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Living her narrative: Writing heroines in the eighteenth-century novel

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Living her narrative: Writing heroines in the eighteenth-century novel

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Content LIVING HER NARRATIVE: WRITING HEROINES IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL by Laura S. Fauteux ________________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY (ENGLISH) May 2011 Copyright 2011 Laura S. Fauteux ii Dedication For Thad, Lincoln, and Baby-Boy Stracker-Fauteux iii Acknowledgments First and foremost I would like to thank my committee members, Hilary Schor, Emily Anderson, and Natania Meeker, for their advisement, support, and encouragement. I would like to thank Dr. Schor for her careful reading, insightful critiques, and encouraging words. Dr. Schor‘s comments were always stimulating and extremely helpful in allowing me to look at things in a new light. I would especially like to thank Dr. Anderson for believing in this project. Without Dr. Anderson‘s unceasing patience, sincere interest, and extensive attention I could never have undertaken or completed this dissertation. I am in awe of how quick and eager she was to respond to every draft and every question, and I am sincerely grateful for how willing she was to be there for me at every step of the writing process. Finally, Dr. Meeker‘s comments always proved invaluable in providing me with new and objective ways of fleshing out my ideas. I am thankful for her time and consideration. I would also like to extend a thank you to Zofia Lesinska at the USC Library for graciously fulfilling every book recommendation that I offered. These acquisitions made my research process so much easier. I am extremely thankful for the funding that I have received throughout my years at USC. I am especially grateful to both the Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and to the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences for the fellowships they awarded me. Additionally, I am grateful to the Department of English for a summer research fellowship they. I would also like to thank the Writing Program and the Thematic iv Options Program for providing me with financial support as well as invaluable teaching experience that has helped me become a better teacher and writer. The encouragement of my fellow graduate students has been invaluable along this incredible journey. I feel as if the friendships I have made at USC are just as important as the education I have received. I would like to acknowledge those who have made a particular impression on my life and study: Natasha Alvandi Hunt, Jennifer Conary, Mariko Dawson Zare, Nora Gilbert, Kathy Strong, Elizabeth Suarez, and Linda Veazey. I would like to thank Dr. Myron Yeager, but I don‘t even know where to begin. ―Thank you‖ comes nowhere close to expressing how grateful I am for his continued support and encouragement. His unceasing belief in my academic pursuit has been one of my primary motivating forces; his uncompromising friendship has become one of my most prized possessions. I am a better person for knowing him. I will consider myself accomplished if I ever become half the professor he is. I simply must acknowledge the wonderful group of people who have given me the most crucial element required in finishing this project—time. To all the people who have watched, and loved, Lincoln while I was reading and writing, thank you! Sarah Harlan has become more than a baby-sitter to Lincoln. She has become part of our family. And to the wonderful staff at Altadena Christian Children‘s center, especially Toni Boucher, Ms. Karen, and Ms. Sarah, thank you for finding the room for Lincoln in your little community and for making me feel so comfortable with sending him to school. v On a more personal note, I have to thank my parents, Robert and Patricia Fauteux, for not only encouraging me to pursue my interests, but for making that possible. Their unwavering love and support has made this journey so much easier. And to Thad and Lincoln. Thank you for traveling on this journey with me. I am so grateful for your patience, your support, and your love. This accomplishment is just as much yours as it is mine. Thank you for making me want to make you proud. And thank you for believing that I could do it, even when I didn‘t. I love you both to the ends of the earth. vi Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract vii Introduction 1 Chapter One: Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, 18 And the Heroine Narrator Chapter Two: ―To Remain in the World Concealed‖: 35 Manley‘s Autobiographical Biography Chapter Three: Becoming Apollo‘s Daughter: 76 Jane Barker and the Galesia Trilogy Chapter Four: An Influential Narrator: 108 Frances Brooke‘s The Excursion Chapter Five: Living to Write and Writing to Live: 142 Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson Conclusion 188 Bibliography 195 vii Abstract This study traces the emergence of the semi-autobiographical writing heroine in the eighteenth century. The exploration of this character illuminates an overlooked relationship between the two developing and prospering genres of the era: the novel and the autobiography. While critics have for the most part discussed the writing heroine in terms of reductive autobiographical readings, such a method neglects this heroine‘s illustration of the critical interplay between the autobiography and the novel genres in their nascent stages. This project reveals that eighteenth-century female authors incorporated elements of the emerging autobiographical genre within their fictional works not merely as a means of self-expression, but also in an attempt to help shape the novel form as it evolved. This study of the heroine writer combines Catherine Gallagher‘s theory of the Nobody of the fictional novel with autobiographical and narrative theories to investigate the evolution of the semi-autobiographical heroine and her novel. In the first half of the eighteenth-century century the writing heroine participates in and celebrates the flexibility allowed in an open market system. In the second half of the century this figure confronts and challenges limitations that arise from the reformation of fiction that framed the novel as a more didactic form. I argue that the later eighteenth-century woman writer sets up her text to trigger her reader‘s assumptions of fictionality by including conventional plots of the reformed and feminine novel, such as the depiction of a heroine‘s courtship and marriage. However, as the semi-autobiographical heroine acts viii out these plot lines she presents for the reader a self-referential yet sympathetic representation of the author through a figure of the fictional Nobody. With the incorporation of the writing heroine, eighteenth-century female authors could simultaneously use and criticize generic and social conventions that they found limiting in the hopes of exposing such limitation. 1 Introduction In her prologue to The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1666), Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, proclaims that ―though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second, yet I endeavour to be Margaret the First; and although I have neither power, time nor occasion to conquer the world as Alexander and Caesar did, yet rather than not to be Mistress of one […] I have made a world of my own‖ (153). In the epilogue to the same work, Cavendish affirms that, ―by this Poetical Description, you may perceive, that my ambition is not onely to be Emperess, but Authoress of a whole World‖ (250). These statements frame a narrative that follows the adventures of a young woman who, after being kidnapped, finds herself an empress in a parallel universe—the Blazing World. Here, she has religious and scientific discussions with strange creatures and finally desires that Immaterial Spirits recommend a writer to act as her scribe. When the Immaterial Spirits recommend none other than the Duchess of Newcastle, the Duchess‘s soul is summoned to the Blazing World and she becomes a favorite with the Emperess. After revealing an ambition to become an empress of her own world, the Duchess becomes frustrated by the complexities involved in conquering a world over which she can rule. Taking the Immaterial Spirits‘ advice, the Duchess resolves to ―reject and despise all the worlds without me, and create a world of my own‖ (213). Subsequently, we read that this ―world, after it was made, appear‘d so curious and full of variety, so well order‘d and wisely govern‘d, that it cannot possibly be expressed by words, nor the delight and pleasure which the Duchess took in making this world of 2 her own‖ (215). The Duchess‘s world may be irreproducible, as is the satisfaction she gains from its creation, yet the text of the Blazing World nevertheless exists, complete with both the prologue and epilogue from the historical writer Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Cavendish creates in The Blazing World a textual enigma. Hers is a work difficult to define generically. The narrative remains firmly rooted within the romance tradition, incorporating conventions such as a kidnapping of the heroine and a fantastical far off world filled with curious creatures. However, Cavendish also anticipates novelistic convention with the inclusion of a more realistic character in the Duchess of Newcastle. This textual Duchess‘s desires and frustrations, explicitly represented within the text, depict her as an individual in contrast with the type characters traditionally found in the romance. While the majority of The Blazing World may adhere to the romantic tradition, Cavendish nevertheless seemingly exemplifies Ian Watt‘s concept of formal realism in the representation of a specific and realistic individual‘s experience. 1 In fact, the portrayal of this realistic Duchess may give so strong an impression of authenticity as to break the boundaries of the fiction in which she is placed. Because this character so closely resembles her author, even in her name and her title, she calls into question the fictionality of the text. 1 Watt‘s concept of Formal Realism explains the emphasis on the realistic and authentic individual represented within the novel: ―the premise, or primary convention, that the novel is a full and authentic report of human experience, and is therefore under an obligation to satisfy its reader with such details of the story as the individuality of the actors concerned, the particulars of the times and places of their actions, details which are presented through a more largely referential use of language than is common in other literary forms‖ (32). 3 If this character‘s strong resemblance to her author calls into question its status as a work of fiction, readers may be left wondering whether the text could be considered autobiographical. After all, the historical Duchess of Newcastle is writing the story of a duchess who is an author also writing about an alternative world. The link between the two Duchesses is almost indisputable, giving the text the appearance of life-writing. Despite the similarities between the textual and the historical Duchesses, however, the two figures must remain distinct in the reader‘s mind. We can assume that the historical Duchess of Newcastle‘s soul was never summoned to a parallel universe at the same time that we can assume that the textual duchess of the Blazing World must be a fictional character if her soul can be divorced from her body while traveling to strange worlds where Worm-men and Bear-men reside. Such obvious fictional overtures within the text prohibit a reader from interpreting The Blazing World as the historical life-narrative of the author despite the inclusion of a figure who so closely recalls the author. I define a character such as Margaret Cavendish‘s textual duchess as a ‗semi- autobiographical heroine‘; through the experiences she narrates and through the act of writing itself, the writing heroine‘s life resembles her author‘s. 2 The author nevertheless places this character within a piece of prose work with conventions that indicate the text‘s fictionality. My investigation into this figure argues for the recognition of a new genre, one that the writing women of the eighteenth century developed to fulfill a need for a 2 I am borrowing Jane Spencer‘s term ―semi-autobiographical,‖ which she uses in The Rise of the Woman Novelist (1986). In this work Spencer explores the fictionalized ―self-portraits‖ of many early women writers who seemingly wrote themselves into their novels and became ―their own heroines‖ (41). 4 more flexible form than the genres available to them. 3 Such a genre allowed these authors room to explore their own unconventional lives while keeping their writing within the comfort of generic form. 4 With the invention of the writing heroine, these authors could simultaneously use and criticize generic and social conventions that they found limiting. As the century progresses the semi-autobiographical heroine evolves in her author‘s response to shifts in the novel form and the literary market. This character nevertheless remains a malleable figure throughout, allowing her author both a space for self-expression as well as a means to contribute to the literary world around her. The nascent genres on which the authors rely in the creation of this semi- autobiographical heroine have much in common. Fictional and autobiographical forms in the eighteenth century evolved in response to a shift in cultural perspective from a primarily religious and collective social consciousness to a society that placed a greater emphasis on the individual. This shift in cultural perspective greatly influenced not only how people perceived themselves and one another, but also had a significant effect on the literature they created. Eighteenth-century literary forms reflected an increased emphasis on the individual in their focus on singular experiences. This in turn resulted in more 3 I can define the kinds of texts I am exploring as a new subset of the novel genre because all of these works have distinct commonalities, indicating that this kind of text is more than merely a trend. The common factors that link works within this genre include a female author and heroines who are simultaneously autobiographical and fictional. This heroine‘s autobiographical nature must stem from writing ambitions that echo her author‘s despite this character‘s being placed within a work with obvious conventions indicating the text‘s fictionality. 4 In this respect, this new genre allows these authors to use literary conventions that are familiar to them, but they can adapt these conventions to their own purpose as they incorporate the figure of the semi- autobiographical heroine. In this respect they can simultaneously partake in and respond to literary convention. 5 realistic works that addressed the immediate, the local, and even the emotional experiences of an individual person or character than did the works of previous eras. 5 Fictional works and life-writings written prior to the eighteenth century did not primarily address the internal identity of a common individual in his or her daily life. Nor did they depict stories, factual or fictional, of local and immediate interest. Instead, these works tended to be more concerned with portraying an idealized subject‘s external deeds. For example, the romance, the popular form of prose fiction that proliferated in the pre-eighteenth-century literary world, refrained from focusing on the internal nature of the character depicted. Instead, works in this tradition portrayed the idealized deeds of noble heroes whose ―military and chastely amatory triumphs served to uplift and uphold the society of which they were the highest representatives‖ (Lennard J. Davis 27). 6 Similarly, life writings of the seventeenth century were, according to Estelle Jelinek, ―for the most part, military, travel and political memoirs—res gestae—progressive and orderly chronicles‖ (24). These were works that were ―more about deeds (often exaggerated) than about [the authors] themselves‖ and they provided ―little in the way of subjective or introspective analysis‖ (24). Recording the idealized historical events of an important person‘s life was of more interest at this time than was a focus on the individual‘s internal feelings about those events. With the cultural shift in the Enlightenment to a greater 5 After detailing the ―analogies between realism in philosophy and literature‖ in an effort to trace the origins of the novel, Ian Watt has argued that ―both the philosophical and the literary innovations must be seen as parallel manifestations of larger change—that vast transformation of Western civilisation since the Renaissance which has replaced the unified world picture of the Middle Ages with another very different one—one which presents us, essentially, with a developing but unplanned aggregate of particular individuals having particular experience at particular times and at particular places‖ (31). 6 Ian Watt states that literary forms previous to the novel ―had reflected the general tendency of their cultures to make conformity to traditional practice the major test of truth‖ (13). 6 valuation of the individual, however, literary works focusing on the common individual proliferated. Autobiographical writings, both public and private, came to reflect everyday concerns through which the writer explored his or her internal identity in relation to the external world. 7 Works of fiction also started to incorporate this increased focus on the individual. As Ian Watt has argued, the fictional figures within prose works became characters with real names living in real places and acting out authentic life stories. Experimental texts that responded to the rise of individualism benefited from the kind of print market that was in place in the early eighteenth century. According to William B. Warner, this ―open‖ market lacked a ―centralized censorship or certification‖ and was basically governed by those whose writings were published (181). This ―openness‖ of the early eighteenth-century literary system allowed for the kinds of experimentation practiced by innovative writers like Cavendish and, years later, Daniel Defoe. Such authors‘ creative works could incorporate conventions from the idealized romance at the same time as embracing the more realistic character of the emerging autobiographical and fictional genres. Theirs were original and creative works that exemplified the flexibility an open print market system allowed. For instance, Defoe could depict in the 1722 Journal of the Plague Year a captivating and personalized account of historical events that occurred in 1665 and not inspire his readers to consider the validity of the fictional journalist purportedly writing this account. Ironically, the 7 Felicity Nussbaum argues that autobiographical serial writings which largely remained private but became very popular in the early eighteenth century are integral to an analysis of the individual‘s exploration of identity: ―Diaries, journals, and autobiographical writings of all sorts effect uneasy resolutions to the ideological contradictions of the bourgeois gendered self that believes, however uncertainly, in its own existence and authority, and in the necessity for its self-regulation within the fluctuating boundaries of self interest‖ (57). 7 very ―openness‖ of the market that made room for such experimental texts in the early part of the century also allowed for the literary movement that would come to inhibit the literary women who took up their pens in the second half of the century. An open market may have been liberating to early authors who sought to experiment with texts and form, but an accommodating market that lacked standards also gave rise to the flourishing of amorous novels as well as a backlash against this kind of scandalous text. In the early century, authors such as Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, and Delarivier Manley capitalized on the lack of censorship in the print market. Tantalizing their readers with the content of their works, these authors took advantage of the open print system to make a profit selling salacious tales of seduction and betrayal. Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding, authors who are the focus of so many ―rise of the novel‖ studies, alternatively took up their pens in reaction to the amorous fiction that had become so prolific. These authors sought to salvage the genre from the writers they considered immoral and to make fiction reputable. In so doing, each author furthered the genre‘s exploration of individualized characters and narrators. In their respective efforts to reform the novel genre and distance it from the amorous novel, they infused a sense of didacticism into their works by including highly individual and seemingly realistic characters and narrators that either acted as role models or instructed their audiences how to read properly. Because the open market system in which their works participated was governed by the kinds of texts that become published, these authors significantly affected the trends in this literary market. In fact, Richardson and Fielding, the two preeminent writers of 8 fiction in the 1740‘s, revolutionized this print market. As successful authors who sought to reshape fiction into a respectable and more useful literary genre for impressionable readers, Richardson and Fielding became the writers who influenced a great majority of the novelists who followed them. 8 Theirs were the works upon which many subsequent novelists either modeled their texts or against which they pitted their narratives. The didactic disposition of Richardson and Fielding‘s texts therefore came to govern a wide range of novelists who aspired to continue in the reformation of the novel in opposition to those who wrote merely to fill the demand of the circulating libraries. 9 As the elevated genre of fiction inspired by Richardson and Fielding became invested with an obligation to guide readers, the characters—and especially the heroines—of this refined novel tended to embody virtues which their authors hoped their readers would emulate. Thus emerged the virtuously ideal heroine of the eighteenth-century novel. The infusion of morality and didacticism into the reformed novel invested the genre with certain standards despite its participation in an open market system that seemingly lacked any strict restrictions. This was especially the case when it came to the domain of the ‗feminine‘ novel that largely portrayed courtship plots and illustrated domestic ideals. 10 While the feminine novel allowed an outlet for many aspiring women 8 Frances Brooke makes explicitly clear these authors‘ influence not only on her novel The Excursion, but also the texts that her novel seems to be arguing against. 9 George Justice explains that ―circulating libraries defined the low end of the novel reading-public, especially in reputation‖ (155). 10 Katherine M. Rogers acknowledges the challenges later eighteenth-century women writers faced who found themselves writing the ‗feminine‘ novel, a ―sort of novel that women were both qualified and encouraged to write‖ (63). She argues that ―though the limitations on women‘s lives kept them from rivaling men‘s presentation of the external world […] they were quite as able to deal with feelings and private thoughts‖ (63). 9 writers, models like Richardson‘s sentimental, internal, and intensely moral texts imposed patterns upon this kind of novel that could also stifle the author‘s creativity. 11 The virtuous heroine in the vein of Richardson‘s long-enduring Pamela Andrews became a standard literary convention in the second half of the century. While this heroine may have been more individualized than the ideal heroines of the romance genre in that her author portrayed her inner emotions and thoughts with greater attention and depth, most of these emotions and thoughts revolved around the heroine‘s persecuted innocence and her devotion to social propriety. She may have been a more nuanced heroine, but she was largely created to serve a precise purpose: to act as a moral guide for impressionable feminine readers. The institution of such an idealized and generally inactive heroine in essence prohibited many writers from being able to create heroines who reflected the more practical concerns and interests of their authors or their readers. Charlotte Smith, for example, makes her frustrations with this conventional heroine manifest in an appeal in Montalbert (1795) to let ―no fastidious critic, on the characters of a novel, disclaim against the heroine of this‖ due to the convention of creating heroines who are ―‗Such faultless monsters as the world ne‘er saw‘‖ (176). The ideal heroine may have served as a role model for her readers, but as an impeccable paragon of virtue she could not have much in common with her readers, let alone her ambitious author. Just as the conventions of the reformed novel made for unrealistically moral and passive heroines, so conventions governing autobiographical writing increasingly inhibited authentic life accounts of the eighteenth-century woman. As a genre that 11 Rogers argues that this pattern degenerated ―from a model to a set of constrictions. Once an area of ‗women‘s material‘ was established, they were expected to stay within it‖ (64). 10 ―demands the public story of the public life,‖ Sidonie Smith deems autobiography ―an androcentric genre‖ (A Poetics of Women‟ s Autobiography 52). 12 Because the proper middle-class female in eighteenth-century England should not by definition perform the kinds of public activities worth reading about, to write and publish her life story would be contradictory to her role as a respectably modest woman. 13 Women who nevertheless chose to narrate their histories did so through a very limited number of scripts prescribed and sanctioned by the world around them. While it is true that men‘s life-stories were also bound by convention, the scripts available to women were far more restrictive, usually circulating around their relationships with their husbands and children or their religious callings. As Smith makes clear, the female life-writer‘s history tended to be recorded in one of three limiting ways: through private journals or diaries that silenced the woman‘s narrative; through a biography of her husband that shifted her own representation into the margins; or through a narrative restricted by certain prescribed roles that resulted in a predetermined and stilted self-representation. The eighteenth- century female writer who wished to express herself through life-writing therefore had just as many restraints as did the eighteenth-century fiction writer and her ideal heroine. While autobiographical genres restricted interesting, compelling, or significant public representations for women, fiction, on the other hand, at least provided the later eighteenth-century female author with a greater sense of anonymity, and perhaps 12 Smith clarifies that ―even if autobiographers concentrate on the life of the mind, they do so because they assume their public importance‖ (A Poetics of Women‟ s Autobiography 52). 13 Smith explains that social expectations regarding the eighteenth-century woman‘s role as modest and self-effacing made her ―life script a nonstory, a silent space, a gap in patriarchal culture‖ (50). Because the ideal woman‘s life was not lived out the public sphere, ―she has no ‗public‘ story to tell‖ (50). 11 freedom. The more refined form of the novel as initiated by Richardson and Fielding may have infused the genre with a moral imperative that seemingly limited the kinds of heroines women writers could respectably portray, but it also integrated novel characters with a sense of attractive anonymity which had never been experienced before. Unlike autobiographical accounts, fiction inspired in its readers a feeling of sympathy. An eighteenth-century reader of fiction was well aware that, despite—or even because of— the realistic nature of a character‘s name or location, a novel character referred to nobody in real life. This anonymity, according to Catherine Gallagher, made this character more appealing to the reader. Gallagher clarifies that ―because they were haunted by no real shadow of another person who might take priority over the reader as a ‗real‘ referent, anyone might appropriate them. No reader would have to grapple with the knowledge of some real-world double or contract an accidental feeling about any actual person by making the temporary identification‖ (―The Rise of Fictionality‖ 351). The appeal of novel characters in the second half of the century therefore lies in their status as anonymous nobodies. My study builds on Gallagher‘s argument concerning the novelistic Nobody in women‘s eighteenth-century fiction. My research reveals a trend of eighteenth-century women writers who included heroines in their novels that are created to be figures who are haunted by the shadow of a ―real-world double‖—her author. In Nobody‟ s Story, Gallagher looks at the ―vanishing acts‖ of authors like Aphra Behn and Delarivier Manley who don created authorial personae to negotiate their status in the literary 12 marketplace and therefore anticipate the characteristics of the fictional Nobody. 14 My argument alternatively focuses on authorial acts in which the eighteenth-century woman writer makes an appearance within her work of fiction. I would like to call attention to the moments in which the fictional Nobody is simultaneously a Somebody. This Somebody challenges the conventions of the morally ideal heroine and the feminine novel of the eighteenth-century. Katherine M. Rogers points out that, according to expectations regarding the virtuous heroine, ―her modesty must keep her from showing even the least sign of egotism‖ (65). At the same time, Paula R. Backscheider posits that ―the ways in which the very act of publication violated the nearly universal opinion of women‘s modest nature and unobtrusive place require no explication‖ (―Women Writers and the Chains of Identification‖ 249). What makes the figure of the writing heroine of the later eighteenth century so fascinating is that this figure flagrantly defies such expectations of modesty through her acts of her writing—acts which further recall her own author‘s literary endeavors and publication. Works that contain semi- autobiographical writing heroines therefore contain brief but conspicuous moments of resistance to the conventional feminine novel. They seemingly eschew the expectations of the refined moral novel regarding the passively modest heroine even as they adhere to 14 Gallagher argues that ―the literary marketplace […] is often the setting for what might be called the authors‘ vanishing acts. It is a place where the writers appear mainly through their frequently quite spectacular displacements and disappearances in literary and economic exchanges‖ (xviii). She goes on to state that ―the author-selves, therefore, are also partial Nobodies, but their nobodiness differs from that of actual characters. There is understood to be no particular, embodied, referent in the material world for the proper name of a fictional character; but the names of these author-selves refer to entities that are neither identical to the writers nor wholly distinct from them. They are rhetorical constructions, but constructions that playfully point to their role in keeping the physical writers alive. I argue, further, that the authorial Nobodies of Aphra Behn and Delarivier Manley anticipated many of the characteristics of explicit, fictional Nobodies. Fictional characters developed partly out of the artful employment of female authorial personae in the works of early modern writers‖ (xix). 13 other expectations regarding women‘s fiction—namely a preoccupation with the heroine‘s virtue and her prospective marriage. 15 The pressure to adhere to the market forces for the feminine and reformed novel may have coerced these authors into including traditionally feminine adventures within their works to appease readers and critics who looked to the novel for moral guidance. At the same time, however, they occasionally break from convention by including glimpses of heroines with lives, activities, and interests that mirror their own. These heroines reflect their authors‘ accomplishments, endeavors, and frustrations in juxtaposition to the typically virtuous heroine who, according to Rogers, ―is too dull to engage our interest and sympathy, as well as too unreal‖ (65). My reading of this heroine writer combines the theory of the Nobody of the fictional novel with autobiographical and narrative theories to investigate the moments of resistance reflected in the semi-autobiographical heroine and her novel throughout the eighteenth century. I argue that in the first half of the century the writing heroine participates in and celebrates the flexibility allowed in an open market system. In the second half of the century this figure confronts and challenges limitations that arise from the reformation of fiction that framed the novel as a more didactic form. I argue that the later eighteenth-century woman writer sets up her text to trigger her reader‘s assumptions of fictionality by including conventional plots of the reformed and feminine novel such as the depiction of a heroine‘s courtship and marriage. However, as the semi- autobiographical heroine acts out these plot lines she presents for the reader a self- 15 Rogers laments that ―women have always been under more pressure than men to stay within conventional bounds, in writing as in conduct‖ (65). 14 referential yet sympathetic representation of the author through a figure of the fictional Nobody. The semi-autobiographical heroine recalls not only her author‘s literary pursuits, but often the unconventional and less than romantic experiences that have led her to become a writer. This heroine and her text therefore depict for the reader not only a more individualized and authentic account of the eighteenth-century woman, but a more practical representation of her everyday interests and experiences than does the feminine novel with its idealized and unrealistic heroine and her courtship plot. The kind of novel in which the semi-autobiographical heroine appears portrays concerns that should be of much more import to her readers than the idealized courtships and marriages of virtuous heroines who are depicted in both the formulaic circulating library novels and even in the morally reformed novel. My chronological study of the heroine writer begins with Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn, the two authors in my research who have garnered the most extensive commentary thus far. Cavendish‘s The Blazing World (1666) and Behn‘s Oroonoko (1688) are texts that incorporate characters that can provide us with a starting point for the eighteenth-century writing heroine. A brief investigation into these texts as well as the critical reviews they inspired will provide a glimpse into how this heroine, her text, and her author have been read in the past. Neither Cavendish nor Behn distinguishes herself clearly from the writing woman in their respective narratives. The narrating heroine who inserts herself into the plot, though not necessarily as the primary protagonist, appears to be the author herself. In fact, this writing figure often calls attention to the fact that she is the author who is writing the narrative. The self-referential 15 narrator participating within her written narrative prefigures the semi-autobiographical heroine as she navigates her way through the emerging genres of the eighteenth century. An investigation into Delarivier Manley‘s experimentation with the various emerging and established genres available in the early eighteenth century analyzes her manipulation of multiple forms of fiction and life-writing. The two texts in which she includes accounts recalling the events of her own life, The New Atlantis (1709) and The Adventures of Rivella (1714), simultaneously rely on and conflict with each other as Manley tells the story of how she became an author. The conventions Manley incorporates into these texts include those established in the romance and amorous novels, but these conventions are framed in narratives that anticipate the distinction between the biographical and autobiographical genres. However, Manly casts the fictional narrator of her ‗biography‘ as committing obvious inconsistencies and inaccuracies to indicate an inherent difficulty in reducing a woman‘s character to the limited and prescribed roles available to her in the early eighteenth century. The slipperiness of textuality and accuracy in Manley‘s works celebrate the freedom of flexible genres and an open market while simultaneously inciting similar flexibility in the formation of female identity. Jane Barker also takes advantage of the fluidity of genre in the early eighteenth century in her Galesia Trilogy (1713-1725). Barker creates in this trilogy a series of texts made up of complicated layers of fictional and life-writing. In the first installment a semi-autobiographical heroine narrates an account of a failed courtship in her youth alongside an unconventional marriage to the muses. Through Galesia‘s history, Barker 16 illustrates the conventional and limited roles available to women in the courtship ritual while simultaneously granting the heroine who narrates this account control over the representation of her romantic intrigue. Inverting traditional romance conventions, Barker constructs a poetic marriage to the muses as a successful alternative for both her heroine and herself. Barker‘s creation of a heroine who resembles her author in both her romantic appellation and in her poetic productions points to Barker‘s celebration of her own poetic and unconventional identity throughout the trilogy. Eccentric works that allow Barker to formulate her own identity in the same manner as her heroine does, the Galesia texts also take advantage of the open market system that allowed for the creation of such an unconventional literary heroine and her adventures. Writing in the wake of the reformation of the novel, Frances Brooke tells the tale of a heroine whose life does not correspond quite as closely with her author‘s as did Manley and Barker‘s semi-autobiographical figures. Brooke‘s The Excursion (1777) seemingly caters to the conventions of the reformed and feminine novel as the heroine participates in a courtship plot that is all her own. Where Brooke‘s novel differs from the feminine novel, though, is in the parallel plot structure through which the heroine‘s courtship progresses alongside her literary aspirations. While some of the heroine‘s literary adventures do recall Brooke‘s own experiences, especially the author‘s struggle with real life theater manager David Garrick, they are embedded within what appears to be a conventional love story. However, Brooke includes an intrusive narrator within the text who criticizes and parodies the heroine‘s romantic aspirations. This judgment lapses into sympathy when she discusses the heroine‘s literary endeavors. The juxtaposition of 17 plots deconstructs the standard marriage plot fantasy and champions an alternative literary quest for the heroine writer. Because this heroine embodies the specific ambitions and frustrations of her author while she nevertheless participates in a conventional plot line, she becomes a less conventional and more relevant representation of the real eighteenth-century woman. Later in the century, both Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson also incorporate self-referential writing heroines into seemingly standard courtship plots in The Banish‟d Man (1794) and The Natural Daughter (1799). However, forming her writing character to recall hardships that she endured publicly herself, each author contrasts the idyllic romance plot with her all-too-real public distress to expose the reformed novel conventions as irrelevant to real world concerns. Depicting heroines who have experiences with the French Revolution, economic hardship, illness resulting from intense physical labor, and unfortunate marriages, these authors illustrate the banality of the typical eighteenth-century passive heroine and the reformed novel in which she appears. The writing characters whose adventures reflect such serious and realistic experiences come into tension with the more idealistic conventions of the reformed novel tradition in which they are seemingly placed. This tension challenges the limitations of the reformed novel and exposes it as a morally reductive genre producing only false heroines and unrealistic plot lines. The semi-autobiographical novel genre as employed by the writers in my study therefore illustrates a broader range of life and literary experience for its heroine, author, and reader. 18 Chapter 1 Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, and the Heroine Narrator Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn are late seventeenth-century authors whose prose works have generated a great deal of critical attention within the last century. Both of these authors created figures within their texts who can serve as literary foremothers to the semi-autobiographical heroine of the eighteenth century. While works by Cavendish and Behn have already been extensively examined, a concise analysis of Cavendish‘s The Blazing World and Behn‘s Oroonoko will help to understand the origins of the heroine writer. Additionally, a brief review of the critical reception of these authors‘ persons and their works will illustrate how the early semi-autobiographical heroine has previously been read. Placing their works within the tradition of the semi-autobiographical heroine‘s text can inspire a new appreciation of their experimental works as well as their contribution to the formation of the heroine writer. Both Cavendish and Behn were widely known in their own time due to their literary ambitions. But each author had to struggle with her position as a woman writer in a society not readily willing to grant her literary fame or acclaim as a female author. In fact, despite their finally becoming what can currently be considered canonical writers, their works and their persons have been subjected to reductive and limiting criticism. As Effie Botonaki reflects, ―Cavendish‘s literary ambitions made her appear as a woman out 19 of her wits and earned her the nickname ‗Mad Madge‘‖ (161). 1 Cavendish suffered personal insult for her entrance into the literary sphere with works that not only breached early generic conventions but also included references to herself, her life, her opinions, and her other works. Unfortunately, Cavendish‘s eagerness to force herself so vigorously into the public eye through unconventional methods and genres negatively influenced the reception of her literary products. The negative reaction to her desire to put her life on display through her works illustrates just how inaccessible life-writing was for women. Just as she was condemned as mad, so were her works. Over the years Cavendish‘s works have unfortunately suffered from reductive biographical criticism. Line Cottegnies and Nancy Weitz attest, ―her full and rich biography, and the many historical figures who discuss her in their own better-known writings, effectively prevented Cavendish‘s works from receiving concerted, serious attention for centuries‖ (7). Aphra Behn‘s works have suffered from a similar limited critical perspective. Behn‘s reputation became questionable after her death when moral standards shifted and other female authors, like Jane Barker, tried to distance themselves from what they considered a scandalous writing woman. Because Behn‘s life as a spy and an author is so intriguing and mysterious, much of her creative work has suffered from critics looking to it for accurate facts and details about her life. For example, while Oroonoko has produced a rich line of criticism, it has also often been analyzed as a source for Behn‘s biography or as grounds for dismissing her as a liar who strayed too far from telling the 1 Dale Spender clarifies that ―she wanted to be a writer, a serious writer, and a recognized writer, and because she did not shrink from public view, because she unashamedly sought publication and wasted not one whit of her time in trying to preserve or protect her reputation, she encountered the most savage and sneering response that society would devise‖ (35). 20 true facts of her life. 2 In fact, Ernst Bernbaum‘s 1913 dismissal of Behn as a liar who never set foot in Surinam, the setting for Oroonoko, set up the following sixty years of Behn criticism. George Guffey explains that ―most critics writing on Mrs. Behn during this century have felt compelled either to confute Bernbaum‘s charges or to support them‖ (7). Robert Chibka marvels on this tendency, proclaiming that ―no one would think to evaluate Defoe [...] on such grounds‖ (511). Because there has been a move away from such reductive perspectives regarding these now canonical authors, we can finally appreciate their texts as well as the semi- autobiographical techniques these texts contained as more than the mere rantings or lies of a mad or dishonest woman. More complex analyses of Behn‘s works have allowed for a richer understanding of the self-referentiality of her work. For example, Margaret Ferguson puts forth the idea that now that ―sophisticated criticism of Behn‘s works is burgeoning,‖ we are able ―to repose the question of biography in a way that can not only notice but also attempt critically to account for [Behn‘s] numerous if always partial self- representations‖ (226). Similarly, new appreciation for Cavendish‘s non-traditional works has also allowed for a more nuanced reading of her work as ahead of its time. Hence, Belen Martin-Lucas argues that Cavendish was ―a great innovator and literary 2 Jaqueline Pearson notes that several critics rely too heavily on Behn‘s fiction for facts of her life, citing Maureen Duffy‘s The Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn, 1640-1689 (1977), Angeline Goreau‘s Reconstructing Aphra: A Social Biography of Aphra Behn (1980), and Sara Heller Mendelson‘s The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies (1988) as relying on the texts of Oroonoko and The Fair Jilt for information concerning the author‘s life. Other early twentieth century critics such as Earnest Berbaum attempted to expose her as a liar, trying to prove that she had never been to Surinam, the setting for Oroonoko. Martine Watson Brownley asserts that ―In the past the narrator of Oroonoko has, with very few exceptions, been studied mainly in terms of the life and ideas of Aphra Behn‖ (174), while Robert L. Chibka has pointed out that ―much discussion of Oroonoko has concerned whether Behn told the truth when she claimed to be telling the truth. Critical as well as biographical judgments have hinged upon this truth-claim to a remarkable extent‖ (511). 