The intentionally provocative title of this essay seeks to contribute to a simmering discussion about representations in Eliza Haywood's writing that have variously been characterized as non-normative, sapphic, homoerotic, or lesbian.1 No longer can scholars consider her an arbitress purely of hetero- sexual passion; rather, her texts in multiple genres throughout course of her career structurally and descriptively present same-sex relationships of varying degrees of intimacy. Attachments along a spectrum of female homosociability-ranging from kinds of same-sex emotional intimacies Caroll Smith-Rosenberg describes as characterizing female sphere to, per- haps, physical intimacies unknowable to us-punctuate her work.2 Indeed, her texts, like eighteenth-century texts, abound with of women's emotional attachments to each other demonstrating, in Katherine Binham- mer's words, that deep and intimate passions existed between (8). Yet these relationships and representations, passions and attachments, go largely undiscussed. The deeply ingrained habits of thought that have shaped Hay- wood criticism, habits Kathryn King's generative biography repeatedly ex- plodes, certainly include too often reading through a culturally defined heteronormative lens-a paradigm that limits horizon of possibilities with which scholars read her work. 3 Scholars often fail to penetrate screen that heteronormativity constitutes insofar as it masks itself as natural, observes Susan Lanser; consequently, mainstream eighteenth-century women's studies remains quite heavily heteronormative to impoverishment and perhaps distortion of field (Of Closed Doors 275). In face of that potential distortion, Lanser urges us to scrutinize normative systems and spaces where we might uncover subtler formations that have remained below scholarly threshold (277). The word seemingly invites us to recog- nize what we miss, to read familiar anew by shedding theoretical or methodological blinders that have previously guided our work.4 It is as though heteronormative critical paradigm itself has, to borrow William Warner's metaphor, overwritten representations that are in fact unstable or queer. 5Over last two decades, Haywood scholarship has had moments where some critics brush up against textual evidence of sapphic relationships and then retreat from its implications-perhaps to impoverishment of which Lanser warns. For example, a number of scholars have discussed The British (1722), a fiction rich in sapphic possibilities. The novel details rela- between two women, Belinda and Cleomira, betrayed by same man, who narrate details of that experience to each and forge an macy. Writing of eighteenth-century domestic fiction generally, Lanser re- minds us that narrative device of confidante and the transmission of letters, journals, or conversation places two women in a structurally erotic rela- tionship (Novel [Sapphic] Subjects 498, emphasis in original). So it is with Belinda and Cleomira, Recluse of title. From moment women meet, an encounter for Persons of same Sex . . . that . . . kept both from speaking for some Moments (9), they are filled with admiration for each other. The word particular which specifically means close or inti- mate captures intensity of moment and perhaps codes a sense of non-normative relationship hidden in plain sight. Belinda wants to experience a narrative exchange with Cleomira through a written and oral sharing of their stories that fulfills her desire to indulg[e] my Grief and mingle my Tears with hers (7, 158).6 They create a structurally erotic relationship. Bonded by end of text, they are scarce a Moment asunder and still live in a per- fect Tranquility, happy in real Friendship of each other, despising un- certain Pleasures of heterosexual relations and embracing a more solid Comfort in each (137-38). …