Fantomina

Plot summary

The story opens in a Playhouse in London where the unnamed main character, intrigued by the men at the theater and the attention they pay to the prostitutes there, decides to pretend being a prostitute herself. Disguised, she especially enjoys talking with Beauplaisir, whom she has encountered before, though previously constrained by her social status's formalities. He, not recognizing her, and believing her favors to be for sale, asks to meet her. She demurs and puts him off until the next evening.

In preparation, she rents lodgings and then meets him at the theater the following night. They go to the house and have dinner. Meanwhile the protagonist realizes that Beauplaisir wants to have sex and she tries to resist him and telling him being a virgin, but he is too aroused and does not listen to her protests, and rapes her.

Afterwards, she is despondent and rejects his money, which confuses Beauplaisir, who did not believe her protestations being serious. Worried about her reputation, she gives her name as "Fantomina".

Soon, however, Beauplaisir tires of her and leaves for Bath. Though she continues to employ the ruse of "Fantomina" throughout the story, the protagonist drops this alias for a short time to pursue Beauplaisir to Bath. Dressed as a country maid, she obtains employment at the inn where he is staying, taking the name Celia. When Beauplaisir sees her, he believes her to be a new maid, and makes romantic overtures. The protagonist plots this encounter carefully and Beauplaisir's every reaction is drawn from him by her manipulation, but the lover believes he has ravished her in spite of some protest on her part. He gives her some money in recompense.

He leaves Bath after about a month, tired of Celia. On his way home, he encounters Mrs. Bloomer, who is the protagonist dressed as a widow, and invites her into his carriage. Her grief prompts him to try to raise her spirits, which results in them having sex in an inn along the way.

When this identity again begins to lose favor with him, the heroine sends Beauplaisir a letter, signed "Incognita," declaring her undying love and passion for him. She writes there is nothing she will refuse him, except the sight of her face. They meet and she, wearing a mask, agrees to sleep with him in the dark. Beauplaisir keeps up each of these affairs, never realizing they are the same woman. The protagonist becomes pregnant and after she gives birth her mother insists she name the father. When Beauplaisir arrives, he does not know who she is until she tells her story in full. At the end, her mother sends her to live in a monastery in France.

Major Themes

Fantomina explores a variety of themes, almost none of which come without literary dispute and controversy. Its unnamed protagonist's game of disguise touches on everything from gender roles, to identity, to sexual desire. Even more so, her inability or unwillingness to seduce Beauplaisir as her true self, heavily implied as a product of a respected social status, also touches on the issue of class in 18th century British society.

Gender

One of the most sweeping themes throughout Fantomina is gender, and its role in shaping the dynamics between Fantomina, Beauplaisir, and the different sects of societies they find themselves in. There are clear challenges to gender normative behavior Haywood is making throughout the story, while also portraying an honest depiction of the disparity between male and female social standings. Fantomina manipulates the constraints put on her because of her gender to satisfy her desire for sex, already thought to be an inherently masculine desire to have. In fact, she manipulates Beauplaisir so successfully that he is made to be a bit of a fool and is easily seduced. This sharply contrasts the wits that are necessary to fool him, which Fantomina demonstrates. Clearly this challenges the notion that women are intellectually or sexually subdued.

But, given the fact that Beaplaisir escapes the end of the novella unaffected, irresponsible for the consequences of his affairs, Haywood hits readers with a dose of reality regarding gender inequalities. Despite the fact that men are easily manipulated, sexually promiscuous, predictable and even foolish, as Haywood seems to argue, they are still regarded as the superior gender.

Class

Fantomina's economic and social standing is portrayed in an interesting light, because her privilege seems to be more of a constraint on her than it is a benefit. This critiques the standards placed on women especially, coming from an elite background. She feels more comfortable coming forward with her sexuality in disguise at a brothel than she would at a party with her fellow middle-class men and women. Lowering her class, where there is less concern over a high-society marriage opportunity, and virginity is less of a critical concern, lots her the freedom she wants.

However, there is never an interaction between separate classes throughout the novella, rather a constant shifting throughout them. So, Fantomina enjoys all of the "benefits" of coming from a lower class, without having to endure the actual economic constraints.