21 theoretician who experimented with form and genre in order to construct new discourses that she very well knew would not be understood in her time, but which have been in our century, read through the lenses of feminist and postmodern thought‖ (217). Because the contemporary critical reader can appreciate Cavendish as an innovator rather than a lunatic, we can acknowledge and understand her own early use of the semi- autobiographical heroine as an innovative technique that may have been misread rather than as a fluke in the works of a mad woman. As Mary G. Mason asserts, ―turn eccentricity to another light and it becomes indistinguishable from the great Western ideal of individualism, and as any reader can testify, the most notable quality of the Duchess of Newcastle‘s writing is the sense of a strong individual, a sharply distinctive personality overwhelmingly present in every line‖ (221). As the following brief readings under such a new ―light‖ of criticism reveals, authors whose self-referential works were previously read rather reductively can now be perceived as worthy of literary merit and attention. Their self-referential characters and narrators can also be seen as literary foremothers for the semi-autobiographical heroine. Margaret Cavendish exemplifies the move toward a more experimental attitude regarding literary works in the late seventeenth century even as she struggled against established literary conventions. In the Blazing World Cavendish‘s textual surrogate, the Duchess, complains to her friends the Emperor and Emperess ―that she had as little skill to form a Play after the Mode, as she had to paint or make a Scene for shew‖ when they seek her advice in establishing a theater in their Blazing-World (247). The textual Duchess recalls Cavendish‘s own struggle with theatrical conventions when the Duchess 22 explains that ―the Wits of these present times condemned [her plays] as uncapable of being represented or acted, because they were not made up according to the Rules of Art‖ (247). 3 Cavendish has the textual Duchess go on to answer the Emperor‘s desire for a ―theatre as may make wise men; and will have such Descriptions as are Natural, not Artificial‖ with a reproach to critics who had condemned her own plays and refused their suitability for the stage: ―If your Majesty be of that Opinion, said the Duchess‘s Soul, then my Playes may be acted in your Blazing-World, when they cannot be acted in the Blinking World of Wit‖ (247). Through this exchange Cavendish uses her textual surrogate to denounce the conventions that restrict the theater to an artificial state while the text itself celebrates the flexibility of the prose genre as Cavendish experienced it. Cavendish uses her textual Duchess simultaneously to express and defend her well known flare for the unconventional. This figure does so by further emphasizing the real-life duchess‘s penchant for challenging generic and societal expectations. When the Emperess questions the Duchess concerning her eccentric ―Accoustrements, Behaviour and Discourse,‖ the Duchess replies that ―I endeavour, said she, to be as singular as I can; for it argues but a mean Nature to imitate others‖ (245). Cavendish had become just as famous—and criticized—for her generic aberrations in her literary material as she had been for creating and wearing clothing that deviated from the traditional fashion of her day and for publishing opinions on such ―unwomanly‖ concerns as science and philosophy. She was always eager to separate herself from those around her and make 3 Cavendish‘s plays were not regulated by the classic unities of time, place, and action. Interestingly enough, Sylvia Bowerbank and Sara Mendelson point out that despite Cavendish‘s plays being condemned by her contemporary critics, ―in 1995 a brilliantly successful production of The Convent of Pleasure was performed at the University College of Ripon and York St. John‖ (97). 23 herself stand out without concerning herself with the ramifications. Therefore Cavendish refused to submit to generic expectations just as she refused to become lost in the crowd of traditionally dressed women. Kate Lilley asserts, ―Both Cavendish herself, and her writings, have similarly challenged categorization‖ (xi). Cottegnies and Weitz point out that throughout the course of Cavendish‘s writing career she took on almost every conceivable genre, but that ―espousing common forms, she then breaks away from servility to the tradition, sometimes turning those forms into something intensely idiosyncratic and personal, but always with a flair for literary originality‖ (10). Thus, despite what many critics think—and as her reference to the ―Rules of Art‖ in the Blazing World indicates—Cavendish had an understanding of generic convention. She merely chose to manipulate these generic conventions in an effort to make them serve her purposes rather than submit to limitations regarding generic form. In this respect she was able to use her unique works to create a world for herself in which she can finally become the accomplished author, playwright, and individual she so wanted to be. Because she refused to accept genre as something closed and limiting but rather as organic and adaptable, 4 Cavendish was able to create the self-referential Blazing World, the ―first part whereof is Romancical, the second Philosophical, and the third is meerly Fancy‖ (152). Through such a multifaceted and reflexive work she can create a space where her plays, her authorship, and even her studies in science are not only 4 Emma Rees describes Cavendish‘s literary oeuvre in such terms: ―The generic skeleton of Cavendish‘s work, far from being fossilized and immovable, was not even fully constituted. Indeed, Cavendish treats all genres as having organic potential and adaptability […]. That Cavendish‘s readers may expect to encounter a fossil rather than a living, developing creature, can only work to her advantage. The readers‘ very expectations, if they are rigid, ossified, Bakhtinian expectations, allow Cavendish license to take old genres in new directions‖ (25). 24 displayed and defended but also appreciated and respected. 5 When the Emperess first finds herself in the Blazing-World she acts as a mouthpiece for Cavendish‘s views on science, religion, and politics. This figure therefore allows Cavendish full expression of her intellectual conclusions as well as her criticism of contemporary scientific methods. Later in the text, Cavendish touts her literary accomplishments when she has the Immaterial Spirits recommend her textual surrogate as a ―plain and rational Writer‖ who would be a superior scribe to famous (male) writers such as Aristotle, Plato, Galileo, Des Cartes, or Hobbes (207). Finally, the Emperor and Emperess are eager to provide a place for her unique plays when they ―intreated the Duchess‘s Soul to stay so long with them, till she had ordered her Theatre, and made Playes and Verses fit for them; for they onley wanted that sort of Recreation‖ (248). Kate Whitaker has explained that Cavendish published the versatile Blazing World as a companion piece attached to her Observations upon Experimental Philosophy and that she also published it as a separate volume ―for the benefit of those, ‗especially the ladies,‘ who would never open a work of ‗serious philosophical contemplations.‘ Thus her self-portrait of heroic ambition would reach the widest possible audience, while the book‘s long philosophical middle section presented a large body of Margaret‘s arguments and ideas in a palatable fictional setting for these general readers‖ (285). Cavendish therefore uses her ―work of Fancy‖ as a multifaceted vehicle through which she references, defends, and makes a space for her 5 Cavendish calls the Blazing World ―a work of Fancy‖ in the prologue to that text (152). Nicole Pohl argues that the Blazing World and the Observations, to which it was affixed, ―explores specifically the constraints of gender on genre and surpasses these constraints by resorting to the realms of multiplicity and heterogeneity. Although the superficial structure of the larger work, and The Blazing World itself, displays a triangular design, the text consists of a multiplicity of genres, a multiplicity of viewpoints, and uses rhetorical figures that confront conventional binarisms‖ (63). 25 accomplishments as an author-on-her-own-terms. She simultaneously creates a place in which she can engage in discussions that were restricted from her. In this respect Cavendish‘s work foreshadows Jane Barker and Frances Brooke‘s semi-autobiographical heroines. As we will see, Barker uses her fictional stand-in to illustrate her own knowledge of and accomplishments in the world of medicine while Brooke uses her novel as a space in which her writing heroine‘s plays can finally be accepted, enacted, and appreciated despite critics who attempt to wield ―unnatural‖ control over the literary world. Perhaps the most important legacy Cavendish imparts to writers who follow, however, is her perspective regarding genre. Unhappy with constraints that arise from merely copying or submitting to any form of convention, whether societal or generic, Cavendish refused to limit herself to the ―Artificial Rules‖ of the age (247). Just as unhappy to cloth herself in the accustomed fashion of the day as she was to frame her voice and ideas with traditional forms, Cavendish intentionally manipulated generic conventions to portray her very self as unique. Emma Rees has argued that ―when approaching a work of literature, the reader engages in a hermeneutic task made possible by the generic indicators which permeate a work. These, in turn, direct the reader to think about and approach the text in a specific way, with a specific set of assumptions operating upon it. What Cavendish does in her work is to exploit these assumptions, frustrate and reverse them, precisely by appearing to make them work in and for her texts‖ (27). In this way, Cavendish acknowledges generic expectations even as she appropriates them in an effort to undermine their constraining nature. By combining and 26 presenting generic conventions in a new way, Cavendish fashions works that engage in literary conventions as they simultaneously subvert them to her end of originality, thereby inciting a freedom of literary form. Cavendish appropriates elements of various genres including the romance and utopia and combines them in the Blazing-World to create a space in which she can espouse her own philosophical views. She can therefore create an ideal world in this text in which she can become Margaret the First. 6 It is only in this created literary space that Cavendish can elevate the status of authoress above even that of empress when she reveals that her ―ambition is not onely to be Emperess, but Authoress of a whole World‖ (250). Although the Duchess professes in the Blazing World that ―I do not love to be imitated if I can possibly avoid it‖ (245), it would be difficult to imagine Cavendish as frustrated with the writers to follow who engaged in similar efforts of female literary freedom and celebration. In the early eighteenth century, for example, Delarivier Manley also takes advantage of generic malleability within the emerging fictional and autobiographical genres to celebrate an era of literary flexibility while simultaneously calling for a similar versatility regarding female identity. By the end of the eighteenth century, writers like Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson also intentionally incorporate generic expectations within their novels in an effort to expose these conventions as 6 For discussions of Cavendish‘s use of the utopian genre in the Blazing World see Lee Cullen Khanna‘s ―The Subject of Utopia: Margaret Cavendish and Her Blazing World‖ in Utopian And Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference (1994), Marina Leslie‘s article ―Gender, Genre and the Utopian Body in Margaret Cavendish‘s Blazing World” in Utopian Studies: Journal of the Society for Utopian Studies (1996), Nicole Pohl‘s ―‗Of Mixt Natures‘: Questions of Genre in Margaret Cavendish‘s The Blazing World‖ in A Princely Brave Woman: Essays on Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (2003), and Rachel Trubowitz‘s ―The Reenchantment of Utopia and the Female Monarchical Self: Margaret Cavendish‘s Blazing World” in Tulsa Studies in Women‟ s Literature (1992). 27 limiting and restricting. Just as Cavendish combines and manipulates generic conventions to celebrate both herself and her literature as multifaceted, so those who follow implemented similar techniques through the use of the semi-autobiographical heroine in their own efforts to create a more flexible genre. Aphra Behn is another important literary forerunner for those authors who helped to develop the semi-autobiographical heroine‘s text. Like Cavendish‘s corpus, Behn‘s prose work participated in a literary world prior to reformation of the genre of fiction and her works therefore seem to participate in several literary genres at once. As Marta Figlerowicz has pointed out, Behn‘s best-known and most studied piece of prose has ―long been notorious for the hybridity and idiosyncrasy of its narrative structure. Even as the devices Oroonoko uses are aesthetically successful, no scholar has hitherto been able to classify them according to a uniform set of literary conventions‖ (321). 7 But Behn is perhaps most well known for the implementation of the first person narrator into her prose, which has unfortunately led to a trend in reductive biographical readings of her works. In a work such as Oroonoko, Behn not only published her text under her own name but she also capitalized on her reputation as a well-known author in the marketing of the work. 8 As Jane Spencer points out, ―the reputation of Aphra Behn‘s pen certainly was great at the time that Oroonoko was written, and she uses that reputation to present the female narrator as authoritative, disinterested and sympathetic‖ (The Rise of the 7 Patricia Pender further explains the complexity of the generic nature of Behn‘s text: ―Oroonoko‘s oxymoronic form combines elements of biography, autobiography, heroic tragedy and romance, producing a veritable concatenation of textual kinds‖ (457). 8 Roz Ballaster explains that Behn ―turned to fiction writing late in her literary career, and only when she could no longer support herself by drama‖ (―‗A Devil on‘t, The Woman Damns the Poet‘‖ 76). We can thus assume that Behn used her name in the hopes that her reputation would influence the sale of her work. 28 Woman Novelist 51). It is Behn‘s self-reflexive references to her life as a writer within the text, however, that illustrate a strategic use of a popular literary convention—the first person narrator who acts as an eyewitness and a minor character within the text. While such a convention is indicative of early kinds of life narratives which center more around external deeds than with personal and internal examination, such a narrator nevertheless also reflects the importance placed on the individual who is observing and recording the events he or she sees. Both Roz Ballaster and Spencer have pointed out that this kind of narrator is common in eighteenth-century works by both men and women. 9 But Behn‘s use of a narrator who is at the same time a well known author is also important in the development of the self-reflexive heroine who provides her author with a unique, and powerful, position in the text. Behn places cues within her work that cue her readers into perceiving her narrator as a specific person. Her text makes it clear that it is Aphra Behn herself who narrates the tale of the tragic slave. 10 These cues further make reference to her status as an 9 Roz Ballaster asserts that the narrator who insists she was there is ―by no means unique to Aphra Behn in late seventeenth-century fiction‖ (―A Devil on‘t‖ 93). Jane Spencer points out that this kind of narrator is ―a type especially common in the early novel—herself a character within the tale, relating it with the authority of an eye-witness‖ (The Rise of the Woman Novelist 47). Behn‘s use of this kind of a narrator, however, is unique in that it is very personal in directly recalling and drawing attention to several elements of her own life as a female author. Margaret Ferguson, in ―The Authorial Ciphers of Aphra Behn,‖ discusses how, a less reductively autobiographical appreciation of her inclusion of authorial personae is ―central to the interpretive knots she so often creates by tying fictional images with ones that seem to be drawn from the (authorial) life, itself being constructed and constantly altered in texts by Behn and others‖ (226-227). 10 Catherine Gallagher asserts that the narrator ―identifies herself as Aphra Behn, a writer already known to the public as a playwright, whose established reputation should guarantee her veracity‖ (67). And Laura J. Rosenthal argues that ―The first-person style and truth claims of Oroonoko certainly encourage the conflation of author and narrator‖ (156). 29 established playwright. 11 Very early in the work the narrator recalls her relationship with the London theater when she informs her reader that trading with the natives in Surinam allowed her to present a set of native feathers ―to the King‘s Theatre,‖ where they were used in Dryden and Howard‘s play for ―the dress of the Indian Queen‖ (10). Later in the text the narrator again reminds her readers of her role as a writer for the stage when she explains that a man she encounters in the tale is ―celebrated in a character of my new comedy, by his own name, in memory of so brave a man‖ (68). 12 Despite such self- reflexive references to Behn‘s successful career as a stage writer, the narrator bemoans the fact that it is Oroonoko‘s misfortune ―to fall in an obscure world that afforded only a female pen to celebrate his fame‖ (43). The narrator thus highlights her role as a writer within the text she is narrating, but in divergent ways. The discrepancy between references to Behn‘s public persona as a well known playwright and statements disparaging her status as a female writer indicates a strategy at play in Behn‘s use of the humble female narrator. 13 Throughout the text, Behn uses the convention of the humble woman writer ironically. This narrator insists that she reluctantly takes up the pen to record the tragic life of an enslaved Coramantian prince merely because all others ―that were capable of giving the world this great man‘s life, much better than I have done‖ have all been 11 Ballaster points out that ―Behn‘s narrator constantly calls her reader‘s attention to her status in the contemporary literary culture‖ (―‗A Devil On‘t‘‖ 94). 12 Colonel Martin will appear in Behn‘s The Younger Brother, OR, The Amorous Jilt, produced and published posthumously in 1696. 13 Ballaster posits that ―Behn‘s ‗Female Pen,‘ […] as she makes perfectly clear, is by no means as ‗obscure‘ as her deprecatory comment might suggest. Her female pen is precisely the agent of her power‖ (―‗A Devil on‘t‖ 95). 30 ―killed, banished and dispersed‖ (43). Indeed, the very last lines of the text show the narrator to be casting herself as the lowly woman writer: ―Thus died this great man, worthy of a better fate and a more sublime wit than mine to write his praise‖ (76). Here, Behn‘s narrator seemingly laments the fact that her skills as a female writer may not do justice to the tragedy of the wronged prince. Yet, directly following this statement, the narrator again makes reference and calls attention to Behn‘s identity and reputation: ―Yet, I hope, the reputation of my pen is considerable enough to make his glorious name to survive all the ages‖ (76). Read carefully side by side, the two lines indicate an act of posturing on the narrator‘s part. While she may appear to be playing the role of the humble woman who only takes up the pen to record the life of a more worthy subject, she nevertheless repeatedly emphasizes her role as an accomplished woman writer. The narrator‘s humility therefore points in two directions—toward the conventional role of the modest woman reluctantly taking up the pen and the proud woman celebrating her own status as a popular author and playwright. The whole of the text illustrates and promotes a similar kind of dissimulation through both the narrator‘s story-telling and Behn‘s dedication of the text. When Oroonoko‘s behavior makes the narrator and her fellow colonists uneasy, the narrator makes it her duty to pacify and supervise the disgruntled slave. Claiming that ―my word would go a great way with him,‖ the narrator informs her reader that she advises Oroonoko that his doubtful attitude toward his release will inspire fear and ―possibly compel us to treat him so as I should very loth to behold; that is, it might occasion his confinement‖ (48). However, the narrator immediately understands her mistake in the 31 bluntness of this speech and relates that ―perhaps this was not so luckily spoke of me, for I perceived he resented that word, which I strove to soften again in vain‖ (48). The narrator illustrates her understanding of dissimulation in this passage. She realizes that the words she spoke revealed too much and that she has the power to manipulate her speech to appease the slave while still achieving her goal of placating him. For example, although she reports that ―after this, I neither thought it convenient to trust him much out of our view,‖ she goes on to write that ―during this time that we had his company more frequently than hitherto we had had, it may not be unpleasant to relate to you the diversions we entertained him with‖ (50). In this way, the narrator disguises suspicion and supervision with pleasant companionship and entertaining and exciting adventures. 14 Behn herself actually points to this kind of dissimulation in the role of the artist in the dedication affixed to the text: a picture-drawer, when he intends to make a good picture, essays the face many ways and in many lights before he begins; that he may choose, from the several turns of it, which is most agreeable, and gives it the best grace; and if there be a scar, an ungrateful mole, or any little defect, they leave it out, and yet make the picture extremely like. […] A poet is a painter in his way, he draws to the life, but in another kind; we draw the nobler part, the soul and mind . . . (3) In this passage Behn explains her theory of poetic license. Just as a painter can manipulate his subject by choosing an aesthetically pleasing vantage point or eliminating a disagreeable flaw, so the writer can negotiate her own subject to make it more palatable to the public. The narrator actually calls attention to her own utilization of this strategy 14 Ballaster also points out that the narrator ―wins the affection and confidence of the proud and aristocratic slaves […] by her story-telling, tailoring her narratives towards their specific gendered interests‖ (―A Devel on‘t‖ 95). Interestingly enough, Ballaster additionally concludes that ―Oroonoko, who only comes to understand the concept of the lie through painful experience at the hands of hypocritical white slave traders and colonists, is on one level the ‗ideal reader‘ of Behn‘s texts‖ (95). 32 within the text: ―though I shall omit for brevity‘s sake a thousand little accidents of [Oroonoko‘s] life, which, however pleasant to us, where history was scarce and adventures very rare, yet might prove tedious and heavy to my reader in a world where he finds diversions for every minute, new and strange‖ (10). In this respect, Behn may claim in her dedication that ―what I have mentioned I have taken care should be truth‖ and that her story ―shall come simply into the world, recommended by its own proper merits and natural intrigues; there being enough of reality to support it and to render it diverting without the addition of invention‖ (5,10). But based on her own theory of poetic license we cannot help but be aware of the influence of Behn and her narrator in this tale. Behn‘s narrative seems to be reflecting the cultural shift from the supposedly objective and collective social consciousness of the romance genre to the emphasis on a more individualized and therefore subjective consciousness. In fact, directly following the preceding quote, despite the fact that the narrator seems to be taking herself out of the equation of the narration, she goes on to emphasize her own place in the narrative process by affirming that ―I was myself an eye-witness to a great part of what you will find her set down‖ (10). While such a statement may grant the narrator a sense of authority and veracity in recounting a period of history for which she was physically present, it simultaneously positions her as the only witness who has complete control over what is told and how it is told. Behn reinforces this point when her narrator follows the emphasis on her position as eyewitness with the admission of having omitted ―a thousand little accidents‖ (10). 15 15 It is these kinds of authorial intrusions that make Ballaster assert that ―Behn‘s ‗little histories‘ represent 33 Behn, like Cavendish, reveals that she has the power to create a world of her own. She concludes her discussion of poetic license by affirming that ―the pictures of the pen shall outlast those of the pencil, and even worlds themselves‖ (3). According to Behn‘s theory, the narration that an author produces will not only endure far beyond the moment that the narrative records, but this enduring record will provide a perspective of that moment that is significantly influenced by the individual author‘s involvement in the act of recording that event. The story of a tragic slave whose history falls into the hands of a supposedly insignificant woman writer therefore becomes just as much a story about perpetuating the reputation of the female author as it does about preserving the history of the unfortunate African prince. Behn inserts herself and her literary success into a text that will ―outlast […] even worlds themselves.‖ She thereby guarantees her status as well known playwright throughout the ages despite the fact that by the time she came to write Oroonoko she could, according to Ballaster, ―no longer support herself by drama‖ (76). The narrator may posture as a conventional reluctant writing woman and thus dissimulate any unwomanly ambition that a desire for such future distinction reveals. But the text itself teaches us to read beyond this deception and appreciate the author who insures her future reputation. It is this kind of performing, as a humble textual self- representation that nevertheless affirms the author‘s enduring reputation and pride, that Behn bequeaths to future women writers who incorporate the semi-autobiographical writing heroine into their works of fiction. It is just such a reading that will help fiction as a corruption or distortion of the fact‖ (94), and that ―despite the claim to simply mirror or ‗represent‘, writing comes to transform vision‖ (95). 34 illuminate Jane Barker‘s own efforts to make herself into the female poet of her generation despite this author‘s attempts to distance her work from the scandalous Behn. While the semi-autobiographical texts by both Behn and Cavendish have suffered from reductive criticism, the relatively recent appreciation of their works has allowed them to shine forth in a new light. No longer do critics merely look at Behn‘s works as either mere autobiography or a pack of lies. Instead, we have critics like Katherine M. Rogers who protest that these kinds of ―interpretations are too extreme, and both distract from Behn‘s actual artistic achievement: imaginative creation building on a foundation of fact, which probably included personal experience‖ (―Fact and Fiction in Aphra Behn‘s ‗Oroonoko‘‖1). Ballaster contends that the more recent proclivity to analyze Behn‘s fiction in terms of biography ―is, perhaps, simply a register of the effectivity of Behn‘s narcissistic narrative strategy‖ (98). Current appreciations not only for Behn‘s narrative strategies but also for a more post-modern view of generic structure have allowed both Behn and Cavendish‘s work to gain more attention and complex analysis. In response to Cavendish‘s proclamation that she was writing for future audiences, Lilley attests that ―perhaps we are at least one instance of that future audience which Margaret Cavendish so fervently desires, for certainly her work is compelling in terms of the current remapping of literary histories, and the relations of gender and literary genres‖ (xii). The following chapters attempt to further this remapping of literary history in relation to gender and genre as they focus on the evolution of the semi-autobiographical heroine‘s text. 35 Chapter 2 ―To Remain In The World Concealed‖: Manley‘s Autobiographical Biography Delarivier Manley was, in her own time, a sort of trailblazer. According to Gwendolyn B. Needham, she ―earned the title to several female firsts: first gentlewoman to gain a living by her pen, first political journalist, first author of a best-seller, first to be jailed for her writings, and perhaps most daring of all, first to assail by deed and word the double standard of morality‖(259). 1 Having accomplished all of these firsts, it should seem odd that such a prominent figure ever slipped into the cracks of relative obscurity. However, Manley‘s contemporary best selling scandal novel The New Atlantis (1709), her Memoirs of Europe (1719), and what could be called her autobiography, The Adventures of Rivella (1714), became works not only condemned as morally inappropriate as the century progressed, but works Clara Reeve deemed unworthy even of specific mention in The Progress of Romance (1785). Reeve chastises Manley for having ―hoarded up all the public and private scandal within her reach, and poured it forth, in a work too well known in the last age, though almost forgotten in the present‖: I forbear the name, and further observations on it, as Mrs. Manley‘s works are sinking gradually into oblivion. I am sorry to say they were once in fashion, which obliges me to mention them, otherwise I had rather be spared the pain of disgracing an Author of my own sex. (119) Some could similarly argue that Manley‘s works are still unreadable, not due to their scandal-mongering, but rather to their extensive inclusion of contemporary and political 1 Needham clarifies that the ―first female to earn a livelihood by writing was Aphra Behn; Mrs. Manley was the second woman and the first gentlewoman‖ (n.259). 36 references that may be incomprehensible for a modern audience. Nevertheless, Manley was an extremely successful writer in her own time. 2 Manley was in fact so successful and popular in her the early eighteenth century that Giles Jacob included a biographical essay of her in his Poetical Register in 1723, the year before Manley‘s death. According to Dolores Diane Clarke Duff, ―this essay began the bad custom of accepting Mrs. Manley as her own most trustworthy biographer, and in 1723, the year of its publication, Mrs. Manley decided to have all her personal papers destroyed upon her death‖ (2). Manley wrote in her will, dated 1723, ―all my other manuscripts what ever I desire may be destroyed that none ghost like may walk after my decease nor any friends letters to me nor copies of mine to them or in a word nor the least from my papers be published but the said tra and com‖ (―Delarivier Manley‘s Will‖ 149). 3 Manley‘s request has largely contributed to the great lack of verifiable information we have concerning her life and has strengthened scholars‘ reliance upon her own works in detailing her life story. This reliance on Manley‘s works for biographical information is ironic, considering a statement she wrote to publisher Edmund Curll concerning her authorship of The Adventures of Rivella. In a preface affixed to the 1725 edition of that text, Curll provides background for the work in an effort to verify the fact that Manley was indeed the author of the text. He asserts that Manley had written to him that ―though the world may like what I write of others, they despise whatever an author is thought to say of themselves‖ (117). Curll clarifies that Manley‘s statement indicates ―the sole 2 John J. Richetti attests that, along with Eliza Haywood, Manley‘s works were ―widely and continually read during the first four decades of the eighteenth-century‖ (120). 3 Manley provides the names of the tragedy and comedy she holds back from destruction as ―the Duke of Somerset‖ and ―the double mistress‖ (Zelinsky 149). However, these plays have never been found. 37 reason of her throwing [The Adventures of Rivella] into the disguise of a translation, and insisting, that it should be kept a secret during her life-time‖ (117). Thus, although Manley‘s will establishes her wish that no personal or private details of her life written by her own hand be made public, her hope ―that none ghost like may walk after my decease‖ was not to be fulfilled. Instead, Curll capitalizes both on Manley‘s popularity and her notoriety in a preface touting Manley as her own biographer in the 1725 edition of The Adventures of Rivella to sell more copy after her death. Curll‘s reliance upon Manley‘s authorship of The Adventures of Rivella as a claim for that work‘s credibility is questionable, especially given the various contradictions Manley strategically includes within the text itself. Furthermore, Manley constructs The Adventures of Rivella as a text that actually relies upon another (conflicting) ‗autobiographical‘ episode that she placed in her previously published scandal novel, The New Atlantis. This earlier text had been published in two volumes in 1709 and Manley modeled it on the French scandal novels, specifically those by Marie Catherine La Motte, Baronne d‘Aulnoy. 4 As a scandal novel, The New Atlantis was published anonymously and included an intricate framing dedication that claimed multiple translations and the idea that the various salacious episodes and characters included within the text were removed from Manley‘s London by both time and space. The claim of the text‘s not referring to any modern day Londoners was made despite the fact that the accounts included in this text closely resembled and parodied well-known members of the 4 Manley‘s connection with d‘Aulnoy goes beyond mere imitation; in 1707 a collection of Manley‘s letters entitled The Lady‟ s Pacquet Broke Open was published with a translation of d‘Aulnoy‘s Memoirs of the Court of England. For a more lengthy discussion of Manley‘s debt to d‘Aulnoy see Roz Ballaster‘s Seductive Forms 123-131. 38 contemporary English political scene. Audiences would easily have seen though such a framing device as readers easily acquired keys to the text. Later editions of the text, as early as 1710, even had keys affixed to them. Additionally, Manley‘s role as author of The New Atlantis became public knowledge upon her arrest for seditious libel, indicating that the framing of the text had not done its job to protect her as the ‗innocent‘ author or ‗translator.‘ Manley‘s 1714 ‗biography‘ was also published anonymously with a similar, though more convoluted, framework of translations. It was presented by Curll to the public as The Adventures of Rivella; or, The History of the Author of the Atlantis. The titles of subsequent editions of this novel, however, alluded to Manley‘s having authored the work. In 1717 the text was reissued as Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Manley and in 1725, after Manley‘s death, it was published as Mrs. Manley‟ s History of her Own Life and Times. 5 The account of Manley‘s life within the text is presented as an oral narration by Sir Charles Lovemore who depicts himself as a life-long intimate of Rivella‘s—his name for Manley. Thus, the novel gives the appearance of a sort of biography despite the fact that the very narrator relating the ‗biography‘ is a work of Manley‘s creation. This dynamic must by necessity set up any narration stemming from this fictional narrator as a fiction itself. Interestingly enough, biographers and critics alike have granted both of Manley‘s novels a sense of authority in the telling of her life story despite their convoluted frameworks, lack of consistency, and status as works of fiction. In 1936 Paul Bunyan 5 For the purposes of this paper I will refer to the text as The Adventures of Rivella. 39 Anderson attested that ―beneath the alluring surface of her narrative lies a structure of objective fact‖ (262), and he goes on to use The Adventures of Rivella as source material for a brief biography of her life. Lennard J. Davis has stated that Manley‘s work has done a great deal for narrative ―by greatly extending the capacity of print to embody a life. Her every detail, every characteristic is preserved in print‖ (118). Fidelis Morgan asserts that evidence concerning Manley‘s life ―creates a trail which leads right back to her own version‖ (18). In fact, in her biography of Manley, Morgan goes so far as to reproduce chronologically the ‗autobiographical‘ episodes from Manley‘s texts. She then follows each with information substantiating or clarifying Manley‘s own words. Unfortunately, even Morgan‘s trail of evidence leads to statements such as ―it is impossible to back this chapter with facts because of the nature of the story itself‖ (136). While the more current criticism and biographies of Manley, including those by Ruth Herman and Rachel Carnell, acknowledge that Manley‘s ‗autobiographical‘ account is ―unreliable since its objective was clearly literary effect rather than absolute truth‖ (Herman 17), and that Manley ―was adept at persuading others to view her as she wished them to‖ (Carnell 51), they nevertheless admit that ―despite its drawbacks, Rivella does provide us with a number of verifiable facts‖ (Herman 17) and that ―most of the information we have about her must be sifted out from her fictional autobiography [...] and from the presumably fictionalized anecdotes about her own life and experiences included in her epistolary and satirical works‖ (Carnell 51). Most critics therefore rely heavily on Manley‘s own works for her life story while simultaneously acknowledging the ambivalent credibility of these texts. In fact, much Manley criticism has tended to 40 circulate around the validity of her autobiographical accounts, and Katherine Zelinsky sums up this unfortunate trend most effectively when she asserts that because Manley ―remains her primary historian‖ her work has become victimized by ―reductionist biographical tendencies‖ (17). Given the fact that in 1723 Manley witnessed the initial trend of biographers relying on the ‗autobiographical‘ writings she included in her novels, Manley could only be keenly aware of the public image that would come to be established of her. Her certainty of the kind of reputation with which she would be branded would have been solidified by her acute awareness of her public and notorious indiscretions, including a bigamous marriage to her cousin and guardian John Manley, an affair with the married John Tilly, and her cohabitation with men out of wedlock. It is not difficult to imagine such a sensibility contributing to Manley‘s reluctance at having her personal letters and papers viewed and scrutinized by the public in an attempt to secure the truth of her life story. In fact, Manley had been threatened by a similar abuse of her character in 1714 when Charles Gildon began work on an account of her life under the title The History of Rivella, Author of the Atlantis. According to Curll‘s preface, ―suspecting it to be, what it really was, a severe invective upon some part of her conduct‖ (115), Manley preempted Gildon‘s biography by proposing to Curll that she take over the writing of the work. 6 In that same year Manley provided Curll with the text for The Adventures of Rivella; or, The History of the Author of Atlantis. 6 According to Katherine Zelinsky, Manley became aware of Gildon‘s biography through Curll‘s advertisements. Two pages of Gildon‘s preliminary biography had been printed before Manley intervened and requested that Curll postpone publication until she talked with him. 41 Because The Adventures of Rivella contains an account of her life that Manley was forced into telling in the face of a forthcoming and presumably condemning biography, and since she refused to claim the work as her own within her lifetime, it is intriguing that critics would adhere so faithfully to Manley‘s text as a reliable source for her life story. Even Morgan, who allows Manley‘s texts to speak for the most part authoritatively for themselves, admits that ―it is important to understand that all of Mrs. Manley‘s autobiographical writing was intended to be read as fiction‖ (20). Carol Barash agrees, attesting that Manley‘s ―Rivella is also structured by strategies of fictional representation, and if the critic or historian goes in search of ‗facts‘ about Delariviere Manley she finds herself in a matrix of conflicting stories, many of Manley‘s promulgation‖ (―Gender, Authority, and the ‗Life‘ of an Early English Writer‖ 165). In fact, Manley‘s insistence upon her personal papers being destroyed upon her death effectively prohibits any clearing up any of the ―conflicting stories‖ she put forth in the previously published ‗autobiographical‘ accounts included in her novels. Moreover, Manley decisively made the ―conflicting‖ accounts she placed within her novels the only accounts available for a formation of her public life story by ordering all of her personal papers to be destroyed. Thus, a reliance on the autobiographical accounts represented within her novels should be considered dubious. As Roz Ballaster has argued, the ―very ‗novelty of the novel, its low status as a literary form at this period and the fluidity of its generic boundaries, provide a small number of women writers the opportunity to explore and challenge gender boundaries‖ (―Seizing the Means of Seduction‖ 107). Manley takes full advantage of the fluidity of generic boundaries in the early eighteenth century in 42 framing the published story of her life as a biographical account told by a fictional third party. But she also makes this ‗biography‘ rely on her previously published scandal novel for details of her early life—even if those details conflict with the narrative contained in the ‗biography.‘ Thus, instead of one ―ghost like‖ walking around after her decease, Manley encourages multiple ghosts of her likeness to rise through her varied ‗autobiographical‘ accounts. In creating these multiple and varying ghosts in her likeness, Manley uses her novels to illustrate the various characteristics and characters that could, and should, be available to women in contrast to the limiting and scripted roles into which biographers and the public alike attempt to force her. Manley‘s ‗autobiographical‘ accounts, contained within several different genres which nevertheless seem to rely on and play off of each other, celebrate the variety of genres and literary forms that were available to her in the early eighteenth century in the creation of her multiple personae. Manley additionally creates a convoluted web of narrative structure that calls the authority of her ‗biographer‘ into question. Manley‘s dense narrative web subtly tricks its readers into believing themselves satisfied with the dubious biographer‘s account of what winds up to be an empty image of Manley. This image is as deceptively reductive as the audience‘s own scandalous perception of her. Although the (auto)biographical text conjures up a satisfyingly sexualized image of Manley for the reader, the inconsistency everywhere inherent in the production of this figure nevertheless indicates the emptiness of this projection. Instead of providing a physical reproduction of Manley, the text in actuality refers readers back to Manley‘s own creative hand in the formation of this empty illusion. 43 Thus, Manley‘s attention to and celebration of a sense of generic versatility attempts to compel her audience into recognizing the need for a similar acceptable versatility when it comes to forming a woman‘s public identity. If her readers cannot accept or appreciate such versatility, then at the very least Manley can have some fun at their expense when they naively fail to see through her creative and self-referential web of illusions. Without forcing modern generic expectations upon ‗autobiographical‘ texts written previous to any such generic distinction, an analysis of Manley‘s works can nevertheless benefit from insights provided from autobiographical theory. 7 Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson have asserted that ―people tell stories of their lives through the cultural scripts available to them, and they are governed by cultural strictures about self- presentation in public‖ (42). Jane Spencer uses this kind of logic to explain why the persona that Manley presents in her novel The Adventures of Rivella differs so dramatically from the one she created earlier in The New Atlantis: ―the story of Delia in The New Atlantis was [Manley‘s] attempt to portray herself as the new pure woman‖ (The Rise of the Woman Novelist 58). Spencer elaborates that ―using the conventions of the romance and seduction tale, then, Manley creates herself as wronged heroine‖ while ―her second self-portrait, in The Adventures of Rivella, can be understood as her reaction to ‗Delia‘s‘ failure to convince. It is a deliberate attempt to valorise the image of amorous woman, because that of pure woman is denied to her‖ (59). In other words, Spencer argues that Manley uses the two cultural scripts available to her in providing a fictional 7 In her recent article, ―The Eluding self and (Auto)biograhical Authority: Delarivier Manley‘s Rivella,‖ for example, Hi Kyung Moon reads The Adventures of Rivella with the assumption that there were autobiographical conventions already established in an eighteenth-century concept of the autobiography which had yet to be established. 44 narration of her questionable past. In the first she presents herself as the seduced and betrayed, yet pure heroine. In the second, after her audience does not accept the initial script as believable, she celebrates herself as the sexually alluring and experienced woman. Such an argument, however, calls into question the authoritative creativity of the autobiographer. This kind of reading of autobiography inspires Smith and Watson to wonder, ―if individuals are constituted through discursive practices, how, then, can they be said to control the stories they tell about themselves?