Joi Jackson and April Swarey
Dr.
Morillo
ENG
563
Annotated
bibliography
9 October 2006
Anti-Pamela; or Feign’d
Innocence Detected
The
Search for Eliza Haywood
There is relatively little
contemporary scholarship on the novel Anti-Pamela alone; therefore, it
was necessary to broaden the scope of our research to include essays, books and
articles written on the personal life and amatory fiction of author Eliza
Haywood. Accounts of Haywood’s life however are obscure, notorious, and up for
debate, as Haywood herself sought to live a life of anonymity. While most critics agree that she was
immensely influential in shaping the novel genre, they discuss Haywood’s work
in a number of ways: as a contribution to feminist theory, as amatory
didacticism, or as literary pornography written for purely commercial
interests. Current criticism also reflects an emerging debate concerning the
inclusion of Haywood’s novels in a lasting canon. Is Haywood an author to be
seriously studied because of a conscious effort to reform feminine subjectivity
within the novel genre, or was she merely as Ros Ballaster asserts, a
“prostitute of the pen, trafficking in desire for profit” (29)? It is our hope that the subsequent research
included here, gathered from the libraries of Duke University, NCSU and
UNC-Chapel Hill, will inspire our
classmates to debate that question further.
Annotated Bibliography
Backscheider, Paula R. “The Shadow of an Author: Eliza
Haywood.” Eighteenth-Century
Fiction Vol. II No. 1-2. Ed. David Blewett and Elaine Riehm. Ontario, Canada:
McMaster University Press,
1998. 79–102.
In this essay, Backscheider challenges popular contemporary
interpretations of Eliza Haywood’s work and life (including those put forth by Richetti and Schofield).
Backscheider obliterates the lies surrounding
Haywood’s personal life, that she was a runaway preacher’s wife. Backscheider states
that little if any is actually known about the real Eliza Haywood, but that she
owned a bookstore and maintained a romantic domestic relationship with a man
named William Hatchett. It is accurately documented that Haywood was a
journalist, playwright, translator, and actress, and that Haywood intentionally
kept her personal life a mystery during the time that she lived, unlike her
cohorts Aphra Behn and Delarivier Manley. Backscheider argues that Haywood is not well received by
scholars because she both overthrows the “author function” and, subsequently,
the canon. Backscheider
points out that many, like Richetti, seek to dismiss
Haywood as an opportunist romance writer who rode the coat tails of male
writers Richardson and Fielding in a literary market that was turning towards
narratives concerning domestic realism and human psychology. Backscheider claims
however that this assertion is impossible because many of Haywood’s supposedly
“mimicking” works precede those of the canonized Richardson and Fielding. Backscheider points
out that Defoe and Haywood were colleagues, highly popular at the same time,
and wrote about similar subjects.
Though, while Defoe’s wayward heroines are able to assimilate back into
society through marriage, Haywood’s worldly women often remain exiled from society
indefinitely. Haywood’s grim endings
provoke the reader to desire to know more about the pessimistic author. Backscheider argues
that often women’s writing is examined as more autobiographical than that of
men, and echoing Armstrong, that in this way women’s bodies have been
“associated with the [women’s] text” (87). However, by intentionally obscuring
her personal history, Haywood turns body politic into an open and multi-faceted
subject. Backscheider
charges that Haywood effectually “identifies herself [both] as author, and
through various narrative personae, with [her] female readers and with the
oppressed lot of [all] womankind” (87).
Thus Backscheider encourages that because
Haywood was so popular and prolific an author in her day, contemporary critics
need to re-examine the work of Haywood and re-examine themselves, in order to
understand why Haywood’s work is so disturbing, and why Richardson and Fielding
are so unanimously, unflinchingly considered “good” authors.
Ballaster, Ros. “The Decline of Amatory
Fiction: Re(de)fining the Female Form.” Seductive
Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction
from 1684 to 1740. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992. 196-211.
In this book chapter, Ros
Ballaster explains the social and literary events
that would have influenced Eliza Haywood’s disappearance from the canon in the
eighteenth century. Women writers of the 1720s were writing for monetary
support and wrote amatory romances because they sold well. The increase in
amorous excitement evolved in an effort to sell yet more books. Three
successful female authors, Aphra Behn,
Delarivier Manley, and Eliza Haywood, emerged as the
“‘fair Triumvirate of Wit’” (199).