Desire

Especially at the time of its publication, a woman's sexual desire was thought to be muted, even nonexistent. Sexual pursuits of any kind were thought to be a man's game, left for a woman to indulge or deny. Fantomina so obviously challenges the standing ideas of what desire looks like and who it can come from. Beauplaisir can be quite forward and open with his desire for whomever Fantomina is impersonating. And while her desires have to be publicly subdued throughout the story, she is the one orchestrating their sexual encounters.

Genre and style

Haywood's story "radically rewrites" the typical "persecuted maiden" story of the early eighteenth century. The heroine is introduced as "A young lady of distinguished Birth, Beauty, Wit, and Spirit" visiting London from the country, who is "young, a Stranger to the World, and consequently to the Dangers of it; and having no Body in Town, at that Time, to whom she was oblig’d to be accountable for her Actions, did in every Thing as her Inclinations or Humour render’d most agreeable to her". The reader thus expects the heroine to be seduced and reach a tragic end; such stories often taught readers about the dangers of "vulnerability, willfulness, and lack of guidance". In Fantomina, however, the heroine does not die nor is she disgraced (the typical endings). Instead, Haywood uses the disguise, wit, and sexual freedom common to Restoration comedies to show the similarities between the two genres, one tragic and the other comic. While Fantomina falls for Beauplaisir, like other maidens, she is also a heroine with an explicit sexual desire. As critic Margaret Croskery writes, Haywood "refuses to define female sexual virtue in terms of chastity or a victimized sexual objecthood…. Instead, she defines virtuous love in terms of sincerity and constancy".

Fantomina's ending, neither true to the "persecuted maiden" genre nor true to the marriages of Restoration comedies, is ambiguous. This would have shocked its readers. As one editor of the text writes, "where the traditional moral might be expected, this story ends with a casual delight in 'an Intrigue, which, considering the Time it lasted, was as full of Variety as any, perhaps, that many Ages has produced'".

Fantomina also draws from the culture of the political pornography of the seventeenth century, which unflatteringly portrayed London commoners as the source of democratic unrest and protest. In the 1720s, Robert Walpole was attempting to limit the franchise in London. However, the political pornography of this time reversed the typical structure of these stories by portraying him as the villainous seducer and London as the "violated maiden". Like these stories, Fantomina's heroine "ultimately triumph[s] over those who would self-servingly exploit the favors of London's commons”.

Celia

This is the second identity that the protagonist uses. Beauplaisir moves to Bath, the protagonist follows him, and takes on the identity of a country girl working as a maid. There, she seduces Beauplaisir without him realizing being persuaded. Soon, Beauplaisir gets tired of Celia, and leaves.

Incognita

The protagonist's final identity, used by her to captivate Beauplaisir anew. Incognita sends Beauplaisir a letter promising an ardent lover if he can accept the condition of her not revealing her true name or face. She keeps her mysterious air by wearing a mask and meeting with him only in the dark. The protagonist does not receive the opportunity to fully play out this identity's trick before her enterprise come to an end with the return of her mother.

Beauplaisir

He is an aristocratic male enticed multiple times into a sexual relationship with the same woman wearing different disguises. Though he knows the protagonist, he does not recognize her in any of her false identities. Due to the sexual nation of their relationship, Beauplaisir gets that woman pregnant, unknowingly, and the truth is revealed to him through the protagonist's mother. At first he promises to look after the child, but then, by the mother's choice, is "ensued from these Civilities" and leaves the infant with her.

Publication and reception

Fantomina was first published in 1725 in the second edition of Haywood’s collected works, which was entitled Secret Histories, Novels, and Poems. Although Haywood was a popular writer at the time, few of her works were republished between the eighteenth century and 1963. The reasons for this have to do with gender, "the bias against didactic and popular literature, ... Haywood’s complicated experiments with genre", and the way that the history of the novel has been told in literary studies. However, since the rise of feminist literary criticism, Haywood's works and those of other early eighteenth-century female novelists have received attention from scholars and Fantomina has appeared in several anthologies since the 1980s.