Eliza Haywood writes the cautionary tale Fantomina in order to instruct women against pursuing their sexual desires. The protagonist, an unnamed “Lady of distinguished Birth” (41), secretly pursued her desires for Beauplaisir under the guise of four different personas, ultimately leading to the ruin of her reputation and being sent to live in a monastery. I will refer to the main character when she is not disguised as the protagonist to avoid confusion. I will be discussing female sexuality, where I will be focussing on certain aspects including sexual identity, sexual behaviour, and how social and religious aspects affect this sexuality. I will argue that Haywood uses the cautionary tale in order to represent female sexuality as distinguishable …show more content…
That is, not only does her mother arrive in town, putting a stop to her schemes, but also the protagonist’s natural biological body disrupts her plans through pregnancy. Indeed, John Richetti argues that: “The early eighteenth-century amatory novella…out one part of the antithesis I am working with: …the heroines are visited by overwhelming and ineffable…passion, obsessions that preclude self-examination and make a mockery of agency and self-consciousness” (336-337) in his essay “Ideas and Voices: The New Novel in Eighteenth-Century England.” The “Shock of Nature” (69), of labour, starts while she is still in town and under her mother’s dominion. The protagonist’s mother is a “severely virtuous” (68) lady, and upon finding her daughter ill, feels “Pity and Tenderness” (69), which is then “succeeded by an adequate Shame and Indignation” (69). Her mother hears Beauplaisir’s story after finding out the truth of her daughter’s schemes. She plans to have her daughter and Beauplaisir marry, to save her daughter from dishonour, but he knows nothing. Rather, the mother sends her daughter to a monastery in France. The ending is interesting because it could mean a return to a Sapphic environment, as Catherine Ingrassa explains in her essay “‘Queering’ Eliza Haywood,” “Fantomina” herself retires to a convent at the end of the text, a strategic (re) turn to a feminocentric community which, Valerie Traub reminds us, may be one of ‘independence and intimacy’ as well as potentially ‘a site for erotic contact’”
Anne McClintock wrote her essay “Gonad the Barbarian and the Venus Flytrap: Portraying the female and male orgasm” to examine pornography and how it has changed throughout history and its effects on how women perform as sexual beings. McClintock focuses on the various roles of pornography such as its emphasis on voyeurism, pleasure, and the male ego. She wants her readers to know that women are still not represented in pornography to satisfy their own desires, but they are there to cater to men and their subconscious. I will analyze how McClintock argues that due to the history of sexism towards women, the roles that men and women have in pornography are inherently different because of the societal belief that women are only seen as objects of sexual desire and are solely there to satisfy the male audience.
It could be considered that at first look, Merry Wiesner-Hanks investigates an alternative view of the early modern world in terms of the history behind Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World. Wiesner-Hank’s viewpoint moves on from her earlier studies in women and gender in Europe and instead investigates Latin America, Asia, Africa and North America within her renaissance studies of “how Christian ideas and institutions shaped sexual attitudes and activities from roughly 1500-1750”. This in depth examination of the concept of sexuality and the way that it is underpinned by religious life and institutions is divided into six chapters. Her chapters explore the context of sexuality within history, including women’s history, legal
The title of the book “Virgins” communicates more than the first sexual act. It depicts the inability to make personal decisions without basing off other people’s opinions and beliefs. The story is an analysis of the progression of two females and their interaction with men. Though different, each girl has a different perception of sexual anatomy and hence Evans is able to communicate his message that virginity or sexuality is something that is a sole decision of someone despite whether they have had vaginal sex or not. Throughout the story, Erica is unsure with men.
Within the past year, the treatment and perceptions of women have been challenged due to the various marches and movements. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romance, The Scarlet Letter, presents how women were viewed in a Puritan society, falling into a rigid dichotomy of either being the “saint” or “sinner.” This is otherwise known as the “Madonna/Whore complex,” which is explored through the life of the novel’s protagonist, Hyster Prynne. Her struggles and experiences through this dichotomy ultimately affect her both physically and emotionally as it represses her femininity.
Ann Woodlief, the author of the biography of “Anne Bradstreet” states “Anne was viewed as an intriguingly feminist writer, merging her sometimes overtly sexual imagery with the concepts of both her love for God and for her husband and family” (Woodlief 2015). This eventually led to a more in depth examination of her writings by feminist critics “in the mid-20th century” of her individualist take on more traditional
To develop the setting of the house, Gilman uses vivid diction to craft an image of the house to show how men a imprisoning the minds of women in Victorian society. Gilman introduces the house as a “colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity” (1066). Although her description uses the words “romantic felicity” which seem to carry a light tone, these words are preceded by the dark statement that the estate is a “haunted house”. By contrasting these two tones, Gilman foreshadows that the house in which the narrator is interned for treatment might seem magnificent and grand, but in reality, the house and the rest cure will turn out to be her doom. The foreshadowing hints that Gilman uses the contrasting description of the house to point out how physicians like John are oppressing women by denying them their right to a postpartum experience with their baby, a thing of “romantic felicity,” and instead, turning it into an ordeal as nightmarish as a “haunted house.”