‖ (42). Spencer‘s argument similarly deprives Manley of any creative control in an effort to explain away the contradictions found in her differing ‗autobiographical‘ novels. Rather than deny Manley creative control in the authorship of her conflicting ‗autobiographical‘ accounts, I argue that Manley takes full advantage of the two ―fallen woman‖ identities available and that she purposely contrast these distinct identities in two very different texts. Manley‘s conflicting personae additionally extend into the narrative of The Adventures of Rivella, as the text‘s questionable narrator litters his (auto)biographical narration with contradictions. Rather than attribute these contradictions to hasty or careless authorship, I argue that they reinforce Manley‘s strategic control in creating her various autobiographical accounts. While Felicity Nussbaum concurs with Smith and Watson that eighteenth-century female autobiographers do ―speak in the language that is available to them,‖ she goes on to argue that these eighteenth-century texts ―imitate, but also often counter, prevailing notions of female identity and its self-regulation‖ (xxi). She argues that despite seemingly adhering to the cultural scripts available at the time, the lack of cohesion within autobiographical 45 texts by eighteenth-century life writers indicates a resistance to those limited scripts. Thus, it is not difficult to see why Spencer would fall into the trap of reading Manley‘s various personae as illustrating ―the two images of womanhood [...] that were jostling for supremacy in the early eighteenth century‖ (57). As Spencer recognizes, Manley may have created representations of herself within narratives that her audience could understand. But Spencer fails to perceive the significance of the contrast between these divergent representations as well as the contradictions and inaccuracies within the autobiographical accounts themselves. Nussbaum reflects that ―it is remarkable how much repetition, fragmentation, and revision occurs [in eighteenth-century autobiography], so that the ‗truth‘ of the life of the author exceeds any fixed version‖ (19). In Manley‘s case, what is remarkable is how much contrast, contradiction, and misdirection the author includes in her texts so that any ‗truth‘ of her life exceeds not only any fixed cultural script, but also any single genre or text. Manley‘s use of life-writing, the scandal novel, and the romance in the creation of the public account of her life story celebrates the fluidity and the compatibility of these various genres in the early eighteenth century. This celebration of the way in which these genres may differ while simultaneously relying on and playing of off each other acts as a catalyst for a revision of female identity that allows for a similar sense of flexibility and accommodation. At the same Manley‘s (auto)biography also becomes a medium for her revenge acted out on an audience that could not accept or appreciate such flexibility. Perhaps Manley‘s most obvious illustration of the fluidity and compatibility of genres within the early eighteenth century is the very contradiction that critics like 46 Spencer find so disconcerting—the discrepancy between Manley‘s representations as the betrayed Delia and the amorous Rivella. Sir Charles Lovemore, the ‗biographer‘ of The Adventures of Rivella, actually directs his audience to The New Atlantis for information regarding Manley/Rivella‘s bigamous marriage, which was one of the most controversial details of Manley‘s life. Lovemore tries to set himself up as a credible source with the ability to provide personal and confidential information regarding Manley/Rivella‘s life when he proclaims that ―she told me all her misfortunes with an air so perfectly ingenuous‖ (61). Nevertheless, he allows Manley/Rivella‘s own account as related by Delia in The New Atlantis to stand on its own merit as a sort of autobiographical sketch detailing her early marriage without providing any supplement to it. He merely informs his audience, ―I must refer you to her own story, under the name Delia, in the Atlantis, for the next four miserable years of her life‖ (60). 8 Lovemore relies upon the previously published account and seemingly allows Manley/Rivella to narrate part of her own history despite his own supposed familiarity with it. But Manley‘s depiction of herself as the betrayed Delia in the 1709 scandal novel to which he refers his readers provides a clear contrast to Lovemore‘s tale of the amorous Rivella. The contrast between Manley‘s Delia and Lovemore‘s Rivella has, as we have already seen with Spencer‘s argument, been widely acknowledged. For example, Ballaster additionally argues that in The New Atlantis Manley presents Delia ―as the iconic suffering heroine of amatory convention, led astray by the male rake‘s potent 8 Marta Kvande has argued that ―Lovemore‘s reference to this text reminds us that his version is not the only one. For anyone familiar with The New Atlantis, knowing the specific story further undermines Lovemore‘s portrayal of Rivella—since his version [...] directly contradicts hers‖ (171). 47 persuasive force‖ while Rivella is transformed ―into the sexually knowing and emancipated female writer‖ (104). She further argues that ―Rivella and the story of Delia read side by side constitute a resistance to the Madonna/whore opposition imposed on women by masculinist ideologies, subverting them by exposing their status as ‗fictions‘ and insisting on the prerogative of the woman to write her own fictions of the female self‖ (Seductive Forms 150). The contrast between the conventional betrayed innocent and the sexually aware female, however, is not the only contradiction regarding Manley‘s personae. Contradictions exist both between Manley‘s two texts and within the texts, even as the one work relies on the other. Such contradiction actually serves not to distance the two texts, but to illustrate Manley‘s deliberate crossing of genres. Ballaster clarifies that ―the ‗mixing‘ of genres, manipulation of generic conventions and boundaries may [...] release a meditation on the nature of the (gendered) writing self. At a historical moment when the generic boundaries of the novel were in process, [...] Manley employed generic ambiguity to address the instability of gender identity‖ (―Seizing the Means of Seduction‖ 96). Manley‘s manipulation of generic ambiguity through the meshing of various genres, however, does not merely address the instability of gender identity. Through the contradictions that exist between and within her various ‗autobiographical‘ accounts, Manley illustrates the constructedness of female identities while simultaneously fashioning the versatility and malleability of the genres in which she is working as a model for a revision of the limited identities available to women. Within the ‗autobiographical‘ account placed in The New Atlantis Manley draws on and seemingly questions constructed gender notions stemming from the romance 48 genre. Most critics, including Ballaster, Janet Todd, and Deborah Ross, acknowledge and dwell on what Ballaster calls Manley‘s excessive use of ―the textual allegory of the innocent female reader seduced into debauchery by the power of erotic fiction‖ (Seductive Forms 132). This scenario applies to the tale of Delia. Delia‘s seduction, marriage, and ultimate betrayal by her cousin, who is also her married guardian, follows several episodes in which an older man seduces and destroys a young girl after arousing her sexuality through her exposure to romance novels. In the narration of her own history as a fallen innocent in The New Atlantis, Delia professes that ―extreme youth and innocence‖ are at fault in her ruin (222). But her youth and innocence are depicted as also being corrupted by an excessive exposure to the romance. Delia illustrates this corruption when she informs her audience that after becoming orphaned she was sent by her cousin-guardian and future betrayer, Don Marcus, to live with an aunt who ―would read books of chivalry and romances with her spectacles. This sort of conversation infected me and made me fancy every stranger that I saw, in what habit soever, some disguised prince or lover‖ (223-224). Delia then confirms that her initiation into romance is what leads her to accept as flattering Don Marcus‘s protestations of love: ―I was no otherwise pleased with it than as he answered something to the character I had found in those books that has poisoned and deluded my dawning reason‖ (224). Ross points out that because ―romance was associated with dangerous female sexuality [...] Manley thus conveys her innocence by suggesting that any shadowy notions about love she may have had at fourteen came entirely from an artificial source outside herself‖ (43). In The New 49 Atlantis, therefore, Manley/Delia constructs her identity as a fallen woman in accordance with the common theme of the dangerous influence of the romance novel on a young girl. While Manley scripts her fall from innocence through a story of seduction and betrayal by means of the dangerous romance in The New Atlantis, she reverses the story of her fall in The Adventures of Rivella. In fact, something no critic has as yet acknowledged is that Lovemore‘s narration of his relationship with Rivella actually illustrates the fallacy of the conventional innocent influenced by the dangerous romance. Before directing his reader to the account of Delia in The New Atlantis, Lovemore confesses that even before Manley/Rivella had been sent to her aunt‘s he had met, admired, and fallen in love with her. Subtle details, however, reveal that Lovemore‘s pursuit of the young Rivella may have taken on a sinister turn. Lovemore‘s own account illustrates his attempts to use the romance to seduce Rivella into returning his affection. Lovemore states that upon meeting Rivella, ―I had used to please my self in talking romantick stories to her, and with furnishing her with books of that strain‖ (52). Lovemore further betrays his agenda of seduction when he mentions that ―my servant used to wait on her as if to bring her books to read, in the cover of which I had contrived always to send her a note‖ (53). Lovemore‘s plying the young Rivella with books and tales of romance, however, fails miserably. He goes on to acknowledge that ―she did not return my passion, yet without any affected coyness, or personating a heroine of the many romances she daily read‖ (53). What is significant is that through Lovemore‘s account we learn that Rivella had been introduced to the romance earlier than had the supposedly unfortunate and highly impressionable Delia. Furthermore, Rivella‘s introduction to 50 romance was instigated by Lovemore‘s conscious intention of manipulating and seducing her. Yet the younger Rivella abstains from falling a victim to the dangers of this literature or to Lovemore‘s seduction. Additionally, Lovemore provides a declaration from an older Rivella which further reinforces the fallacy of the dangerous romance novel that yields a fallen innocent. He informs his audience that Rivella told him years later that ―tho‘ she had read so much of love, and that I had often spoke to her of it in my letters, yet she was utterly ignorant of what it was, till she felt his fatal power‖ (54). Careful readers should learn from Lovemore‘s account not to place their trust in such a crafty and manipulative narrator. But they should also be aware that Manley/Delia‘s narration of seduced innocence, to which Lovemore refers his audience, is based on a constructed fallacy that Lovemore‘s very narration unwittingly illustrates as false. The contrasting stories of Rivella and Delia‘s betrayed innocence refute the popular notion regarding the dangers of the romance while also revealing the inadequacy of using this fallacy to construct the figure of the seduced and betrayed female. One account portrays Delia as undertaking the romance heroine‘s role: ―I had the honour and cruelty of a true heroine‖ (The New Atlantis 224). The subsequent account illustrates Rivella as very much in control of herself and her emotions when it comes to an excessive exposure to the romance. She is able to differentiate between fiction and reality at an even earlier age than the fallen Delia. Careful readers who compare the two versions can therefore perceive that the concept of the seduced innocent who falls victim to the dangers of the romance novel is in reality a culturally constructed script. They can also see that such a script can be easily used as a novelistic—or even 51 (auto)biographical—convention that confines the multiplicity and complexity of an individual or even a fictional character into a prescribed role. The savvy Rivella who does not fall victim to the supposed dangers of the romance does nevertheless succumb to what can only be described as the disease of love. When she meets the attractive youth Lysander, ―she became hectick, and had all the symptoms of a dangerous indisposition‖ (55). This infatuation deprives Rivella of the awareness of ―what she did, as not having freewill, or the benefit of reflection‖ (55). While we can see that Rivella was able to resist Lovemore‘s attempts at seduction and was immune to the romance-as-weapon to which her more mature alter-identity falls victim, she is nevertheless susceptible to the dangers of falling in love. Rivella‘s ―prepossession, or rather madness‖ (55), in fact, does not even stem from any effort of Lysander‘s. That youth ―was passionately in love elsewhere, [...] he had no designs upon that very young lady, and would decline all opportunities of entertaining her‖ (55). Rivella‘s foolishness in losing her head over an indifferent young man who bears a name common to the romance genre, yet who refrains from enacting the conventions of the romance or from even using the romance novel as an instrument of seduction, again points to the inadequacy of placing the blame on this genre for the figure of the fallen innocent. Because Manley has Lovemore use the myth of the seduced innocent in The Adventures of Rivella while he simultaneously illustrates the fallacy of this myth, the reader must be left wondering where the truth of Rivella/Delia‘s sexual awakening lies. Both versions relate Rivella/Delia‘s coming into sexual awareness, but each has its own 52 account of how she achieved this awareness. Ironically, the account in The Adventures of Rivella that depicts Rivella as coming into a sexual awareness without any outside influence or seduction—which would seemingly establish her as an unnaturally sexual female—leaves her relatively unscathed. Rivella does betray society‘s mandate that a female refrain from showing her desire for a man until he makes his own desire for her known and she does act foolishly in stealing money from her father to give to the indifferent Lysander. Rivella‘s reputation nevertheless remains intact. That is, it remains intact until we learn not from The Adventures of Rivella but from this text‘s direction to The New Atlantis that this savvy and sexually aware girl has somehow managed to fall into the snare of the romance and has bigamously married her cousin-guardian. The inconsistency between these two texts, even as one relies on the other, leaves Manley/Rivella/Delia‘s (sexual) identity elusive. One text—The Adventures of Rivella— shows that she was not the seduced innocent but had come into a sexual awareness on her own. The other text—The New Atlantis—shows that she was not the sexually mature or knowledgeable woman, but the seduced innocent. Which to believe as truth? Ironically, the very concept of ‗truth‘ is the one element in which these conflicting texts come into agreement. In The New Atlantis Delia proclaims to her confessor that it is the ―native love for truth I have‖ that induces her to narrate her history of seduction and betrayal (222). After telling her story she further laments that her lost reputation ―destroyed all the esteem that my truth and conversation might have else procured me‖ (227). Lovemore confirms Rivella‘s reverence for truth in The Adventures of Rivella when he states that ―she loves truth, and has too often given her self the liberty to speak, 53 as well as write it‖ (50). It is ironic that the one place where these conflicting texts agree centers is in the truthfulness of the very woman penning the inconsistent accounts of her own life. We must remember that even if Lovemore is narrating her story, Manley is ultimately the woman constructing his narrative. If ‗truth‘ is so important to Manley/Rivella/Delia, a reader must be left wondering how it can be that such a truth- loving writer can provide two accounts that are not consistent with each other. This conflict is exactly where Manley‘s texts reveal the ‗truth.‘ Her conflicting accounts prove that there is no ‗truth‘ in the figure of the deceived innocent, nor is there ‗truth‘ in the alternate figure of the sexually alluring woman. The conjunction of these two conflicting texts and figures indicates that the ‗truth‘ does not exist in either of these, or even in any other constructed and limiting female representation. Instead, it exists somewhere in between them. By scripting her life story in the two conflicting alternatives available to her and by setting them at the same time within and against each other, Manley‘s texts illustrate the fallacy and inadequacy of such scripted female identities while at the same time illustrating the two distinct and contradicting texts as compatible in bringing this ‗truth‘ to light. The coming together of the two separate works to reveal that such an elusive truth acts as a model for the way in which various scripted identities cannot individually reflect the versatility inherent within any given woman‘s character. Instead, the combination, the borrowing, and the revision of individual reputations may provide something closer to the ‗truth‘ of the multiplicity and flexibility of public identity while at the same time exposing even this identity as merely a social construct. 54 Contradictions between Delia and Rivella point out the fallacy of one ‗truth‘ when it comes to a scripted female identity, but contradictions within the narrative of The Adventures of Rivella further illustrate the concept that there really is no way to provide a truthful narrative of a person‘s life. Perhaps the most glaring inconsistency found in Lovemore‘s narration of Manley/Rivella‘s life is one that has largely remained unexplored. Admittedly, many of Manley‘s critics have focused on Lovemore‘s account of Rivella‘s public defense after being arrested for having written The New Atlantis. Rivella‘s defense is twofold. Initially she defends herself ―with much humility and sorrow, for having offended,‖ claiming that she had no ―farther design than writing for her own amusement and diversion in the country‖ (110). However, when the court dismisses this defense as untrue, ―she said then [the libelous content] must be inspiration, because knowing her own innocence she could account for it no other way‖ (110). Catherine Gallagher has argued that in this defense ―fiction was [Rivella‘s] alibi‖ (88): ―The alibi was as transparently untrue (or, since it was not intended to convince, as truly fictional) as The New Atlantis was transparently slanderous. [...] Delarivier Manley‘s comic-heroic version of her defense opposes the truth of a political crime to the fictionality of a fictional alibi. Indeed, the obvious fictionality of the alibi indicates the truth of the charge. Delarivier Manley‘s case is full of paradoxes of this sort‖ (90). As Gallagher points out, despite its elusiveness, Rivella‘s public defense nevertheless points to the ‗truth‘ in the same round-about way that Manley provides the ‗truth‘ of (her own) female identity through conflicting self-personae—the truth that she does not exist in 55 either of them. But what critics tend to neglect is the fact that Rivella‘s public defense is not the only defense Manley/Rivella provides within Lovemore‘s narration. In addition to the public defense, Lovemore also includes Rivella‘s personal defense of her having written The New Atlantis. This personal defense directly contradicts her public defense. It also acts as an indictment of the very public that instigates her to write the scandal novel and that condemns her for doing so. Perhaps the most significant difference between the public and personal accounts is Rivella‘s personally acknowledging that The New Atlantis was indeed based on more than mere ―inspiration.‖ Lovemore questions her motives for ―exposing people that never had done her any injury‖ (107), and Rivella replies ―she did no more by others, than others had done by her (i.e.) tattle of frailties‖ (108). Rivella‘s answer indicates that she did in fact knowingly include scandalous accounts within her novel that were based on something stronger than her own mental musings. But her defense also points out that what she did in The New Atlantis was nothing more than what society had done to her: ―the town had never shewn her any indulgence, but on the contrary reported ten fold against her in matters of which she was wholly innocent‖ (108). Rivella‘s personal defense points out that her own reputation as a sexually fallen woman has in reality been created through rumor and the inflation of certain situations. In fact, Lovemore informs us that Rivella‘s writing career began upon her having been ostracized from this society that casted her in the role of scandalous woman: ―She told me her love of solitude was improved by her disgust of the world [...]. To be short, she spent two years in this amusement; in all that time never making her self acquainted at any place where she lived. ‗Twas in this 56 solitude, that she composed her first tragedy‖ (67). In sullying Rivella‘s reputation through rumors and exaggeration, society defines her as a scandalous and amorous woman. Retiring from a world that brands her with this sullied identity provides Manley with the time and focus to explore a career that results in her writing The New Atlantis. Thus, in creating Rivella‘s scandalous identity by focusing on her supposed ―frailties,‖ the world is not only guilty of the very crime that it accuses her of committing when she writes The New Atlantis, but it is also guilty of creating the author who would go on to write such scandal. Rivella, in fact, indicates that her society is guiltier than she is in having included sketches of real people within her scandal novel. According to Rivella‘s personal defense, The New Atlantis actually has more ‗truth‘ in it than does the reputation and identity that the world has constructed for her. She protests that while the world conjures up accusations against her despite her innocence and inflates these rumors ―ten fold,‖ at least she bases her own tales of scandal on well known ―stories that all the world had long since reported, having ever been careful of glancing against such persons who were truly virtuous, and who had not been very careless of their own actions‖ (108). While the world carelessly condemns Rivella‘s character without considering extenuating circumstances or further investigating malicious reports or innuendos, Rivella, the lover of truth, at least consciously directs her attacks toward those whose base characters have already been widely acknowledged and away from anyone who does not deserve such condemnation. In this sense, Rivella actually divests herself of any wrong doing by claiming that The New Atlantis merely repeats in print accounts that have long been 57 public knowledge. At the very least she has divested her work of any misrepresentations of the ―virtuous.‖ Hence, if the public is to condemn anyone, it should be itself. Rivella claims that she merely cleans up and includes in her scandal novel what society ―had long since reported.‖ Manley‘s dedication to The New Atlantis reinforces Rivella‘s personal defense as well as her indictment of a society that casts her into a scripted identity. The postscript does this by illustrating the gap between the ‗truth‘ she so loves and any representation of that truth—be it in a narration, a novel, a rumor, or even her own account of the ―truth.‖ Within the frame of the text the ―mere translator‖ who dedicates the scandal novel to Henry, Duke of Bufort informs this nobleman of the supposed previous translations of the text: The following adventures first spoke their own mixed Italian, a speech now corrupted, and now much in use through all the islands of the Mediterranean; from whence some industrious Frenchman soon transported it into his own country; and, by giving it an air and habit, wherein the foreigner was almost lost, seemed to naturalize: a friend of mine, that made the campaign, met with it last year at Brussels; and thus, à la Franҫois, put it into my hands, with a desire it might visit the court of Great Britain. (3) This dedication reveals the distance between the original text and the text that is presented to the Duke as The New Atlantis. The work has been translated from an archaic and recently corrupted Italian into contemporary French, and this French translation has subsequently been converted into English. The shifting of the languages of the text is not the only perversion of the work, however, as the French translator ―seemed to naturalize it‖ and make the content more consistent with French custom. Much of what was in the original must have therefore been altered through these various translations and 58 adaptations. Ross has argued that this dedication‘s account of the text‘s various translations was ―a ruse that was probably meant to be transparent‖ (40), while Ballaster contends that Manley‘s dedication ―presents herself as the sedentary translator toiling in libraries in the attempt to fix a series of peripatetic texts into some kind of stable meaning or utterance‖ (Seductive Forms 130). However, the account of such perversion of the original text would conversely seem to illustrate both the instability and the unreliability of the final work. Multiple translations and cultural alterations to a text must by necessity provide an adulterated version of the original in much the same way that society has manipulated elements from Manley/Rivella‘s own life by focusing only on certain situations and reporting ―ten fold against her in matters of which she was wholly innocent.‖ The account of the multiple translations may have been a ruse, but it nevertheless reinforces the idea there is indeed a gap between an original and subsequent editions—or between the ‗truth‘ and future the retellings of that ‗truth.‘ In this way, Manley‘s dedication shows how a translated text can appear original but is in reality an adulterated recreation of that original. In much the same way, the female reputation which society has created for her may appear to be an accurate representation because it was based upon an action she committed that society considers immoral. In reality this representation is merely a script that has been created to confine her to one recognizable identity that can easily be categorized, judged, and condemned. The Adventures of Rivella takes this corruption of both narration and reputation even further than does The New Atlantis, resulting in a celebration of the fluidity of 59 genres as they existed. Manley‘s depiction of this corruption illustrates that the fluidity among genres in the early eighteenth century could be an effective model for reforming society‘s concepts of constructed and limiting (female) identity. Manley sets up an even more complex account of the creation of The Adventures of Rivella in the translator‘s preface and the introduction than she did in The New Atlantis. The Adventures of Rivella is supposedly the result of Sir Charles Lovemore‘s oral narration to the Chevalier d‘Aumont, which has in turn been orally narrated by d‘Aumont to an amanuensis. This scribe translates this narration from the original French into English. As if the distance from the original narration to the final text were not complicated enough, we must also factor in not only the accuracy of d‘Aumont‘s memory, but also his attention span. The reason for the text existing at all is based on Lovemore‘s reproach toward d‘Aumont for ―not being attentive to his relation‖ (41). D‘Aumont protests that after hearing Lovemore‘s narration he will prove his diligent concentration by reciting to his amanuensis ―most of what he had discoursed with him that evening, as proof both of the goodness of his memory, and great attention‖ (41). Then, of course, there is also the reliability of Lovemore himself, with whom the narration originates and whose character, as we have already seen, is questionable at the very least. The reader must be left wondering whether inconsistencies found within the text should be attributed to Lovemore‘s dubious character, d‘Aumont‘s false memory or inattention, mistakes made in transcribing an oral narration, or inaccuracies in the translation of the text from one language to another. 60 Various inconsistencies within The Adventures of Rivella may make a reader suspect any, or even all of, these steps that distance the reader from the original ‗truth‘ of the subject of the work—Manley/Rivella. For example, is it d‘Aumont‘s false memory or a slip within Lovemore‘s narration that is responsible for an inconsistency in his learning the foolish result of Rivella‘s infatuation with Lysander? At first we read that ―this story I have had from her self‖ (56). However, a few pages later Lovemore presents the reader with a different account for his coming into awareness of Rivella‘s having stolen money for Lysander: ―my sisters tattling with her sisters, had gained the secret, and very little to my ease imparted to me‖ (59). The first account would make Lovemore a close confident of Rivella‘s and thus provide both Lovemore and his narration with a sense of credibility. The later account conversely sets up a distance between the narrator and his subject; Lovemore must look to his sisters for information concerning Rivella. Setting the two conflicting accounts side by side, however, could point to a defect in Lovemore as reliable narrator. He seems to be producing the illusion of having an intimacy with Rivella which is actually betrayed by the later conflicting account. On the other hand, the inconsistency could merely be an error on the scribe‘s part, or even a glitch in the translation. All of the steps that by necessity distance the reader from the original narration also distance her from any supposed ‗truth‘ the narration may have contained. The narration becomes highly suspicious. Of course, all of this framework setting the narration up as unstable and unreliable is a fiction constructed by Manley who stands behind the text as the creator of the biographer of her life. In this respect, the text becomes even more suspicious. As we 61 have already seen according to Curll‘s explanation concerning the text, Manley did not want the world to know that she was the author of her own biography because ―though the world may like what I write of others, they despise whatever an author is thought to say of themselves‖ (117). Perhaps it is for this reason that Manley, who exerts ―final puppeteer-like authority over her constructed biographer‖ (Zelinsky 19), uses Lovemore to portray Rivella as the humble woman writer. He claims, ―yet this thing is to be commended in her, that she rarely speaks of her own writings [...], insomuch that I was well pleased at the character a certain young person gave her (who did not mean it much to her advantage) that one might discourse seven years together with Rivella, and never find out from her self, that she was a wit, or an author‖ (49). While there is humor in this statement, there also appears to be humility in that Rivella seems not to be the boastful or prideful woman writer. Yet, we must wonder at the conflict between this statement and one following it in which Lovemore discusses Rivella‘s first tragedy: ―I have since often heard Rivella laugh and wonder that a man of Mr. Betterton‘s grave sense and judgment should think well enough of the productions of a woman of eighteen, to bring it upon the stage in so handsome a manner as he did, when her self could hardly now bear the reading of it‖ (68). 9 While this account may initially appear to reinforce Rivella‘s humility in that it seemingly shows Rivella as embarrassed by the quality of her first tragedy, it actually betrays a sense of pride in her initial foray into writing. First, this statement contradicts Lovemore‘s claim that Rivella rarely spoke of her own writing, as Lovemore claims that 9 This passage refers to the 1696 production of Manley‘s The Royal Mischief which was produced by Betterton and performed by Elizabeth Barry. 62 he has ―often‖ heard Rivella discuss this tragedy. Furthermore, Rivella‘s wonderment over having her script performed by such a prominent actress as Elizabeth Barry conversely indicates a sense of self-satisfaction in having even a remedial work of hers performed at such a young age. Because this account is couched in the fictional biographer‘s narration, which has already established Rivella as humble in her stance as a writer, it is easy to overlook the vanity inherent in this statement. But, as Manley suggested to Curll, an audience‘s awareness of her penning this narration could have heightened this vanity. Manley thus intentionally deceives her reader when she presents Lovemore as the narrator of her life story. In so doing she celebrates not only the slipperiness, but also the fluidity of genres as they existed in the early eighteenth century. Manley‘s The Adventures of Rivella is neither what we would currently define as an autobiography nor a biography despite the text‘s appearing to be the account of Manley‘s life told by a third party. Ross argues that in using Lovemore to narrate her life story, ―Manley created a fictional frame that allowed her to present her romantic account of the events of her life as if it were objective truth‖ (40). However, we have already seen that Lovemore‘s ―objective‖ narration is just as suspect as any ―romantic‖ account provided by the author herself would be—perhaps even more so when we factor in the various translations and orations that supposedly remove the reader from the original narration. Regardless of which suspicious narrative we focus on, what current readers can garner from this text is an appreciation for the fluidity of such narratives. Manley‘s texts illustrate that a biographical work must be just as suspect as an autobiographical work and that a 63 biographical work can, in fact, be an autobiographical work. Her work slips between what could be defined as two distinct genres—the biography and the autobiography— while also incorporating convections of the romance and scandal novels. Manley‘s comment to Curll concerning her reticence to let the world know that The Adventures of Rivella was in fact penned by herself proves that there was at least an awareness of the distinction between the two kinds of life-writing accounts at the time she wrote the narrative. However, expectations regarding either genre had yet to be definitively solidified, and Manley took advantage of this in creating the (auto)biography. In such a work, Manley can present her own life account through the mouth of another. She does so not to give it the impression of objectivity as Ross argues, but rather to illustrate the gaps between the ‗truth‘ of her life story that is so important to her and any representation of such ‗truth.‘ Manley‘s celebration of the flexibility and compatibility of the various genres available to her does not end with the play between the genres we would now consider autobiography and biography in The Adventures of Rivella. Manley goes on further to manipulate the genres of the era within one single text. As we have already seen in Manley/ Rivella‘s public defense in The Adventures of Rivella regarding her writing of The New Atlantis, the author claimed ―inspiration‖ for the material within that earlier text. But, as Gallagher argues, both Manley‘s personal and public defenses indicate this claim of ―inspiration‖ is in actuality a false claim. Nevertheless, the scandal novel‘s relationship with ‗truth‘ is dubious in that while its characters may be based upon real people, the stories in which Manly/Rivella places them are exaggerations or salaciously 64 romanticized accounts that reveal the baseness of the individuals that she caricatures. As Ballaster points out, ―Manley was [...] an inveterate lover of fictional exaggeration and subversion‖ when it came to ―scoring points over her intellectual or political enemies and detractors‖ (―Introduction‖ vi). In this respect, Manley/Rivella‘s The New Atlantis does contain a clear element of ―inspiration.‖ However, Manley positions Lovemore as referring his readers to this text created from ―inspiration‖ for the account of Delia as if that scandal novel were clearly a factual, or autobiographical, work. In this manner the scandal novel appears to be both fictional and factual. The result of this movement between genres as well as the movement between the simultaneously factual and fictional texts can be confusing. 10 Exacerbating this confusion is Manley‘s illustration of the overarching ‗truth‘ of the ―true story‖—that there is no truth to the figure that either text portrays as illustrated through the reliance of the (auto)biography on the ―fictional novel.‖ It may appear that the two texts remain, and should remain, exclusive of each other since they are of differing genres. But Manley‘s interpolation of autobiographical accounts within her ―inspired‖ scandal novel and her fictional (auto)biography in fact come together to celebrate the way these two texts of varying genres work with each other while maintaining their individual autonomy as independent texts in differing genres. 11 Thus, it is not only the plethora of obscure 10 As Davis makes clear, ―in this case, the reader would have to consult the fictional novel to get the true story of the disguised character discussed in The History of Rivella. The framing at this moment is complex enough to baffle the observer at first glance‖ (120). 11 I am borrowing the term ―interpolation‖ from Emily Anderson‘s ―Autobiographical Interpolations in Maria Edgeworth‘s Harrington.‖ Anderson defines ―interpolation‖ as ―the insertion of new matter into a pre-existing document; the word depends for its meaning on our perception of two discreet categories that, once interpolated, remain discreet yet juxtaposed. An autobiographical interpolation is then an 65 contemporary and political references that may unsettle today‘s reader of Manley‘s texts. Instead, as Backsheider argues, Manley‘s work may ―occasionally jolt modern readers, because [the author] strikingly and in a variety of ways [inserts herself] in [her fictional] text‖ (13). It would seem, however, that modern readers would be receptive to such an insertion of an autobiographical voice within a fictional biography. An argument can be made that the fluidity of Manley‘s texts anticipates more modern notions of literature that question the boundaries genre and narrative. Unfortunately, much like Cavendish before her, modern audiences who can perhaps better appreciate Manley‘s meshing of genres are generally not introduced to her work because of the reductive and scandalous reputation she has garnered over the years which has condemned Manley and her texts as immoral and unworthy of attention. The irony of Manley‘s skill at manipulating genres is that the ‗truth‘ that her various texts reveal in an attempt to expose the reductive nature of such a reputation seems to have been lost on her contemporary and future audiences even if her novels were widely read ―during the first four decades of the eighteenth-century‖ (Richetti 120). Manley‘s contemporary audience could not understand the significance of the meshing and flexibility of genres and identities in Manley‘s works and instead latched onto the idea of Manley‘s revealing her life story to be that of the amorous/seduced woman. Thus, also like Cavendish, Manley‘s texts can be seen as ahead of their time and written for a future audience that would one day comprehend her vision. Frustrated with an audience that was limited by reductive perceptions of her, Manley nevertheless autobiographical passage of a text at once integrated within, and distinguished from, its fictional frame‖ (1- 2). 66 seemingly gains the upper hand when she tricks readers determined to perceive her as a sexual and scandalous woman into thinking themselves satisfied with her own creative act of misdirection. In The Adventures of Rivella, Manley portrays the concept of misdirection as resulting in a more complex portrayal of herself than the more limiting reputations which were unfortunately all too readily available and enacted by her readers‘ perceptions of her. Critics like Carnell have already pointed out that in her (auto)biography Manley uses a lengthy narration of her involvement in the infamous and complicated Bath- Albemarle lawsuit to deflect ―readers‘ attention away from some of the most difficult years in her own life, those that followed her five years with Tilly‖ (120). 12 Many Manley critics have argued that John Tilly was the one man whom Manley really loved. This may account for her reticence in providing a judging society with much detail into their relationship or the heartache that followed their separation. 13 Rabb, for example, puts forth that ―the long account of the trial relegates Manley to a minor role in her own life; it conceals a sexual passion that biographers agree was her most intense‖ (154). 12 Morgan describes the Bath-Albemarle lawsuit as ―a sort of seventeenth-century Jarndyce v. Jarndyce‖ (102). The lengthy trial was concerned with determining the legal beneficiary of Christopher Monck, the second Duke of Albemarle. The case was complicated because Albemarle had two drafts of his will, one signed in 1675 and another signed in 1687, as well as a Deed of Release which was drawn up and signed in 1681. The Deed of Release stipulated that the 1675 will, which deemed Albermarle‘s cousin Lord Bath his heir, could only be altered if the new will was signed by six witnesses, including three peers. Additionally, there needed to be an exchange of sixpence to make the old will and the Deed of Release void. The 1687 will, which Albermarle had drawn up to appease his wife, Elizabeth, the Duchess of Albermarle, named Colonel Thomas Monck and his family the new heirs. However, the document was only signed by three witnesses—none of them peers—and there was no exchange of sixpence. According to The Adventures of Rivella, Rivella and Cleander became involved in the affair in an attempt to settle the dispute between the two feuding prospective heirs in the hopes of benefiting financially. 13 Manley had a five year affair with John Tilly and she lived with him (out of wedlock) before he married Margaret Reresby. According to The Adventures of Rivella, Cleander, who is the fictional representation of Tilly, only marries after Rivella selflessly advises him to do so due to financial problems he incurred from the Bath-Albermarle case, which Manley got him involved in. 67 The glimpse that Manley does include of their involvement indicates Cleander, the fictional representation of Tilly, is the one character that may come the closest to providing a more intricate account of Manley/Rivella‘s life despite—or perhaps even because of—his false first impression of her. Upon her first meeting with Cleander, Rivella brings with her a copy of Moral Reflections by the Duke de Rochfoucaut ―that she might entertain her self with reading whilst she waited for audience‖ (84). Obviously the content of a work that V oltaire had ―praised for its propriety and correctness‖ would seem at odds with the scandalous reputation that society had branded Rivella with by this point (Zelinsky n. 84). But Cleander, oblivious of Rivella‘s sexual past or current reputation, has no other basis upon which to form his initial impression of her. He therefore ―formed an idea from that book of the genius of the lady, who chose it for her entertainment, and tho‘ he had but an indifferent opinion hitherto of women‘s conversation, he believed Rivella must have a good taste from the company she kept‖ (84). Rivella‘s possession of a moralistic book diverts Cleander‘s impression of her away from her status as a sexual woman and he can see past her reputation to her ―genius.‖ The moral book acts as a source for misdirection, but that misdirection actually results in Cleander‘s ability to see Rivella for more than just a woman with a sexual past. She becomes for him an intelligent woman of ―good taste.‖ It is ironic that while Cleander is the man who actually participates in a sexual affair with Rivella, it is the spurned Lovemore who nevertheless insists on characterizing her as a sexual being. Marta Kvande has argued that throughout the text Lovemore ―equates [Manley‘s] text with her body, reading both as no more than sexual‖ (164). But 68 Kvande goes on to explain that this sexualizing of Manley‘s works and character actually points out a reductive masculinist perspective of women: ―By putting these words in a male narrator‘s mouth, Manley portrays that sexualized image as sorely limiting, for any contemporary reader of Manley‘s earlier works [...] would have been aware that those works were highly politicized‖ (164-165). All of Lovemore‘s inconsistencies and inaccuracies would therefore seemingly induce critical readers to question this narrator‘s reliability. Nevertheless, critics still seem to grant this narrative a great deal of weight in the formation of Manley‘s reputation, especially when it comes to Lovemore‘s final physical depiction of Manley/Rivella as a purely sexual being. Lovemore‘s physical description of Manley/Rivella receiving the listener into her bed ―in a state of sweetness and tranquility‖ has garnered much attention throughout the text‘s critical reception (113). Early readers use Lovemore‘s description as a basis of Manley‘s sexual and therefore immoral position as a (woman) writer, and more recently critics have delved into the complexity of this depiction. None, however, have realized its role a ruse Manley plays on her readers as well as a celebration of her creative pen as more powerful than her undiscerning readers‘ attention. Davis has argued that the description is ―a fantasy of Manley‘s in which she offers herself to her collective readership. The incredible detail, the superabundance of flowers, the oriental suggestions all strike the reader as part of colossal autoerotic reverie the likes of which had probably never occurred so directly between author and reader in the history of the narrative up to this point‖ (119). Ballaster, however, qualifies Davis‘s reading: Yet the most striking aspect of Lovemore‘s fantasy is surely its indirectness. All he can offer his reader, d‘Aumont, is an imprint in a bed, 69 the perfume of flowers, the echo of the woman writer‘s voice in conversation. Manley‘s texts may be available for the male gaze, but the equation of her text with her body is, it transpires, precisely a male fiction. [...] What Lovemore ‗pimps‘ is his own fantasy of the absent author who is, ironically, in reality his author. While the man appears to have authored the perfect female object, it is she in fact who has authored him. (―Seizing the Means of Seduction‖ 106) Based on such a reading we can determine that Lovemore‘s last description of Manley is the final cue to the reader that the narrator‘s relationship with his subject is not as intimate as he professes. In the end Lovemore cannot physically produce Rivella for d‘Aumont in the same way that he cannot produce an accurate representation of Rivella for the reader. He cannot do so not only because he does not know her well enough, but because the Manley/Rivella he has been narrating does not exist. Lovemore can only paint for his audience a picture of the sexual Rivella‘s bed, carrying this audience (in the heat of summer after dinner) within the nymphs alcove, to a bed nicely sheeted and strowed with roses, jessamins or orange-flowers, suited to the variety of the season; her pillows neatly trimmed with lace or muslin, stuck round with junquils, or other natural garden sweets, for she uses no perfumes, and there have given you leave to fancy your self the happy man, with whom she chose to repose her self, during the heat of the day, in a state of sweetness and tranquility. (113) Lovemore may be able to produce Manley/Rivella‘s bed, but he cannot in the end produce her. However, Lovemore‘s empty description does provide a more subtle clue as to exactly who is in charge of this description of Manley/Rivella. The passage in which Lovemore portrays an absent and sexualized Manley/Rivella in bed awaiting the reader distinctly echoes passages from Manley‘s most famous novel, The New Atlantis. Ballaster has already noted similarities between this passage and passages found in Manley‘s scandal novel, and she has also acknowledged 70 that such scenes are similar to some found in d‘Aulnoy‘s works. 