Happy New Year! Wanted to start the year with posting an essay. I hope you enjoy. 🙂
Women have generally been oppressed throughout the centuries in Western societies pre-twenty-first century, especially if they are within a society based on a hierarchy of class. The novel initially arose as a genre in the eighteenth century with authors using the novels to find ways to critique those they couldn’t do in normal conversations, especially for women within a patriarchal society that’s dominated by class hierarchy values. The middle-class authors started to write books that held critique of the social classes and gender. Love in Excess, Or, The Fatal Enquiry by Eliza Haywood contributed to the rise and formation of the novel as a genre by using the novel as a way to critique the upper-class and gender roles by utilizing her characters and their descriptions of desire and sexuality in order to display their interactions with one another based on class and gender.
Women have been oppressed by males for centuries (with notable exceptions), but with the rise of the novel, there was a rise in women’s status. Writing novels and having them published in a male dominated publishing world was a start for women’s voices to be heard. “In the eighteenth century it was an important medium for the articulation of women’s concerns, and its rise was centrally bound up with the growth of a female literary voice acceptable within patriarchal society” (Spencer, ix). By having the protagonist be D’elmont, a male, it may have caused people to accept Love in Excess more than if the protagonist was a woman considering what D’elmont gets up to within the novel. Eliza Haywood was still working within a patriarchal society and played to the social part of having a male protagonist to be featured in a romance to also capture the attention of women readers. These issues addresses the discrepancy of the class structure and genders. By writing a novel, the female author can write and publish critiques without it looking like a critique. Jane Spencer in her essay The Rise of the Women Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jan Austin, sheobserves, “In some of her [Haywood] works…she used a popular but greatly-scorned form, scandal about public figures disguised as fiction” (Spencer, 9). Women now had the chance to critique without directly critiquing a person, and it was essentially a step forward for writers in that they could use their work to voice their concern and critiques in the form of fiction without direct consequences, especially if they could be written anonymously. Women would not be directly going against the ideology of the male dominant patriarchal society they lived in, but still had the ability to write their views and opinions within their novel, which often resulted in domestic fiction such as Haywood’s Love in Excess. Considering that the novel had a reputation to have women writers at the time of Love in Excess’s publication, it helped create a unique function for the novel, especially those concentrated in domestic fiction. Nancy Armstrong states in her essay Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel:
Domestic fiction mapped out a new domain of discourse as it invested common forms of social behavior with the emotional values of women….In this way, domestic fiction could represent an alternative form of political power without appearing to contest the distribution of power that it represented as historically given (29).
The rise of domestic fiction helped the novel’s rise as a genre because more women were writing novels as they could gain an alternative form of political power without directly appearing to challenge the status quo of the patriarchal society. Giving women more political power with critique found within the novel, allowed Haywood to critique desire and sexuality especially within terms of class and gender. Armstrong later goes to state in her essay that: “[the novel] developed sophisticated strategies for transforming political information into any one of several recognizable psychological conditions, and it did so in a way that concealed the power exercised by discourse itself in carrying out this transformation on a mass scale” (36). Women now have a way to exercise their power within a patriarchal society that is still trying to continually oppress them. Haywood’s description of desire and sexuality of males and females held a critique of social class, although mostly that of the upper-class. The upper side of English aristocracy didn’t have the best of reputation as they tended to be frivolous and indulged in pleasure instead of virtue, and the novel exemplified that. According to Armstrong: “The novel had a reputation for displaying not only the seamy undersides of English political life, but also sexual behavior of a semi-pornographic nature” (96). The novel with its steamy examples of the sexuality and desire displayed in English political life revealed the aristocracy’s tendency to indulge in sexual relations without a care of virtue. The indulgence and frivolousness of the upper-class who only seek to please themselves without thinking of the consequences is often seen with D’elmont through half of Haywood’s novel.
The interactions between D’elmont and several different females showed a critique of class based between genders as each women were of different types of personality in different stations in life. First is his interaction with Amena, then with Aloisa, and lastly Melliora. First was the interactions between Delmont and Amena. Both of them are of the upper-class, but their genders set them apart. D’elmont was lustful towards Amena and was not serious in wanting to pursue a courtship with her, which was contrary to Amena who had feelings for D’elmont and wanted to be with him and saw him as a perspective husband. Amena was still under the dominion of her father, as she was single and not yet married. As Spencer states: “A single woman was considered in law to have her own separate existence, but she was supposed to be under her father’s authority” (12). Therefore, if she and D’elmont were to be together, they would need her father’s permission in order to be married. Amena disregarded her virtue in pursuit of chasing her passion even though indulging in pre-marital, unchaperoned intimacy without a marriage proposal would result in Amena’s reputation being destroyed. Amena and D’elmont went along with their plan anyway to meet in the Tuilleries. “[Amena’s father to her] ‘Could neither the considerations of the honour of your family, your own reputation, nor my eternal repose, deter you from such imprudent actions, as you cannot be ignorant must be the inevitable ruin of ‘em all….nor has the most private of your shameful meetings escaped my ears!’” (Haywood 48). Despite D’elmont not wanting to marry her, he continued to meet with her unchaperoned at night, which essentially ruined Amena’s reputation, and showed a critique of an upper-class male towards even another upper-class woman that he didn’t care much for her reputation, but rather sought his own pleasure even if it ruined hers. Considering that only Amena’s reputation would be destroyed and not D’elmont, it also implied that males, especially those of high social status, were free to do what they want without much consequence to themselves. D’elmont not taking responsibility for what his actions caused Amena was a critique by Haywood in showing that males had more freedom than females to display their sexuality without the consequence of a destroyed reputation.