Other readings have discussed the history of sexuality—A history of Latina/o Sexualities. Throughout history, women were supposed to be passive. Women were there to please the man and ofter were viewed as the inferior. Sex was viewed as something that was essential only for reproduction; it was only to be pleasurable during a marriage and through very strict guidelines set by the church. This is still an influential way which women are being treated today.
As a matter of fact most frequently critics have looked at how prejudicial her mother’s philosophies have been for our character, and attributed to Editha Mowbray the “fallness” of her daughter. In her essay “The return of the prodigal daughter” Joanne Tong contemplates how “Mrs. Mowbray pays too little rather than too much attention to her daughter” (2004: 475) the outcome of which is a misunderstanding of her position in society with regards to the strict laws of etiquette and feminine ideology in eighteenth century England. Cecily E. Hill also blames Editha for Adeline and Glenmurray’s extramarital affair and their inevitable moral condemnation, and instead of accusing the lovers she sees Editha as the soul villain of the novel. Contrary to the typical concept of a mother who provides a safe education to Adeline, she experiments with dubious theories that ultimately foreground her daughter’s tragic
Inside and beyond the myth and the social impact of the subject as One or Substance. Alan H. Goldman’s essay ‘Plain Sex’ is a central contribution to the academic debate about sex within the analytic area, which has been developing since the second half of the ‘90s in Western countries. Goldman’s purpose is encouraging debate on the concept of sex without moral, social and cultural implications or superstitious superstructures. He attempts to define “sexual desire” and “sexual activity” in its simplest terms, by discovering the common factor of all sexual events, i.e. “the desire for physical contact with another person’s body and for the pleasure which such contact produces; sexual activity is activity which tends to fulfill such desire of the agent” (Goldman, A., 1977, p 40).
He places her in the nursery of the colonial mansion, despite her requests to be placed otherwise, “I don 't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs... but John would not hear of it” (Gilman, 2). The narrator’s husband dictates all aspects of her life to the point where she internalizes her husband 's authority, accepting his dominance over her, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad,” (Gilman, 2). Even though the narrator knows what she needs is to be active surrounded by people instead of cooped up alone in a house out in the countryside, she abruptly stops her train of thought as she remembers John’s instructions to not think about her condition.
It may skew her thinking and at times be subjective. The intended audience is someone who is studying literature and interested in how women are portrayed in novels in the 19th century. The organization of the article allows anyone to be capable of reading it.
Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina; or, Love in a Maze is about unnamed young woman who changes her identity multiple times in order to maintain a relationship with the man she loves. Her high standing social class does not allow her to freely communicate with men. This issue prompts her to disguise herself as prostitute for the chance to be with Beauplaisir. The restrictions set by society heighten her curiosity and desire for love—it becomes her biggest yearning. The extreme measures this woman takes throughout the story demonstrates how society made finding a sensual relationship extremely difficult, if not impossible, for high classed women during the eighteenth century.
Shakespeare's Othello is set during the Renaissance period and therefore the roles of the women in Othello are supposedly bounded by the period when women are considered to be of low intellect. In Othello, most male characters assume that women are inherently promiscuous, which explains why all three women characters in the play are accused of sexual infidelity. Yet Shakespeare develops the women to speak the most sense throughout the play and able to trust other characters in the play. To the men in Othello, female sexuality is a threatening force more than it is an attractive one.
In the novel Dracula, Bram Stoker highlights the theme of sexuality that challenge ideas of sex to both the female and male characters. The author objectifies the female characters in the novel to be over sexualized and portrays sex to empower women. Stoker may present the theme of female sexuality; however, he demonstrates gender inequality triumphs at the end leaving women in the shadows again. Women in the eighteenth century hardly had any type of power outside of overseeing the household and they probably contained much less power expressing any type of sexual emotions. Stoker’s novel gives readers a different perspective of the female sexuality as if almost empowering women and stating that they too can be sexual creatures like men.
Rosemarie Morgan thinks that continuous censure, criticism and frustration is precisely what increased his sympathy towards women who were coerced to conform to the men 's world (Morgan, 2006, p.15). This chapter of the paper makes an attempt to discuss the importance and the influence that the society with its prejudices had on the portrayal of women in the novel, with special focus on the protagonist Tess of the d 'Urbervilles. Social influences and prejudices include the oppression that Tess receives from her family, the church 's denial of a proper burial for her baby, and the society 's judgments on being a mother of an illegitimate child. The second one is gender restraints, illustrated through male