14 From this observation as well as the knowledge that the text was composed under pressure from Curll and Gildon, Ballaster concludes that ―Rivella [...] is a brisk riposte to masculine appropriations of the female ‗form‘, physical and textual. Its erotic withholding of authorial identity mimics the strategies of Aphra Behn, herself a victim of Gildon‘s biographizing ambitions‖ (150). But Ballaster fails to see the extent to which this passage from The Adventures of Rivella recalls and parallels various passages from The New Atlantis. She thus misses yet another cue cluing the audience into the idea that the entirety of the text is in reality in Manley‘s strategic control. Ballaster does note that Lovemore‘s description echoes the first story rendered in The New Atlantis—that of Germanicus and the Duchess (20-21). But the portrayal of the woman skimpily dressed and languishingly awaiting the male gaze on a hot day also echoes several other narratives found within Manley‘s scandal novel. These include the stories of Charlot and her guardian the Duke (39), Louisa and Hernando (119-120), and Diana and Rodriguez (245-246). The last account even contains the same ―descriptive prose‖ as both the Germanicus and Rivella descriptions, right down to the jasmines and orange flowers strewn about, the excessive heat of the day, and a woman laid out on a ―repose of sweets‖ (246). While the setting of these scenes as well as the interaction of these characters may recall d‘Aulnoy‘s works, the repetition of these smaller details must 14 In Seductive Forms Ballaster quotes from d‘Aulnoy‘s Travels into Spain to show that Manley borrows ―ingredients—the garden, the sleeping woman, the woman's body exposed to the lover‘s amorous gaze‖ from the French author (126). She also notes that the ―descriptive prose of‖ the passage in The Adventures of Rivella ―echoes that employed to represent young Germanicus awaiting his Duchess in the first story rendered in Manley's New Atlantis‖ (149). Ballaster sets each passage side by side to reveal their similarities. 71 recall Manley‘s distinct style. Because Lovemore‘s physical description of Rivella so closely echoes Manley‘s style, a reader familiar with her infamous work should suspect Manley as the author behind Lovemore‘s narration despite Manley‘s insistence upon the text being published anonymously. Undertaking anonymity by using an unreliable narrator for her (auto)biography, Manly provides a sexualized characterization of herself. Thus, she gives the world what they seem to want from her while at the same time indicating to that world that what they want from her is a fiction. But, more importantly, this fiction is a fiction of her own making. Manley attempts to trick her audience into being appeased by a fictionalized and reductive identity that her audience demands and that she creates for them. At the same time she exposes this identity as constructed and fictional through an embellished narrative of her life recounted by a dubious narrator. Sidonie Smith has explained the complexity involved in a woman writing about her life story: Since autobiography is a public expression, she speaks before and to ‗man.‘ Attuned to the ways women have been dressed up for public exposure, attuned also to the price women pay for public self-disclosure, the autobiographer reveals in her speaking posture and narrative structure her understanding of the possible readings she will receive from a public that has the power of her reputation in its hands. [... She thus] approaches her ‗fictive‘ reader as if ‗he‘ were the representative of the dominant order, the arbiter of the ideology of gender and its stories of selfhood. (A Poetics of Women‟ s Autobiography 49) Manley was well aware of the public script that the world had written for her. Her text is a direct reflection of this knowledge. With the male narrator‘s depiction of Manley/Rivella as in the end a sexual being to be possessed in ―a bed nicely sheeted and strowed with roses, jessamins or orange-flowers,‖ Manley seemingly gives in and 72 provides her (male) readers with the identity that they believe and want her to embody. Yet, as Ballaster has noted, that particular embodiment of Manley/Rivella is finally absent from the picture Lovemore paints. What is present in Lovemore‘s description is Manley‘s own style. This distinct narrative style should direct the reader back to her scandal novel in the same way that Lovemore had previously referred his readers to The New Atlantis. Just as that first referral indicates a fiction regarding female identity, so this referral indicates that the ‗biography‘ itself has been a fiction. When Manley‘s style seeps through Lovemore‘s narration, she provides a clue for the reader to realize that Lovemore, along with his unreliable narration, is a fiction—one that Manley has authored herself. 15 By giving her readers what they anticipate and desire in Lovemore‘s purely sexual portrayal of herself, Manley is really playing a trick on her audience by seemingly placating them. In actuality, however, she takes that portrayal away from Lovemore and the rest of the world by exposing it as a mere fiction—a severely limiting construction of male desire. In so doing Manley wields absolute control over both the text, its fictional presentation of herself, and her reader. Unfortunately, Manley‘s strategy of trickery is largely to blame for her reputation and her works going out of style over the years that followed her death. Duff details Manley‘s falling ―a victim of changing literary fashion and of her own insistent topicality‖ (3). She cites various nineteenth- and early twentieth-century critics who condemn Manley‘s works as an extension of her own ―immorality‖: ―All the nineteenth 15 As Kvande has argued, ―Manley uses Lovemore‘s obviously biased narration to point out that his construction of Rivella as a sexualized and purely private figure is just that: a construction, and one that does not fit with Rivella‘s own version of herself‖ (173). 73 century references to Mrs. Manley deal with her character rather than with her works, and almost all condemn her solely on moral grounds‖ (5). Duff goes on to explain that Manley‘s ―biography was discussed primarily in moral terms if at all throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth‖ (6). This kind of reading severely limits the few criticisms that deal with Manley or her texts during this time period. Felicity Nussbaum has advised that it is ―important to historicize narrative, to recognize its embedment in its particular moment and sociocultural situation, and to note the ways in which its various readers over time assign its varying meanings‖ (17). From this advice we can see not only Manley‘s use (and exposure) of the (limited) cultural scripts available to her in the telling of her life story, but we can also see how easily it would be for Manley‘s works to fall into disrepute due to critics failing to recognize the context and culture in which Manley wrote this life story. Spencer has asserted that ―In The Adventures of Rivella, Manley took her reputation into her own hands and influenced the picture of herself and her writings which has been preserved since her time. Her self- portrait as amorous, erotic woman writer was accepted because it fitted her public‘s expectations‖ (17). The subsequent critics who condemned Manley and her works to relative obscurity due to her ―immorality‖ were unfortunately practicing the very tendencies Manley‘s texts were trying to expose and correct in her own time. Despite the fact that contemporary readers and critics failed to appreciate her subtle artfulness in tricking them into an awareness of limiting social constructs, Manley was a critically adept author who embraced the fluidity of the generic boundaries of the early eighteenth-century. She did so in an attempt to reform the gendered reputations 74 that in the end limited her reputation to that of a sexually scandalous woman and her work to immoral and unreadable texts. The works that she creates from differing and emerging genres—the biography, the autobiography, the romance, and the scandal novel—nevertheless illustrate various personae that she created for herself while they also come together to reveal each of these personae as fictional constructs. Even if Manley‘s reputation over the years was sullied by reductive type casting, we can finally appreciate Manley‘s contradicting and contrasting texts that make it impossible for any single one of her personae to walk around ―ghost like‖ after her decease. Duff has put forth that ―Mrs. Manley is at best an elusive figure, partially because she wished to be‖ (vi). Manley wrote of herself in The Adventures of Rivella that ―her love of solitude was improved by her disgust of the world; and since it was impossible for her to be public with reputation, she was resolved to remain in it concealed‖ (67). Disgusted with the world for labeling and limiting her with a sexual reputation, Manley used her works to expose the fictionality of such a constructed reputation while at the same time using the fluidity of her various works to call for a more effective means of creating a woman‘s public identity. Even if her contemporary readers could not grasp or fulfill this appeal, Manley at least had the last laugh with the knowledge that the construct that her readers held of her was one of her own making and one that pointed to their own superficial reading and judgment. And just as Lovemore‘s narration ultimately fails to produce Rivella physically for his readers, so Manley could be confident that her own constructed identity would not, and could not, limit who she was. Manley‘s works illustrate that a 75 woman cannot be confined within one text, nor can she be defined by one reputation. By making her texts refer to each other and by emphasizing the fluidity of their boundaries, Manley reveals that her own similarly fluid self does in fact remain in the world, concealed by the limitations of constructed reputations and identities. 76 Chapter 3 Becoming Apollo‘s Daughter: Jane Barker and The Galesia Trilogy By the time that Jane Barker wrote the romantic and semi-autobiographical narrative depicting how she became a poet she was over sixty years old. Nevertheless, the title page of Love Intrigues: or, The History of the Amours of Bosvil and Galesia (1713) indicates that this text was ―Written by a Young Lady‖ (1). Upon the publication of Love Intrigues Barker had obviously passed middle age and had witnessed only the mediocre-at-best success of her coterie style Poetical Recreations (1688). Therefore, the attribution of Love Intrigues to a ―Young Lady‖ may have been just as much an indication of her wishful-thinking as was her attempt to use the narrative to construct herself as a successful poet. Fully conscious of her status as spinster as well as the infamous reputation of female writers in the tradition of Aphra Behn and Delarivier Manley, the aging Barker took matters into her own hands to secure her reputation and to attempt to cast herself as the most successful female poet of her generation. 1 She did so through what would become the Galesia Trilogy, made up of Love Intrigues, A Patch- Work Screen for the Ladies (1723), and The Lining of the Patch Work Screen (1726). These texts are not merely the naïve life writings of a vain and amateur poet, however. They are instead the works of an unconventional early eighteenth-century woman who sought to celebrate the accomplishments she achieved not only in poetry, but 1 Carol Shiner Wilson notes that ―spinster‖ was the ―legal term for an unmarried woman at the time‖ (―Introduction‖ xvi). 77 also in agricultural management and medicinal practice. Moreover, these works are highly layered texts that take advantage of the experimentation rampant within the flexible and evolving early-eighteenth-century literary market. Barker depicts the various achievements she was able to accomplish as a single woman through the complex narratives of a heroine who is at once fictional and autobiographical. While Galesia directly recalls her author through her romantic appellation and her poetry in addition to her various unconventional endeavors, this heroine nevertheless enacts conventional plots in texts structured to point to both fiction and life-writing. The complicated affinity between author and heroine in addition to the complex framing of the Galesia texts makes it increasingly difficult for readers to decipher the relationship between author, heroine, and narrator. In fact, the texts‘ shifting narrative structures become so convoluted at times that we may easily wonder if Barker found herself entangled in this confusion as well. Regardless, the undeniable affinity between Barker and Galesia indicates the author‘s use of this heroine to construct her unconventional identity as the successful poet Galesia. This chapter will attempt to delineate the complicated relationship between author, narrator, and heroine in these texts to show how Barker used Galesia as a tool in the rewriting of her own complex poetic identity. Barker witnessed the climax of her youthful foray into the world of poetry with the 1688 publication of her Poetical Recreations. Benjamin Crayle was the publisher of this miscellany of verse, the first section of which is described as ―By Mrs. Jane Barker.‖ The collection of poems was not successful enough to warrant a second publication. Perhaps disappointed with this lack of literary success and still fancying herself a poet, 78 Barker created her Magdalen Manuscript in 1701. In this later text she claimed that poems published in the relatively unsuccessful Poetical Recreations had been included in that work without her consent. In the unpublished Magdalen Manuscript she incorporated new poems as well as revised versions of those included in the 1688 text. But this was not the last time she would revise her poetry. She would go on to revisit poems from both Poetical Recreations and the Magdalen Manuscript in the Galesia Trilogy where she attributes many of the previously collected poems to her heroine. 2 If attributing revised poems that had been either previously circulated or published under her own name may not substantiate a particularly strong connection between the author and her heroine, then the name that Barker chose for this heroine does. The opening of Poetical Recreations contained several poems dedicated to the author Jane Barker, and among these poems can be found one entitled ―To the Incomparable GALAECIA, on the Publication of her Poems.‖ 3 Additionally, the second section of Poetical Recreations contains several poems that Crayle dedicated to Barker: ―On the most Charming Galecia‘s Picture,‖ ―The Young Lover‘s Advocate: being an answer to a Copy of Verses: Written by Galaecia to her Young Lover on his V ow,‖ ―To my Ingenious Friend Mrs. Jane Barker on my Publishing her Romance of Scipina,‖ and 2 The poems that Barker borrows from Poetical Recreations and attributes to her heroine include ―To my Brother, whilst he was in France,‖ ―The Grove,‖ ―The Rivulet,‖ ―Anatomy,‖ ―On the Apothecaries Filling my Recipes amongst the Doctors,‖ ―An Invitation to my Learned Friends at Cambridge,‖ ―To my Indifferent Lover, who complain‘d of my Indifferency,‖ ―To my Friend Exilius, On his persuading me to marry Old Damon,‖ ―To my Muse,‖ ―To my Friends, against Poetry,‖ ―A Virgin Life,‖ ―The Necessity of Fate,‖ ―To my Young Lover,‖ ―To My Young Lover. A Song,‖ and ―A Ballad. By way of Dialogue Between two Shepherd-Boys.‖ 3 The dedicatory poems that reference Barker‘s name directly are ―To Madam JANE BARKER, on her Incomparable POEMS,‖ ―To the Ingenious Mrs. BARKER, On Her Excellent POEMS,‖ ―To the Ingenious AUHTOUR, Mrs. JANE BARKER On Her POEMS,‖ ―In Elegantem JANE BARKER Poeticen Epigramma,‖ and ―To Mrs. JANE BARKER On Her Ingenious POEMS.‖ 79 ―A Batchellor‘s Life, in pursuit of Mrs. Barker‘s Verses in Praise of a Single Life.‖ This text that refers alternately to ―Galecia‖ and to Mrs. Jane Barker indicates that Barker had clearly adopted this romantic appellation as her own by 1688. That Barker chose her own nickname for the writing heroine to whom she attributes poetry she had written twenty- five years earlier clearly encourages a correlation between author and heroine. This correlation between author and heroine would not have been lost on all of Barker‘s readers, though her choice to use the name Galesia for her semi- autobiographical heroine may have been subtle enough for her to escape censure for writing so publically about her own unconventional and literary life. Despite the attribution of the 1713 edition of Love Intrigues to ―a Young Lady,‖ there would have been a contingent of readers to recognize the heroine‘s name as Barker‘s alias from the 1688 publication. Carol Shiner Wilson and Carol Barash have both pointed out that while Poetical Recreations may not have garnered much acclaim and did not merit a second printing it did have a ―significant if not large‖ readership (Wilson, ―Jane Barker‖ 45): ―Anne Finch and John Dryden read Barker. Poetical Recreations was read well after its publication, as we learn from sources including the commonplace book of Poet Laureate, Robert Southy‖ (45). The contingent of knowledgeable readers would have been able to decipher the initials ―J.B.‖ affixed to the dedication of that text. Furthermore, that 1713 dedication to the Countess of Exeter solidifies an affinity between the author and her heroine. Barker writes in it that she hopes her ―little Novel‖ will act as a deterrent to the Countess of Exeter‘s daughter ever to ―entangle her Nobel Person in those Levities and Misfortunes the ensuing Treatise describes me unhappily to have 80 struggled with‖ (82). 4 Barker seems clearly to have set up her heroine to act as a stand in for herself in this first installment of what would become the Galesia Trilogy. However, this affinity between author and heroine becomes increasingly complicated as the 1719 edition of Love Intrigues is published and as Barker goes on to publish the final installments of the trilogy in 1723 and 1726. Sarah Prescott has argued that ―Barker is fascinating precisely because she exemplifies the transitional nature of this period where manuscript circulation and publication could coincide and coexist with print culture‖ (22). She speculates that the 1713 edition of Love Intrigues ―was probably originally intended for a coterie audience‖ (22). That Barker originally intended that text to be exposed to a limited and selective audience may explain why it so overtly supports such a strong correlation between author and heroine. A larger audience would present risks for the female writer who may have felt uncomfortable about being associated with the more popular female writers of contemporary amorous novels whose reputations became tainted by the content of their works. 5 Thus, in the 1719 edition Barker‘s name appears on the title page, as it does on the subsequent 1723 and 1726 installments of the trilogy, promoting a distancing effect between author and heroine. The character of Galesia represented in both the youthful heroine and the more mature narrator in Love Intrigues would appear to readers who were not in the know to be a fictional creation as she does not share the historical name of the author to whom her text is attributed. 4 Barker signs her initials, J.B., to the dedication of the 1713 edition, while the text is merely attributed to ―a Young Lady.‖ 5 Although Barker‘s texts present Galesia as chaste and virtuous, they nevertheless present her as an ambitious woman who participates in a questionable courtship with her cousin and participates in unconventional activities that could call her reputation into question. 81 Furthermore, Barker physically distances herself from her heroine in A Patch- Work Screen for the Ladies as well as The Lining of the Patch Work Screen. In her ―To the Reader‖ of the first of these texts, the author informs her audience that she has physically encountered Galesia: ―With her I renew‟d my Old Acquaintance; and so came to know all this Story of her Patch-Work‖ (53-54). 6 Jane Barker signs her name to this preface, and readers must suppose that it is this same Jane Barker who goes on to narrate in the ―Introduction‖ that ―When we parted from Galesia last, it was in St. Germain‟ s Garden; and now we meet with her in England, traveling in a Stage-Coach from London Northward‖ (55). Because these two prefaces are placed in such close proximity and because Barker uses the first to establish that she is the recipient of Galesia‘s narrative which then begins in the ―Introduction,‖ the narrator could only be Barker. Barker picks up this same kind of physical distancing of herself from her heroine in the ―To the Ladies‖ of the final installment of the trilogy. There again the author informs her readers that ―You may please to remember, that when we left our Galesia, it was with the good Lady‖ (177). Barker‘s later texts seem to be setting up a clear distance between herself and her heroine for her more public readership. That the later Galesia texts go to such lengths to distinguish heroine from author may reveal Barker‘s increased awareness of the shifting literary market and her forming her texts to a more public audience who would buy her works. In her ―To The Reader‖ of A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies Barker explains why she has undertaken the 6 Jane Barker signs her name to the ―To the Ladies‖ of The Lining of the Patch Work Screen. She also signs her name to the ―To the Reader‖ of The Patch-Work Screen, but she does not sign her name to the ―Introduction‖ of that text. 82 authorship of this text: ―My Two former Volumes of Novels having met with a favourable Reception, (much beyond their Desert) encourages me to perform my Promise in pursuing The Sequel of Galesia‘s Story‖ (51). 7 Barker is capitalizing on the success of her previous works in the newly professional marketplace that has by this time produced such successful, and fictional, works as those by Daniel Defoe. According to King, Barker appears in this preface to be very much aware of this marketplace: ―She belongs, indeed, to the new breed of writer, the novel-writing woman who casts a commercial eye on that new breed of reader, the novel-buying public‖ (―Galesia, Jane Barker, and a Coming to Authorship‖ 96-97). 8 King has argued that the shifting literary marketplace produced a sense of unease in early professional female authors like Barker. 9 Therefore, Barker may have distanced herself from the heroine who so closely resembles her due to the public nature of these texts as well as the increasing attraction of fictional works like 7 The ―Two former Volumes of Novels‖ to which Barker refers to Love Intrigues and The Banish‟d Roman (1715). These two works were published together in 1719 as The Entertaining Novels of Mrs. Jane Barker. 8 Prescott endorses King‘s assessment, citing Barker‘s prefaces to The Patch-Work Screen and The Lining of the Patchwork Screen as imploring readers to buy her texts. In the ―To The Reader‖ of The Patch-Work Screen, Barker writes, ―be sure to buy these Patches up quickly […]; thereby you‟ll greatly oblige the Bookseller, and, in some degree, the Author. Who is, Your humble Servant, Jane Barker‖ (54). In the ―To the Ladies‖ of The Lining of the Patch Work Screen she similarly writes, ―Since you have been so kind to my Booksellers in favor of the SCREEN, I hope this LINING will not meet with a less Favourable Reception from Your Fair Hands: which will infinitely oblige Your Devoted Servant, Jane Barker‖ (179). 9 King indicates that it is this kind of discomfort that makes ―the autobiographical Galesia fictions unusually rich texts for the study of anxieties of authorship in an early professional female writer‖ (92). King‘s article goes on to argue that ―A Patch-work Screen encodes within itself the story of its own creation and, by implication, the story of how one early eighteenth-century professional writer managed to construct for herself the conditions, psychological and discursive, that made addressing an impersonal readership possible. More specifically, it argues that the complex layerings of female auditors built into the framing fictions of A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies attempt to ease the anxieties of authorship thematized in its core narrative‖ (93). In making this argument, King asserts that the Jane Barker who signs herself as the author of the prefaces is a ―fictionalized ‗Jane Barker‘‖ (97). This ―Jane Barker‖ is an alter ego of the historical Jane Barker in the same way that Galesia is this historical author‘s alter ego. 83 those by Defoe. Distancing herself from her heroine could make these works more attractive to her audience and therefore more profitable for her as a writer. 10 Despite the distance that Barker constructs between herself and Galesia which may be attributable to authorial anxiety or the increasing attraction of works of fiction in the literary market, an affinity between Barker and Galesia nevertheless remains indisputable. Therefore, this distancing effect may not be solely due to Barker‘s anxiety over her works being made available to a more public audience. It may also point to her ability to gain control over the authorship of her own life through the use of and experimentation with contemporary literary conventions. The later Galesia narratives indicate that Barker was keenly aware of the prominent literary forms at play in the early eighteenth-century literary marketplace. For example, Barker invokes other contemporary and popular titles in her introduction to A Patchwork-Screen for the Ladies as she frames this text: 11 ―why a History reduc‘d into Patches? Especially since Histories at Large are so Fashionable in this Age; viz. Robinson Crusoe, and Moll Flanders; Colonel Jack, and Sally Salisbury with many other Heroes and Heroines?‖(51). Aligning her own text with the new ―histories‖ that are so fashionable, Barker distances her work from the romantic and amorous novels that were also flourishing in the literary market. Barker further uses her introduction to point out her own experimentation with literary 10 King explains Barker‘s financial troubles and need for money in ―Jane Barker and Her Life (1652-1732): The Documentary Record.‖ 11 In ―To The Reader‖ from A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies Barker states that ―My Two former V olumes of Novels having met with favourable Reception, (much beyond their Desert) encourages me to perform my Promise in pursuing The Sequel of Galesia‘s Story‖ (51). The ―Two former Volumes‖ to which Barker refers include the 1713 Love Intrigues and the 1715 Exilius; or, The Banish‟d Roman, both of which were published together in the 1719 The Entertaining Novels of Mrs. Jane Barker. 84 form. Not only will she take up the popular and conventional ―history‖ genre, but she will restructure her history into a series of patches. Patricia Meyer Spacks points to the experimental patchwork construction of the text as impairing the cohesiveness of the work. She calls the second installment of the Galesia Trilogy ―a weak novel, lacking integration of plot, character, and point of view‖ (69). Spacks condemns Barker as an author who, ―lacking any apparent focused, conscious purpose, produces an almost incoherent mélange of happenings related to one another only by the often peripheral involvement of the heroine and interspersed with samples of her poetry, including several recipes in verse‖ (66). Spacks‘ analysis of A Patchwork-Screen, however, fails to take into account the affinity between the heroine and her author. 12 Spacks does not appreciate Barker‘s literary experimentation as she intentionally incorporates aspects of both fiction and life-writing to create a heroine who will in turn create for her author a distinct and unconventional literary identity. Barker‘s texts reveal an early appreciation of the complexities of life-writing that allowed this author to generate in her own texts a seemingly fictional writing heroine whose ability to take control of her own narrative extends to Barker herself. Barker‘s texts indicate that she was keenly aware of the fact that despite being based in historical fact, life-writing is nevertheless a form of fictional representation. It may be a record of historical characters and events, but these events and characters become filtered through 12 Spacks analyzes autobiographies and novels in a parallel manner, setting the two side by side in an effort to reinforce the eighteenth-century desire for consistent identity rather than exploring how the status of the two genres in their nascent stages could come together to allow for experimentation and creativity in the merging of a historical and fictional identity. 85 the life writer‘s own perspective, bias, and motivation for writing. 13 This chapter will illustrate Barker‘s recognition of how such a seemingly historical account as a life narrative could be manipulated and how this author managed to manipulate such narrative to create her own identity as a successful poet. As Barker shapes her heroine‘s identity and poetic patchwork to recall her own poetic ambitions, she incites readers to recognize her very self in this heroine. The author nevertheless maintains a discrete distance from the character that she places into sometimes conventionally fictional frameworks and plots that are under her own control and thus not constrained by historical accuracy. This kind of framing life-writing within fiction allows Barker to take control of and shape her own life through these experimental texts and to celebrate her own status as a literary woman. Through her Galesia texts Barker can construct her own identity right alongside that of her heroine. Despite the experimental nature of the Galesia texts, Barker uses standard conventions to create her identity as the poet Galesia. But she uses these conventions unconventionally. In the first installment of the Galesia Trilogy, Love Intrigues, Barker constructs this identity through a conventional courtship plot as narrated by an older and wiser Galesia. Barker thus utilizes the life narrative structure to form this romantic tale. However, this narrative reflects Barker‘s awareness of the intricacies of the life narrative. Barker depicts her semi-autobiographical heroine Galesia as in complete control of this ―life narrative‖ and she reveals the more mature Galesia as strategically interpreting her 13 Sidonie Smith has argued that ―autobiography is always, multiply, storytelling: memory leaves only a trace of an earlier experience that we adjust into a story; experience itself is mediated by the ways we describe and interpret it to others and ourselves‖ (―Constructing Truth‖ 35). 86 youthful actions and motivations as well as the actions and the motivations of those around her for her audience. The traditional courtship episode as narrated by the older Galesia and enacted by the youthful Galesia and her cousin Bosvil fails to provide this semi-autobiographical heroine with the security of marriage or the identity of the conventional eighteenth-century proper wife. Barker therefore sets up Galesia‘s narrative so as to invert the conventions of the typical romance as she goes on to depict an alternative courtship with and marriage to the muses for her heroine. Barker thereby fashions her heroine with an alternative but respectable feminine identity—that of the chaste female poet Galesia—through this unconventional courtship. It is the heroine‘s poetic identity that inspires Galesia to become the author of her own narrative and to tell the tale not only of her failed courtship but of her poetic calling and her unconventional marriage to the muses in the same way that Barker has taken charge of her own history in the creation of the Galesia narrative. Barker goes so far as to indicate in Love Intrigues that this text is her own rewriting of her life story and that Galesia is her self-representative heroine. We learn from Galesia‘s narrative of her youthful courtship that she had been unable to bring her cousin Bosvil to account for his flirtations without jeopardizing her own reputation as a respectable young woman. Galesia reports that following one of her kinsman‘s many slights, she became so distressed with her situation that she sought repose in the solace of nature. Here she ―wished some kind Serpent would creep out of its Hole and sting me to Death; or Thunder descend, and strike me into the Ground, and at once perform my Death and Funeral. O! no, (said I) that will render Bosvil too happy: I will go Home and write 87 the whole Scene of this Treachery, and make myself the last Actor in the Tragedy‖ (33). 14 It is not difficult to conclude from this passage that the narrative that makes up Love Intrigues is the depiction of the ―whole Scene of this Treachery.‖ The youthful heroine Galesia has fulfilled her development into the older Galesia narrating the account of Bosvil‘s false courtship. When Galesia constructs herself into the ―last Actor of the Tragedy,‖ on one level she becomes the heroine who has successfully maneuvered her way through Bosvil‘s secret courtship. On another level she is also the author of the history of this dangerous romance. On this authorial level, Galesia becomes even more successful than the heroine who has escaped from a dangerous courtship with her reputation intact. She becomes the creator of both the tale in which she is victorious and the depiction of herself as the victor within this tale. As the creator of her own history, Galesia gains control not only over the situation in which she is placed, but also how she is represented in this scenario. This is the exact dynamic that Barker has set up for herself as the author of the Galesia texts. Barker can use Galesia to create a life-story of her very own fashioning through this heroine who closely resembles yet who remains distanced from her. In this self-constructed life-story, Barker creates an account that not only legitimizes, but celebrates her unconventional roles as both female poet and a single woman. She does so through Galesia‘s narrative that illustrates a sense of female frustration with the etiquette governing the actions of the conventional eighteenth-century woman. While the young Galesia remains trapped within the limiting and frustrating 14 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Love Intrigues are from the revised 1719 text reproduced in The Galesia Trilogy and Selected Manuscript Poems of Jane Barker. 88 roles assigned to her as a proper young woman and prospective wife, Barker uses the more mature Galesia to expose these frustrations through her narrative. Within the narrative, the more mature Galesia reports that in her fairly conventional courtship she had been constantly uncertain of her cousin‘s intentions toward her and that she was therefore forced to regulate her actions accordingly. She ―set up a pretended Indifferency‖ (13). When Bosvil refused to declare himself publicly as her suitor, Galesia shows that she was not able to regulate her outward actions with her inner feelings without breaching social decorum: ―Truth and Sincerity were supplanted by a Tincture of Modesty and Pride; for no Mouth spake more directly against the Sentiments of a Heart than mine did at that Time‖ (13). Barker constructs the narrative to make it painfully apparent that Galesia was forced to feign modest indifference for the benefit of those around her: ―I had acted justly and honourably towards him; He could not upbraid me with Coyness nor Kindness; for tho‘ I had squar‘d my Actions by the exact Rules of Vertue and Modesty, yet I did not exclude Civility and Good-nature‖ (29). Restricted to acting the conventionally modest heroine by enacting superficial civilities that will not call her virtue into question, Galesia indicates that the only real option she had in this situation was to project the appearance of a proper woman, not a woman in love—even if it meant losing the man she wanted to call hers. Barker here makes clear the limitations of the conventional heroine‘s role through the young Galesia‘s inability to reconcile her inner emotions with her outward etiquette. Barker goes on to construct Galesia‘s narrative so as to provide a unique alternative to these conventional roles for both her heroine and herself. Following 89 Galesia‘s account of Bosvil‘s initial betrayal in which he offended her by consulting her father over his marriage to a neighboring gentlewoman, Barker has Galesia reveal that she again turned to the solitude of nature both to express her inner feelings and to regain a sense of composure she was only able to counterfeit otherwise: ―interiorly I was tormented with a thousand Anxieties, which made me seek Solitude, where I might, without Witness or Controul, disburden my over-charged Heart of Sighs and Tears‖ (13). Galesia recounts that it was during one of these ―solitary Walks that my rolling Thoughts turn‘d themselves into these Verses‖: ―Methinks these Shades strange Thoughts suggest, / Which heat my Head, and cool my Breast, / And mind me of a Lawrel Crest. / Methinks I hear the Muses sing, / And see ‗em al dance in a Ring, And call upon me to take Wing‖ (14). Barker‘s text shows that Galesia‘s experience with nature redirects the semi- autobiographical heroine from the roles prescribed for her as a conventional eighteenth- century woman. Barker has Galesia narrate that upon the muses‘ call to ―Write, write thy V ow upon this Tree, / By us it shall recorded be,‖ she ―saw a very smooth-bark‘d Ash, under which I sate, and in the midst of melancholy Whimsies, I writ these Lines on the Body of the Tree‖ (14). As Galesia describes herself as writing her verse/vow upon the tree, Barker invokes the romantic tradition of ―writing upon nature to make one‘s love permanent‖ (Carol Barash, English Women‟ s Poetry, n. 196). Here Barker inverts the conventions of romance by incorporating this romantic tradition in the description of her heroine‘s poetic calling instead of using it in conjunction with the more traditional, if secret courtship. While the courtship ritual as enacted by Bosvil fails to secure for the young Galesia a stable marriage, Barker constructs through her text an alternative 90 courtship and marriage opportunity. Galesia recounts that once she wrote her vow upon the tree, having found herself ―abandon‘d by Bosvil, and thinking it impossible ever to love any Mortal more, [she] resolv‘d to espouse a Book, and spend [her] days in study‖ (14-15). Barker therefore has her heroine turn away from the frustratingly traditional concept of marriage to marry herself to the muses. This account of Galesia‘s poetic initiation illustrates the author‘s fashioning her own alternative poetic identity as Galesia right alongside that of her heroine. Barker has her heroine recount that after she had written her verse vow on the tree she ―thought to become Apollo‟ s darling daughter‖ (15). Apollo, the Greek god of poetry and medicine, is a fitting father figure to use here, for the heroine‘s alternative path will lead her to practice both verse and medicine. Calling herself Apollo‘s daughter, however, is not the only connection Barker‘s heroine has to this god and his legacy. Carol Shiner Wilson has pointed out that the name ―Galesia‖ itself ―recalls the female form the Latin name ‗Galaesus,‘ a son of Apollo‖ (―Introduction‖ xxxvii). While some critics, like Wilson, have connected Galesia‘s name with Apollo‘s offspring, they have by and large neglected the larger implications of the scene in which Barker constructs herself as Galesia through the heroine of these texts. What is perhaps most significant in Barker‘s having the more mature Galesia narrate her early ―thought to become Apollo‟ s darling Daughter, and Maid of Honour to the Muses‖ is that this proclamation illustrates both the heroine and Barker as fashioning themselves into the poet Galesia (15). The name ―Galesia‖ is never mentioned within this passage, but we already know from the outset of the text that Galesia is the heroine‘s 91 name. The connection between this heroine‘s thinking to become Apollo‘s daughter and the fact that her name would be the same as Apollo‘s daughter, if he had one, subtly reveals the power the narrative grants to the nascent poet. The young heroine claims her inheritance as someone bearing the name Galesia—a name which indicates her status as the daughter of Apollo. That she ―thought to become‖ the poet Galesia furthers the implications that she has the capability of constructing herself into this poet as an alternative identity to that of the conventionally spurned lover or prospective wife. The more mature narrator constructs an account of having claimed the name and poetic inheritance as her own. She therefore creates for herself a role other than that of a woman defined solely through the failed conventional courtship. The muses can therefore ask her to ―cast off thy Chain, / Which links thee to thy faithless Swain; / And vow a Virgin to remain‖ (14). Through her narrative, the more mature Galesia creates for herself an alternative marriage to the muses which allows her to take control of her own life. At the same time Barker constructs Galesia‘s narrative so as to recall her own romantic pseudonym. In doing so, we can see the text as Barker‘s own construction of her identity as Galesia and her claiming of this poetic calling and identity as hers. Barker constructs her poetic identity through Galesia in such a way as to show how all encompassing this poetic identity is. She also reveals that this poetic identity is what enables Galesia, and Barker by extension, to become an author and thereby justify her single life as a poet throughout the trilogy by recording her various unconventional successes. As Galesia rewrites her life as an author and reprints several poems from Barker‘s previously published Poetical Recreations she celebrates her alternative 92 successes in both medicine and agriculture. This rewriting of Barker‘s poetry and achievements enables Barker to prove that she has been able to contribute productively to the world not despite, but because of her unconventional status as a spinster. At the same time this text depicting unconventional feminine productivity provides for Barker‘s female readers the model for an alternative identity to that of the conventional domestic woman of the eighteenth-century. Setting such an unconventional example for her readers, Barker uses the Galesia texts to reveal that women who do marry and thereby try to fulfill the conventional eighteenth-century ideal forfeit their vast potential. In ―Leaf I‖ of A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies, Barker has Galesia inform the woman in need of material for a patch-work screen that she can only provide her with ―Pieces of Romances, Poems, Love-Letters, and the like‖ because she had been ―dropp‘d into a Labyrinth of Poetry, which has ever since interlac‘d all the Actions of my Life‖ (74, 76). The poetic patches that she provides to the lady and that make up A Patch-Work Screen illustrate the concept of Galesia‘s poetic identity as encompassing and expressing all of her alternative pursuits. These pursuits thus become represented within patchwork- poetry that makes up the second installment of the trilogy. One of these patches is a poem that Barker revises from Poetical Recreations to show how poetry allows Galesia to harmonize all aspects of her unconventional life. In this revised poem an invocation to the muses replaces the first fifteen lines of the original ―A Farewell to Poetry, with a long Digression on Anatomy.‖ Rather than turning away from poetry to the study of anatomy, Barker instead has her semi-autobiographical heroine‘s poetic calling direct her medical study: ―Come, gentle Muse! Assist me now, / A double Wreath plait for my Brow, / Of 93 Poetry and Physick too. / Teach me in Numbers to rehearse, / Hard Terms of Art, in smooth, soft Verse‖ (85). Poetry thus becomes for Galesia a means not only of her mastering the scientific subject, but also of displaying her unconventional knowledge. Barker further uses Galesia‘s poetic calling and literary patchwork to celebrate her own unconventional contribution to the world of anatomy and medicine. Kathryn King has found an advertisement for ―Dr. Barker‘s Famous Gout Plaister‖ in one of Benjamin Crayle‘s 1686 publications, proving Barker‘s own historical medical accomplishment (―Jane Barker and Her Life‖ 22). Barker reconstructs a celebratory account of this achievement through Galesia‘s alternative study of anatomy as well as the poetic patches that express the heroine‘s satisfaction at her success. Barker has Galesia report that reducing her anatomical knowledge into verse has allowed her to master the subject so well that she has been able to put this knowledge to use as a healer. Galesia proudly reports that ―several People came to me for Advice in all sorts of Maladies, and having tolerable good Luck, I began to be pretty much known‖ (116). In fact, Barker boasts the height of her accomplishment through Galesia‘s medical adventure. The heroine reveals that she is so successful in her alternative scheme of study that, having ―got to such a Pitch of helping the Sick, […] I wrote my Bills in Latin, with the same manner of Cyphers and Directions as Doctors do; which Bills and Recipes the Apothecaries fil‘d amongst those of the Doctors‖ (116). Barker has Galesia indicate that her satisfaction was so extreme that ―my Muse wou‘d needs have a Finger in the Pye: and so a Copy of Verses was writ upon the Subject‖ (116). Following this reiteration that poetry infuses all 94 aspects of the heroine‘s life, Barker attributes to her heroine another poem that had previously been published in Poetical Recreations: ―On the Apothecaries Filling my Recipes amongst the Doctors.