Social attitudes began to cool toward such narratives though, as sexual
ideologies reacted to Puritanism and economic fluctuations during the mid to
late eighteenth century. Richardson’s Pamela was
written in reaction to such exotic romances and its immense popularity signaled
the end of public acceptance for amatory fiction. Ballaster
noted that the acceptance of Pamela depended far more on “moral purity”
than on the “probability of plots” (198). Male magazine editors refused to
serialize amatory fiction and Haywood’s earlier novels would soon be edited to
make them palatable to a more sexually conservative public, if they were sold
at all. By the 1820s, Haywood’s work was completely removed from the canon,
generally being labeled as pornography. Surviving amatory fiction was also
removed from public literary discourse, and instead became viewed as a private
indulgence for the lady’s boudoir. After the 1740s, the ideal virtuous female
subject shackled the ability of women authors to explore the possibilities of
female self-representation within novels. Ballaster
notes that a century later, there were more women writing and selling novels,
but they were creating and hiding behind quiet, submissive female subjects. He
argues that it was not due to the efforts of male critics that authors such as Behn and Haywood were excluded from the canon, but rather
to the women who built literary reputations by distancing their work from those
earlier female writers.
Craft-Fairchild, Catherine. “Eliza
Haywood and the Masquerade of Femininity.” Masquerade
and Gender: Disguise and
Female Identity in Eighteenth-Century Fictions by Women.
University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1993. 51-73.
In this book chapter, Catherine Craft-Fairchild
explores the recurring theme of masquerade in Eliza Haywood’s amatory novels,
as a challenge to the established forms of novel subjectivity. Craft-Fairchild
felt Haywood used the convention of masquerade in order to create a distance
between the real identity and the fabricated image that is necessary for the
reformulation of the character’s role. The power of the male gaze is refocused
upon what the female has created and the female fabricator is empowered because
she controls what is perceived to be valuable, instead of being a mere victim
of male voyeurism. Craft-Fairchild
defended the use of established patriarchal roles for women in Haywood’s
novels, explaining that while Haywood was attempting to define new subjectivity
for women, she was still confined within male-dominated, eighteenth-century London. As a result, her
work is “doomed to reproduce the dominant discourse, even as it challenges it”
(65). Craft-Fairchild also reads into Haywood’s refusal to mitigate the many
ambiguities and inconsistencies in her novels as a deliberate attempt to create
disequilibrium which challenged the established order of a society “whose smooth
functioning calls for the elimination of contradictions” (68). What other
critics have viewed as evidence of Haywood’s lack of literary genius,
Craft-Fairchild views as evidence of a conscious attempt to redefine feminine
subjectivity within the novel.
Ingrassia, Catherine. “Eliza Haywood,
Sapphic Desire, and the Practice of Reading.” Lewd &
Notorious. Ed.
Katherine Kittredge. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.
235-257.
Catherine Ingrassia
explores in this book chapter the complexity of desire and offers alternate
readings in six of Eliza Haywood’s amatory novels, written before the
publication of Anti-Pamela. Ingrassia asserts
that Haywood was challenging the accepted patriarchal sexual ideology by
creating female characters engaged in plots that did not culminate in marriage
or motherhood. Rather, Haywood offered specific directions for women to survive
within the limitations of eighteenth-century British male-dominated society by
creating relationships with other women that furthered their emotional and
financial interests. Those female relationships were usually far more
successful than any heterosexual unions found within Haywood’s narratives. Ingrassia cites that as proof that many of the
relationships in Haywood’s novels may be read as lesbian in nature. In that way,
Ingrassia believed Haywood created new female
subjectivity by introducing alternate sexualities into her novels. Ingrassia concedes that those passages regarding female
intimacy were often ambiguous, and could be read as lesbian,
or merely close friendships. As a result, Ingrassia
refers to those relationships as “sapphic,” which she
defines as intimate relationships allowing for, but not assuming sexual
activity. That ambiguity allowed Haywood to write about women exploring desires
and pleasures that were otherwise forbidden in a patriarchal society. The
castigating critics of Haywood in the eighteenth century, most notably Alexander
Pope, read Haywood’s novels as creating dangerous women who rejected the roles
of established society, but Ingrassia reads Haywood’s
women as creating entirely new communities, separate from the narrow confines
of bourgeoisie standards. Ingrassia asserts that
creation of feminine society, or “literary reproduction” by Haywood caused her
work to be viewed as aberrant, but was also influential in the development of
the novel as works that followed hers sought to establish a more sexually
conservative model (251).
Lubey,
Kathleen. “Eliza Haywood’s Amatory Aesthetic.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39.3
(2006): 309-322.
