Exposé of the Popular Heroine: The Female Protagonists of Eliza Haywood

Abstract

Expose of the Popular Heroine: The Female Protagonists ofEliza Haywood MARY ANNE SCHOFIELD Eighteenth-century fiction bristles with unforgettable women charac­ ters. Pamela Andrews and Clarissa Harlowe, on the one hand, are models of Christian virtue and behavior, while Moll Flanders and Fanny Hill, on the other, are women of little virtue but extraordinary sexual power. And as protagonists of the acknowledged masters of the eighteenth-century novel, Pamela Andrews, Clarissa Harlowe, Sophia Western (Tom Jones), and Fanny Goodwill (Joseph Andrews), to name the most prominent, have been adequately examined by critics and scholars. Such is not the case, however, with the heroines of the popular, though minor, female novelists of the period, most especially Eliza Haywood, whose first novel, Love in Excess; or, The Fatal Enquiry (1719), rivaled Defoe's Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and Swift's Gulliver's Travels as "the most popular English fiction of the eighteenth century be­ fore Pamela."1 Haywood had intimate knowledge of women's problems in the eigh­ teenth century; she left her husband, the Rev. Valentine Haywood, and supported herself and her two children by her literary efforts. With a few exceptions,2 each of her novels concerns itself with the heroine and her problem of self-identity. Just as Mary Astell (Serious Proposal to the Ladies, 1697) and Defoe (Essay on Projects, 1692, 1697) were concerned with the state of women's education and Richard Steele (essays in The Tatler and The Spectator) with their position in the family and society, so Haywood, the first popular novelist to investigate the feminist milieu to such an extensive degree, deals with an even more basic need: a woman's 93 94 / SCHOFIELD concept of self, an understanding of herself as an independent, selfcontrolled , perhaps even an aggressive person. It is this quest for feminine identity which forms the basis of Haywood's novels. The majority of her novels of her first period (1720s and 1730s)3 depict the troubled situation of the divided heroine who is unable to reconcile diverse elements within herself and accept her position in society; she ends her struggle in exile or death. The novels of her later period (1740s and 1750s) offer a more con­ servative portrait of the virtuous heroine who is tested throughout the novel but remains true to her virtue and her womanly position and is hap­ pily rewarded with marital bliss at the conclusion. A study of Haywood's heroines and the novels in which they appear not only rekindles interest in Eliza Haywood but also, because of the sheer abundance and popularity of her work (sixty-odd romances, nov­ els, and secret histories, excluding her translations of continental ro­ mances, poetry, and other prose) provides us with the most comprehen­ sive treatment of the "woman question" in the period and allows us a brief look at the impact of the popular novel upon the traditional conceptions of "woman," "wife," and "mother." Like the eighteenth century itself, the novel was undergoing revision. With both, it was the changing status of women that accounted for the upheaval. Murial Williams observes that the "position of women, especially of the middle class, was changing dras­ tically because of a decline of industry in the home and the corresponding mechanization and centralization of industry."4 Because women were less in demand at home, they turned to other areas in which they could assert themselves. The large number of minor female novelists during the eigh­ teenth century is just one facet of this new movement, while the increased number of female novels readers is another.5 Haywood caters to this growing and influential group of women in her numerous romances and novels. To them she presents a pattern of femi­ nine behavior during this period of the eighteenth century. Her character­ istic fable of feminine distress, of persecuted virtue, was natural to her as a novelist alert to the preoccupations of her audience, for the cult of eighteenth-century womanhood was centered on the encounter between a sexually aggressive male and an innocent, superior female — a fictional­ ized portrayal of readers' sense of traditional conduct.6 Because the moral values of the bourgeoisie supported and aided...