‖ Barker‘s inclusion of ―On the Apothecaries Filling my Recipes amongst the Doctors‖ not only illustrates the heroine‘s satisfaction at her success, but it also allows Barker to celebrate publically her similar accomplishment as a medical healer. Initially conveying the degree of satisfaction at having a recipe professionally acknowledged, this poem goes on to exemplify how much power the speaker holds in her hand as a woman whose unconventional knowledge has allowed her to create a secret medical remedy: ―The Sturdy Gout, which all Male-Power withstands, / Is Overcome by my soft Female Hands. / Not Deb‟rah, Judith, or Semiramis, / Cou‘d boast of Conqust half so great as this; / More than they slew, I save, in this Disease‖ (117). Through this poem, Barker places her semi-autobiographical heroine at the forefront of accomplished women to illustrate and celebrate her contribution to the medical world. But the poem goes on to assert that Galesia, and Barker by extension, is even more powerful in her success than either the disease or the men who must submit to it—for gout primarily affected men more than women in the eighteenth century. The heroine has the power to alleviate male suffering by treating their disease. Barker‘s poem places Galesia, as the curer of gout, in a very powerful and accomplished position that rivals any other successful woman. Furthermore, this success makes her even more powerful than either the men who fall to gout or the doctors who have failed to discover ―Dr. Barker‘s Famous Gout Plaister.‖ 95 King has argued, however, that Baker‘s poetic celebration of Galesia‘s success in finding a cure for gout is merely a ―fantasy of female power‖ (95). She explains that if ―literary authority involves the ability to be seen and to be heard in the realm of public discourse, then Galesia‘s authority is strictly limited: it enacts itself ‗before a Looking- glass‘‖ (95). It may be true that within the text Galesia is only able to celebrate her success rather quietly, ―for want of good Neighbors to do it for me; or rather, for want of Desert to ingage those good Neighbors‖ (119). However, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the poem celebrating Galesia‘s success was not only written by the similarly successful Jane Barker, but that this poem had been previously published in 1688 under Barker‘s own name. Barker‘s claim in the Magdalen Manuscript that the poems from Poetical Recreations, including ―On the Apothecary‘s Filling my Bills amongst the Doctors,‖ had been published without her consent does not diminish her public celebration of her achievement in The Patchwork-Screen for the Ladies. The fact that Barker incorporates in The Patchwork-Screen this very poem that celebrates her medicinal success reveals a public reclamation of both medicinal and literary authority for Barker, if not for Galesia. We must remember that A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies was one of the texts that Barker herself constructed as a more publicly oriented work. In her preface to this work she implored her readers to ―be sure to buy these Patches up quickly‖ (54). With the incorporation of ―On the Apothecaries Filling my Recipes amongst the Doctors‖ included amidst an account illustrating her own similar medical success, Barker both acknowledges and claims the poem that was previously published under her name, but without her consent, as her heroine‘s. By 96 including this poem in the trilogy as Galesia‘s, Barker constructs this patch to act as a public declaration of her own medical contribution. Claiming the poem as Galesia‘s, Barker reclaims the poem from the previously published Poetical Recreations–a text over which she claims to have had no control. In reframing this poem as her semi- autobiographical heroine‘s, Barker contextualizes the poem and illustrates to the world her own medical achievements. She can thus free her celebration from a mere ―fantasy of female power‖ by reaching beyond the ‗Looking-glass‘ to those who recognize Jane Barker in Galesia. In this way, Barker uses the text not only to establish her medical authority, but also to gain control of this authority as she reclaims a poem celebrating her medical achievement that had previously been taken out of her control. This narrative that Barker constructs to claim ownership of her medical achievement in effect illustrates such an unconventional example of female success as accessible not only to her heroine and to herself, but to her readers as well. The 1688 version of the poem through which Barker celebrated her medical prowess included several lines that are not included in the version that Barker attributes to Galesia in 1723. These lines from the original poem address Barker‘s awareness that the public may be concerned with the idea that it is a woman who has discovered the cure for gout. 15 But Barker concludes these lines with an affirmation of unconventional feminine ability: ―Such ease to States-men this our Skill imparts, / I hope they‘ll force all Women to learn Arts‖ (Poetical Recreations 32). Barker may have omitted these lines from the Galesia 15 These excluded lines read thus: ―Mankind our Sex for Cures do celebrate, / Of Pains, which fancy only doth create: / Now more we shall be magnified sure, / Who for this real torment find a Cure. / Some Women-haters may be so uncivil, / To say the Devil‘s cast out by the Devil; / But so the good are pleas‘d, no matter for the evil. / Such Easer to States-men this our Skill imparts, / I hope they‘ll force all Women to learn Arts‖ (Poetical Recreations 32). 97 text because such a sentiment could be considered as too provocative for respectable female novel readers who continue to walk the fine line of conventional domestic propriety prescribed to them. Nevertheless, Barker‘s novel subtly makes this point for her through both the narrative of female achievement and the poetry she ascribes to Galesia. In constructing a heroine who attains unconventional levels of success outside of the traditional roles allotted to her through a narrative that celebrates this alternative kind of success, Barker makes her heroine into an unconventional role model for her female readers. Through Galesia Barker can illustrate the possibilities that her readers can achieve outside of the traditionally domestic roles ascribed to them. 16 In effect, Barker structures Galesia‘s narrative so as reveal that failure to marry is not the failure that most believe it to be. In fact, she inverts the concept of failure associated with marriage to illustrate to her readers that the conventionally successful fulfillment of marriage itself is potentially the ultimate feminine failure. In addition to celebrating feminine medical success in ―On the Apothecaries Filling my Recipes amongst the Doctors,‖ Barker further uses this poem to reinforce the idea that it is her heroine‘s having escaped the limitations of the conventional marriage that is the key to her success. Barker‘s poem depicts Galesia as rejoicing in her failed courtship and her unconventional path of study: ―False Strephon 17 too, I almost now cou‘d bless, / Whose Crimes conduc‘d to this my Happiness. / Had he been true, I‘d liv‘d 16 That Barker‘s texts are directed mainly toward women is made obvious through their introductions as well as their feminine patchwork structures. 17 Barker used the name Bosvil in her narratives and Strephon in her verse to refer to the same character. 98 in sottish Ease, / Ne‘er study‘d ought, but how to love and please; / No other Flame, my Virgin Breast had fir‟d, / But Love and Life together had expired‖ (117-118). Barker‘s poem makes clear that if Galesia‘s courtship had been successful she would have been forced to continue performing among the conventionally respectable women who have studied only ―how to love and please‖ rather than how to heal and cure. Barker‘s poem goes on to clarify that ―happy Brides shed Tears, they know not why‖ (118). Brides who may discover ―sottish Ease‖ in their marriages become sedated to their situations by sacrificing the limitless potential they have to become someone other than the proper wives who merely study how to serve their husbands and children. Particularly poignant are the tears they shed on their wedding days from the loss of a potential they are tragically unaware they have the ability to attain. As Barker creates a narrative of her history depicting her own unconventional feminine success, however, she provides these brides with an illustration of a fruitful alternative to the limited identity they must submit to as conventional eighteenth-century women. Even if the lines calling for women to step up to their potential are removed from the revised poem in Galesia‘s narrative, the narrative itself enacts Barker‘s calling these women at the very least to become aware of their hidden or lost potential. Barker‘s reconstructed narrative of her life even provides the illustration of a universally accessible alternative prospect for those women who may not have access to the more complicated studies that could potentially make them into medical healers. In recasting her heroine‘s failed courtship as an unconventional narrative of feminine triumph, Barker creates new measures and new models for female success. Instead of 99 depicting her heroine as succumbing to the heartache that Bosvil inspires in her, Barker rather shows her semi-autobiographical Galesia as embracing the opportunities that appear all around her: ―I retir‘d into myself, and return‘d to my Studies; the Woods, Fields, and Pastures, had the most of my Time, by which Means I became as perfect in rural Affairs as any Arcadian Shepherdess‖ (35). Barker has Galesia‘s account reveal that her experience with the world around her grants her much more than an outlet for her emotions. Galesia recounts that because she spent so much time in the outdoors and away from the rules governing society that she came to have a keen understanding of the rules governing nature. She discovers ―The Rules to sow and reap in their Season; to know what Pasture is fit for Beeves, what for Sheep, what for Kine, with all their Branches‖ (35). With this kind of universally accessible knowledge, Barker shows that Galesia was able to acquire the opportunity to pursue a much different path than the one prescribed for her as a conventional wife. Her ability to manage and cultivate the land so well ―gratify‘d my Vanity, that I was suppos‘d able to perform Things above my Age and Sex‖ (35). Barker indicates through this narrative that Galesia, no longer the powerless girl repeatedly and secretly courted by her inconstant lover, has discovered a position as an agricultural manager in which she is in control of her life and productive at the same time. While she may have failed according to conventional standards that define feminine success as securing a husband and bearing children, Barker uses her text to redefine the terms of feminine failure and success. The unconventional achievements 100 Barker depicts through her narrative become not only celebrations of her own alternative achievements, but examples for other women to pursue in lieu of the tragically limiting conventional marriage. Although Barker‘s narrative celebrating her own unconventional successes may provide her readers with examples for how they too can become productive women outside of the domestic sphere, Barker does reserve the poetic calling that enables her to record these achievements specifically for herself. She depicts medicinal success and agricultural management as options for all women to pursue fulfilling the potential that they may lose once they marry. But Barker‘s narrative, which constructs her identity as a poet throughout the trilogy, reveals that poetry is hers and hers alone. In this way Barker uses these texts not only to create herself as the poet Galesia, but to affirm herself as the female poet of her time despite the limited success she may have achieved historically. Barker constructs her calling as a poet to appear to be something she was called to, not something that she created for herself. She inserts yet another poem into the Galesia texts that can also be found in Poetical Recreations that illustrates this important point. In context, in The Patch-Work Screen Barker attributes ―The Necessity of Fate‖ to Galesia‘s response to her mother‘s having accepted Galesia‘s life as a single woman. Just as Baker wrote in 1688, so she has Galesia write, ―All this, my Fate, all this thou didst foreshow, / Ev‘n when I was a Child, / When in my Picture‟ s Hand, My Mother did command, / There should be drawn a Lawrel Bough‖ (142). 18 The poem continues, ―For 18 The one significant revision that Barker makes in the 1723 version of this poem that is attributed to Galesia is the omission of the word ―cruel‖ ascribed to her poetic fate. The original poem reads, ―Ah cruel Fate! All this thou didst fore-show‖ (Poetical Recreations 39). This omission of the word ―cruel‖ may be indication of Barker‘s using this text to construct her role as a poet as more of a positive role. 101 then my Muse well knew, that constant Fate, / Her promise would compleat‖ (142). Barker‘s poem depicts Fate as present at her ―Initiation / Into the Muses Congregation‖ (143). In these lines we can perceive Barker‘s narrative and poem to be constructing her indisputable role as the poet Galesia as a position assigned by Fate. This is not an identity she either courts or has the ability to relinquish no matter how hard she may try. According to Barker‘s narrative, no one can deny her fateful identity as the poet Galesia. That Barker depicts her poetic identity as an indisputable act of fate may be her way not only of affirming her role as poet, but of shaping her identity as the female poet of her time despite the lack of conventional success that she may have achieved historically. Barker‘s depiction of the semi-autobiographical Galesia‘s fateful ―Initiation / Into the Muses Congregation‖ coupled with allusions each Galesia text makes to Parnassus invokes the late seventeenth-century‘s Salic Law of Wit. As the mountain held sacred by Apollo, Parnassus was considered to be the home of the muses. Marilyn L. Williamson has described the Salic Law of Wit associated with this mountain, whereby, only with ―rare exceptions, women were excluded by Apollo‘s law from Parnassus as from the French throne. Each woman writer as she appeared therefore had to prove herself the exception to Apollo‘s rule‖ (166). Barker uses her narrative constructing herself as the fated Galesia to fashion herself the most recent exception to this rule. In her narratives, Barker has Galesia repeatedly visit this sacred mountain. Galesia describes her first visit to Parnassus after having chosen to renew her affections for Bosvil and to neglect her verse vow to the muses. Barker describes the muses as returning to her heroine in a dream and forcing her to recall her irrevocable fate as a poet: 102 ―I fell asleep in a Corner of our Garden, and there dream‘d that an angry Power on a sudden carry‘d me away, and made me climb a high Mountain‖ (25). Because Galesia‘s name positions her as Apollo‘s daughter and inheritor of this god‘s poetic prowess and since she had also made a vow to the muses and broken this vow, it is not difficult to argue that the mountain to which Baker has the ―angry Power‖ carry Galesia is Parnassus. Galesia‘s dream of this ―high Mountain‖ in Love Intrigues foreshadows several critical passages from A Patchwork-Screen for the Ladies and The Lining of the Patchwork Screen in which reveal Barker‘s preoccupation with the mountain of Parnassus. In the second installment of the trilogy, for example, Barker has Galesia recall her discovery and imitation of Katherine Phillips‘s poetry, each line of which she envisions as ―a Ladder to climb, not only to Parnassus, but to Heaven‖ (76). Upon moving to London, Galesia evades the chaos of city life by seeking refuge in ―a Closet, in my Landlady‘s Back Garret which I crept into, as if it had been a Cave on the Top of Parnassus‖ (122). Galesia‘s escaping from the confusion of London life by retreating into her poetic activities prefigures Barker‘s final and more telling reference to Parnassus in the final installment of the trilogy. In The Lining of the Patchwork Screen Barker depicts an older Galesia‘s encounter with Parnassus that illustrates the life altering effect that her poetic calling has had on the heroine. But this depiction also constructs Galesia, and Barker by extension, as the feminine exception allowed by the Salic Law of Wit. In this respect, the text illustrates Barker to be the female poet of her time regardless of the lack of material success she may have achieved as this poet. In this final installment, before Barker has 103 Galesia return to Parnassus in another dream, she has her heroine envision several unfortunate individuals, including ―Ladies affronted, Maids deluded by false Lovers,‖ ―Wives mis-used,‖ ―honest women despised,‖ and ―Girls trappan‘d by Bawds‖ (274). These unfortunates recall the experiences that Galesia has either encountered or heard tales about, and all of these tragic stories have made up the various episodes depicted within the three Galesia texts. However, Barker constructs Galesia‘s dream so as to recall the idea that her heroine has been able to evade these and other unfortunate fates through her unconventional feminine pursuits that are also depicted within the narrative. Barker writes that Galesia‘s ―good Genius‖ discovers the heroine amidst all of these unfortunates and informs her that he will ―conduct her to some Diversion after her Surprize; so he led her up a Hill, which he told her, was Panassus, and said he would introduce her, to see some of the Diversions of the Annual Coronation of Orinda‖ (275). Thus, Barker depicts her poetic calling as again rescuing her from being aligned with the various unfortunate fates that women face in traditionally domestic roles. This power removes Galesia to the festivities on Parnassus that celebrate the very poet after whom Galesia has modeled her poetry—Katherine Phillips. Several critics have already closely analyzed this coronation scene. For example, King has argued that Galesia‘s late arrival at Orinda‘s coronation, along with her being sent away after merely sitting silently and observing the revels, indicates Galesia‘s failure as a poet. She asserts ―belatedness, banishment, failed aspiration: the vision is a fitting image of an abortive struggle to come fully into authorship‖ (―Galesia, Jane Barker, and a Coming to Authorship‖ 96). Because such critics as King point out that Galesia‘s 104 ―banishment‖ indicates the loss that occurs from the shift from a manuscript culture to the impersonal and commercial book trade, Wilson has conversely argued that this passage illustrates that ―while Barker may regret the passing of the world of genteel literary production, she is more liberated than discarded‖ (―Jane Barker‖ 44). However, reading the Parnassus passages that occur in all three of the Galesia texts as Barker‘s fashioning herself into the exception to the Salic Law of Wit provides more insight into Galesia‘s banishment from Parnassus. Galesia‘s name fixes her as Apollo‘s poetic daughter and gives her a right to be present at his sacred Parnassus, even during the coronation of another poet. But we must remind ourselves that by the time that Barker wrote and published The Lining for the Patchwork Screen Katherine Philips, the poet being honored in the dream, had been long deceased. Philips died in 1664. She was therefore dead long before the first installment of the Galesia Trilogy, published in 1713. She was gone even before the publication of Barker‘s 1688 Poetical Recreations, which contains poems pertinent to the Galesia Trilogy. Therefore, for Barker to depict her semi- autobiographical heroine as arriving late to the deceased poet‘s coronation need not be surprising since Galesia‘s own poetic initiation could not occur until years after Orinda‘s. Galesia‘s appearance on the sacred mountain after Philips coronation merely reflects Barker‘s desire to establish herself as Philips‘s successor as the exception to the Salic Law of Wit. In fact, Barker‘s depicting Galesia as arriving late to the coronation can further indicate her setting Galesia, and herself by extension, as the next in line in the progression of the female poets to be coronated on Parnassus. According to Abraham Cowley‘s ―On Orinda‟ s Poems,‖ Katherine Philips was the greatest and sole female poet 105 of her time: ―Ah! Cruel Sex, will you depose us too in Wit? / Orinda do‘s in that too reign, / Do‘s Man behind her in Proud Triumph draw, / And cancel great Apollo‘s Salick Law‖ (l. 3-6). Since Barker actually refers to and quotes this poem by Cowley within her narrative, it is not too much to assume that Barker would have been familiar with Cowley‘s reference to Philips‘s as this poet‘s exception to the Salic Law of Wit‘s mandate that only one woman be allowed on Parnassus at a time. We must factor into Barker‘s construction of the Galesia dream sequence that Philips had relinquished her earthly poetic rule by the time that the heroine arrives at the coronation. Therefore Baker, otherwise known as Galesia and Apollo‘s daughter, is the next in line to this earthly poetic throne. This is especially apparent if we consider that Barker‘s narrative makes it clear that it was always her fate to become a poet. If Barker dismisses Galesia early from Orinda‘s ceremonies, it is only because it is still Barker‘s time to reign as the female poet on earth. The text reveals that Philips‘ death has left the opening for Barker to ascend to the female throne with her poems found in both Poetical Recreations and the Galesia Trilogy. Barker‘s affirmation of herself as the reigning female poet of her time plays down the fact that she never achieved the same level of fame as her predecessor. Several critics have pointed out that the literary career of Barker, and the textual Galesia, remained fairly limited. These critics have pointed to this failure as another reason why Barker banishes Galesia early from the revels on Parnassus. After all, by the time Barker published The Lining to the Patch Work Screen in 1726 she was seventy-four and still struggling to support herself with her writing. However, Barker creates her narrative to illustrate that 106 such conventional failure does not negate her having successfully fulfilled the role of the female poet exempted by the Salic Law of Wit. According to poems found both within Barker‘s Poetical Recreations and Galesia‘s narrative, Barker in fact uses this relative failure to reinforce her identity as the fore-destined female poet of her generation. Despite proving her exception to the Salic Law of Wit and producing worthy poems, Barker‘s narrative portrays the ―angry Power‖ that reminds Galesia of her verse vow as forecasting her future life as a poet as one of poverty. This power relates that ―Thy whole Life pass in Discontent, / In Want, and Woe, and Banishment: / Be broken under Fortune‘s Wheel, / Direct thy Actions ne‘er so well. / A thousand other Ills besides, / Fortune does for them provide, / Who to the Muses are ally‘d‖ (25-26). Barker creates a narrative that seemingly predicts her failure to achieve fame and fortune in spite of worthy poetic endeavors from the very moment she allies herself with the muses. Barker goes so far as to compare her poetic calling to ―Cassandra‟ s Fate, / In all thou sayst, unfortunate. / The God of Wit sent her that Curse, / and Fortune sends thee this, and worse‖ (25). She illustrates that she has been adequately forewarned that her fate as a poet is not necessarily a fortunate or easy one. But this does not indicate poetic failure by any means. Instead, her failure to accrue monetary reward or fame in fact signifies her having successfully fulfilled the muses‘ prophecy. Barker‘s texts reveal that she may fail to become as widely recognized as Philips or to be rewarded financially as the muses‘ chosen poet. But she constructs her narrative in such a way as to justify the quality and worth of her poems as rivaling those of the successful Philips even if she may not have 107 achieved Orinda‘s fame. Barker therefore restructures what could conventionally be seen as her failure as a poet into a signification of having successfully become the female poet of the early eighteenth century. Within the Galesia Trilogy, Barker constructs a heroine who narrates the story of how, in her youth, she curtailed her behavior so as to appease the way the ―World now rolls‖ despite the inner turmoil such behavior caused her. But Barker uses this narrative to illustrate unconventional paths of success outside of traditionally sanctioned feminine roles. At one point in the narrative, Barker has Galesia confide that ―I sought vain Glory through differing Paths, and seem‘d to scorn what I really courted, popular Applause, and hid a proud Heart under a humble Habit‖ (16). In essence, this is what Barker has done through her unique Galesia texts. On the surface, Barker portrays the life of a spinster whose loneliness leads her to indulge a life of unconventional study due to her failure to secure a husband. But her texts redefine the terms of this relative failure. Through a careful reading of this history the audience must come to appreciate the vast accomplishments the semi-autobiographical heroine has the ability to perform in her single life. Through the use of this fictional heroine whose romantic appellation and experiences point the reader back to her author, Jane Barker, like Galesia, gains the ability to narrate her own life account, create her own identity, and celebrate her unconventional accomplishments while hiding her ―proud Heart under a humble Habit‖ of fiction. In this way, Barker can use the idea of fate within her heroine‘s narrative along with the more subtle success that this fate prophesies to ensure her identity and success as the female poet of her age. 108 Chapter 4 An Influential Narrator: Frances Brooke‘s The Excursion Frances Brooke‘s The Excursion (1777) recounts the adventures of a heroine who enters London unchaperoned to pursue two objectives. Maria Villiers longs to obtain a husband who can fulfill her dreams of a title and a coach and six and to conquer the London literary world. In some respect, Maria‘s dual plot line mirrors that found in Jane Barker‘s Galesia Trilogy. Both Maria and Galesia find themselves in failed courtships while they also both pursue literary callings. However, The Excursion‘s writing heroine differs remarkably from Barker‘s. While it was easy to conflate the identity of the author of the Galesia trilogy with the heroine of those texts, such a precise affinity between author and heroine is lacking in Brooke‘s The Excursion. There are similarities between Brooke and her writing heroine Maria, but these similarities do not permeate The Excursion as is the case with Barker‘s Galesia trilogy. This difference between Barker‘s use of the writing heroine and Brooke‘s can be attributed to shifts in literary trends during the fifty years that separate The Excursion from the Galesia texts. Highly influential authors such as Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding had revolutionized the genre of fiction by the 1770‘s. That Brooke‘s The Excursion invokes the works of both Richardson and Fielding illustrates the influence these mid-century authors had on the fiction writers who followed them. As authors who consciously strove to reshape the genre of fiction into a more refined and useful literary form in response to the romance and amorous novels that flourished in the early part of 109 the century, Richardson and Fielding set in place a higher and more moral standard for fiction. Several ―rise of the novel‖ studies have illustrated how Richardson‘s attempt to infuse didacticism and morality into fiction resulted in the immensely successful Pamela and how Fielding responded to the intensity of Richardson‘s epistolary text by constructing a work with an intrusive narrator. 1 Richardson used the figure of a persecuted yet virtuous fifteen-year-old servant girl to act as a role model for his readers and Fielding created a narrator who acted as a mediator and critical guide for his. Both Richardson and Fielding created fictional characters whose realistic appearance helped these writers to create works that could entertain and instruct their audiences more easily. Ian Watt has argued that such authors implemented three components into their works that led to the ―production of what purports to be an authentic account of the actual experience of individuals‖ (27). Watt asserts that fictional works, beginning with Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, depicted characters with common names who lived in specific times and in specific places. It is true that Barker‘s text, written previous to either Richardson or Fielding, did employ specific times and places and that Galesia does appear to be an authentic account of an individual‘s own actual experience—Jane Barker‘s. But Catherine Gallagher has explained that the specificity that made the mid-eighteenth-century novel seem so realistic was exactly what made audiences aware that what they were reading was fiction. She explains that realism was ―understood to be fiction‘s formal sign‖ (Nobody‟ s Story xvii). Gallagher clarifies that the fictional character at the heart of the mid-eighteenth-century novel was more 1 See Ian Watt‘s Rise of the Novel and William Warner‘s Licensing Entertainment, for example. 110 easily identified with because of that character‘s very fictionality. 2 This character is a virtual ―Nobody‖ because it refers to nobody in real life, and this ―Nobody was the pivot point around which a massive reorientation of textual referentiality took place‖ (xvi). Unlike Barker‘s Galesia whose identity corresponds so closely with her author‘s, Brooke‘s Maria appears to be a heroine with her own distinctly fictional plot line and identity. As Gallagher makes clear, Maria‘s fictiveness would mark her as a heroine with whom Brooke‘s later-eighteenth-century readers could more easily identify. 3 Gallagher argues that ―what seemed to make novelistic ‗others‘ outstanding candidates for such‖ sympathetic affiliation ―was the fact that, especially in contradistinction to the figures who pointedly referred to actual individuals, they were enticingly unoccupied‖ (―The Rise of Fictionality‖ 351). Galesia was a heroine who was obviously occupied by her own author, but Brooke does not limit her heroine to a similar occupancy. Barker used her heroine as a tool to establish her own poetic identity. This was an identity that she made clear was hers, and hers alone. According to Barker‘s text only she, claiming the name Galesia, has a right to inherit Apollo‘s poetic legacy. While her texts provide examples of alternative pursuits for other women to follow in the realms of agriculture and medicine, Barker does not set up her own pursuit of poetry as one for all women to undertake. Instead, Barker uses Galesia specifically to promote herself as the exception to the Salic Law of Wit. Brooke, on the other hand, refrains from using her heroine for such a particular 2 Gallagher explains that ―eighteenth-century readers identified with the characters in novels because of the character‘s fictiveness and not in spite of it‖ (Nobody‟ s Story xvii). 3 Gallaher states that ―fictional characters […] were thought to be easier to sympathize or identify with than most real people‖ (―The Rise of Fictionality‖ 351). 111 justification. Maria‘s adventures, both literary and romantic, seem to be her own. Brooke may use her text to make a personal attack on David Garrick for refusing to stage her own play. But she does not design her heroine‘s actions for such direct retribution. Maria experiences literary frustrations, but these frustrations reflect larger literary concerns than just Brooke‘s disagreement with Garrick. Maria therefore becomes a sympathetic representation of more than just her own author. She becomes all prospective eighteenth-century woman writers facing the perils of the literary market. Brooke structures the narrative of her sympathetic heroine‘s adventures so as to justify all women‘s ability to participate in the literary marketplace and their literary pursuits as worthy material for the eighteenth-century novel. Brooke invokes the works of both Richardson and Fielding as she shapes her writing heroine‘s adventures. As she does so she critiques the legacy that each author imparts to the novel as she inherited it. She clearly aligns her text more firmly with Fielding‘s while simultaneously critiquing Richardson‘s. William B. Warner has argued that ―in the second half of the century, different positions upon what novels should be were often inflected through divergent critical valuations of Richardson and Fielding. In this way, the rivalry of Richardson and Fielding on the market in the 1740s is reproduced in the earliest literary criticism and history of the novel‖ (13). Brooke seems to use her narrative to weigh in on the rivalry between these two highly influential authors and the traditions that each set up. Brooke‘s previous novels, including The History of Julia Mandeville (1763), The History of Emily Montague (1769), and The History of Charles Mandeville (1790), did follow Richardson‘s lead in their epistolary format. However, in 112 The Excursion Brooke clearly distances her work from Richardson‘s. This text directly refers to Richardson‘s Pamela and Clarissa when the heroine‘s guardian cautions her ―not against the giants of modern novel, who carry off young ladies by force in post- chaises and six with the blinds up, and confine free-born English women in their country houses, under the guardianship of monsters in the shape of fat housekeepers, from which durance they are happily released by the compassion of Robert the butler‖ (11). Brooke distinguishes her own work from Richardson‘s when she goes on to write that her heroine‘s guardian instead cautioned his ward against ―worthless acquaintance, unmerited calumny and ruinous expence. The first dangers he knew were generally imaginary, the latter, alas!, too real‖ (11). Brooke seems to be questioning the relevance of Richardson‘s text to a more realistic heroine. Richardson‘s Pamela may have portrayed characters more realistic than those in the romance novel. And his heroine may have been more moral than those typically represented in the amorous novel. Nevertheless, Richardson‘s text contains a plot that is largely improbable. The melodramatic kidnapping, attempted seduction, and elevated marriage of a servant girl are hardly events that could instruct an audience on how to act on a daily basis even if the virtuous heroine was created to be a role model for female readers. 4 According to Brooke‘s indictment of the popular Richardsonain novel, the adventures portrayed in such a text are not only farfetched, but dangerous to her own realistic and impressionable heroine who faces more common dangers. 5 Brooke clearly aligns the adventures in her novel with Fielding‘s mandate that 4 McMullen asserts that ―Brooke was poking fun at the melodrama of some contemporary novels, including Richardson‘s Clarissa‖ (168). 5 Katherine M. Rogers has asserted that Maria‘s adventures are ―considerably more realistic and 113 a good writer of fiction keep ―within the Limits not only of Possibility, but of Probability too‖ (402). Thus, it is no surprise that J.M.S. Tomkins has asserted that the heroine in The Excursion is the ―nearest approach to a female [Tom] Jones‖ in the eighteenth century (169). Brooke, in fact, allies her novel much more closely with Fielding‘s works as she employs a critical narrator reminiscent the one found in Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. According to Watt, the Fieldingesque narrator is ―almost as attentive to his audience as to his characters‖ (285). Watt explains that such an narratorial approach ―promotes a distancing effect which prevents us from being so fully immersed in the lives of the characters that we lose our alertness to the larger implications of their actions— implications which Fielding brings out in his capacity of omniscient chorus‖ (285). Thus, as readers come to Fieldingesque novels, an intrusive narrator guides them through the adventures of the text all the while evaluating these adventures and their moral significance for the reader. In this respect the critical narrator mediates the audience‘s reading experience, prohibiting readers from becoming too absorbed in the psychological consciousness and emotions of the characters to appreciate the larger relevance of the text. Warner has argued that ―the polemic between Richardson and Fielding about the sorts of narrative and character that fiction should possess becomes deposited […] as two interesting‖ than those found in the sentimental novel that Richardson influenced and that was flourishing in the literary market (―Sensibility and Feminism‖ 167). Rogers also argues that the ―feminine novel‖ tradition that Richardson founded and that encompassed the works of most female authors who followed him contained plots that suffered from the figure of the ideal heroine: ―The plots are almost forced into melodrama, since those who suffer from realistic misfortunes generally contribute to them. A real woman might compromise herself with a man, but then she would cease to be perfect; a totally innocent one might be kidnapped by a seducing scoundrel, but that is not very likely‖ (―Inhibitions on Eighteenth-Century Women Novelists‖ 66). 114 species of novel: the Richardson novel of psychology and sentiment, and the Fielding novel of social panorama and critique‖ (40). Brooke clearly aligns her narrator of The Excursion with Fielding‘s critical mediator. The narrator in The Excursion will guide her readers to a critique the kind of novel inspired by Richardson‘s Pamela and Clarissa as well as the corruption of the London literary market that inhibits a more literary female plot line. The Excursion is the only of Brooke‘s four novels to deviate from the epistolary format and to employ a narrator. Her decision to use an intrusive narrator to depict the adventures of a writing heroine cannot, therefore, be dismissed as insignificant. While several critics have discussed Fielding‘s influence on Brooke‘s final novel, their analyses have been far too brief to appreciate fully Brooke‘s sophisticated adaptation of Fielding‘s critical narrator. Betty A. Schellenberg draws a very brief comparison between Brooke and Fielding when she asserts that The Excursion incorporates the ―worldly third-person narrator of Henry Fielding‖ (46). Paula R. Backscheider and Hope D. Cotton also provide little depth to such a comparison when they assert that ―the influence of Henry Fielding‘s Tom Jones is evident in this novel‖ and only go on to mention that ―Brooke uses the same kinds of suspenseful, delayed gratification strategies that Fielding uses as she moves from one character to another, one location to another. The narrator assumes firm control of the story and the reader‘s interpretation by, for instance, stating motives in unequivocal terms‖ (xxvii-xxix). These critics are adept in briefly pointing out Fielding‘s influence on Brooke, especially when it comes to her indebtedness to Tom Jones. But 115 their analyses fall significantly short. They fail to explore the implications of the Fieldingesque narrator‘s evaluation of Maria‘s literary ambitions in comparison with her more romantic pursuits. Lorraine McMullen has come the closest to appreciating the complexity of Brooke‘s intrusive narrator. She has argued that this ―narrator is as much a character in the novel as Maria and her new friends. Although the narrator remains sympathetic to Maria throughout her adventures, she comments ironically on the impracticality of Maria‘s hopes and dreams, her lack of understanding of what is going on around her, and her lack of commonsense and decorum‖ (178). McMullen also recognizes that Maria‘s ―hopes for success as a writer run parallel to her hopes for success in London society‖ (178). However, McMullen‘s analysis fails to take into consideration that Brooke alternately highlights her narrator‘s irony and sympathy depending on which of Maria‘s adventures she is addressing—the heroine‘s social and marital quest or her literary aspirations. The narrator may appear to ally herself with Brooke‘s readers by providing a mediated if sympathetic evaluation of the heroine‘s social naiveté and impulsivity. But this narrator‘s impartiality becomes impeded by a sympathetic kinship with the heroine when it comes to Maria‘s literary aspirations. The narrator‘s comments shift from detached criticisms of Maria‘s romantic illusions to defensive explanations of this heroine‘s literary talent. Brooke‘s use of an ambivalent narrator who sympathetically recounts Maria‘s literary endeavors allows for a narrative that devalues the conventional courtship plot and that instead honors an alternative plot of female literary ambition. Brooke can use her narrator‘s sympathetic evaluation of the heroine‘s frustrated literary 116 career as an indictment of the corrupt London literary market that fails to value female talent and that therefore proscribes the representation of such an alternative female pursuit. Brooke sets up her novel to illustrate the banality of what would be a realistic courtship plot in contrast with the more unrealistic scenarios that were depicted in the popular ―feminine‖ novel tradition. Katherine Rogers has asserted that in this kind of novel inspired by Richardson‘s works ―courtship must be the all-pervasive subject, since it provided the only adventure available to respectable young women and could be used to generate sentimental distress which did not come from any fault of the character‖ (―Inhibitions on Eighteenth-Century Women Novelists‖ 66). Because the heroine in this tradition had to be faultless, she remained largely inactive. Therefore, all of the drama that circulates around this ideal heroine‘s courtship tended to be unrealistic and generally improbable. Although the narrator of The Excursion begs leave to ―introduce to the acquaintance of my reader the two heroines of my story‖ (5), her very brief description of the ―mild‖ Louisa foreshadows this heroine‘s lack of prominence in the novel. Because the fulfillment of Louisa‘s relatively simple aspiration of becoming Mrs. Montague inspires the very minimum of intrigue, a focus on such an uneventful courtship would be fairly uninteresting to narrate. However, there is significance within the insignificance of Louisa‘s courtship and marriage plot. Louisa‘s simple plot line reflects the more common courtship and marriage that took place in eighteenth-century England. Her desires remain simple, unchecked, and easily fulfilled. Unlike her sister, Louisa does not appear to be a novel reader. She remains uninformed by texts like Pamela that portray a modest 117 heroine whose all enduring virtue is finally rewarded with an unrealistically advantageous marriage to a nobleman. The lack of melodrama or tension in Louisa‘s courtship indicates the absurdity of improbable plot lines like Richardson‘s. Louisa‘s sister, on the other hand, had read a ―hundred novels, and at least half a dozen true histories‖ (115). Maria‘s romantic and social desires become shaped by such farfetched fantasies. In focusing her narrator‘s attention on Maria‘s more ambitious romantic and social pursuits Brooke exemplifies this narrator‘s role as a mediator who evaluates the heroine‘s absurd romantic experiences with a detached sense of sympathy. This objective moral guide maintains a critical perspective regarding Maria‘s actions and ambitions that are shaped by the unrealistic novels and ―true histories‖ she has been reading. The omniscient narrator reveals the naiveté of Maria‘s vivid, if misinformed, imagination when she describes Maria‘s motivation for going to London. Maria ―painted to herself in glowing colours‖ her guardian‘s ―rapture and surprise, when he should see her return to Belfont, after an absence of two or three months, with a ducal coronet on her coach; an event of which she had not the remotest doubt‖ (10). Maria‘s sincere belief that she will discover in London an honorable duke who will fall in love with and marry her despite her modest inheritance reflects a common plot motif again derived from Richardson‘s Pamela. Unfortunately, as the narrator critically points out, it is Maria‘s inexperience and her ill informed imagination that place her into a plotline that attracts the narrator‘s critical attention. She emphasizes Maria‘s lack of real world experience as setting her up to be a dupe to her imagination: ―Sincere, rash, credulous as an infant, she invited deceit, 118 and stood a ready prey to the arts of the selfish and designing‖ (33). Maria envisions herself as a heroine in a world in which she should be warned against the ―generally imaginary‖ dangers of Richardson‘s novels. This belief is what inhibits her from heeding her guardian‘s advice regarding the ―too real‖ dangers of false acquaintances and profligacy. Brooke constructs her narrator‘s critical assessment of Maria‘s actions to discredit the improbable plots of novels like Richardson‘s along with their melodramatic depictions and unrealistic marriages. The narrator recounts that when Maria enters London with the intention of finding just such a marriage, the heroine‘s head turned ―hastily at the sound of a title; a sound for which she had listened impatiently the whole evening in vain‖ (22). The narrator highlights Maria‘s lack of discernment in choosing the first man of title she encounters to fulfill what she mockingly calls the heroine‘s ―fairy dreams of greatness‖ (23). Brooke‘s narrator makes it clear to her reader that Maria‘s judgment in choosing Melvile for her suitor is influenced by her novelistic delusions: ―he regarded her with an attention the most flattering possible to her charms; but in which, if she had known the world, she would probably have observed a mixture of something like hope, not quite so flattering to her virtue‖ (22). Maria misreads Melvile‘s intentions because she envisions herself as a heroine and impulsively casts Melvile as her hero. Unfortunately for Brooke‘s heroine, Melvile is not operating on the same level as Maria. The narrator clarifies that ―the first object that struck his sight was Maria […] talking earnestly to Lady Hardy. So much beauty, under such protection, must necessarily attract the notice of every man who was at all its votary‖ (22). This 119 observation reveals that the popular novel‘s convention of depicting a heroine‘s elevated worth as shining forth regardless of her situation or questionable background does not correspond with Maria‘s experience. The novels that Maria has read influence her to believe that her innate ―beauty and merit‖ make her worthy of the honorable attentions of a man of Melvile‘s stature (8). But Maria‘s surrounding herself with a less-than-reputable set of people attracts Melvile‘s less-than-honorable intentions. The all-knowing narrator mocks the heroine‘s propensity to supplement Melvile‘s veneer with her own misguided imagination, thinking him the ―most charming of mankind‖ (39). Italicizing this description, the narrator emphasizes the irony she finds inherent in Maria‘s casting a virtual stranger and an obviously rakish figure as her idealized hero and future husband. The omniscient narrator juxtaposes the thoughts of both Maria and Melvile to criticize her heroine‘s having been influenced by conventions of the popular novel. She informs us of Melvile‘s true thoughts concerning Maria: ―She seems to me a little adventurer, who is looking out for men of a certain rank: I know not with what design, nor is it material‖ (44). To this speech the narrator ironically testifies, ―in these terms of respect, esteem, and tender veneration, did the most amiable of mankind speak of a woman, who thought him all but a divinity, and who amused herself with the idea of their hearts having been formed for each other‖ (44). Again ironically quoting Maria‘s idealized description of Melvile in heroic terms, the narrator juxtaposes the heroine‘s idealistic assessment with Melvile‘s more sinister inclinations. The juxtaposition of the worldly Melvile‘s less than honorable observation with Maria‘s naïve thoughts illustrates that the popular novel has not adequately prepared Maria for a ―hero‖ like Melvile. In 120 fact, her misreading of the situation through novelistic idealism is what places Maria in jeopardy. The imaginary dangers and idealized rewards of the popular novel do not correspond with the more subtle dangers and very real consequences that Maria faces in her own adventures in London. Brooke‘s narrator emphasizes that, like the rest of society, she must remain objective in her judgment of the heroine regardless of the novelistic conventions that lead this heroine to commit social indiscretions. The narrator impartially exonerates Melvile for thinking Maria a ―little adventurer‖ because Maria has set herself up to look the adventurer: ―let us be candid: Lord Melvile might in some degree stand excused. The impropriety of [Maria‘s] unprotected situation, and her apparent intimacy with a woman of Lady Hardy‘s very equivocal character, were sufficient pleas to justify suspicion‖ (44). Embarrassed by Maria‘s actions, the narrator confides that ―truth obliges us to confess her inconceivable indiscretion‖ in leaving a party early with Melvile (69). This objective narrator confesses that she cannot forgive her heroine‘s credulity: ―The most perfect ignorance of the world, and the most unsuspecting temper existing, will, in candid minds, but in no other, apologize for Miss Villiers‘s extreme imprudence in inviting Lord Melvile to a tete-a-tete supper‖ (76). Only the most sympathetic and wholesome minds could look beyond Maria‘s inexperience to understand her sincere motivations, but the narrator must remain firm: ―The world will judge, and it has a right to judge, by probable appearances‖ (76). 