Second, there were D’elmont and Alovysa. D’elmont wanted to be with Alovysa based on her lineage because his ambition to gain status and wealth overwhelmed him. His marriage with Alovysa was built on commerce and status, and much less to do with love on his part, even though Alovysa was completely in love with him. His disdain for Alovysa continued to grow as she became an obstacle in order for him to be with the one he loves. D’elmont goes as far as to trying to later pin the situation with Amena onto Alovysa: “Alovysa for whom he never had any thing more than an indifferency, now began to seem distasteful to his fancy, he looked on her, as indeed she was, the chief author of Amena’s misfortunes, and abhorred her for that infidelity” (90). Haywood showed within her novel that a male, especially an upper-class male, need not take the blame onto himself, but divert it elsewhere and not take responsibility for himself to clear his own conscience. D’elmont essentially denies his own actions in regarding Amena’s reputation and throws it upon Alovysa who by then he greatly despises.
Lastly, D’elmont falls in love with Melliora after he meets with her and has taken her under his care. Although, taking her under his care only leads to him desiring her more and with more opportunity to convince her of his desire for her. D’elmont tried multiple times to get Melliora to give into his wiles even going as far as accosting her, and plotting to rape her, but she continued to resist or someone else plotted against him, thwarting his own plot to get Melliora. D’elmont got a taste of his own medicine when he’s tricked by Melantha, and it’s now he who feels violated as Melliora had been. “Melantha he always dispised, but now detested, for the trick she had put upon him” (Haywood 146). D’elmont is now feeling partly of how Melliora felt after being accosted by him. Haywood could’ve been critiquing that eventually a person who has done bad things will have bad things done back onto them – karma. D’elmont was tricked into having sex with Melantha when originally, he tried to trick Melliora into being put into a position for him to rape her, and now D’elmont knows what it’s like to have a trick played onto him.
Throughout Love in Excess, D’elmont slowly started to change as he was influenced by his love for Melliora, essentially becoming more conscientious of his actions and their effect on the women who falls in love with him. D’elmont reflects about his new aim in life after Melliora leaves him to go back to the covenant, “Ambition, once his darling passion, was now wholly extinguished in him by these misfortunes, and he no longer thought of making a figure in the world (Haywood 163-164). D’elmont learns that ambition isn’t everything as his marriage to Alovysa turns disastrous and is in his way of a relationship between himself and Melliora. D’elmont loses his passion for advancing himself through ambition because his love for Melliora is now his only passion, and despite the many attempts of women in Italy to change his attention to them, he refuses: “In fine, he shunned as much as possible all conversation with the men, or correspondence with the women; returning all their billet-deux of which scarce a day past, without his receiving some, unanswered” (Haywood 166). D’elmont was now wholly dedicating himself to his love for Melliora. Only by a virtuous love did D’elmont find it in himself to think that his actions have consequences for both him and others. It was through Melliora being in his life, then out of it for a while, that D’elmont became a man more conscientious of his attitude and actions toward people, and that his actions have consequences. “‘What will become of me,’ said she [Melliora] to her self, ‘what is it I am about to do? Shall I forgoe my honour – quit my virtue – sully my yet unspotted name with endless infamy – and yield my soul to sin, to shame, and horror?’” (Haywood 155). Melliora is debating on her virtue and honor, which have been important to her throughout the novel. The emphasis on the importance of virtue and honor for a woman could indicate a prelude to the upcoming conduct, novel books that became highly popular later in the upcoming eighteenth century as virtue was becoming more highly valued within the theme of novels. D’elmont is learning virtue through the influence of Melliora who desperately tries to sustain her virtues, despite the attacks on by D’elmont.
By analyzing D’elmont’s interactions with different women, it addressed the issues of discrepancy of the class structure and gender – mostly that of a male’s freedom in desire and sexuality as compared with a female’s freedom in displaying their desire and sexuality in a class governed by the sake of reputation and virtue. Love in Excess showed a uniqueness of having several different classes of women, each with their own qualities. The novel allowed a critique of social behavior of how an upper-class male has treated different classes of women whether they be upper-class, middle-class, or lower class in a social class hierarchy structure. The novel was written in third-person point of view following a male protagonist who has several women pining after him, but in the end, he goes for the most modest and beautiful of them all. Epistolary writing is seen through letters of correspondence and often helps to move the plot along in Love in Excess. All of this combined showed a beginning trend of the rise of the novel which dealt with epistolary writings with a general plot where the most virtuous woman ends up with the dashing and powerful male figure who has spent a good amount of time chasing after them trying to make them their own. The form of the novel to critique, especially of the upper-class, to teach what kind of female would be the one to receive rewards at the end by how they acted and kept to their virtue, became popular with the masses, which led to the rise and popularity of the novel.
Work Cited
Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987. Print.
Haywood, Eliza. Love in Excess, Or, the Fatal Enquiry. Ed. Oakleaf, David. 2nd ed. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2000. Print.
Spencer, Jane. The Rise of the Women Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austin. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Print.
Inquisitive Muse 