Return to Home PageFor years studies of the early British novel were dominated by criticism of
the works of canonical writers like Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry
Fielding. Jane Austen was heralded as the mother of women’s fiction, a lone
female voice breaking into the masculine world of letters to introduce the
illustrious line of nineteenth-century female authors who followed her. More
recently, however, scholars have rediscovered the work of women novelists like
Eliza Haywood, whose fiction was as popular as that of Defoe and whose literary
career spanned almost 40 years. For this reason alone Haywood’s The
Injur’d Husband (1722) and Lasselia (1723)--published together in
one volume as part of the University Press of Kentucky’s series,
Eighteenth-Century Novels by Women--should prove of interest to Jane Austen
fans. The revival of such texts not only places Austen’s work in a more
accurate context, but allows us to more fully appreciate her novels as part of a
longstanding tradition of women’s fiction.
Jerry Beasley’s introductory remarks serve as an illuminating guide to this
tradition. Consisting of two major sections, a biographical sketch and a
commentary on the two novels, the introduction first dispels some of the myths
surrounding Haywood’s life. One such myth revolves around the critical
response to Haywood’s early work, particularly to her thinly veiled portraits
of contemporary figures in her “scandal novels,” tales of amorous intrigues
involving court personalities. The reactions of Jonathan Swift, who called
Haywood “a stupid, infamous, scribbling woman,” and of Alexander Pope, who
attacked her in his satiric poem The Dunciad, were representative of the
period’s misogynistic attacks on women writers. But, as Beasley observes,
these criticisms did not diminish Haywood’s popularity, nor did they force her
into literary exile as critics once believed. In fact, her amazing output is one
of the marvels of 18th-century literature: beginning with Love in
Excess (1719–20), Haywood published more than thirty novels, a
biography, and four translations during the 1720s alone. Over the course of her
career, which ended with her death in 1756, she produced poems, plays, conduct
books, and pamphlets, started a publishing business, and edited periodicals,
including The Female Spectator, the first monthly magazine written by a
woman for women. As Beasley rightly points out, the achievements of Haywood
“helped create a legacy without which later generations of female authors
might well have needed to find something else to do.”
During the 1720s, amatory fiction like The Injur’d Husband and Lasselia
dominated the literary marketplace. Read against Austen’s discreet and
subtle prose, these two novels appear striking in their explicit treatment of
female sexual desire. But Haywood and Austen aren’t so different, really. Both
suggest that female passion--more particularly the indulgence of
passion--carries a great cost for women. The eponymous heroine of Lasselia (subtitled
The Self-Abandon’d) provides a ready example of a woman caught between
desire and discretion. As such Lasselia can be read as a prototype for both
Marianne and Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. Just as Marianne
suffers a sudden and nearly fatal attraction for Willoughby, Lasselia falls
madly in love with the handsome, accomplished--and married--Monsieur de l’Amye;
like Elinor, Lasselia restrains her passion (for a time at least), recognizing
that her feelings are “not consistent with Virtue, nor Discretion.”
Lasselia’s discretion is no match for her love, however, and she succumbs to
the “dangerous Charmer.” Rather than condemn Lasselia’s actions,
Haywood’s narrator remains sympathetic, explaining that her heroine’s
downfall occurs only after a stormy battle between her sense and sensibility:
“the long Suppression of a Passion which she had always consider’d as
fruitless, now on a sudden let loose, was beyond the Power of Reason to
restrain.”
The Injur’d Husband; or, the Mistaken Resentment also explores the tug
of war between abandonment and restraint. Rather than presenting an internal
struggle, however, The Injur’d Husband depicts two women possessed of
diametrically opposed characters: the notorious Baroness de Tortillée and the
virtuous Montamour. The former--manipulative, cunning, and willing to go to any
length to obtain the men she desires--numbers among the early novel’s greatest
villainesses. She is, in fact, a female rake who treats men as sexual objects
and abandons them once her conquest is assured. Unfortunately for Montamour, her
fiancé Beauclair catches the eye of the baroness, who schemes to discredit and
then supplant Montamour in his affections. As Beasley points out, Beauclair’s
seduction is surprisingly easy for a man supposedly devoted to Montamour. But
like the book’s misleading title (Baron de Tortillée, the injured husband,
plays only a minor role), Beauclair’s two-dimensionality suggests that
Haywood’s concerns are not with male characters. It’s the Baroness de
Tortillée and Montamour who drive the plot and draw the reader into the text.
In light of the significance of Haywood’s fiction for the development of the
novel, the University Press of Kentucky has done a great service by making two
of her early works available to general readers. But The Injur’d Husband and
Lasselia impart more than critical insights into the novel’s history
and women’s role in that history. They’re plain fun to read--something
Haywood’s contemporaries understood, and a pleasure we can now enjoy for
ourselves.
Candace Ward teaches 18th-Century literature and women's studies at Illinois State University. She has recently been granted a Fulbright fellowship to pursue her research on women's sentimental fiction and tropical fever at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica.
JASNA News v.18, no. 2, Spring 2002, p. 20