6 The narrator points out that in spite of Maria‘s innocence this 6 McMullen asserts that ―although innocent, Maria has, by transgressing the bounds of propriety, become fair game‖ (179). 121 heroine must be found guilty in a court based on public appearance. And as the narrator makes clear, appearance is the sole basis upon which London society establishes itself and by which she must judge Maria‘s social interactions. The critical evaluation of the heroine reaches its height when Maria intentionally deludes herself into a more appealing novelistic approach to the world despite the epiphany she has regarding her misguided imagination. Maria‘s conviction that Melvile is an honorable hero whose marriage proposal would rescue her from any impropriety may explain, if not excuse, this heroine‘s previous indiscretions. But the narrator takes this heroine to task for deliberately refusing to shed her novelistic ideals when her hopes are finally and unconditionally revealed to be delusions. When Lord Claremont approaches Maria with a monetary reward for relinquishing an agreement to become Lord Mevile‘s mistress—an agreement she was unaware she had made—the narrator makes it clear that Maria finally becomes aware of her misunderstanding. Maria explains to Lord Claremont that she has awakened ―from a pleasing dream to a lively sense of my own childish infatuation‖ (113). She can finally see that ―the ideal, the all-perfect Lord Melvile […] no longer exists but in the traces of my deluded imagination‖ (114). However, the all knowing narrator reveals that despite this revelation, the heroine intentionally ignores her new understanding in preference for her former novelistic manner of viewing the world and Melvile in romantic terms. Maria would rather explain away Lord Claremont‘s report of Lord Melvile‘s marriage through novelistic convention than accept the truth that her dreams have come to naught. In this way Maria frames the 122 threat to her romantic ambition as part of a scenario in which Claremont becomes one of those ―avaricious fathers‖ of whom ―she had read […] in a hundred novels‖ (115). 7 However, Brooke does reveal in this scenario that novels do hold the potential to help in deciphering real world experiences. Maria has finally come to an adequate assessment of Claremont‘s corrupted nature based on her novel reading. He is indeed an ―avaricious father‖ who wants to marry his son off for monetary compensation. But Brooke reveals that blind constancy to novelistic design in contrast to an awareness of the real world can lead to very real danger. Maria is as far from the novelistic heroine as Melvile is from the novelistic hero. Melvile never intended to marry her, only to make her his mistress. Perhaps if the novels that Maria had read had incorporated a mediating narrator like Maria‘s who pointed out the fallibility of the very novel conventions the heroine was enacting then Maria could have used what these novels had to teach. More importantly, she may have been able to differentiate between fantasy and reality and save her reputation. The narrator‘s final evaluation of Maria‘s willful disregard of reality in preference for novelistic fantasy becomes even more harsh than all of her other judgments regarding the heroine. In this respect, the heroine becomes even more blameworthy than the novels that had initially misguided her. The narrator reports that her heroine was ―struggling, against conviction, to believe Lord Melvile faithful to engagements which he had never entertained the remotest idea of forming‖ (120). The narrator condemns Maria for 7 Interestingly enough, Maria has finally come to an adequate assessment of Claremont despite the fact that her conclusion is based on the novels the narrator has been showing to be so unconducive to a clear perspective on the real world. Perhaps this is because the novels that Maria has been reading do not contain the kind of narrator her novel is making a case for. 123 disregarding the conviction that she had been misguided. The heroine‘s ―credulity, her pardonable vanity, her sanguine temper, and absolute ignorance of the world‖ are responsible for Maria‘s determination to ignore reality in preference for her novelistic delusions (120). In contrast, the narrator is much less callous in her assessment of Melvile. She actually forgives him his actions in the whole affair as ―he had intended to seduce, but had no design to deceive her‖ (120). Although Melvile‘s intention may be dishonorable, the narrator points out that he had no motivation to hide his impure objective from Maria. Melvile is not a deceptive rake, just an overt one. The innocent heroine becomes even more culpable than the immoral rake in this narrator‘s estimation. Maria‘s determination to ignore Melvile‘s impure overtures and to become his wife at any cost makes her an irresponsible heroine. The narrator therefore mocks Maria‘s endeavors to secure Melvile‘s affection in spite of her understanding his unworthy intentions when she writes him a letter. The narrator again resorts to irony and italics to reveal the folly of Maria‘s persistent fantasy when she professes her love for Melvile and writes that their ―two hearts were so evidently formed for each other‖ (134). When the narrator relates that Maria ―owned her tenderness; a tenderness justified, and even rendered meritorious, by his virtues; by virtues it would be profaneness even to doubt‖ (134), the reader cannot but perceive the narrator‘s scorn for Maria‘s melodramatic insistence on Melvile‘s honorable intentions. Only when Maria becomes undeniably convinced of her indiscretions does the narrator‘s condemnation of Maria and her romantic aspirations abate. Toward the end of the novel, the narrator recounts that Maria redeems herself when she acknowledges that 124 she has learned the errors of her misinformed imagination: ―She even owned that the splendor of Lady H‘s equipage had first mislead her, and that ambition had too large a share in her partiality for Lord Melvile‖ (142). Like Jane Austen‘s Catherine Morland and Marianne Dashwood, Maria can overcome her novelistic delusions. She becomes ―convinced of two truths very important to female happiness‖ that are irreconcilable with the popular novels that had so misinformed her: ―that it is possible to love twice, and to be happy without either a coach and six or a title‖ (150). Maria has finally come to realize what her narrator has been illustrating all along. Her ―fairy dreams of greatness,‖ dreams of ―coaches, cornets, [and] titles‖ (8), are unrealistic fantasies only pursued by credulous, vain, foolishly sanguine, and ignorant fictional heroines. When Maria comes to terms with her own reality and the incompatibility of the popular novel with this reality her impractical marital aspirations become discredited, as do the novels that put such impractical notions in her head. If Brooke‘s novel devalues the traditionally feminine courtship plot put in place by authors like Richardson, her work does provide a replacement for this unrealistic and dangerous plot line. The narrator‘s critical assessment of Maria‘s misinformed actions discredits the melodramatic experiences of the popular novel that had so misguided her own heroine. Through Maria‘s experiences Brooke shows these unrealistic representations to be dangerous to Maria‘s world view and reputation. But the narrator‘s brief depiction of Louisa‘s more realistic and relatively uneventful courtship reinforces the conclusion that courtship is not the ideal subject for a novel. Brooke‘s novel reveals two very important points regarding the standard feminine plot line. First, in depicting a 125 realistic courtship a work runs the risk of having very little with which to entertain the reader. Second, in depicting a more entertaining courtship a work runs the risk of deluding its readers with improbable and irrelevant scenarios. Brooke solves this dilemma by replacing the courtship scenario with an alternative plotline—one of justifiable and realistic female ambition. While Brooke‘s narrator consistently and critically chastises Maria for her impractical romantic pursuits, neither Brooke nor her narrator discredits this heroine‘s literary endeavors. Surprisingly, given the narrator‘s critique of novels and their promotion of foolish and unrealistic marriage ideals, this narrator loses her critical distance from Maria when she evaluates Maria‘s talent for writing. Her description of Maria‘s literary endeavors reveals a pronounced sympathy that eventually challenges her critical distance from the heroine. Instead of condemning Maria for pursuing her literary talents, the narrator‘s critical judgment becomes directed instead at the obstacles impeding Maria‘s success. The novel reveals this alternative female plot line to be more appropriate novelistic material than the discredited and devalued courtship plots. The disintegration of the narrator‘s critical distance toward Maria is evident whenever she addresses this heroine‘s literary talents. This disappearance of a critical distance reveals that, unlike her romantic pursuits, Maria‘s literary ambitions are not worthy of mockery or castigation. When the narrator informs us that Maria ―estimated her epic poem at 100l., her novel at 200l., and her play, including the copy, at 500l.‖ (55), readers may become aware of the heroine‘s lack of experience in the literary market. As George Justice has pointed out, ―these are wildly exaggerated figures, as the twenty 126 pounds which Burney received from Lowndes for Evelina might indicate‖ (172). However, there is no hint of mockery or any italicizations on the narrator‘s part pointing to Maria‘s credulity regarding the value of her works. Through her lack of overt critique here the narrator may be revealing that Maria does not grossly overestimate the worth of her texts, just the value that society places upon such literary merit. The narrator further reveals that Maria‘s literary ambitions are not based on unfounded delusions, as are her romantic inclinations. Unlike the deceptive courtship plots that misinformed Maria‘s imagination, the narrator champions Maria‘s literary talent as justified based on her talent. In contrast to her descriptions of Maria‘s social impropriety, the narrator alternatively praises Maria‘s literary prowess: ―To be explicit, she had genius, that emanation of the Divinity‖ (16). While the italicization in this passage could give the impression that the narrator is mocking the heroine‘s writing ability, the narrator does not juxtapose her praise with a contrasting description of the heroine‘s ―genius‖ as she does when she alternatively discusses Maria‘s romantic pursuit. Instead, Maria‘s ―genius‖ becomes reinforced with the narrator‘s comparing the heroine with Alexander Pope: ―From almost infancy she had ‗Lisp‘d in numbers, for the numbers came‘‖ (16). The narrator makes it clear that Maria was born with talent that marks her as a legitimate writer even if she is not born with the sagacity to realize she is not a novelistic heroine herself. Maria‘s talent sparks so much confidence in her narrator that she does not feel the need to condemn or mock the heroine‘s pride in her work: ―Diffident as she was by nature, that enthusiasm inseparable from true genius, broke through the veil which modesty would have thrown over the merit of this piece‖ (16). The narrator had 127 revealed that Maria‘s vanity was partly at fault for her misguided conduct regarding Melvile. But here the narrator believes that such modesty is inappropriate due to the caliber of Maria‘s work. The narrator‘s description of Maria‘s motivation for pursuing her literary aspirations justifies the unconventionality of this alternative plot line. Rather than portray Maria as a heroine eager to gain notoriety or monetary reward for her tragedy, Brooke has the narrator make clear that Maria‘s literary interests stem from something more pure. While Maria contemplated submitting her play to a theater manager when she became aware of her dwindling funds, the narrator confides that the heroine ―rather wished, unless her affairs should oblige her to precipitate her measures, to wait till she was Lady Melvile before she allowed it to be represented; as the performance of a woman of quality would naturally attract general attention, and appear with double éclat‖ (52). According to the narrator‘s explanation, Maria wants to give her tragedy the very best chances of success possible. She believes that the prospective title that she will receive from a marriage with Melvile will secure a larger audience for this play. Furthermore, Brooke‘s narrator makes clear that Maria does not wish to make her foray into the theater based on something as common as financial need. Instead, the narrator reveals that ―it was [Maria‘s] determination to give the profits of her play to a public charity‖ (52). In this way Maria‘s literary aspirations are much more pure than her romantic ambitions. While she finally acknowledges that her attraction to Melvile was influenced by her ambition for the coaches and titles with which he could provide her, Maria‘s desire to see her play staged is inspired by her reverence for the theater and her 128 pride in her work. The narrator shows that Maria becomes so enthralled by a performance of Braganza that she ―was on fire to give her tragedy to the public‖ (57). Maria‘s sincere excitement about the theatrical world and her potential to succeed in this world excites her so much that she cannot wait to become Lady Melvile to share her work with the world. Unfortunately, as the portrayal of Maria‘s failed attempt to get her tragedy staged illustrates, the London theater is not the ideal place of the heroine‘s imagination. But the narrator does not chastise Maria for her naiveté when it comes to her interaction with the London literary world. Judgment within the narrative becomes directed not at the idealistic heroine, but rather at the corrupt forces that challenge Maria‘s literary idealism. Maria‘s first experience with the theater builds up her fantasy of the London stage as the epitome of artistic achievement: ―Maria was satisfied; her warmest ideas of theatrical perfection were realized‖ (57). However, the heroine becomes aware of how far from perfect the London literary world is when she submits her tragedy to be considered for this theater. Brooke enlists Mr. Hammond, ―one of the sublimest poets, and most judicious critics‖ (59), to educate Maria on the corruption of the theater. When the theater manager rejects Maria‘s script without even reading it, Hammond explains that with only two theaters in London to monopolize the industry, theater managers have all the power to decide whose plays are performed and whose are, literally, overlooked. Instead of basing their decisions to perform a play on a writer‘s talent or the virtue and merit of a work, these managers can use the limited access available to the stage to their 129 own benefit. Thus, they accept only plays that will grant them personal advantage with those of higher rank who can use status and bribes to appeal for literary friends. The narrator‘s description of Maria‘s disappointment with the London theater justifies the heroine‘s idealism while castigating the literary corruption that inspires her disillusionment. Rather than ridicule Maria‘s uninformed vision of the theater, the narrator explains that Maria ―had supposed (and she might perhaps, if any manager had the elevation of mind sufficient to try the experiment, be justified in this seemingly Utopian idea), that the director of a theater must at the same time taste the most refined pleasure, and reap the most permanent advantage, in encouraging genius and gratifying the publick, by giving pieces of superior excellence, without regard to any consideration but that excellence itself‖ (88). The narrator does not mock the heroine‘s idealization of the theater. Instead, she reinforces Maria‘s assumption as perfectly valid. The narrator‘s judgment is directed at the theater manager who impedes Maria‘s ability to get her worthy tragedy staged, condemning him as lacking an ―elevation of mind.‖ Furthermore, the assessment of Maria‘s refusing to acknowledge Mr. Hammond‘s theatrical credibility is hardly as condemning as the narrator‘s evaluations of Maria‘s refusal to accept the truth of her relationship with Melvile: ―In this, however, she was mistaken; as she was in imagining she knew the world better than a man who had passed all his life, and that life not a short one, in the first company of which it is composed‖ (86). Instead of berating the heroine as credulous, vain, foolishly sanguine, or absolutely ignorant, the narrator merely explains that Maria is ―mistaken‖ in not giving the critic his due. No longer describing the heroine with such condemning adjectives, the narrator gently censures 130 Maria for naïvely ignoring the critic‘s advice. We can therefore conclude from the more sympathetic assessments attained from the both the narrator and from Mr. Hammond that neither Maria nor her writing is unworthy of the stage, but that the corrupt theater is unworthy of Maria and her talent. According to Brooke‘s novel, the London stage is blemished by theater managers who should value Maria‘s talent as do the narrator and Mr. Hammond. The sympathy that both Mr. Hammond and the narrator inspire for Maria‘s inhibited literary aspiration is an important part of The Excursion, but it is not the only sympathy that the work invokes. As Catherine Gallagher has pointed out, ―the fictional framework‖ of the mid-eighteenth-century novel ―established a protected affective enclosure that encouraged risk-free emotional investment‖ (―The Rise of Fictionality‖ 351). In other words, the very fictionality of the novel from the mid-century onwards could inspire in the novel reader a sense of sympathy for the characters that was not available in more historical narratives. Gallagher clarifies that because novelistic characters were ―conjectural, suppositional identities belonging to no one, they could be universally appropriated‖ (Nobody‟ s Story 168). In this respect, Brooke can use the fictionality of her text and her heroine to garner sympathy for the writing Maria. Brooke increases this sympathy by incorporating a critical narrator into her text to guide her readers into appreciating this heroine‘s literary talent. This narrator also directs the reader‘s disapproval toward the forces that impede the fulfillment of Maria‘s literary merit. But at the same time Brooke‘s fictional text points to an affinity between the heroine‘s literary frustrations and her own. Brooke includes notes within her text that 131 allude to her unpleasant experience with theater manager David Garrick. While several critics have already pointed out autobiographical elements of The Excursion by tracing the parallels between the heroine‘s life and the author‘s, my argument does not reduce Brooke‘s text to a retelling of her own life story. 8 If Brooke‘s Maria was an autobiographical character in the same respect as Barker‘s Galesia, later eighteenth- century readers may have felt inhibited by the affinity between author and heroine. Such a heroine could present too specific a representation of her author for this reader to sympathize with. Brooke, however, uses a distinctly fictional heroine with clearly fabricated adventures to lessen this affinity. Maria has her very own courtship plot that is definitively fictional and absolutely her own. Nevertheless, Brooke uses the sympathy inspired by the ‗Nobodiness‘ of this fictional heroine to encourage her readers‘ compassion for the very real literary frustrations of the eighteenth-century woman writer. Authorial notes that Brooke inserts into her novel draw indisputable parallels between the obstacles that impede Maria‘s literary success and those that inhibited Brooke‘s own theatrical endeavors. One such note included in the first edition of The Excursion makes clear, if it wasn‘t already, that the theater manager that refuses to read Maria‘s text is a parody of real life theater manager and popular actor David Garrick. Brooke informs her readers in one note that ―long after the above Chapter was written, but before it was committed to the press, this great theatrical luminary disappeared from his orbit‖ (n. 85). Garrick had recently retired when Brooke first published The Excursion. Both Lorraine McMullen and K.J.H. Berland provide thorough accounts of 8 For example, McMullen indicates that ―a number of aspects of the novel recall Frances Brooke‘s own life‖ (169). 132 Brooke‘s antagonistic interactions with Garrick. Berland argues that Brooke was convinced that in the early 1750‘s Garrick had deliberately and strategically held on to a script of her play entitled Virgina for a considerable length of time. While Garrick was in possession of Virginia he produced another version of this play, diminishing the worth of Brooke‘s script. McMullen has shown that Garrick also rejected several of Brooke‘s other productions: ―The Shepherd‟ s Wedding circa 1757, possibly the farce Frances wrote after The Shepherd‟ s Wedding, and certainly Rosina circa 1772-1773‖ (176). 9 Brooke‘s professional interaction with Garrick had obviously left her with a poor impression of the theater manager and his powerful role as guardian of the stage. The authorial notes that Brooke includes in her novel allow her to make a specific attack on Garrick as the impediment to her own theatrical success. After clarifying Garrick as the subject of her lampoon in The Excursion, Brooke‘s notes in the first and second edition include what appear to be apologies for having lashed out at the popular figure. In the first edition Brooke protests, ―as the writer honours his talents, though she disapproves his illiberal maxims of government, she has unaffected pleasure in predicting, that the various excellencies of his performance will be remembered with delight, when the errors of his management, though fatal to literature, shall be consigned to oblivion‖ (n. 85). In her second edition, published six years after Garrick‘s death, Brooke extensively edited the rather condemning caricature of the theater manager. She explains her previous raillery: ―Those pleasantries, though justifiable at the time, and from the cause, when a sudden impulse of well founded anger gave its deepening shades 9 McMullen also goes on to detail the antagonistic correspondence between Garrick and Brooke. See An Odd Attempt in a Woman pages 176-178. 133 to the pencil of the writer, would be unpardonably illiberal, when this incomparable performer has long ceased to be an object of the resentment, and is only that of the most lively regret‖ (n. 175). 10 Berland points out that in spite of the praise the authorial notes lavish upon Garrick, ―the rather conventional compliments are again outweighed by implicit blame‖ (227). Despite the detached tone and the apologies Brooke incorporates in these notes, they highlight a point of critical interest within Brooke‘s novel. The notes may appear to explain and even apologize for Brooke‘s attack on Garrick, but what they really do is draw attention to the fact that The Excursion is doing just that. The text itself is criticizing David Garrick‘s role as a corrupter of the London theater. Brooke thus ends the note inserted in the first edition with a seemingly positive outlook that nonetheless calls attention to Garrick‘s culpability in the corruption of the London theater. Brooke asks if she may ―be here indulged in a wish, which she almost ventures to call a prediction, that the dramatic Muse may again raise her head; and new Shakespeares, new Sophocles, new Garricks, arise, under the auspices of a manager who has sufficient genius to be above envy, and sufficient liberality of mind to be incapable of avarice?‖ (n. 85). All of Brooke‘s praises are merely back-handed complements specifically indicting Garrick as the inhibitor of her theatrical aspirations. Brooke‘s personal indictment of Garrick within the text has caused many critics to view The Excursion as autobiographical rather than as a novel that uses its fictional heroine to garner sympathy and support for the adventures of the writing woman. In arguing that Maria‘s failure to get her play produced is reflective of her author‘s 10 The ―cause‖ to which Brooke refers in this note would presumably be Garrick‘s unfair treatment of her own scripts. 134 experience, Lorraine McMullen has asserted that, ―more than likely, Frances Moore [Brooke], as a young woman arriving in London, bright, ambitious, and hopeful, had encountered the same problems as Maria. The novel may indeed give us the best picture we shall ever have of her own early London experiences‖ (186). Jodi Wyett agrees, asserting that ―The Excursion, though ostensibly about a young woman‘s ‗entrance into the world‘ and the development of her individual taste, is also about an older author‘s frustrations with the world‖ (135). Both critics‘ assessments are partially accurate. The text, especially with regard to the theatre manager episode, is reminiscent of Brooke‘s experience. And the authorial notes included within this section do call attention to Brooke‘s specific literary frustration. But her frustration, as similar as it is to the heroine‘s, is not the heroine‘s. Maria‘s literary struggle is all her own, in the same way that her awkward romance is all her own. Brooke‘s frustration at having her tragedy withheld may have incited her to make a personal attack on Garrick through her novel. But Maria‘s experience does not get as far as Brooke‘s. In Maria‘s case, the theatre manager refuses even to look at her work before rejecting it. In this respect, the fictionalized encounter within The Excursion becomes more abstract than Brooke‘s more specific interaction with Garrick. The unread tragedy within the novel represents the script of the woman writer in general who is rejected unjustly without having her merit fully appreciated or rewarded. At the same time, the affinity between Maria and Brooke‘s frustrations indicates both of their scenarios as realistic impediments to female literary success. 135 Brooke may use her text to condemn Garrick personally for his abuse of her talent as well as his own power as a theater manager. But by fictionalizing her experience through her more sympathetic writing heroine, Brooke is also able to use the novel to condemn the corrupt literary forces that impede the eighteenth-century woman writer in general. In this way she can sympathetically present to the world the struggles such writers must endure to succeed in the literary world through her creation of an alternative feminine literary plot line. This is true especially when we consider Brooke‘s strategic use of a critical narrator. This narrator can guide her readers into a sympathetic assessment of the writing heroine while guiding these readers into a more critical awareness of the forces that generally refuse a woman writer a viable literary path in the real world. Furthermore, this critically intrusive narrator helps to mark as fictional the writing heroine whose literary experiences nevertheless resemble those of her author and expose the impediments to female authorship. This intrusive narrator distances the author from her heroine by constantly pointing out Maria‘s fictionality. This narrator therefore allows the fictional yet semi-autobiographical heroine to become more easily appropriated by her readers as well as her author in the depiction of these impediments. Through her obvious fictionality, Maria becomes a figure who can sympathetically represent all potential women writers while also simultaneously portraying the very real struggles of her own author. The Excursion therefore depicts a sympathetic writing heroine who does travel this tempestuous literary path to exemplify such a plot line as an interesting and viable alternative to the more traditional, unrealistic, and dangerous courtship plotlines. And the intrusive narrator that Brooke uses to depict this fictional yet 136 semi-autobiographical heroine‘s literary path becomes a literary tool that will be useful for prospective female writers in their own authorship of these kinds of influential alternative novels. Brooke‘s novel therefore sympathetically illustrates Maria‘s literary path as a more worthy plot line to be pursued. Maria‘s experiences depict the very real inhibitions that impede both the woman writer and the London literary market. Nevertheless, instead of condemning Maria‘s literary ambitions to absolute failure as she does the heroine‘s social and marital aspirations, Brooke rather constructs her narrative so as to preserve Maria‘s literary goals, as well as those of her potential readers. The narrator relates that after the heroine‘s tragedy is rejected, Maria‘s ―literary hopes were at an end‖ (121). But Brooke allows her heroine‘s hopes to escape complete annihilation. When the letter that Maria writes to Melvile is returned to her, the narrator clarifies that the tears the heroine sheds are not inspired solely by Melvile‘s betrayal: ―she grieved such a letter, for it was admirably written should be thrown away‖ (135). A significant portion of Maria‘s disappointment stems from the loss of an audience for the letter into which she poured so much of her heart and her talent. The narrator confides that Maria was ―determined to insert this letter in her next novel‖ (136). While Maria‘s ambition of marrying into title, money, and coaches has come to a close, her literary aspiration has not. She may yet go on to write another novel. If Maria‘s literary endeavors do not succeed in the novel, at least they do not fail as completely as do her ambitious romantic aspirations. In fact, Brooke sets up her critical narrator to champion this writing heroine‘s continued conviction in her writing ventures. While the narrator may have chastised 137 Maria for willfully deluding herself concerning Melvile‘s marriage to another, the narrator alters dramatically when she discusses Maria‘s conviction of going on to write another novel: ―‗Her next novel?‘ Is she not then cured of the disease of writing? Alas! my friend, it is plain you have never been an author‖ (136). While the narrator has maintained a sense of distance from her heroine in providing either critical or sympathetic assessments of Maria‘s other ambitions, here this distance between narrator and heroine breaks down. This distance between heroine and narrator is replaced with a new and surprising disassociation of the narrator and her audience. The narrator seems to be implying that she understands the heroine‘s literary drive in a way that her readers— who are not writers—never can. This blatant act of the narrator‘s distancing herself from her reader may in fact be a challenge to these readers to take up the pen and experience the alternative path that Brooke is providing for them through the unconventional female literary plot line of The Excursion. In the end Brooke‘s novel does not condemn the female literary plot line to failure as she does the typical courtship plot. Instead, the avenue of authorship remains open to Maria, and to Brooke‘s readers. Even if we do not see Maria fulfill her literary goals or go on to write the novel that will contain the rejected love letter, we do read that her talent and genius will be continue to be encouraged. When everyone has returned to the country accompanied by Mr. Hammond, the literary critic requests that Maria‘s uncle ―build us a theatre; and Miss Villiers and I will, in defiance of managers, write tragedies, and play them ourselves‖ (152). This removal of Maria‘s literary talents from the London literary scene may seem like a concession on the heroine‘s part. But we must appreciate 138 that in this scenario Maria‘s talents will be directed by a respectable and talented writer in Mr. Hammond and not subject to further condemnation by corrupt theater mangers. With such a tutor, coupled with the experience she has acquired in London, it is not difficult to imagine Maria as evolving into just the type of writer who could implement a narrator like her own—one who can entertain her readers with fiction while pointing out what they can and cannot take from it into the real world. By creating this safe space for her heroine to pursue her literary endeavors, Brooke uses her novel to indict the corrupt literary forces that impede her heroine from succeeding in London. Brooke clarifies exactly what is at stake in the corruption of the London literary market through Mr. Hammond‘s response to the theater manager‘s rejection of Maria‘s worthy text. In the first edition, the narrator recounts that this gentleman advised the heroine to keep her tragedy ―till more liberal maxims of government should take place in the important empire of the theatre; an empire on the faithful administration of which depended, not only national taste, but in a great degree national virtue‖ (83). Brooke illustrates that the corruption of the theater and literature in general extends to a corruption of English literary taste and virtue. She feels so passionate about this corrupted influence that she elaborates on it in the second edition of the novel. In this edition Mr. Hammond‘s voice directly remonstrates: The influence of the theater, on both public and private virtue, makes it an object of the highest importance to the state, of which a director ought to consider himself as the favoured substitute: ‘tis his, by the most disinterested culture of dramatic genius, to give fresh vigor to the rising shoots of poesy; to extend the reign of uncorrupted taste, of polished elegance, of heroic virtue, and that purity of manners of which happiness is the inevitable consequence. (175) 139 Almost every one of Maria‘s London acquaintances exemplifies that this corruption has indeed extended beyond the theater and into the social world. This is nowhere more evident than in the novel‘s depiction of the popular scandal magazine in which Lady Blast intends to destroy Maria‘s reputation by falsifying the heroine‘s lineage and misconstruing her actions. We can therefore see the corruption of the stage as more than just a source of Maria‘s literary disappointment. The corrupted London theatre has not only perverted national taste, but also national virtue. In this way, the theater has negatively influenced those around the naïve heroine to make them the kind of people who would take advantage of Maria‘s credulity. Brooke‘s novel, however, may provide a strategy to combat the corruption threatening England‘s literary and cultural existence as well as aspiring writers like Maria. Again enlisting Mr. Hammond as an objective critic, Brooke describes Maria‘s tragedy as a work embodying everything that could restore England‘s virtue and taste: ―the fable is interesting, the conduct such as the severest judgment must approve; the manners painted in the most glowing colours, and the style even luxuriantly poetical; but what I most admire are those little strokes of tenderness and passion which seize so instantaneously on the heart‖ (60). That such an important work could be rejected by corrupted theater managers should incite the reader‘s indignation. By enlisting a sympathetic heroine whose work is worthy of an elevated stage but whose talent is unjustly rejected by the corruption of literary London, Brooke creates a feminine plot line that is appropriate for the novel and her novel readers. In this kind of trajectory Brooke can depict the more realistic frustrations of the talented eighteenth-century woman writer 140 as a legitimate source for the feminine novelistic story line. The fictional portrayal of such a sympathetic heroine who embodies the kind of talent that can rectify the corrupted taste and virtue of England can inspire other women to follow Brooke‘s initiative. By establishing Maria‘s literary adventures as justified, interesting, and relevant to the social good, Brooke constructs a more pertinent feminine plotline that may inspire her own readers to pick up their pens and join in her effort to combat the corrupted literary forces. Brooke initiates an alternative feminine literary plot line through which such writers can make Maria‘s unconventional plot not so unconventional. By granting her writing heroine something resembling an optimistic literary future, Brooke provides a much needed alternative feminine plot line. Jane Spencer has argued that in The Excursion, ―Brooke produced an impeccably ‗moral‘ work by criticizing the kind of independent and ambitious behavior she showed in her own life. Maria Villiers‘ story was ‗very properly calculated to deter young ladies from launching into the world . . . without discretion‘‖ (20). However, Spencer‘s analysis only focuses on the fact that Brooke criticizes her heroine‘s marital quest, which is based on dangerous impressions inspired by the popular novel. Such an assessment fails to take into consideration that Brooke‘s text refrains from passing similar judgment on Maria‘s literary ambitions. Brooke instead directs the judgment in her text at both the popular novel that relegates its heroines to unrealistic courtship plots and the institutions in literary London that prohibit her heroine from seeing her literary talent rewarded. Brooke‘s novel indicts these conventional texts and literary powers as limiting not only to women writers but to the elevated virtue and taste that such writers could inspire. While 141 Brooke may use her text to give vent to her own literary frustrations by inserting authorial notes condemning David Garrick, the novel nevertheless remains a work about a fictional heroine whose adventures, both literary and social, are her own. By the end of the novel Maria‘s has learned the errors of her ambitious ways, but her literary aspirations remain firmly intact. Because Brooke honors this heroine‘s literary talent and deems it worthy of survival, we can envision Maria going on to become the kind of writer to correct the vices of the London literary market. With direction from Mr. Hammond and with her own enlightening experience, perhaps she will go on to use a critical narrator like Brooke‘s in her novels who can correct other impressionable young women who may fall victim to the conventions of the popular courtship novels. In fact, Maria‘s story allows readers to hope for, and perhaps write, novels that will provide a more appealing plot line to that of the popular courtship novel—the coming of age of the woman writer. 142 Chapter 5 Living to Write and Writing to Live: Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson Employing the writing heroine to reveal alternative paths for their female readers could have been considered risky for both Jane Barker and Frances Brooke. The number of professional women writing prose works was not so very large at the respective times in which these two authors ventured into the literary market place. By the 1790‘s, however, there were more women than ever publishing, and a large number of these women entered into the literary market with the novel form. 1 Nevertheless, the heroine writer‘s existence within the novel does not appear to have increased at the same rate. 2 Because of the legacy that Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding had imparted, the novel as a genre had become more accepted as its own category of literature by the end of the century, complete with sub-genres and conventions for those sub-genres. 3 As Katherine M. Rogers has illustrated, Richardson‘s works greatly contributed to the pattern for a ―‗feminine‘ novel—a sort of novel that women were both qualified and encouraged to write‖ (63). The ‗feminine‘ novel dealt exclusively with the ―feelings and 1 Cheryl Turner‘s Living By The Pen: Women Writers in the Eighteenth Century details the number of women writing prose work in the eighteenth century. Her study reveals an ―abrupt upward surge‖ of prose works produced by women in the 1790‘s (38). 2 Janet Todd observes that ―the professional woman author was by the late 1790s pretty much established in England and at least three to four hundred women published during the decade‖ (218). She then goes on to assert ―Few women wrote about female authors in their fiction‖ (223). 3 Michael McKeon has stated that ―by the middle of the eighteenth century, the stabilizing of terminology—the increasing acceptance of ‗the novel‘ as a canonic term, so that contemporaries can ‗speak of it as such‘—signals the stability of the conceptual category and of the class of literary products that it encloses‖ (19). 143 private thoughts‖ of a heroine who embodied the ―chastity, propriety, sense of duty, [and] delicacy enjoined on women in real life‖ to ensure the heroine‘s role as a model for her female readers (63, 65). Even Barker and Brooke‘s writing heroines could arguably fit within the parameters of such female modesty. For the most part their heroine‘s writing endeavors remained harmless hobbies, not professional ambitions meant to sustain the writing heroines financially as independent individuals. Although The Excursion‘s Maria Villiers does think to present the world with her novel, her epic poem, and her tragedy, never does she actually capitalize upon her literary talents to make her own way in the world. Instead, she always has her uncle and her new husband, Col. Herbert, upon whom she can rely. The conventions of the feminine novel prohibited the use of a heroine whose goal it was to produce literary works in order to support herself, regardless of the prevalence of such individuals in the real world. Despite the restrictions placed upon the feminine novel, however, there are two authors in the 1790‘s who did pick up where Frances Brooke left off and who incorporated just such writing characters into their own novels. Both Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson depict characters who travel the alternative literary path Brooke seems merely to have hinted at. But both authors also include female writing characters who, reminiscent of their authors‘ lives, pursue a literary career with the goal of making themselves financially independent. Because Smith‘s novels contain so many references to the struggles she endured in real life that made her turn to writing to sustain herself, she received a great deal of criticism condemning her for the inclusion of so much 144 autobiography in a genre that was supposed to be marked by its fictionality. 4 Such criticism itself reflects the expectations that had come to govern the conventions of the novel—a genre separate from life-writing. A heroine whose literary pursuits stemmed from an ambition to make herself independent coupled with her resemblance to her real life author was contrary to the conventions of both the novel and the feminine novel. These were standards by which Smith and Robinson were expected to submit due to their gender. The typical feminine novel‘s heroine would never presume to commit any action that would result in her own independence. Simultaneously, expectations concerning the fictionality of the novel prohibited the incorporation of an author‘s personal experiences. Smith and Robinson, however, used their writing heroines to comment on the limitations of the later eighteenth-century novel‘s conventions. Their inclusion of autobiographical references makes the unconventionality of their heroines twofold. Their heroines‘ resemblance to their authors jeopardized the very fictionality expected of the novel form. Simultaneously, this resemblance casts the heroines as unconventional in their undertaking physical labor—the act of writing—to support themselves independently. This double unconventionality in turn resulted in each author receiving manifold criticism. By breaking, however subtly, with established novel conventions and expectations and by purposefully including elements of their own lives within their works, Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson challenged the conventions and expectations 4 In 1798 The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, for example, criticizes Smith‘s ―desire of obtruding on the public her own private history [which] has given a sameness to her tales‖ (qtd. in Melissa Sodeman, 136). 