Then, as now, lurid speculation concerning the sexual dalliances of London’s fashionable and wealthy elite was a popular cultural pastime, as was the undoing of females whose passion leads them astray from the path of virtue. The female body (Symbol) The moment that Fantomina decides to impersonate a prostitute is also the moment that her body becomes symbolic of merely physical features; posing as a prostitute reduces her to just a body, without status or class. 96-7: "…she resolved to take another course; and remembering the height of transport she enjoyed when the agreeable Beauplaisire kneeled at her feet, imploring her first favors, she longed to prove the same again. Haywood is extremely modern in the way that she includes sexual relations in the idea of love: in the eighteenth century, sex was traditionally strictly reserved for married couples. It remains interesting that she only poses as the lower class, and thus has the option at any point to return to the privileges of a richer life. IF you were half so sensible as you ought of your own Power of charming, you would be assur'd, that to be unfaithful or unkind to you, would be among the Things that are in their very Natures Impossibilities. She presents an uncanny ability to transcend social spheres altogether, as she is able to change the appearance of her class through aesthetics alone. discovered. Within this novel, class hierarchies are not described from a privileged and content perspective, but rather from the perspective of one who is restricted by her class. Themes. Fantomina, or, Love in a Maze is a novella by Eliza Haywood which charts an unnamed female protagonist's pursuit of the charming, shallow Beauplaisir. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of “Fantomina” by Eliza Haywood. Fantomia, a young lady in Fantomia who exemplified the stereotypical female in the 18 th century, switches into various disguises and roles and has many interactions with Beauplaisir. Women’s writing from 1660-1800 took many different forms, and in this class we will study plays, letters, novels, memoirs, poetry, and prose treatises. Fantomina illustrates a lot of the same themes as Love in Excess, but switches the roles of the characters to give the power of the desire to the female character instead of the male through the art of masquerade. These courses focus on a diverse array of topics from across the fields of American and British literature; world literature; critical and narrative theory; film, video game analysis and other areas of popular culture studies; rhetoric, composition and literacy; digital media studies; and folklore. Within this novel, class hierarchies are not described from a privileged and content perspective, but rather from the perspective of one who is restricted by her class. Literary Devices. Eliza Haywood “I have aced all my essays and writing assignments since using SuperSummary. BEING A Secret History n001 n001 While there are many critical understandings of the secret history in literature, as the essays in The Secret History in Literature: 1660-1820 suggest, the genre usually offers a glimpse into the secret lives of public individuals. Under her disguises as Fantomina, Incognita, and Celia, the protagonist engages in intercourse, which she refers to as her “Virtue” … Fantomina. Again, when in the disguise of Celia, her body is ‘half-reluctant, half-yielding’, displaying the struggle that women faced in the expression of their desires. Fantomina Book Description : Fantomina, or, Love in a Maze is a novella by Eliza Haywood which charts an unnamed female protagonist’s pursuit of the charming, shallow Beauplaisir. This is not a case of forgetting morality, but merely of considering it to be irrelevant to the novella. Fantomina’s actions are restricted by her reputation as a higher class Lady, as her public relations are constantly monitored and her eligibility to marry based upon virginity as well as status. The concept of prostitution and two unmarried individuals engaging in sexual acts was a scandalous idea to an eighteenth-century society. Lowering herself to a lower class is thereby portrayed as positive to the reader, as it allows Fantomina the freedom she seeks. However, Haywood inverts this to suggest instead that class and social status is based on outward impressions, not on one’s blood. The repetitive occurrence of female protagonists inverting gender hegemonies from the prostitute to Fantomina’s mother to the convent, produces a ‘gynocratic’, or woman-centered novel. Fantomina: the Manipulator of Situations 1503 Words | 7 Pages. Blog. In Aphra Behn’s The History of the Nun and Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina, the established expectations of the female role within society are brought into question then directly rejected. She is not allowed to carry out a conversation of any type with a person of the opposite sex, nor is she allowed to pursue them. Instead of coming from the privileged upper class perspective we see someone restricted by their status in the upper class and someone wishing to escape it. For instance, both Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina: Love in a Maze (1735) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) depict women as nothing more than objects. In the period between 1660-1730 female writers were killing it. Fantomina is a foil to Beauplaisir’s male gaze, and with her foresight and constantly being a step ahead of him, she finds a way to reverse typical gender dynamics. Your email address will not be published. Fantomina is a playhouse prostitute. In Haywood’s “Fantomina” the “maze” that is referred to in the subtitle is that of this sort of dance Fantomina and Beauplaisir are participating in. Haywood’s novella contains prostitutes, a deceitful maiden, and a philandering male. The Department of English offers over 200 courses for undergraduate- and graduate-level students. Female and male desire are completely different ideologies in the eighteenth century, and Haywood expects this to be common knowledge for her readers. Dealing with major themes such as identity, class and sexual desire, and first published in 1725, Fantomina subverts the popular 'persecuted maiden' narrative, and reaches a climax which would have shocked its contemporary… Both women use masquerade to explore questions of identity. Because she is a woman of high birth and social ranking she is unable to interact with the lower class part of the theatre but Haywood soon describes how she is different than most women of her time. Disguise is not only a ‘Frolick’ in Haywood’s novella. Discussion of themes and motifs in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale. Today I describe a detailed plot of Eliza Haywood's novella Fantomina; Or Love in a Maze. Important Quotes. Important Quotes. Fantomina explores a variety of themes, almost none of which come without literary dispute and controversy. Lastly, Fantomina challenges the societal expectation of unmarried women’s sexuality as being a restrained quality. 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