treat wittiness, learning, knowledge? What are the differences between them? Is either Oroonoko or Imoinda treated as particularly witty? Learned? Knowledgeable? What about the narrator?
5. Critics have historically associated “the novel” with the middle class and middle class consciousness; “the romance” with the feminine and aristocratic; “the epic” with the masculine and aristocratic. What elements of this text strike you as “middle class,” and why? What elements are more “elevated” or “aristocratic”? More gendered? With what class—either economic or generic—does the narrator’s conception of value and worth seem to lie?
6. What is the role of violence in this text? Characterize the moments when violence is particularly apparent—what is unique or unexpected about the nature of this violence?
7. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the national economy was increasingly underwritten by traffic in human flesh; wealth was built on the backs of slaves. How does Behn’s narrator seem to treat the traffic in human flesh? As the text was read and re-read over time, and especially during periods invested in abolitionist discourse, it came to be treated as an “anti-slavery” novel—though currently, that analysis is being complicated. What do you think? Is this an anti-slavery novel? Or is the question that simple?
8. After reading the end of the text, go back to the beginning—what insights do you gain? Reexamine question #1. Do you have any new insights?

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Eliza Haywood, Fantomina (1724)

The first reading for this class will be Eliza Haywood's fiction of amorous intrigue, Fantomina, first published in 1724. At the height of her career, Haywood was--along with Daniel Defoe--one of the best-selling authors in England. She was well-known as a writer of "romance" "novels," the nature of which we'll discuss in class. The text of Fantomina is available on our Blackboard site, accompanied by a useful introductory essay by John Richetti. You may also want to see what's available on Haywood in the Literature Resource Center (login required), or read a brief biography. "Women Writers in Eighteenth-Century England," a website put together by students at the University of Michigan, also gives an interactive overview of female authorship during the century, starting with Haywood.

As you read, consider some of the following questions:

1. What different roles does Fantomina take, and how do they seem to relate to or build upon each other? Why do you think she takes these roles, as opposed to any others? What forms of agency or power does each character have or seem to have in the text? Why does she change her name with her identities; do we even know her “real” name?
2. One of the repeated images in this text is experimentation. Where does this occur? What does “experiment” mean to you? In this text? What ideas in the text seem related to experimentation, and why? Look these words up in the OED, or in Johnson’s eighteenth-century Dictionary of the English Language. What useful historical senses do they have?
3. Of what class is Fantomina? Beauplaisir? How is class explored in the text? Keep in mind that possession is often associated with class division, as are labor and work.
4. What role does masquerade play in this text? How does it seem to function? Note that a “masquerade” is also an event, a form of leisure entertainment particular to the eighteenth century.
5. What is the role of the embedded letters (another level of discourse) in Fantomina?
6. What tone does the narrator seem to take towards Fantomina? Towards the events that unfold?
7. When does Fantomina’s mother show up in the text, and what effect does that have? Where is she throughout? Where is Fantomina’s father?
8. Under what circumstances does Fantomina go into labor, and what effect does that have? What is the sex of her child, and why?
9. How does the fiction end? Does the text seem to encourage us to “read” the ending in a particular way, or are there complications, questions? After reading the ending, go back to the beginning—do you learn anything new about the opening?
10. Where, ultimately, does power—class-based, gendered, and so on—seem to reside in the text? How does the action of the plot and/or the narrator’s take on the events she retells confirm or complicate that location of power?
11. Haywood’s fictions were immensely popular in the early 18th century; she and Daniel Defoe were the two bestsellers of the period. What do you think might have made her work so interesting to early modern readers?

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