145 of the novel genre. In this way, these authors attempted to redeem the genre by making it once again a vehicle for constructing alternative feminine identities and outlets for the female reader. Both Smith and Robinson turned to professional writing as a means of supporting themselves. To make the money they so desperately needed to survive and to provide for their families, these authors resorted to the novel form. This fictional form had exploded by the late eighteenth century in order ―to feed the ever increasing circulating libraries‖ (Janet Todd 219). Along with both a supply and demand for the novel came the expectations and patterns governing such works. Rogers has detailed the feminine novel that had come to dominate the genre as it was available to women and how this sub-genre limited writers in the 1790‘s. Rogers asserts that the moral of Pamela could be read ―not as Virtue Rewarded but as „Writing Rewarded‟‖ (64). She argues that Richardson‘s encouragement directed at a new generation of female writers aided ―women whose natural talents and interests fitted‖ his female pattern. However, this pattern simultaneously implemented a ―set of constrictions. Once an area of ‗women‘s material‘ was established, they were expected to stay within it‖ (64). Rogers attributes the weaknesses of many female novels to the restrictions that came with the feminine novel format, citing such elements as the ―hothouse atmosphere of contrived situations and artificially protracted agonies‖ (64), the ―[flattening] of women‘s novels‖ (65), the dullness of the too young and too innocent heroine (65), and the unreal ―distressing plot circumstances‖ resulting in ―the dissociation of plot from character‖ (66). According to Rogers, the majority of Charlotte Smith‘s novels suffer by current standards from 146 following this pattern ―without conviction‖ and it is only occasionally, when Smith was ―sparked by indignation at political abuses or derision of social pretentiousness [that] her writing is original and forceful‖ (68). It is, interestingly enough, for the most part only when Smith includes elements from real life within her works that such instances of ―original and forceful‖ writing occur. While Rogers faults Smith‘s works for their lack of ―conviction,‖ Smith‘s contemporary critics found fault with the inclusion of the very autobiographical references which made her work, according to Rogers, only occasionally ―original and forceful‖ for a modern audience. In 1794, for example, The Analytical Review condemns The Banished Man for its similarity to Smith‘s life: ―We must add, that we cannot think it any recommendation of this novel, that the authoress has so frequently introduced allusions to her own affairs‖ (qtd. in Loraine Fletcher 226). Specifically condemning Smith‘s work as a ―novel,‖ this review portrays the genre as one that by definition must not allude to an author‘s own affairs. The review illustrates the audience‘s demand for fictionality within the novel. Such a review of Smith‘s work indicates that critics and readers alike felt the incorporation of autobiographical aspects threatening not only to the feminine novel format, but to the novel as a genre marked by its fictionality. Both Smith and Robinson, however, were bold in highlighting the parallels between their own lives and the plots within their novels. Sarah Zimmerman has argued that Smith made the events of her own life readily available to her readers: ―The prefaces that open most of her works became, in effect, a serialized autobiographical narrative‖ (60). Diane E. Boyd also contends that Smith made her dire circumstances amply 147 apparent to her readers to market ―herself as a woman scrambling to keep her family afloat‖ to the point that ―rather than discuss her novels, [her readers] discussed her material circumstances‖ (150). Smith defends her autobiographical inclusions in the preface of The Banished Man (1794): In the strictures on a late publication of mine, some Review (I do not now recollect which) objected to the too frequent allusion I made in it to my own circumstances—I might quote in favour of this practice, the example of two of the greatest of our poets; but I will make no other defence than that which is lent me by a sister art:—the History Painter, gives to his figures the cast of countenance he is accustomed to see around him—the Landscape Painter derives his predominant ideas from the country in which he has been accustomed to study—a novelist, from the same causes, makes his drawing to resemble the characters he has had occasion to meet with. (i) 5 Smith, despite her own gender and status as a published author, uses the masculine pronoun when discussing the ‗novelist‘ and the other artists she claims as mentors. This defense does not merely address her writing outside of the confines of the feminine novel in that her primary character will be an émigré of the French Revolution. Smith‘s defense further calls for the inclusion of autobiographical circumstances within her work as a woman. Despite her gender—or even because it—Smith had been exposed to various difficult situations which did not lend themselves to appropriate material for a feminine novel. But Smith‘s preface indicates her protest that she should not be limited because of her gender from including allusions to these situations because ―a novelist [...] makes his drawing to resemble the characters he has had occasion to meet with‖ (emphasis added, 5 No page numbers are given for the Preface in the Dodo Press edition. The roman numerals I provide would begin with the first page of the Preface. 148 i). Male artists who are not limited by the constraints of the feminine novel have the freedom to include characters and occasions they encounter within their art. Smith declares that, as a writer—even a female one—she should be granted similar privilege. In fact, by making her own life situations known to her audience and by highlighting and defending the incorporation of these real life situations within her novels, Smith makes her novel more pertinent for her female readers by making it more descriptive of the real world: her real world. In so doing, Smith paints for her readers in her own version of the feminine novel scenes not of the unrealistic heroine and situations Rogers identifies, but scenes that could, and did, happen to women everyday in England. Mary Robinson‘s private life was the subject of public scrutiny due to her former career as an actress who had had an affair with the Prince of Wales, later to become King George IV. Robinson was in fact writing her memoirs, which would become completed by her daughter and published posthumously, as she was writing her last novel, The Natural Daughter (1799). In the section of the memoirs that Robinson wrote herself she attempts to revise her reputation as Perdita—the scandalous lover of several famous men. According to Anne K. Mellor, in the memoirs Robinson depicts herself in three ways to offset the imposed role of the fallen woman: first, as a woman who has fallen due to circumstances beyond her control, including a neglectful husband; second, the star crossed and fallen lover who had been forced to marry her husband but who was really in love with the prince; and third, a female artist. Mellor argues that in the memoirs, ―more significant than the particulars of these counter-narratives is the image of Robinson-as- author emerging as the controlling force—that is, Robinson as an authorial subject who 149 writes not simply poems and novels but, more importantly, narratives of the self‖ (359- 360). In a last attempt to present the world with a different picture of herself, Robinson litters her life narrative with evidence of her identity as an author from the very beginning of her struggle with her failed marriage, which results in her publicly scrutinized and celebrated affairs. The parallels between her failed marriage and her notorious romantic liaisons as well as the presentation of herself as an author within her memoirs are also everywhere readily apparent in Martha Morley‘s adventures in The Natural Daughter. While this novel does have its own plot line that deviates from Robinson‘s life, the main character‘s resemblance to Robinson in her writing, acting, and marriage is unquestionable. Eleanor Ty has argued that ―many readers would recognize this description to be the narrative of Robinson‘s early years—her unhappy marriage to Thomas Robinson, her stardom in Drury Lane, her brief affair with the Prince of Wales in 1780, and her subsequent struggle to support herself and her daughter through writing‖ (79). Robinson solidifies Martha‘s role as a fictional stand in for herself should the reader have any doubts when in the novel Martha is referred to by Robinson‘s own poetic aliases ―Julia,‖ ―Sappho,‖ and ―Laura Maria‖ (234-235). To look at each of these writers‘ novels as merely rewriting their own lives, however, is a reductive task. Robert D. Bass has already negligently dismissed Robinson‘s The Natural Daughter as merely ―a thin, novelized autobiography‖ (392). Diane Boyd has pointed out Smith‘s life was similarly discussed at the expense of her novels, illustrating the danger of focusing too much on Smith‘s autobiographical inclusions. In fact, Boyd warns us that ―there is a danger to figuring Smith too closely 150 with her female characters—an inadvertent devaluing of Smith‘s intellect and imagination. Considering Smith herself as a model for her mothers‖—and we might add writers—―in fiction seems as debilitating as discussing the author rather than the work; we continue to participate in the same misreading as her contemporary readership!‖ (154). My reading does not attempt to trace the autobiographical aspects of Smith‘s The Banished Man or Robinson‘s The Natural Daughter. However, I would argue that in The Banished Man and The Natural Daughter both Smith and Robinson contributed to and counted on their audience‘s awareness of the goings-on in their lives and that both authors deliberately included elements in their novels that would serve to recall these goings-on. Blatantly accentuating autobiographical elements within their novels allows each author to blur the line between life and fiction. Smith and Robinson‘s works use this blurring to break with novel convention and expectation to challenge standards that had come to confine the genre to one of trivial entertainment largely dominated by unreal and insipid heroines. The flagrant inclusion of references to their real lives, and especially to their real lives as writers, challenges eighteenth-century novel conventions and expectations that made the genre seem limited to Smith and Robinson. Tilottama Rajan‘s theory of autonarration is helpful in elaborating how the inclusion of autobiographical references within a novel does not merely make that novel into a reductive retelling of the author‘s life, but can help to open it up beyond the confines of the text itself. Rajan defines the ‗autonarrative‘ as ―a specific form of self-writing, in which the author writes her life as a fictional narrative, and thus consciously raises the question of the relationship between 151 experience and its narrativization‖ (160). Rajan sees the writer of the autonarrative as acknowledging that her own ‗life‘—that is, her ―public history, and the autobiographical pre-text that precedes her interpellation into a social script‖ (162)—is as constructed as the narrative itself. In this way, autonarrative becomes a ―double textualization of both the narrative and the life on which it is based‖ (161). Rajan argues ―the transposition of personal experience into fiction recognizes that experience as discursively constructed . . .. But it is also a way of putting the finality of the text under erasure, by suggesting that what it ‗does‘ or where it ends is limited by its genesis in the life of a conflicted historical subject‖ (150). By including allusions to their own real world and historical experiences within a genre marked by its fictionality, Smith and Robinson in effect explode the boundaries of the novel form itself. The inclusion of well known autobiographical events within their novels not only blurs the line between fact and fiction, but it also annihilates any stability within the form of the novel by implicating the characters and events of the novel with outside, historical references that cannot be pinned down within the confines of a text. Smith and Robinson therefore resist the conventions that the novel reader and critic demanded by the end of the eighteenth century. They resist using the ideal heroines who are by today‘s standards ―too dull to engage our interest and sympathy, as well as too unreal‖ or plots that contain a clear sense of closure generally achieved through the marriage or death of this ideal heroine (Rogers 65). They also incorporate female writing characters with experiences that closely resemble their own and are therefore too threatening for the restrictions of the eighteenth-century novel that ―worked toward the stabilizing illusion of coherent identities‖ (Freeman 27). 152 The conspicuous inclusion of Smith and Robinson‘s female writing characters along with the real life experiences found within their novels complicate the novel form and any illusion of such stability. Rajan has argued thus: The fact that the author is and is not represented by her textual surrogate has significant consequences for the reading process. For instead of generating a series of identifications in which the author recognizes her alter ego in the mirror of the text, the reading process involves a series of (mis)recognitions in which we cannot be quite sure of the relationship between textuality and reality. These misrecognitions generate a series of complex intertextual relationships between what is and what could be. (160-161) By incorporating fictional characters that clearly recall their own lives, Smith and Robinson destabilize both the genre and any fictional stability that the genre alleges. Each fictional character may appear to have a cohesive identity within the world of the novel. And she may even take part in adventures that end with a sense of closure within the fictional world of her novel. However, even if her identity is at times allied with her author‘s within this novel, she nevertheless deviates, by virtue of her fictional surroundings, from her author. For example, even if Robinson‘s heroine pursues a literary career, Martha deviates from her author as much of her plot revolves around her avoidance of committing adultery. However, the fictional character cannot be completely cohesive unto herself within the world of the novel as she distinctly recalls her author. By necessity, this character‘s identity reaches beyond the text into the real world and blurs the boundaries of text and real life. By so complicating the novel‘s fictionality through the inclusion of autobiographical and historical elements, these authors are able to present the novel as a valuable space in which they can critique the very form itself as 153 one whose conventions are too confining. In so doing, these authors illustrate how the novel can, and should, be revitalized from a genre that must adhere to the same limiting conventions that make it a genre of mindless diversion into a more relevant genre with the ability to comment on and grapple with political, economic, and moral issues that concerned not only themselves but their readers. Both Smith and Robinson‘s works reveal that each author struggled with the form of the novel as it was available to her. Because these authors turned to the novel to support themselves as well as their families, they were restricted by the demands of a market that no longer offered the ―openness‖ of the early eighteenth-century literary market. If they did not write what people wanted and expected, they could not sell their work. Unfortunately, what the public wanted from women writers were tales that could not do justice to the intellectual capacities of these highly intelligent and socially conscious women. Smith criticizes what the novel genre had become by the end of the century when in her 1796 work Marchmont her male protagonist turns to a bookseller for advice on writing to sustain himself. Marchmont receives the following counsel: ―Turn your thoughts to novel writing—narrative, let it be about what it will, is read, because the mind quietly acquiesces, and it requires no trouble to think about it‖ (v 2. 224). While upon first perusal this advice may portray the novel as a genre through which Marchmont is free to explore whatever he desires, upon further reflection the passage actually indicates the banality of the form itself. Whatever Marchmont writes need not require his readers to engage in any mental stimulation. Instead, Marchmont‘s mentor indicates that narrative almost lulls the reader into a mind-numbing sleep as the ―mind quietly 154 acquiesces‖ to whatever is read. Ultimately refraining from writing a novel, Marchmont complains that ―any tendency to political discussion, however liberal or applicable, was not to be tolerated in a sort of work which people took up with no other design than to be amused at the least possible expense of thought‖ (v 2. 229). Smith portrays the prospective writer‘s talent as inhibited by the expectations of the novel audience and the limitations of the fictional form that make the genre one of mere escapism rather than a form that could potentially serve greater social purposes. Through this incident Smith reveals that the novel had become a trivial genre of entertainment that required little to no mental stimulation. As such it really had no social relevance. As the most convenient genre available and one of the few respectable methods of gaining money to support her large family, novel writing was therefore a disappointing, though necessary, venue for Smith. Though it could provide her with enough money to support her family, however meagerly, it could not provide her with the stimulation or social consciousness she craved. Robinson illustrates similar frustration in The Natural Daughter. Desperate for money, Robinson depicts her writing heroine as frustrated when she initially seeks to present her novel to the world: ―After offering her first-born to a variety of patrons, [Martha] was informed that the market was already overstocked, and that the species of composition in which she had indulged her fancy was become a very drug, only palatable to splenetic valetudinarians and boarding-school misses. She sighed as she quitted the renowned emporium of genius‖ (208). Martha Morley‘s foray into the literary world portrays the novel genre as less than invigorating. It is a well-worn and decrepit form 155 only attractive to the infirm and immature—the socially irrelevant. Similar to Smith‘s criticism of the novel that lulls the reader into quiet acquiescence, Martha learns that the novel is the drug for those socially irrelevant readers. Martha goes on to receive advice from a Mr. Index, a publisher who gives her a trifling ten pounds for her manuscript. His advice does nothing to promote the novel form. He directs Martha to write with a lancet—a metaphor for attacking people through satire—rather than a pen, and he expostulates, ―who now think of writing with a pen, except for a few old, hum-drum novelists, who convert sermons into romances, and make the press tremble, while it groans with their ponderous faragoes of moral insipidity‖ (209). According to Robinson‘s portrayal, the novel, despite the access it provides women into the literary world, is no longer a vehicle for true literary talent. Instead, it has become an outlet for the mundane, the trivial, and the insignificant. Much of what both Smith and Robinson struggled with concerning the novel centers on the conventions that had come to be expected from the form. As we have already learned from Rogers, the feminine novel tended to center on a dull, uninteresting, and inexperienced young heroine who was forced to endure unrealistic hardships that challenge her virtue and who in the end was either saved through marriage or died from her downfall. Smith reveals that she is well aware of such restrictions in her 1795 work Montalbert: Let no fastidious critic, on the characters of a novel, declaim against the heroine of this, as being too forward or too imprudent. There are only two ways of drawing such characters: they must either be represented as------ ‗Such faultless monsters as the world ne‘er saw‘----- 156 Or with the faults and imperfections which occur in real life. Of these, many are such as would, were they described as existing in a character for which the reader is to be interested, entirely destroy that interest. (115) Smith‘s anticipation of the critics‘ judgment indicates that there were strict expectations concerning novel heroines. To present a heroine whose experiences are not limited by novelistic conventions but are rather reflective of the political and social concerns of the world outside the novel would arouse the critic‘s wrath and in all probability not appeal to a reader whose sole aim was to be entertained. Essentially, to write what she wanted to write would not benefit her monetarily or critically. But to write what the world wanted her to write would condemn her work to triviality—something to which Smith could not submit. As several critics, including Rogers, have already addressed, Smith may not completely buck novelist conventions and expectations, but she does stretch them as far as she can while still allowing her work to be mainstream enough to provide her with the income to support herself and her children. It is in the exposed seams of her stretching the feminine novel form that Smith illustrates the limitations and constraints of the novel as it has come to be in the later eighteenth century. These strained seams at times rupture, freeing the novel form from its restricting conventions. Smith‘s exposing the seams of the later eighteenth-century novel is perhaps nowhere more evident than in a second preface attached to the beginning of the second volume of The Banished Man. In this preface that is entitled ―Avis Au Lecteur,‖ Smith makes clear her self-consciousness as a novel writer and her struggles with the genre through a dialogue with a ―friend.‖ According to the author what is most concerning to this friend to whom she has given her first draft is whether she is planning an experiment 157 of creating ―a novel without love in it?‖ (90). The first volume of The Banished Man opens in 1792 and follows the wanderings of the main character, the Chevalier D‘Alonville—a member of the French aristocracy who has lost everything in the Revolution. By the end of the first volume there is no suitable female prospective heroine for D‘Alonville to pursue. This is a clear deviation from the feminine novel. Smith presents a conversation between herself and her friend in which she protests this convention: Author.—Alas! my dear Sir! if you had yourself ever seen much of that part of the critical world who descant on novels, you would be aware of the extreme difficulty of the task that a Novelist has to execute [...]. I thought in the present instance, the situation of my hero was of itself interesting enough to enable me to carry him on for some time without making him violently in love, I was determined to try the experiment. Friend.—I am afraid it is an experiment you must not carry too far. I do not believe that the generality of novel readers, and it is to those you must look, will agree with [your] sage advisers.... (91) Smith calls attention to the expectations of the novel critic while she uses her ―Friend‖ to recall the idea that the audience also has expectations—expectations that we are reminded Smith must adhere to for financial reasons. This dialogue also reveals, however, the clash between what critics and novel audiences find interesting and what she as an author finds interesting. For the eighteenth-century novel reader, the adventures, trials, and tribulations of an exiled, and fairly realistic, French émigré were simply not enough in and of themselves for the plot of a feminine novel. There had to be a love plot to entertain the eager novel reader and critic and to set up either the submissive or fallen 158 heroine for a moral lesson. Smith seemingly heeds her ―friend‘s‖ advice and diligently provides the subsequent chapters with Angelina, an angelic heroine for D‘Alonville to pursue and marry. Smith nevertheless makes clear within the novel her reluctance at having to curtail her story to her readers‘ and critics‘ expectations. This is primarily manifested through the plot itself. Rogers has asserted that although Smith ―did not in fact hazard‖ the experiment of excluding a love plot, ―the main emphasis in The Banished Man is on the French Revolution, the problems of the émigrés who fled to England, and those of Charlotte Denzil, a middle-aged mother of a family and hard-pressed author like herself. Through her, Smith derides the kind of rarified fiction which women with real problems had to write‖ (73). Indeed, the heroine Angelina is barely developed and her courtship with the French émigré is given relatively little attention in relation to the adventures of D‘Alonville and his various wandering acquaintances. In fact, Mrs. Charlotte Denzil, Angelina‘s mother and the writer whose circumstances so closely recall Smith‘s, receives just as much attention as Angelina, the supposed heroine of the novel. While leaving the heroine relatively underdeveloped, Smith instead focuses on the heroine‘s mother to explore and protest the typical—and limiting—love plot that she was herself forced to retell in her various novels. That the writing mother‘s name is ―Charlotte‖ would be enough to invoke a correspondence between the fictional writer and Smith herself. 6 It would also call into question Smith‘s assertion at the end of the initial 6 Charlotte Smith‘s writing character signs her name ―Charlotte Denzil‖ in V ol. I and ―Henrietta Denzil‖ in V ol. II 159 preface to the work that ―though some of the adventures are real, the characters are for the most part merely imaginary‖ (iii). However, Denzil‘s situation as a mother writing to provide for her dependent children and a woman persecuted by negligent and conniving lawyers concerning a lawsuit over the family inheritance cinches the identity of this character as a stand-in for Smith. 7 Mary Ann Schofield has already argued that ―through Mrs. Denzil, Smith catalogs and examines the trials of being an author. The disguise is barely perceptible‖ (183). And several critics, including Schofield, Rogers, and Ruth Benis, have pointed to a passage within the novel in which Mrs. Denzil details a day of writing to reinforce her role as a stand-in for the frustrated real life author. None of these critics have, however, revealed the subtle trick that Smith plays on her readers with regard to her own stance as a writer in the same position as Denzil. Denzil‘s narration of a typical day in which ―‗poor Mrs. Denzil‘ [...] leaves her bed in a morning, when her health permits, to go to her desk, from whence she rises only to sit down to a dinner she cannot eat‖ does indeed paint a vivid picture of the struggling woman writer (182). 8 This literary struggle is something that has not been so vividly portrayed in any novel to this point. Over the course of this day ―poor Mrs. Denzil‖ receives letters demanding the payment of bills she cannot fulfill, writes to her bookseller begging for part of the money he had promised her, and attempts to placate the demanding bill collector. After all of this ―she must write a tender dialogue between 7 Recall that Smith refers to her real life struggles with her father-in-law‘s inheritance within many of her prefaces. 8 While we have heard about the various writing characters having written a poem, play, or novel, never do we actually see them in the process of writing. 160 some damsel, whose perfections are even greater than those ‗Which youthful poets fancy when they love,‘ and her hero, who, to the bravery and talents of Caesar, adds the gentleness of Sir. Charles Grandison, and the wit of Lovelace‖ (183). Here we can see a clear juxtaposition of the ideal romance of the novel world in opposition to the realistic persecutions that Denzil must endure. Denzil returns to her writing table only to be interrupted yet again by real world drudgery with the discovery that her household is out of small beer, her garden has been ransacked by pigs, and her neighbors, the Grubbins, have contracted ―scarlot favor” (184). Denzil‘s complaints make blatantly clear the less than ideal conditions that not only surround her writing, but also the harsh circumstances amidst which she must conjure up trivial plots, idealistic love stories, and larger than life heroes for the entertainment of her readers. She protests ironically that such cumbersome circumstances are a ―precious recipe to animate the imagination and exalt the fancy!‖ (183). While several critics have noted the significance of this passage, they fail to see how Smith uses this scene to reflect back on the form of The Banished Man itself. Schofield has argued that the passage‘s juxtaposition of Denzil‘s fictional romance and her real life is important ―because of what it reveals about the novel and fiction. [...] Such detailing of [Denzil‘s] existence, then, supports the entire notion of romance‘s raison d‘etre: necessary disguise. In order to deal with the awfulness of life, one disguises in a romance—both author and character. The romance provides escape—for both writer and reader‖ (184). What Schofield fails to recognize, however, is that writing the love scene does not provide Denzil with any form of escapism or pleasure. It is true that the love 161 scene she writes is much more frivolous than the circumstances she faces in regard to her neighbors and her bill collectors. And this scene maybe more attractive than the realistic scenario that Denzil faces. But the fact that she actually has to sit down to write this love scene while worrying about the terrors of her real life is an arduous task. Denzil‘s romantic fiction only serves to accentuate the harsh reality she must endure as she writes. The novel that Denzil writes is not something from which she seeks solace, but from which she seeks sustenance. If the juxtaposition between the realities of Denzil‘s own precarious situation and those of a heroine in a romance had not already been made obvious enough, Denzil goes on from the previous passage to detail the rest of her day. This day ―passed as before; her hero and her heroine are parted in agonies, or meet in delight and she is employed in making the most of either; with interludes of the Gubbins‘ family, and precautions against importing the infectious distemper into her own‖ (184). Here Denzil strives to balance the real world danger of deadly disease and debt with the lighter and airier conventions of an entertaining novel. This novel itself, despite its fanciful subject matter, nevertheless carries dire consequences for the author. Should she fail to produce this love scene, she will not earn any money to support herself or pay her bills. If she writes what her audience wants—namely love scenes between unrealistic heroines and heroes—then she will be able to earn a meager living for herself and her children. If she fails to do this, she will not have the money to fend off the bill collectors and she could wind up in debtors‘ prison. Writing under such duress, the conjuring up of 162 a love scene and the writing of a novel can hardly be seen as escapism for Denzil—or for Smith. Instead, it alternatively accentuates the direness of the author‘s own situation in contrast to the unreality she must write. This account emphasizes the contrast between Denzil‘s dire circumstances, which closely resemble Smith‘s own, and the frivolous romance Denzil must force herself to write. But Smith as the author of The Banished Man actually escapes from writing the very scene her fictional author must force herself to create. While Denzil must write the love scene between the unrealistically ideal hero and heroine, Smith does not. In fact, Smith emphasizes the exclusion of the love scene between her hero and heroine within The Banished Man: ―The conversations then which decided that D‘Alonville was an accepted lover, by the woman he adored, and the parting of persons thus mutually attached, when one was going to a country from whence there were so many chances that he might never return, shall be passed over‖ (211). Smith‘s novel, while still hinting at a love scene to please a general readership, glosses over such an unnatural and unreal scene. Furthermore, Smith actually backs up her own reluctance at having to write such an artificial scene by putting forth ―one great objection to novels‖: ―the frequent recurrences of love scenes; which readers of so many descriptions turn from as unnatural, or pass over as fulsome; while to those who alone perhaps read them with avidity, they are said to be of dangerous tendency‖ (211). Here Smith points out the double standard of the novel reader. While readers insist upon certain plot conventions—such as a love story between a hero and heroine—they nevertheless acknowledge the contrived and labored detailing of such a romance. These scenes have become hackneyed and 163 overdone. Yet, because the form of the novel had become so governed by certain expectations, these scenes have become necessary. Nevertheless, Smith not only avoids writing such a scene in this novel, but she actually points out this avoidance, critiques these scenes, and replaces them with an illustration of the fatigue and frustrations that accompany the writing of such scenes. If the lack of such antiquated and standard scenes was unconventional for a feminine novel, then Mrs. Denzil‘s subplot further highlights Smith‘s deviation from novel expectations. At the same time this subplot reinforces the frustrations Smith experienced with the novel form. While Angelina, the heroine of the novel, remains relatively underdeveloped, Mrs. Denzil is actually fairly well developed for a marginal character. We learn in great detail what has driven her to make her living as a writer: an absentee husband, negligent relations, and an ongoing litigation regarding her children‘s inheritance. We also learn the motivation for her writing. After detailing the persecution she undergoes on a daily basis, Denzil asserts that she has borne it all ―because I felt a degree of self-approbation in stemming a tide of adversity under which the generality of women would have sunk‖ (186). While the conventional novel heroine, about whom Denzil must write, must passively endure hardships such as false lovers, the threat of indigence, or a bad marriage, both Denzil and Smith were living the consequences of the realities of these situations. As a result, Denzil turns to writing, which is no longer an indulgent hobby but an arduous task she must endure to provide for herself and her family. Denzil actually describes this activity as ―unceasing toil‖ (260). Angelina reflects that ―although [Mrs. Denzil] was yet but in middle age, her constitution, naturally 164 very good, was quite broken down with fatigue of mind, by leading so sedentary a life as she had lately done to write for our subsistence‖ (319). 9 Smith here carefully emphasizes Denzil's writing as physical labor. The detailing of such physical exertion and labor on the part of Mrs. Denzil, who actually seems to steal the attention that should be reserved for the heroine of the novel, deviates from the typical feminine novel. Denzil is the exact opposite of the ideal heroine who does not have to work to get her happy ending but who must passively endure. Instead, Mrs. Denzil must be active to the point of jeopardizing her health through the labor of writing. The attention and detail given to Mrs. Denzil over and above her daughter would seemingly place this writer as the heroine of the novel. Yet as the love interest of the hero of the novel, Angelina must be, by eighteenth-century novelistic convention, the heroine. As the heroine of the novel, Angelina does embody the passive position of an ideal heroine, but only because her mother sacrifices herself to place her daughter into that position. Denzil makes her position as martyr to her daughter‘s role explicit in a protest to Lord Aberdore, one of her negligent relations. After he expresses concern over Angelina‘s having married an emigrant, Denzil asks, ―and who, my Lord, will marry young women, whatever may be their merit or their beauty, who are without fortune? While, on the other hand, if they remain single, how are they to be supported when, worn out with many years of trouble, (and the period, my Lord, is not very remote) I shall leave 9 Smith reinforces the physical fatigue involved in writing in the ―Avis Au Lecteur.‖ After listing the castles she has created in her novels such as Emmiline, Desmond, and The Old Manor House, Smith reflects, ―I have already built and burnt down one of these venerable edifices in this work, yet must seek wherewithal to raise another‖ (89). In this passage Smith compares writing to the manual labor of building an actual castle. Her work stresses that writing may be a mental activity, but it is just as exhausting and demanding as the physical exertion required in building an actual edifice. 165 them?‖ (404). Here Denzil firmly places her daughter in the position of a passive heroine. This is the typical kind of heroine who finds herself in the precarious position of procuring a husband and who faces indigence should she not find one, but who nevertheless remains inactive throughout her novel. As Denzil makes clear, Angelina does not have to act because her mother wears herself out writing novels to support her daughter‘s inaction. By pointing out her own sacrifice for her daughter‘s benefit, Denzil both alludes to and embodies the female problem. If a woman does not marry or find a husband, her resources become limited. This is the circumstance that Denzil lives and the situation her daughter may experience should she not marry successfully. In effect, Denzil illustrates the life of the heroine after the novel and her (bad) marriage has ended. Through the act of writing for a living, Denzil allows her daughter to be the passive heroine to D‘Alonville‘s hero and to allow their romance to take place. Angelina clarifies her mother‘s sacrifice when she writes to D‘Alonville that Denzil has hidden the seriousness of her illness—an illness which is the result of writing—―because she would not, in paying a physician, take from her children any part of what her writing has, from time to time, procured us‖ (318). Denzil‘s sacrifice goes further than providing money for her heroine daughter. She goes so far as to sacrifice her health and happiness to allow her daughter‘s romance to take place. Despite the fact that traveling and certain climates would be more beneficial to her health than residing near D‘Alonville, Denzil forgoes these options to allow her daughter to follow D‘Alonville (338). In traveling to D‘Alonville‘s residence, Angelina even acknowledges her mother‘s sacrificial attitude as she explains that she is reluctant to make her mother aware of her anticipation for 166 reaching her husband because her mother ―would check her own wishes, and hasten on, even at the expence of her health, rather than give either of us a moment‘s pain‖ (374). Denzil affirms her sacrificial proclivity when she writes to D‘Alonville upon their arrival that ―I, to whom traveling is pleasure, and of course health, should be sorry that I am arrived at the end of my travels [...] but that as I think less of others than of myself, and from the extreme scarcity, (as far at least as I have been able to observe,) of even transient happiness, I shall be content, if for some time you and my Angelina find it in being near each other‖ (377). In setting up Denzil as a writer sacrificing herself for her daughter‘s happiness and position as a heroine, Smith reaffirms the sacrifice the writer must make within the feminine novel genre. Denzil risks her own health for the sake of her daughter‘s romance in the same way she makes herself ill as she sits down to write love scenes in her novels to provide for her family. Smith‘s deviation from the typical feminine novel format by breaking away from a plot of mere courtship to the concerns of the French Revolution and the struggles of a writing woman allows Smith to open up her novel beyond the limitations of the genre. She uses her novel to critique the limitations of the novel format while simultaneously using it to comment on real world concerns like the treatment of the French émigré in England and the tenuous position in which women are placed. She details the confining nature of a genre whose demands on its writers produce hackneyed and unrealistic love scenes and romances, not to mention strife for the writer who must constantly attempt to create something new regardless of the limitations of the genre. Smith illustrates this struggle within her interruption of the novel in the ―Avis Au Lecteur.‖ She protests: 167 But my ingenious contemporaries have fully possessed themselves of every bastion and buttress—of every tower and turret—of every gallery and gateway, together with all their furniture of ivy manipulation, and mossy battlements; tapestry, and old pictures; owls, bats, and ravens—that I had some doubts whether, to avoid the charge of plagiarism, it would not have been better to have earthed my hero, and have sent him for adventures to the subterranious town on the Chatelet mountains in Champagne […] where I think no scenes have yet been laid, and where I should have been in less danger of being again accused of borrowing. (89) This passage makes clear Smith‘s concern at being accused of plagiarism. 10 Smith finds such an accusation frustrating since the novel demands that she write only of certain topics despite those topics having been already exhausted to the very last detail, as the metaphor of the ―bastion and buttress‖ evinces. By clearly including elements of her own life within the novel through the figure of Mrs. Denzil, however, Smith actually challenges the limitations of the novel genre. The reading world was very aware of Smith‘s situation as a mother using her writing to provide for her children. But just in case they were not, Smith opens the Preface to The Banished Man by saying that she has written her novel ―under great disadvantages‖ and ―during which I have been compelled to provide for the necessities of a numerous family, almost entirely by my own labour‖ (i). While such a statement sets up her situation as closely resembling that of the writing Charlotte Denzil within the novel, Smith ends the preface by asserting that ―I have, in the present work, aimed less at the wonderful and extraordinary, than at connecting by a chain of possible circumstances, events, some of 10 Aside from being criticized from borrowing from her own life, Mary Wollstonecraft accused Smith of plagiarism in The Analytical Review in August 1791: ―in the easy, elegant volumes before us, she too frequently, and not very happily, copies, we can say scarcely say imitates, some of the distressing encounters and ludicrous embarrassments, which in Evelina, etc., lose their effect by breaking the interest‖ (qtd. in Melissa Sodeman 131). 168 which have happened, and all which might have happened to an individual, […] but I beg leave to add […] that though some of the adventures are real, the characters are for the most part merely imaginary‖ (iii). Despite asserting that the characters are imaginary, novel readers must become aware of the parallels between Smith and Denzil, and as such they must by necessity begin to question what else in the novel is not imaginary but representative of real life. We can see that Smith‘s work reveals the eighteenth-century feminine novel genre‘s troubling lack of a connection between real life and the text. Because Smith‘s text and her life become so entangled while remaining distinct, The Banished Man comes to signify more than the text itself. This signification makes the novel more stimulating than any mere narration that simply lulls the reader‘s mind into quiet acquiescence. 11 Smith‘s novel reveals that a text, despite the expectations of its fictionality, can supplement itself with and tie itself to real life. In so doing Smith attempts to move her work away from the mind numbing novel genre whose composition is almost formulaic. Instead she attempts to create an innovative and original work that sparks the reader‘s interest in and relationship with the real world. Smith‘s novel shows that a text actually requires something beyond itself to make it a more effective and effecting work. Smith‘s novel therefore becomes more than a novel for mere entertainment, but a novel of conjecture for her readership. In reading events in the novel that reflect circumstances of Smith‘s own life, the audience is made critically aware that the novel 11 Recall the advice Marchmont received concerning novel writing: ―Turn your thoughts to novel writing— narrative, let it be about what it will, is read because the mind quietly acquiesces, and it requires no trouble to think about it‖ (v.2. 224). 