Kathleen Lubey argues
in this article that Haywood did not write about sex and seduction purely for
monetary gain. Lubey also disagrees that Haywood was
in opposition to the patriarchal order, and instead used sex to represent her
world from a feminine perspective as she addressed a primarily female
audience. According to Lubey, Haywood performed a delicate balancing act between
the excitement of sexual images and the restraints of dire consequences if
those images were acted upon for illicit pleasures. Haywood’s objective was to
excite the reader erotically in order to make the reader aware of how powerful
and destructive passionate impulses could be. Lubey
asserts that Haywood offered her readers, who were primarily women with
narrowly confined lives, the opportunity to learn how to manage passion from
the mistakes of fictional characters. In that sense her amatory fiction was
didactic and meaningful. Lubey’s argument gains
credibility as she introduces quotes from Haywood defending herself, describing
the purpose of her novels as instructive. Critics like Joseph Addison were
concerned that Haywood’s work would incite women to dwell on the erotic and
engage in masturbation. Haywood’s response to detractors like Addison was that “love is
neither virtue nor vice,” but rather intensifies those passions in residence,
revealing the subject’s “true nature” (312).
Richetti, John. “Histories by Eliza Haywood
and Henry Fielding.” The
Passionate Fictions of
Eliza Haywood. Ed. Rebecca P. Bocchicchio and Kirsten T. Saxton. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000. 240-258
In this essay, Richetti examines Haywood’s later literary works, with
little attention to the novel Anti-Pamela. Richetti argues
that while attention to sensational sexual exploits are distinctly “Haywoodian,” her later attention to didactic, domestic
realism and subsequent exploration into the psychology of human nature are
simply pantomimes to Fielding and Richardson.
He charges that in her later works, Haywood did not successfully
synthesize the modes of romantic and didactic despite her efforts, and that
this merge would be later realized in the work of Jane Austen. Richetti observes
that Haywood abandoned the scandalous, romantic novel out of economic
necessity; she had to keep up with the changing market. Richetti
calls Anti-Pamela “an amusingly vicious attack
on Richardson’s book,” featuring “Syrena,
a clever and amoral reversal of his priggish paragon” (243). However, he does not examine this text any
further or pay any critical attention to Haywood’s earlier romantic works. Richetti is more
concerned with detailing Haywood’s later attention to realistic historical
settings as an improvement from her earlier a-historical romances and a
reflection of her alignment with Fielding. He claims that Haywood’s work would
remain formulaic and transparent. However, he does acknowledge, like Schofield,
that Haywood did have a distinctly feminist slant.
Schofield, Mary Anne. Eliza Haywood. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall & Company,
1985.
In this book, Schofield
constructs a complete overview of the life and works of Eliza Haywood, and
provides the reader with an interpretive lens on how to contextually approach
Haywood’s work given the time period in which she was writing. This text includes a complete timeline of
Haywood’s life and publications, and detailed summaries on each of Haywood’s
literary publications, organized by the period/phase in which Haywood was
writing. Schofield’s discussion includes
Anti-Pamela. Schofield indicates
that Haywood married at seventeen to a Reverend fifteen years her senior, would
later abandon her husband and alone began a career in London as an actress, playwright,
novelist, translator and editor; Haywood was a prolific writer because of
financial need. Schofield asserts that Haywood, like her heroines, was
determined to live her life outside of the patriarchal confines of her
society. Haywood was subsequently
punished for her scandalous comportment by Alexander Pope who, in his novel The
Dunciad, defamed Haywood as a low-class hack
in 1729. Haywood, previously able to
sell her novels on her name alone, went into a nearly ten year period of relative
inactivity, when she resurfaced it was with more didactic domestic novels. Haywood’s name was now removed from the cover
pages; she assumed a pen name and in some publications concealed her gender. Anti-Pamela
was written in this later period; it would be her last scandalous novel. Anti-Pamela
was Haywood’s first feat as a printer; she opened her own printer business in
1741. Schofield argues that Haywood is a feminist writer who engages in what
Schofield calls “double-speak.” While superficially Haywood’s books can be read
as sensational romances, close reading reveals the struggles of female
protagonists trapped by the bonds of a patriarchal society where women are
viewed only as sexual objects for men. Haywood’s heroines try to attain agency
by manipulating male-constructed stereotypes of femininity. In Haywood’s earlier works this battle ends
in exile or death. In Anti-Pamela,
Schofield charges that Syrena’s complete prostitution
“to man’s notion of woman” causes her to loose possession of herself and that
she is “fatally enslaved” (85). Schofield encourages the reader to see the
social entrapment and subsequent economic neediness of Haywood’s heroines as a
reflection of Haywood’s life and career.