169 does in fact reflect some historical accuracy. They are thus left to ponder what is fiction and what is not. Once readers acknowledge and accept as provocative that this work does in fact contain elements of historical veracity, they can perceive that the text in fact reaches beyond the fictional world into their own world. In so doing they can appreciate that the novel form is not, nor should it be, a closed form. As Rajan has argued, ―the transcription of the author in the text is a characteristically romantic move: expressive not of the egotistical sublime, but of the text as the unfinished transcription of a subject still in process‖ (149). By including herself within the novel through Mrs. Denzil, Smith makes clear that the text itself is as open and free as she is. Smith‘s essence as an individual cannot be pinned down. Just as she is a person who continues to live on and transform herself, so the novel itself is a form that should be open and free, not confined by antiquated and boring expectations and conventions. Smith reveals that the novel should not merely entertain, but it can, and should, reflect the world outside the text. The inclusion of real political and economic issues within Smith‘s novel not only allows her work to challenge the genre to open itself to the inclusion of concerns beyond the expected formulaic conventions, but to reaffirm the original appeal of the novel as Smith saw it. In the ―Avis Au Lecteur,‖ Smith relates that her ―friend‖ recommends that she adhere to the maxim ―Que rien n‘est beau que le vrai‖ (90). This friend clarifies that he does ―not mean to say that you can adhere to the truth in a book which is avowedly a fiction,‖ but that since hers is a novel concerned with the real French Revolution, ―your imagination, however fertile, can suggest nothing of individual calamity, that has not there been exceeded. Keep therefore as nearly as you can to circumstances you have 170 heard related […] and I am persuaded […] it will have the advantage of bearing such a resemblance to truth as may best become fiction‖ (90). Smith‘s inclusion of this advice recalls the primary draw of the novel in contrast to the romance that preceded it. The novel originally bore a closer ―resemblance to truth.‖ By including examples of ―individual calamity‖—her own calamity as a single mother struggling to take care of her family through hard work—within her ―fictional‖ novel, Smith charges the novel with a sense of pertinence. She makes the novel much more than mere entertainment. Unfortunately, as she has made clear through her critique of the novel both through prefaces and Denzil‘s experiences as a writer, the novel had by the end of the eighteenth century become hackneyed and unrealistic in much the same manner as the romance had by the beginning of the century. Both the format of The Banished Man as well as limitations this novel exposes characterize it as a work critiquing and condemning the conventions of the novel form. But this work also reestablishes the genre as one through which Smith, and others, can comment on and perhaps affect the real world. While Smith‘s perspective as a writer struggling with the novel form may have inspired her to use the writing heroine in The Banished Man to open up the novel to such social influence, Mary Robinson‘s perspective as both author and celebrated actress serves a similar purpose within The Natural Daughter. Concerning the eighteenth- century theater, Lisa Freeman has argued that ―the fictional persona created by a playwright often had to compete with the persona or public reputation of the actor or actress taking part‖ (18). As a former successful actress, Robinson was known to the public as Perdita not only due to her performance in the 1779 staging of Florizel and 171 Perdita, David Garrick‘s 1756 adaptation of Shakespeare‘s The Winter‟s Tale, but also due to the extra-marital affair she engaged in with the Prince of Wales that was inspired by a royal command performance of this play. Thus, Robinson was keenly aware of how public and private reputation overlapped—especially as her reputation as Perdita took on a scandalous connotation. Because the eighteenth-century public was often so preoccupied with the lives of famous actors, the fictional character these actors undertook on stage had to contend with their public reputations, leading eighteenth-century theater critics like Freeman to wonder, ―if an actor‘s name became the sign of a social character type, what became of the actor‘s person and how, in practice, might personal character have contributed to or detracted from the status of the actor or actress as emblem on the stage?‖ (37). In Robinson‘s case, ―the actor‘s person‖ may essentially have disappeared, as did her proper name, once she became known as The Perdita. However, we can further extend Freeman‘s concerns of how personal character may have ―contributed to or detracted from the status‖ of the semi-autobiographical heroine as emblem within her novel once Robinson turns from the stage to the pen. The former actress turned author uses the novel genre not only as an alternative means of financial support, but as another medium through which to perform. In discussing the ‗play of fiction,‘ Emily Anderson argues that the eighteenth-century novel highlights its fictionality in the same way the theater does, offering ―its authors yet another theatrical frame; the fictional text, which announces a discrepancy between its author and the sentiments it conveys, could function as an act of disguise; and authorship could become an act of performance‖ (Eighteenth-Century Authorship and the Play of 172 Fiction 2). While the novel may act as a type of veil whose fictionality separates it from its creator, that very fictionality allows the author a certain amount of freedom to include her own voice while simultaneously disavowing that voice. According to Anderson, it is in this way that the novel can become a performance for her author. In analyzing how Robinson utilizes the ‗play of fiction‘ we can see how she uses her text to take on another role aside from that of The Perdita—this time the faithfully and falsely persecuted Martha Morley. In so doing, Robinsons challenges the restrictions of the conventional feminine novel. Like Smith‘s The Banished Man, Robinson‘s The Natural Daughter subtly defies convention as dictated by the feminine novel. While there is throughout the novel an underlying love plot between Martha Morley and Lord Francis Sherville, this typically ‗feminine‘ plot is overshadowed by the fact that Martha is married off very early in the novel to someone else. In fact, the brief courtship between Mr. Morley and Martha is unconventional as Martha seeks repose in the house of Mr. Morley more for the sake of leaving her father‘s house than for entering into a loving and longed for relationship. 12 Since the primary concern of the feminine novel has been accomplished within the first few chapters, the remainder of the work serves to distance itself from the typical love plot, a plot that in all probability would have been expected from the notorious Perdita. 13 12 As Eleanor Ty has argued, ―the courtship period, which usually takes up most of the novel of sentiment, is brief and understated. Martha, governed more by ‗sentiment‘ than by ‗passion,‘ marries Mr. Morley unceremoniously very early in the novel‖ (75). 13 That Robinson‘s novel audience held certain romantic expectations regarding the former actress‘s prose works is explicit in the sale of her first novel, Vancenza; or, the Dangers of Credulity. Janet Todd asserts that this novel ―sold out on its day of publication [February 2, 1792] primarily because it was suspected to 173 Essentially beginning where most feminine novels end, Robinson‘s novel concerns itself with what comes after the fulfillment of the courtship period. Robinson illustrates through Martha‘s failed marriage and attempts to support herself independently the fallacy not only of the feminine courtship novel (which leads readers into believing marriage the ultimate achievement), but also of the novel as a genre of stability. Freeman has argued that the eighteenth-century novel differs from the theater in that ―while the novel […] worked to resolve or at least to compensate for the semantic conflicts of character, the stage sought to exploit the dissonant effects that emanated from that concept of identity‖ (27). Far from attempting to resolve any ―semantic conflict of character,‖ Robinson‘s novel instead constantly points out the instability of identity. As several critics, including Anne K. Mellor, Morgan Rooney, and Eleanor Ty, have already illustrated, Robinson‘s novel serves to expose the constructedness of (feminine) identity, and, by extension the constructedness of a woman‘s reputation. Rooney, for example, argues that The Natural Daughter suggests ―not only that ‗good‘ women can be duped and cheated out of the safe confines of the eighteenth-century script of femininity, but also that women with unorthodox identities can still be ‗good‘ women‖ (367). While Robinson‘s novel may suggest that identities and reputations, like the author‘s as Perdita, are constructed and therefore deceptive, The Natural Daughter clearly illustrates, and at times even celebrates, the laxity inherent in reputation and identity. Freeman argues that be a roman á clef about her liaison with the Prince‖ (223). If readers approached The Natural Daughter with a similar expectation—as is understandable considering the title of the work—they may have been disappointed in Martha‘s vigorous fidelity to her husband. For a discussion on the implications of the title of The Natural Daughter as well as Robinson‘s use of titles in general within the novel, see Sharon M. Setzer‘s article ―Romancing the Reign of Terror: Sexual Politics in Mary Robinson‘s Natural Daughter,‖ pages 533-536. 174 ―by representing identity as an effect of character, writers for the stage capitalized upon, rather than compensated for, anxieties over the stability of personal and social identity‖ (12). She goes on to assert that ―in contrast to the novel, we will find that the stage offers us a medium in which public exteriors were taken not merely as symptomatic of an interior, but rather as the only basis upon which judgments about character could be formed‖ (27). Rather than contributing to the differences between the eighteenth-century novel and theater, The Natural Daughter shows Robinson taking full advantage of her familiarity with the stage by incorporating the theater‘s power to reveal, and revel in, the instability of reputation and identity as she confronts the conventions of the eighteenth century novel that she finds so limiting. The adversities that Robinson‘s heroine faces after the failure of her marriage, which closely resemble those Robinson endured herself, illustrate the latitude that exists between an individual‘s reputation and her self. At the same time the novel also demonstrates the full importance of this reputation—despite its inherent fallibility—for women. Martha Morley marries a man whose sole goal in life is to be perceived as morally irreproachable: ―The labour of his life was that of obtaining a reputation, which might, when the grave closed upon his efforts, ensure the applause and admiration of posterity‖ (252-253). Because Mr. Morley is so concerned with his reputation, which is also influenced by that of his wife, he becomes infuriated when it appears to him and to others that Martha has given birth to the illegitimate foundling Fanny, whom Martha has discovered and adopted in compassion for both the infant and the infant‘s mother, lady Susan Lovel (a.k.a. Mrs. Sedgley). While Martha‘s benevolence toward Fanny derives 175 from sincere sympathy, Mr. Morley‘s reaction to his wife‘s altruistic actions regarding the foundling are based firmly in his desire for moral reputation. Morley chastises Martha for going to the aide of the sick infant rather than attend church because ―religious duties should never be neglected. The most exalted situation is embellished by the exercise of piety‖ (130). There is obviously a discrepancy between Martha‘s sincere actions and Morley‘s moral pride. While Martha does not concern herself with putting forth the appearance of a pious and religious woman to achieve a moral reputation, she enacts her benevolence. Her husband, however, is much more concerned with the appearance of ―exalted‖ piety rather than the fulfillment of it. It is because Morley concerns himself solely with reputation and appearances rather than looking any further into his wife‘s actions that he believes Martha has given birth to Fanny, falsely accuses her of infidelity, and banishes her from his house. Having been shoved into the world with the (false) reputation of an adulteress, Martha is seemingly faced with the two conventional prospects for the heroine of a feminine novel: she can either become the fallen woman and the adulteress her husband labels her, or she can become a falsely accused innocent heroine who passively awaits vindication. Rather than act on an obvious mutual attraction and accept an enticing offer from lord Francis, Martha intentionally and ardently refrains from acting the part of the conventional fallen heroine. Had she submitted to lord Francis‘s proposition, not only would she have essentially become his ‗kept woman,‘ but she would have become exactly what her husband had accused her of—an adulteress. Martha‘s pride in her virtue, however, proves unwavering when she is faced a second time with the tempting 176 prospect of becoming lord Francis‘s lover: ―Lord Francis … again renewed his offer of protection: but Mrs. Morley‘s pride prevented her accepting it‖ (144-145). Martha not only refrains from traveling the path of the fallen heroine who gives into the seductive lover, but the pride she holds in her virtue and chastity reinforces her persistent refusal of becoming what her husband, and the world, would label her. Martha may not undertake the role of the conventional fallen woman, but neither does she fill the role of the typically passive, innocent heroine. Where Smith‘s novel splits the active and passive heroines into the writing Denzil and the ideal Angelina, Robinson‘s novel brings these types together in the creation of Martha—a heroine who maintains her virtue, but who does not do so passively. Martha refuses to sit idly by and submit to poverty and persecution as an inactive heroine awaiting vindication and rescue. Instead, she acts on her own behalf and she takes pride in her virtue as the chaste heroine of the novel. 14 In her refusal to take the easy way out by becoming what her husband and the world believes her to be, and in her refusal to wait passively for someone else to save her from her fate, Martha undertakes various demanding and laborious careers to support herself, maintain the pride she has in her virtue, and prevent herself from becoming either the fallen woman or the passive heroine. Frequently described as ―proud‖ of mind and heart, Martha bases her pride in having resisted fulfilling the reputation and identity of the conventional fallen woman that is forced upon her. But it is Martha‘s physical action and hard work that enable her to remain faithful to this pride of chastity and virtue. In 14 In comparison with Samuel Richardson‘s famously virtuous heroine Pamela, Martha also seemingly prizes her chastity above all else and suffers to keep her virtue intact. However, while Pamela does write excessively about her virtue in letters and a journal, the action she takes to secure her chastity is purely passive, as illustrated by her frequent fainting spells that seemingly save her from assault. 177 this way, Robinson shifts the active and self-supporting writing woman from the margins of Smith‘s The Banished Man to center stage as heroine of The Natural Daughter. Throughout the novel, Martha endeavors to support herself without any kind of assistance that would jeopardize her virtue by instead pursuing various careers that are presented as both physically grueling and mentally taxing—occupations that directly parallel those Robinson undertook to support herself and her daughter after her own separation from her husband. Initially seeking a living on the stage, Martha faces the rigors of the life of an actress: ―The task was an arduous one; but the high spirit which upheld her under the pressure of unmerited persecutions did not, in this moment of trial, lose any part of its sustaining quality. She knew that the labor of her talents is more honorable than the independence of indolence‖ (178). Like Robinson, Martha enjoys the success of the theater despite the hard work and questionable reputation that comes with being an actress on the eighteenth-century stage. Martha recognizes that her ―labor,‖ whatever difficulty may accompany the endeavor, can provide her with the very ―independence‖ that she could not have acquired had she become lord Francis‘s woman. She may have gained financial support had she submitted to his entreaties, but she never would have gained true ―independence,‖ ―honorable‖ or otherwise. Even if she suffers from the ―unmerited persecutions‖ resulting from the reputation of a strolling actress, she does not submit to the fulfillment of such a reputation. Instead, with the ―high spirit‖ uncharacteristic of a conventionally passive heroine, she embraces the difficult and laborious challenge actively, supports herself financially, and maintains the pride she holds in her virtue through her hard work. 178 In the end, the strain and turmoil Martha experiences in her acting career do not compare with the physical and mental distress she goes on to endure as an author after her stage career comes to a close. Like Smith in The Banished Man, Robinson provides descriptions of the act of writing that reveal it to be a labor of intense strife and physical endurance. Martha‘s association with her own author is enhanced by the parallels between their literary paths, and this is particularly evident in the physical affliction that Martha encounters and which definitively recalls Robinson‘s own well publicized physical ailments that marked the beginning of her career as a novelist. At the age of twenty-five, Robinson had contracted a mysterious illness—the result of impulsively attempting to track down her long-time lover Banastre Tarleton—in a post-chaise in the early morning hours. This illness left Robinson partially paralyzed and significantly damaged the beauty that had characterized her as a successful actress and fashionable trendsetter. It was after suffering this affliction that Robinson turned away from her public life of infamous celebrity and pursued a more cerebral and literary career despite the physical limitations that made the act of writing so difficult. 15 Foreshadowing her own future as a struggling, but proud author, Martha reveals early on in the novel her respect for both the physical and ―mental exertion‖ associated with writing. Martha declares that ―there is no harder labour …. The toils of intellect are more severe than even the miseries of adversity‖ (119). The narrator also describes 15 See Paula Byrne, Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson, 228-229. Byrne explains that early reports seem to indicate Robinson suffered something akin to hypothermia after having exposed herself to the night air while traveling. However, Byrne argues that Robinson‘s symptoms are more in line with rheumatic fever and states that ―at the age of just 25 the woman reputed to be the most beautiful in England was ‗reduced to a state of more than infantine helplessness‘‖ (228). 179 Martha‘s writing as ―incessant labour‖ (208). We learn that in writing a novel from which she hopes to gain the financial means to support herself, she ―had employed her pen, till her health was visibly declining‖ (221). Clarifying the intensity of the act of writing, the narrator goes so far as to inform the reader that ―you will perceive, that of all the occupations which industry can pursue, those of literary toil are the most fatiguing. That which seems to the vacant eye a mere playful amusement, is in reality an Herculean labour‖ (228). Far from the playful amusement of most heroines, the arduous and physical act of writing is for Martha a ―labour‖ that takes its toll on her very body in her quest to prevent herself from becoming the fallen woman the world perceives her to be. Even for the healthy and robust Martha, the corporeal demand stemming from the act of writing leaves her wracked by the intensity of the task, and the reader must be left wondering how such toil could be endured by an invalid such as Robinson. In undertaking the grueling career of an author, Martha‘s body may not undergo the same physical invasion that it would have had she become lord Francis‘s ‗kept woman.‘ Nevertheless she does suffer just as much, if not more, physical exertion as she would have had she become the lord‘s lover. Like Smith‘s Mrs. Denzil, Martha does not take up the cumbersome pen to avoid thinking about the miseries she has undergone, but to save herself from them. While Denzil writes to escape debtors‘ prison and to support her family, Martha writes to support herself and to prevent herself from becoming the fallen heroine the world has cast her as. The physical demands stemming from her literary 180 labor, however, are burdens Martha willingly accepts in her role as an active heroine securing her own ―honorable‖ independence and maintaining the pride she holds in her chastity and fidelity. While Martha‘s literary and theatrical labors are strongly reminiscent of Robinson‘s life, Martha‘s reputation as a fallen woman and adulteress is perhaps the strongest correspondence she shares with her author. Robinson was perhaps most famous for having pursued extramarital affairs not only with the Prince of Wales, but also with several other prominent political and military men. Despite the similarity between their reputations, however, Robinson portrays Martha as a heroine who has the highest regard for her chastity and fidelity to her husband. This heroine consistently resists becoming the fallen woman that Robinson had become as The Perdita. We can thus begin to see Anderson‘s ‗play of fiction‘ at work in Robinson‘s creating a heroine whose life parallels her creator‘s in so many ways, yet whose character is in fact the exact opposite from her own. In this dynamic, Martha becomes a new role for Robinson the author and the actor to undertake in an attempt further to expose the limitations of the novel genre—and especially that of the feminine novel. 16 Freeman has asserted that ―actors and audiences in [the eighteenth century] were interested in drawing attention not so much to the ‗character‘ portrayed as to the portrayal of the character by the actor‖ (34). By refocusing this assessment onto Robinson‘s The Natural Daughter we can reconsider how Robinson incorporates elements of the theater within her novel by creating a 16 Robinson has already challenged the confines of the genre by writing about an unconventional heroine and by setting the plot of her story after the heroine‘s marriage. 181 fictional heroine whose experiences recall her own life even though this fictional heroine‘s persona differs so dramatically from her own. Recalling Rajan‘s theory of autonarration, Ty has argued that ―by including what would have been well-known elements of her own life in her novel, Robinson calls attention to the constructedness of both the fictional and the biographical narratives‖ (80). If Martha‘s fictional story recalls Robinson‘s, as Ty argues, the reader would also still be aware of Robinson‘s notorious reputation as Perdita even as Robinson writes herself into the role of the falsely persecuted heroine. By drawing attention to the fact that Martha-as-stand-in for Robinson is—yet is not—like Robinson in her reputation and her persecution, the novel itself becomes a stage on which Robinson again becomes an actress. This time the author casts herself in the role of the falsely accused and ever faithful Martha. Freeman has argued that ―the stage worked to expose literary character as fiction, questioning the authority with which it was increasingly invested by playing it against other aspects of ‗character‘‖ (27). Eighteenth- century theater-goers based their judgment of the character on stage not only on her actions, but also through the very portrayal of that figure. The audiences‘ judgments were therefore also influenced by the reputation the actress brought with her to the role. Freeman points out that ―eighteenth-century audiences were not only obsessively aware of aspects of an actor‘s or actress‘s personal life. Rather, [...] they were also persistently encouraged to draw associations between those private lives and the roles players played. Audiences, in short, were keenly aware of how public and private ‗character‘ either converged or diverged in performance‖ (39). The audience‘s awareness of Robinson‘s 182 public ‗character‘ as conflicting with the role she takes on as Martha sets up a readily detectable tension within the novel. As the author of The Natural Daughter, Robinson‘s own notorious past, including her various careers as well as her separation from her husband, was well known to her audience. This audience would clearly ally the author with the heroine she creates within the novel. 17 However, while Martha‘s outward reputation may resemble Robinson‘s, the fidelity with which Martha honors her negligent husband could not be further from the reality of Robinson‘s very public affairs. Robinson‘s reputation as an infamous adulteress in juxtaposition to the role she writes herself into as a painfully constant wife creates a ‗play of fiction‘ as elements drawn from real life both blur and contrast with elements within the novel. While Martha‘s adventures as a school teacher, an actress, and a writer—which are all undertakings resulting from her husband‘s having abandoned her—closely resemble Robinson‘s own experiences, Robinson‘s celebrated affairs with the Prince of Wales, Banastre Tarlton, and Charles Fox, to name only a few, create a clear discrepancy between Robinson and the chaste heroine onto whom she writes her life story. This simultaneous similarity and disjunction between Robinson and her fictional stand-in create a powerful sense of discord within the novel—a genre that was supposedly working ―to resolve or at least to compensate for the semantic conflicts of character‖ (Freeman 27). Far from resolving any ―semantic conflicts of character,‖ the 17 Robinson additionally draws several distinct parallels between her own experiences and those of her heroine to solidify the association. Martha‘s failure on stage due to the audience‘s harassment inspired by young Leadenhead closely resembles Robinson‘s failure as a playwright due to a similar attack on her 1794 presentation of Nobody. Two poems Martha writes within the novel are actually poems Robinson published under her own name the same year as The Natural Daughter. 183 element of play within Robinson‘s novel regarding the infamous actor/author‘s blurring her own identity with that of the ever faithful Martha destabilizes any illusion of consistency of character achieved by the novel form. Because Robinson‘s novel audience was well aware of Robinson‘s past, they must have seen Martha Morley as a fictionalized version of Mary Robinson. However, because Robinson brings with her a widely established and publicly acknowledged reputation as an adulteress, the audience cannot but perceive the discord produced by trying to reconcile the scandalous author with her virtuous heroine. While their outward actions and their reputations may be in sync, the character in which Robinson casts Martha as the faithful yet suffering wife is directly opposed to the character that Robinson embodies as the infamous and adulterous actress. Robinson centers Martha‘s pride in the heroine‘s chastity and fidelity to her husband while Robinson almost proudly flaunted her affairs to the public. As a result, the audience cannot but question the truth of Martha‘s character as it is presented in the novel. All of the pride that we perceive Martha to work so hard to maintain through her writing and acting becomes suspect when we see this supposedly chaste heroine portrayed by an infamous adulteress who went through the very same struggles which for her had resulted from infidelity. Once the reader takes into consideration Martha‘s association with and portrayal by the scandalous Perdita, there is an obvious breakdown of any consistency of character within the novel. In taking a cue from the eighteenth-century theater and in participating in Anderson‘s ‗play of fiction,‘ The Natural Daughter questions the authority of literary character within the novel genre by playing it against the ‗character‘ of its own creator. 184 In portraying a heroine so drastically different from the ‗character‘ of her creator while still emphasizing the multiple and undeniable similarities between their situations, actions, and life experiences, The Natural Daughter produces a dissonance of character rather than any stabilization of identity. The novel thereby illustrates the very fictionality of the coherence of literary character in general. In exposing this failure of the novel to produce a clarity of character and identity—the supposed goal of the genre—The Natural Daughter debunks the constrictions of novelistic convention, not to mention the ultra- confining limitations of any feminine sub-genre. In so doing, Robinson‘s work deconstructs novelistic conventions to make the genre a free instrument for authors to use for their own various purposes—as Robinson does when she portrays the reality behind the ―happily ever after‖ of the conventional marriage. But she also reveals the novel to be a more malleable form that has the potential to take on the conventions of various other genres, including the theater and the autobiography, as it becomes that free instrument. By the end of the eighteenth century the conventions of the novel, especially the feminine novel, novel had become so firmly established that both Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson were criticized for incorporating elements of their own lives within their fiction and for deviating from the typical ‗feminine‘ plot. As we have seen, they both expressed, through their works, their frustrations not only with the limitations of the genre, but also with novel readership and the literary marketplace. Robinson makes this latter concern most evident in The Natural Daughter when Martha discovers that the novel she sold to Mr. Index for a meager ten pounds has reached its sixth edition without 185 providing her with any additional financial compensation. 18 Perhaps such pitiful monetary and critical recompense for work they have illustrated as so arduous and physically demanding is why both Smith and Robinson felt ambiguous about their positions as authors. Charlotte Smith complained repeatedly in her letters that she did not come to authorship voluntarily. She claims she was compelled by her family situation ―to live only to write & write only to live‖ (The Collected Letters 23). 19 Similarly, in the dedication to the third edition of Vacenza in 1792, Robinson protests ―I disclaim the title of a Writer of Novels; the species of composition generally known under that denomination, too often conveys a lesson I do not wish to inculcate‖ (qtd. in Setzer 531). Despite the animosity each felt toward her endeavor as novelist, Smith and Robinson both expressed their allegiance to novel writing. Smith asserts in 1802 that ―I am never so well pleased as when I have a good deal of work to do, & my greatest vexation is that the affairs of my family require so much of my attention that I cannot work at my literary business & at that only‖ (The Collected Letters 404). Smith‘s statement is a far cry from protesting that she was only driven to write in order to support her family. Robinson also expressed her regard for her status as a novelist when in 1799, the same year she published The Natural Daughter, she lists herself among the ―Female Literary Characters 18 Setzer conjectures that this episode alludes to the ―popularity of her first novel, Vacenza; or the Dangers of Credulity. In a letter to John Taylor, Robinson complained, ‗My mental labours have failed through the dishonest conduct of my publishers. My works have sold handsomely but the prophets have been theirs‘‖ (n. 243). 19 Smith repeats this sentiment almost verbatim in 1794 when she would have been working on The Banished Man: ―I am likely to stay [in Bath] some time, for I have found the waters of very great service to me in removing that excessive lowness and depression which render‘d me unfit for every thing, & is perhaps the most distressing of all evils to a person situated as I am—who must live to write & write to live—‖ (The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith 113). 186 Living in the Eighteenth Century‖ that she affixed to A Letter to the Women of England. Next to her own name Robinson includes the designation ―Novelist‖ (Robinson 87). That each author felt a great deal of ambiguity toward her relationship with the novel genre is clearly evident. As their reluctance to embrace the term ―novelist‖ so aptly illustrates, they were both obviously drawn to the novel genre at the same time that they felt inhibited by it. Despite their reticence to take on the challenges of bearing the title ―novelist,‖ both Smith and Robinson became fairly prolific prose writers. Smith produced eleven novels between 1788 and 1798 and Robinson produced seven between 1792 and 1799. The constrictions they obviously faced while writing within the genre may have increased the reservations these authors felt for their literary aspirations. Smith and Robinson nevertheless undertook the challenge of writing in this genre despite these limitations—or perhaps even because of them. By writing novels that not only exposed the conventions of the very form that they felt so confining, each author challenged the limitations of the genre‘s conventions. Smith‘s The Banished Man emphasizes the limitations of the hackneyed romance tradition while Robinson‘s The Natural Daughter debunks the novel‘s attempt to solidify character and identity. By intentionally using their works to recall their lived experiences and by consciously incorporating elements from various genres, including the autobiography, the preface, the dialogue, and the theater, these authors sought to reform a genre whose conventions had become too limiting. Perhaps it was their efforts to reform the novel genre through the incorporation of various media and through the exposure of the too constricting novel conventions and expectations 187 within The Banished Man and The Natural Daughter that not only allowed Smith and Robinson to feel a little more at ease with themselves as novel writers and to reclaim this title and the passion to write later in their careers, but also to embrace the genre as one they could use to illustrate their own achievements as industrious, hard working authors and independent women. 188 Conclusion By the end of the eighteenth century the figure of the woman writer was not an uncommon one in England. Janet Todd has estimated that somewhere between three to four hundred women achieved publication during the 1790‘s (218), and Cheryl Turner has pointed to a ―surge‖ in women‘s published prose fiction within this decade (38). If these critics‘ estimations are accurate and if the figure of the woman writer cannot be considered as anomalous in the later eighteenth century, we must consider why the figure of the heroine writer virtually disappears in the novels of the nineteenth century. If writers like Frances Brooke and Charlotte Smith were successfully able to use this figure to achieve brief moments in which they could open up the novel to portray more accurate representations of their own experiences as women and as women writers, then why do we not see her likeness in works by Frances Burney, the ever self-conscious novel writer Jane Austen, or later Victorian novelists? The semi-autobiographical writing heroine may have allowed for such powerful representations of female experience within the eighteenth-century novel, a form that was supposed to be more reflective of reality than previous genres, but she paradoxically becomes effaced as this genre continued to evolve. As I have illustrated in the previous chapters, the heroine writer in the eighteenth century did allow for moments of acute realistic representation for the female novelist. While the feminine novel of the later eighteenth century prescribed a specific type of heroine who participated in a relatively conventional, if generally unrealistic, courtship plot, the semi-autobiographical writing heroine provided her author with the means of 189 smuggling into this novel more accurate and pragmatic representations of life as she experienced it. In this respect, these authors were able to provide brief insights into eighteenth-century feminine concerns that did not strictly revolve around courtship. Instead of using the novel merely to entertain and divert with depictions of unrealistic heroines and improbable situations, their works attempted to reflect more practical and realistic concerns. As we have seen, Frances Brooke‘s depiction of the writing heroine illustrates the absurdity of the dramatics that tended to be depicted in the otherwise boring courtship ritual while she simultaneously emphasizes the very real struggles that the writing woman must endure in working to make her talent recognized, let alone rewarded. Later in the century, both Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson provide heroine writers who portray the not-so-happily-ever-after of marriage; the physical labor these abandoned figures endure illustrates the more mundane, yet probable, concerns of the eighteenth-century woman who may have been duped into a romantic marriage reminiscent of the feminine courtship plot. Rather than being concerned with romantic abductions or idealized notions of being rescued by a prince-charming-like-hero, these figures are more concerned with life-threatening illnesses they have been exposed to or how they can earn enough money to provide themselves with the very basic essentials, like food and shelter. These moments of texture shrouded within otherwise conventional plotlines flesh out the more practical concerns of the author and even her contemporary readers. The texture of such unconventional moments within these seemingly conventional works serves as a conspicuous source of juxtaposition. The more practical interests of the 190 unconventional writing heroine and her author become juxtaposed with the more romanticized conventions of the feminine novel and its typically passive and ideal heroine. For example, in Smith‘s The Banished Man we are faced with the abandoned Mrs. Denzil‘s poverty, concern for her sick neighbors, and ill health as a result of her devotion to supporting her abandoned family by novel writing. Mrs. Denzil‘s situation provides a clear contrast with her passive heroine-daughter who merely awaits a reunion with her lover and lives off of her mother‘s sacrifices as she does so. This kind of juxtaposition between Denzil‘s practical action and her daughter‘s ideal passivity clearly illustrates the lack of reference that the typical feminine plot and its conventions had to the more commonplace concerns of the author and her readers. By highlighting and exposing this lack of relevance in the more traditionally feminine plot lines these authors contributed to the devaluation of this genre—and with it their own texts—from the evolution of the novel. That many female writers of the second half the century desired to participate in the evolution and elevation of the novel genre can be seen in their works as well as their negotiations with publishers. In discussing the close of her second novel, Cecilia (1782), Frances Burney reveals her desire to distance her novel from the formulaic works which filled the circulating libraries: ―if I am made to give up this point, my whole plan is rendered abortive, and the last page of any novel in Mr. Noble‘s circulating library may serve for the last page of mine, since a marriage, a reconciliation, and some sudden expedient for great riches, concludes them all‖ (qtd. in Justice 250 n. 13). Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson also expressed their disdain for circulating libraries, inferior 191 novels, and dilettante authors in works such as Smith‘s The Wanderings of Warwick (1794), The Banished Man (1794), Montalbert (1795), and Marchmont (1796), and Robinson‘s The Natural Daughter (1799). Smith repeatedly ridicules characters who are poor writers. Robinson‘s semi-autobiographical heroine, who resorts to teaching and novel writing to support herself, is disgusted with the prideful and arrogant students in whose futures she disdainfully foresees ―a long list of embryo poetesses, novelists, tragedians, prudes, peeresses, and petticoat philosophers‖ (The Natural Daughter 214). These authors thus sought to distance their works from those more common and formulaically inferior feminine novels found in the circulating libraries as they simultaneously attempted to characterize their own novels as literary texts continuing to raise the novel genre above those other works. 1 But by characterizing other feminine texts as inferior and limited, these authors essentially contributed to the effacement of their own works. Although their works critiqued the conventions of the feminine novel and exposed the genre as limiting, their novels nevertheless participated in this genre. Even if they were able to achieve moments of texture that other novelists failed to portray, these moments were ensconced within the literary conventions they exposed as reductive and invalid to the elevated novel. As the term ―literature‖ became one of discernment, the more common and formulaic novels like those found within the circulating libraries, and the novels of these women along with them, became less appreciated. Clifford Siskin has argued that despite the fact that 1 Betty A. Schellenberg has similarly detailed the way in which many female authors in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries attempted to elevate their own works by purposely naming or denying the novels of their fellow novelists in ―Women Writers and ‗the Great Forgetting,‖ in The Professionalization of Women Writers in Eighteenth-Century Britain. 192 many women were writing and publishing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there was a ―narrowing of the notion of literature in Britain‖: ―a term that had once embraced all kinds of writing came, during this same period of time, to refer more narrowly to only certain texts within certain genres. This means that these acts of narrowing were also acts of gendering; … they took writing out of the ‗hands‘ of women‖ (qtd. in Schellenberg 164). Just as the authors in this study attempted to reform the feminine novel into a genre that could be considered ―literature,‖ they paradoxically exposed the very form within which they were writing as unworthy of this categorization. As time passed and as the concepts both of literature and of separate gendered spheres became more distinct, the works of these female authors fell into relative disfavor. Instead of valuing contributions many female writers may have made to the novel, female novelists of the eighteenth century alternatively became figures of feminine curiosity. Betty A. Schellenberg has, for example, illustrated the way in which nineteenth-century perspectives of eighteenth-century female authors contributed to ―deformations‖ of their characters. She has argued that in emphasizing the eighteenth- century woman writer‘s domestic concerns over her authorship, these ―‗deformations,‘ while elevating their subject and preserving her memory, paradoxically distort the record of an earlier, broader openness to women‘s professional activity‖ (180). Schellenberg concludes that we might ―generalize that this distortion was the effect of reading their career narratives through a presumptive governing framework of gendered separate spheres‖ (180). By using their own novels to illustrate the absurdity and irrelevance of the typical feminine novel, authors like Brooke, Smith, and Robinson may have 193 contributed to this solidifying of the separate spheres. Exposing the typical feminine novel as a form of impractical diversion and entertainment, these authors depict the feminine genre in which their own works were categorized as separate from more pertinent and relevant forms of ―literature.‖ In this respect, the female writer of such novels becomes valued more for her status as a woman than as a woman writer or contributor in the evolution of literature. Perhaps the tendency of later critics and audiences to read eighteenth-century women writers as curiosities of the separate gendered sphere is why we have until recently been unable to appreciate the efforts and contributions of authors like Brooke, Smith, and Robinson and their semi-autobiographical writing heroines in the development of the novel genre. Even if the writing heroine disappeared from sight in later novels, and even if she does not appear in the relatively few works by women writers that managed to find a place in the more refined category of ―literature,‖ we now have the possibility of recovering and appreciating the contributions she allowed her eighteenth-century authors to make. Jane Austen may not have incorporated a writing heroine within her novels, but the moments of texture that such writing heroines brought with them are readily apparent in her novels. While Frances Burney‘s influence on Austen has been repeatedly cited, now we can also appreciate the similar influence an author like Frances Brooke had on this now canonical literary author. Rather than look to the more popular and typically ideal heroine of Evelina as a model for Austen, we can now appreciate Brooke‘s Maria Villiers, who naively falls in love with a rake only to learn that ―it is possible to love twice‖ (150), as a prototype for the impulsive Marianne 194 Dashwood. Miss Dashwood may not be an author, like Maria, but her less-than-ideally- feminine impulsivity and her almost endearingly inappropriate zeal to fall in love with the rakish Willoughby provide the kind of relevant and realistic texture that Brooke‘s writing heroine had years before. Therefore, even if the writing heroine becomes lost in the future of ―literature‖ and the novel, her legacy does not. 195 Bibliography Anderson, Emily Hodgson. ―Autobiographical Interpolations in Maria Edgeworth‘s Harrington.‖ ELH 76.1(Spring 2009): 1-18. - - -. Novels and the Theater, Haywood to Austen. New York: Routledge, 2009. 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Asset Metadata

Creator Fauteux, Laura S. (author)

Core Title Living her narrative: Writing heroines in the eighteenth-century novel

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publication Date 04/12/2011

Defense Date 03/23/2011

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag eighteenth-century autobiography,eighteenth-century women writers,OAI-PMH Harvest,rise of the novel

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Anderson, Emily (committee chair), Schor, Hilary M. (committee chair), Meeker, Natania (committee member)

Creator Email fauteux@usc.edu,fauteux76@hotmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3734

Unique identifier UC1176316

Identifier etd-Fauteux-4330 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-448218 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3734 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Fauteux-4330.pdf

Dmrecord 448218

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Fauteux, Laura S.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu