幻想和現實的衝突：夏綠蒂．萊諾克斯《女吉訶德》中的女性閱讀、權力和婚姻

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(1)⊕ 國立中山大學外國語文學系研究所碩士論文 A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE INSTITUTE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE NATIONAL SUN YAT-SEN UNIVERSITY. 幻想和現實的衝突：夏綠蒂．萊諾克斯《女吉訶德》中的女性閱讀、權力和婚姻 Yearning for Significance in an Insignificant World: Women’s Reading, Power, and Marriage in Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote 研究生：李家暐撰 By: Chia-wei Lee 指導教授：田偉文教授 Advisor: Professor Rudolphus Teeuwen 中華民國九十七年六月 June, 2008.

(2) For Birdie and my family.

(3) Abstract My thesis aims to explore the conflict between bourgeois and romance ideologies in Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote in terms of women’s reading, power, and marriage in the eighteenth century. In chapter one, I focus on Arabella’s access to romantic fantasies, offering an overview of women’s position and reading in bourgeois society. Through examining the society’s attitude to and concerns with reading, we can see that in the bourgeois ideal women are voiceless and restrained within the domestic domain, the one that offers no opportunities for the significance that romance heroines enjoy. Also, both women’s motives to read and the society’s eagerness to prohibit it reflect the economical and capitalistic sides of the bourgeoisie. Then, Arabella’s exclusive reading of romance makes her totally subject to it; the canonized romances become the female tradition for Arabella. By comparing the quasi-classicism of romance to the contemporaneity of novel, the discrepancy between Arabella and the outside world is clearly shown. She endeavors to yearn for significance in the prosaic reality which offers no opportunity. Consequently, chapter two examines Arabella’s power on two levels. Arabella, trying to mediate the gap, constructs her romantic counter-reality with the help of the power of imagination. Arabella manipulates her surroundings to make them meet the requirements of the romantic world, which appears to be an autonomous domain governed by love, excluding the laws, morality, and secularity of the reality. Furthermore, in the love-ruled realm the power structure of bourgeois society seems to be reversed. Women have power over their submissive and constant suitors. The typical images of both genders are reversed. However, heroines’ possession of power is at the expense of rejecting and denying female sexuality and desire. Therefore the autonomy and the reversal of power structure proposed by romance are actually illusive; the power only exists by sacrificing female subjectivity..

(4) In chapter three I will probe into the double-edged role marriage plays. The marriage between Arabella and Glanville can be seen as the compromise between romance and bourgeois ideologies. With the help of her manipulation of the reality, Arabella’s marriage does exemplify the romantic ideal. Glanville is romantically presented as a hero performing countless actions to win his lover. Their marriage is depicted as an amatory union, which is the essential ending in romances wherein love is sanctified. On the other hand, the marriage ending also satisfies the concerns of middle-class society, wherein marriage is considered as a trade and bears an economic mission rather than connecting two lovers. Hence the marriage plot functions as a happy ending that settles the two confronting ideologies.. Keywords: Lennox, Female Quixote, romance, novel, bourgeois ideology, reading, power, marriage.

(5) 論文名稱：幻想和現實的衝突：夏綠蒂．萊諾克斯《女吉訶德》中的女性閱讀、權力和婚姻校所組別：國立中山大學外國語文學系研究所畢業年度及提要別：九十六學年度第二學期碩士學位論文提要研究生：李家暐指導教授：田偉文教授論文提要：本論文旨在探討夏綠蒂．萊諾克斯《女吉訶德》中的中產階級和浪漫小說兩種意識型態的衝突和對立，筆者希望藉著分析十八世紀英國社會的景況來描繪出當時女性的社會地位及角色，並勾勒出當時所盛行的中產階級價值觀的大致樣貌，以突顯其和書中女主角艾拉貝拉所深信的浪漫小說價值觀的差異和衝突。在第一章中，筆者從艾拉貝拉的閱讀行為著眼，分析當時社會對女性閱讀的敵對態度，顯示中產階級意識型態中的理想女性形象是無聲又謙卑的，且被限制在家庭內；這和浪漫小說中女性高高在上的地位大相逕庭。第二章接著探討艾拉貝拉的想像及操弄力量，以及浪漫小說中的男女權力結構。在第三章中，筆者視書中的婚姻結局為兩股對立的意識型態的折衷，艾拉貝拉的婚姻一方面滿足了浪漫小說所追求的情愛結局，也同時符合了當時社會視婚姻為商業活動的期望。關鍵字：夏綠蒂．萊諾克斯，女吉訶德，中產階級，浪漫小說，小說，婚姻，女性閱讀，權力.

(6) Table of Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter One The Conflict between Bourgeois Ideology and Romance Ideology ………………………6 Chapter Two The Love-Ruled World and the Fantasy of Power ………………………………………47 Chapter Three Marriage as Compromise and Happy Ending …………………………………………...72 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………...89 Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………………….90.

(7) Lee. 1. Introduction Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, since its publication in 1752, has drawn a great deal of attention, for it ostensibly portrays the confrontation between the romance and the novel in the age wherein the two genres are both struggling. Romance, seemingly at its last gasp, receives strict public censures that accuse it of bearing an excessive, stale, and out-of-date literary burden; while the novel, claiming to be innovative in various aspects regarding to realism, emphatically proclaims its unprecedented position as the emerging groundbreaking genre and anxiously tries to distinguish itself from romance. Seemingly, The Female Quixote appears to be a confession of Lennox, who was once fond of romance reading (Doody xix), “surrendering the fantastic geography of romance to the ‘new province of writing’” (De Michelis 188). However, as numerous critics suggest, the distinction between the novel and romance is problematic and rendered controversial, for romance rather evolves into the new genre than dies in sacrifice to it. Laurie Langbauer investigates this view of the relation between romance and novel by showing us the dilemma Lennox faces in endeavoring to draw the line between her novel and the romance within itself: “The novelist is caught in a double-bind; she tries to cast out from her writing exactly that power which she also envies and wishes to usurp” (30). Langbauer, though still asserting a distinction that “romance was the chaotic negative space outside the novel that determined the outlines of the novel’s form” (29), demonstrates that the novel gets empowered by what it means to expel. On the one hand, the emerging new genre needs “dead wood out of which to spring” (Langbauer 30); The Female Quixote nominally sacrifices and scapegoats romance for its own convenience as a novel. While on the other hand, without the nourishing of romantic.

(8) Lee. 2. elements, Lennox’s work would lack the power and glamour that attract readers. As Deborah Ross sees it, “the novel was really a new kind of romance that owed a part of its ‘delight’ to the rich plotting of its ancestor” (457). Ultimately, according to Langbauer, The Female Quixote fails to appear “stable and controlled” because it heavily relies on the abundance of romance; and the romance shows its charm with the representation which the novel aims to ridicule (29). Mary Patricia Martin, though agreeing with Langbauer’s view of the relation between novel and romance, views the hybridity of The Female Quixote from a rather more positive perspective. Martin argues that Lennox’s weaving of romance into the novel is an attempt to fight against the patriarchal world. Her argument is manifested in terms of the oppressed position of women writers, excluded as they are by the male-dominated literary tradition in the eighteenth century. With the aid of feminocentric ideas proposed by romance that blurs the acknowledged gender and power relationship between men and women, Martin asserts that Lennox’s combining of romance and novel serves to challenge the literary patriarchy held by Richardson and Johnson. In addition, other critics, such as Patricia Meyer Spacks and Jane Spencer, also manage to explore the possibility of female power in the discourse of romance that favors women. Spacks, investigating the concept of desire, indicates that Arabella’s eccentricity marks her longing for female significance and power. Arabella’s behavior represents her eagerness to control and to possess the central position. Spencer sees Arabella’s story as “related to a reformed coquette tradition” (187); according to which, Arabella is represented as a coquette who is unwilling to give away her power, one that is acquired through the romantic code of love. Moreover, Catherine A. Craft suggests that romance discourse has reversed the gender.

(9) Lee. 3. roles, arranging a gender-crossing that women are capable to reign while men act submissively. Then the pattern of Arabella as an individual versus the outside world leads to the issue of madness. Scott Paul Gordon disputes the idea that Arabella is in pursuit of power and justifies the romantic values. Gordon, separating romance values from romance as a genre, argues that The Female Quixote means to revive and celebrate disinterested values. He takes the fact that Arabella is unaware of what really happens in reality and asserts that her motivation is not self-interested (or Mandevillian). Hence Arabella’s madness acquires a space to “preserve” these values that are canonized by Gordon as the inheritance from Sidney (501); Arabella is thus victimized and heroized simultaneously. Thomas H. Schmid takes a deeper and more comprehensive scope to view Arabella’s case as one of hysteria. Comparing Arabella to Freud’s Dora, Schmid points out that Arabella “mimes a romance discourse that aggressively relegates women to passive roles defined by men”; Arabella’s “hyper-mimesis of a male economy of desire” reveals and reminds that romance is itself a masculinist genre (21). From the overview of various critics’ contribution to analyze The Female Quixote, we can see that the conflict and contradiction in the novel is more than a matter of literary tradition; it is also a matter of ideology. I will offer a series of historical accounts, portraying the reality of Arabella’s milieu, to examine the cause and intrinsic qualities of Arabella’s code of behavior and how it differs from and contrasts to a society whose bourgeois core values are emerging and dominant. My thesis will proceed in three chapters, exploring the conflict between bourgeois ideology and romance ideology in terms of women’s reading, power, and.

(10) Lee. 4. marriage. In chapter one, I focus on Arabella’s access to romantic fantasies, offering an overview of women’s position and reading in bourgeois society. Through examining the society’s attitude to and concerns with reading, we can see that in the bourgeois ideal women are voiceless and restrained within the domestic domain, the one that offers no opportunities for the significance that romance heroines enjoy. Also, both women’s motives to read and the society’s eagerness to prohibit it reflect the economical and capitalistic sides of the bourgeoisie. Then, Arabella’s exclusive reading of romance makes her totally subject to it; the canonized romances become the female tradition for Arabella. By comparing the quasi-classicism of romance to the contemporaneity of novel, the discrepancy between Arabella and the outside world is clearly shown. She endeavors to yearn for significance in the prosaic reality which offers no opportunity. Consequently, chapter two examines Arabella’s power on two levels. Arabella, trying to mediate the gap, constructs her romantic counter-reality with the help of the power of imagination. Arabella manipulates her surroundings to make them meet the requirements of the romantic world, which appears to be an autonomous domain governed by love, excluding the laws, morality, and secularity of the reality. Furthermore, in the love-ruled realm the power structure of bourgeois society seems to be reversed. Women have power over their submissive and constant suitors. The typical images of both genders are reversed. However, heroines’ possession of power is at the expense of rejecting and denying female sexuality and desire. Therefore the autonomy and the reversal of power structure proposed by romance are actually illusive; the power only exists by sacrificing female subjectivity. In chapter three I will probe into the double-edged role marriage plays. The.

(11) Lee. 5. marriage between Arabella and Glanville can be seen as the compromise between romance and bourgeois ideologies. With the help of her manipulation of the reality, Arabella’s marriage does exemplify the romantic ideal. Glanville is romantically presented as a hero performing countless actions to win his lover. Their marriage is depicted as an amatory union, which is the essential ending in romances wherein love is sanctified. On the other hand, the marriage ending also satisfies the concerns of middle-class society, wherein marriage is considered as a trade and bears an economic mission rather than connecting two lovers. Hence the marriage plot functions as a happy ending that settles the two confronting ideologies..

(12) Lee. 6. Chapter One The Conflict between Bourgeois Ideology and Romance Ideology In The Female Quixote, Charlotte Lennox, by depicting an eighteenth-century lady who indulges in the fictional realm of romance, introduces a female counterpart of Don Quixote, for both he and Lennox’s heroine Arabella are possessed by whimsical fancies that are eccentric to the societies they belong to. Arabella, who is raised by her solitary widowed father in the remote countryside, has nothing but a huge collection of seventeenth-century French romances as her self-education material. As a result, Arabella, who is almost completely ignorant of non-fictional reality, fills her mind with the great adventures of romance heroes/heroines and the fantasies of a love-ruled world. Living in a society where bourgeois values and beliefs are prevalent, Arabella thus faces the gap between the reality and her own perception of the world. I intend to argue in this chapter that Arabella, through uncensored reading, establishes a thinking pattern that is structured with romance codes. She conducts herself in behavior, speech, and thought through the perspective of romance ideology, and perceives the entire world as bound by that ideology. This ideology is ruled by the codes of love, courage and sacrifice. In the world of romance, women are the center and the cause of everything that happens. However, eighteenth-century society is governed by the values and concepts proposed by bourgeois ideology that sees women as the objects to be controlled and monitored. Furthermore, forming a sharp contrast with the disinterestedness promoted by romance, bourgeois ideology provides a system that displays the importance of economic force and emphasizes individualism, both in terms of sociology and of literature. Hence the tension between.

(13) Lee. 7. Arabella and the society reflects and epitomizes the conflict and contradiction between bourgeois ideology and romance ideology. My argument will proceed in two parts. In the first place, I will discuss the relationship between women, reading, and society. The analysis of how these three elements link and interact with each other shows part of the nature of bourgeois ideology in the sociological aspect, concerning the role and the life of English women, especially those from the upper and middle classes. Romance and novel, though different from each other in a rather blurred way, are treated equally hostile by the male-dominant society, for both are seen to generate dangerous and subversive effects. The ideal of obedient and voiceless middle-class women, guardians of domesticity, clashes with significant image of heroines proposed by romance ideology. While most women read romances only to make a spiritual escape from the prosaic reality, Arabella acts out the counterattack against the patriarchal values. She indeed perceives the reality in the sense of romance with the prop of the canonized romances as the female tradition. Consequently, in the second part of this chapter, a pattern of opposition is drawn between romance and novel, in terms of ancients versus moderns. The novel is now considered as the new bourgeois form of literature against the previous ones; while romance, being seen as the female tradition and sharing the same characteristics, such as timelessness and collectiveness, with the traditional classics, presents an opposing discourse against the novel. Thus through the comparison between the quasi-classicism of romance and the contemporaneity of novel, the intrinsic qualities of both ideologies can be examined in detail. The principles that rule and operate in the romantic world and bourgeois realm will be explored on the terms of genres..

(14) Lee. 8. The establishment of romance ideology in Arabella’s mind is comparatively straightforward and apparent, as “from them she drew all her notions and expectations” (7); but why the outer world appears to be bourgeois to her, a daughter of an aristocrat, deserves more exposition in advance. To explain this, one has to take into account how bourgeois ideology comes to the central position in eighteenth-century ideology. The influence of the middle class in the contemporary society is well demonstrated by the fact (which will be discussed later in this chapter) that the newly rich bourgeoisie, though “of comparatively minor proportions, may have altered the centre of gravity of the reading public sufficiently to place the middle class as a whole in a dominating position for the first time,” asserts Ian Watt in The Rise of the Novel (48). Watt’s “triple rise” theory may seem a little arbitrary emphasizing too much the suddenness of this phenomenon, for this change occurs far earlier in the early seventeenth century and develops slowly the context and preparation with which novel flourishes, as J. Paul Hunter argues in his Before Novels; yet it is the consensus that the new readers are indeed “from ‘middle’ occupational groups” and the society moved “from feudal, land-driven models to modern, market-driven ones” (Hunter 66-68). As K. G. Hall puts it, by the eighteenth century, the triumph upon literature of the middle class, which “constituted a large part of the reading public,” reflects the prevalence of bourgeois ideals which is achieved by the “transmission of ideology” through printed sources (5). The primary concerns from bourgeois viewpoint, such as “status and social mobility; marriage and female virtue; social order; personal morality,” become the critical elements of the contemporary comments, which “all subscribed to a greater or lesser extent to essentially bourgeois ideals” (Hall 4). However, one should bear in mind that this “dominating position” of.

(15) Lee. 9. the middle class is not absolute but comparative, for some elements of bourgeois ideals are inherited from the old ruling classes and the outcomes of the interactions among them, such as the concepts of class fixity and female status shown in this chapter. The values and beliefs of the middle class being “absorbed by the gentry and the aristocracy” is a widespread phenomenon in eighteenth-century England and is as well one of the major themes in the contemporary novels (Hall 8). For example, “the enactment of the triumph of the middle-class code in sexual ethics” in Samuel Richardson’s Pamela brings a “complete re-education in the proper attitudes to sex and marriage” to the aristocracy, the “social superiors” and “moral inferiors” of bourgeoisie (Watt 166). The theme of an aristocrat being taught a moral lesson is also presented in The Female Quixote, when Sir Charles expresses similar moral concern and protests against the lecherous Sir George about his dissolute behavior: “I cannot endure to hear People of your Stamp endeavouring to propagate your mischievous Notions; and because you have no Regard for your own future Happiness, disturbing other People in the laudable Pursuit of theirs” (206). Sir Charles, with a title, holds the middle-class attitude toward morality; while Sir George represents “the supposed lechery of male peers,” which deserves criticisms and inculcation (Hall 4). Furthermore, in addition to the conflict occasioned by her romance reading, Arabella’s residing in the country increases the discrepancy between her and middle-class ideology and intensifies the impression that she is surrounded by the outside bourgeois world. The gap between London, which “contained a very large proportion of the reading public,” and the country inevitably widens during the process of modern urbanization (Watt 178). The same observation is also made by.

(16) Lee. 10. Hunter: “London vastly outstripped the national growth rate in literacy and widened the gap” (76). On the other hand, as Watt points out, “The combination of physical proximity and vast social distance . . . give[s] a particular emphasis to external and material values in the city-dweller’s attitude to life . . .” (179). The big city represents the extremity of bourgeois ideology overemphasizing economic values, compared to the more conservative and slower development in the country. Arabella’s church-going, “to attend Divine Service” (8), appears to be comparatively traditional to the “decline of religious values in the town” under “the supremacy of material values” (Watt 180). Arabella’s reading of the French romances with “the prodigious Length” (129), the “foolish old-fashioned Book[s]” (53), which is somewhat out of date, also suggests the country’s falling behind, as Spencer writes, “These romances, much read in England in the seventeenth century, were soon overtaken in popularity by the novel in the eighteenth . . .” (184). Some remarks of the characters from London about Arabella’s eccentricity as well show the distance between the country and urban ways of life. Mr. Hervey, being misrecognized by Arabella as “an impious Ravisher,” “concluded her Fears of him were occasioned by her Simplicity” (20-21). Sir Charles attributes his niece’s oddness to “a Country Education, and a perfect Ignorance of the world” (180). Similarly, Miss Glanville, while arguing with Arabella about the appropriateness of visiting a sick lover, imputes “such a grave kind of Amusement” to one of the country customs: “I know you Country Ladies . . . are very fond of visiting your sick Neighbours . . .” (182). Also, Glanville, in several scenes, misinterprets the influence of romance ideology upon Arabella as country simplicity. When Arabella shows her displeasure of being offended by Glanville’s having “presumed to kiss her Hand,” which violates the rules of romance, he just blames her.

(17) Lee. 11. resentment on “her Country Education” (28). Ultimately, Glanville, “who thought the Solitude she [Arabella] lived in, confirmed her in her absurd and ridiculous Notions, desired his father to press her to go to London” (254), believing that moving out of the country to the city is the cure of Arabella’s unusual behavior, as, “to leave her solitude for normal society in the hope of restoring her to sanity,” in John Richetti’s words (207). Glanville simplifies Arabella’s problem as the seclusion of the country that can be solved by “Company, and an Acquaintance with the World” (117). Although Richetti sees this “widening of the narrative,” a journey which is “out of solipsistic solitude and toward social associations and intellectual relationships,” as a failure, for “it reduces what had been a powerfully expressive delusion to a mere lack of information and purposeful, rational instruction,” the confronting relationship between Arabella and the reality has been sketched in the first place in terms of urbanization foreshadowing the upcoming turmoil (207). Before further examining the conflict and interaction between bourgeois ideology and romance ideology, I would like to investigate the method by which Arabella’s mind gets imbued with the heroines and their significant adventures. While Arabella’s reading is vulnerable to be labeled as a dangerous activity that ruins and corrupts women’s minds with unrealistic chivalry and courtly fantasies, the nature of female reading in the eighteenth century plays a critical role in revealing various aspects of the female position and social life under bourgeois ideology in a male-dominant society, both politically and economically. Reading, while serving as the major recreation and the educational tool of upper and middle class women, is considered unstable and necessary to be supervised; as Nancy Armstrong points out, “reading was at once the most useful and the most dangerous way to take up a.

(18) Lee. 12. woman’s time” (100). The misgiving about the dangerous effect reading could generate can be traced back to society’s anxiety over the proliferation of literacy during the first half of the century. “Upward social mobility” is a major theme in economic individualism and marriage in contemporary novels (Hall 14), for example, as the Marquis’s marriage with Arabella’s mother, who is “greatly inferior to himself in Quality” (6); yet as Watt states, “class distinctions were the basis of social order,” the fixity of classes ensures the stability of the society (46), and “the general tenor of the social thought” (which, of course, is more likely from a gentry/aristocracy viewpoint) proposes that “the basis of society is and should be a system of classes each with their own capacities and responsibilities” (270). The fact that Glanville is sensitive to the difference between his and Arabella’s social statuses more or less suggests the emphasis on class fixity. Before Glanville knows the influence of romance upon Arabella, he mistakes that “the Scorn she had expressed for him was founded upon the Difference of their Rank and Fortune” (33), and concludes that “the Affront he had received, proceeded from her Disdain to admit the Addresses of any Person, whose Quality was inferior to hers . . .” (37), as he protests to Arabella: “if the person who tells you he loves you, be of a Rank not beneath you, I conceive you are not at all injured . . .” (44). The insistence on class fixity is also supported by the early capitalistic idea that the workers should stay with their job in the factories. Holding this attitude, since the abilities of reading and writing are not necessary to the working class, it’s no wonder the public opinion holds that “reading constituted a dangerous distraction from the proper pursuits of those who worked with their hands” (Watt 46). Reading, in Watt’s words, “a difficult psychological process” (40), evokes the ruling class’s fear of its mind.

(19) Lee. 13. transforming/distorting strength to arouse “ambition above the station they were born into” (Hunter 76). In the case of the lower working class, it is concerned with social economic stability. Not yet recognizing the potential of literacy in economy and consumerism, which prospers soon henceforth, middle-class factory owners and manufacturers oppose any idea that will jeopardize production and profit. Therefore, to the society, reading symbolizes the potential subversive force that can endanger the fixed social classes. This fear still exists and somewhat transforms when the middle class are entering the group of the reading public. The limited growth of the reading public from the working class not only resulted from the fear mentioned above but also from the fact that books are very expensive in the eighteenth century (Watt 41). However, Hall observes that the middle class, “the bulk of the reading public, possessed both the economic and educational means necessary for the novel to flourish” (6). The newly rich middle class is financially capable of obtaining reading material. Also, because the ability of reading is “a necessary accomplishment only for those destined to the middle-class occupations,” this emerging class gets access to printed knowledge (Watt 39). On the other hand, considering the fact that “the number of religious publications does not seem to have increased in proportion either to the growth of the population or to the sales of other types of reading matter,” the growth of “secular literature” should be attributed to the growth of the middle-class reading public (Watt 50). As the result, the fear originating from the instability of literate lower working class transforms gradually into a moral issue, for, compared with the public of religious reading, “the morally-deprived readers would be identified as those who.

(20) Lee. 14. read romances rather than religious works . . .” (Hall 5). It is because of concern about morality that some writers, such as Richardson, produce fictional prose that means to delight and to teach. “The author’s task was to attract, entertain and (particularly after Richardson) instruct this growing section of the public,” observes Hall (6-7). The moral issue about the readership of the middle class only becomes more pressing with the growth of the female reading population from the upper and middle classes, to which the majority of the romance-reading public belongs (Watt 43). The importance of female literacy has been recognized increasingly. As Hunter writes, “The ability to write might well have been helpful too, both for keeping household accounts and for teaching children, but reading ability was more important—more valued, and more useful day to day” (74). By analyzing and examining this phenomenon, the social role and status of English women in the eighteenth century would be clearly shown. As stated earlier, female reading functions both as a recreation in daily life and as a vehicle of education: “to occupy leisure but [it] also has educational value,” in Armstrong’s words (106). These two functions actually link with each other, for if female reading is done properly and safely, i.e., under patriarchal censorship, it can effectively fill a woman’s idle time while at the same time inculcating the concept of female obedience required in the male-dominant society. As Armstrong sees it: “supervision” decides whether an activity belongs to “amusements that led to corruption” or “forms of leisure that occupied a woman constructively” (100). To reveal the conceptual structure of the bourgeois idea about female reading, it is crucial to discuss the intrinsic qualities of reading. As Jacqueline Pearson writes in her Women’s Reading in Britain 1750-1835: A Dangerous Recreation, reading is considered as an “intellectual development” to men.

(21) Lee. 15. while it appears merely to be an entertainment for women (4). In the case of male, reading “is evoked to represent civilized values,” and “tends to be depicted as shaping the male subject in a range of positive ways” (Pearson 4). Therefore, reading is seen as the exercise that can stimulate male minds which are elevated through the intellectual training of thinking. The idea of male reading is to generate great thoughts and to motivate the growth of a mature, independently-thinking subject. However, on the contrary, the contemporary commentators hold an attitude of limiting and regulating women toward female reading: “women should therefore avoid strenuously intellectual works or controversy . . .” (Pearson 44). This tendency can be seen in the writing of James Fordyce, an eighteenth-century clergyman, as Spacks points out: “He [Fordyce] warns emphatically against any revelation of female wit and elaborately urges his readers toward domestic activity and learning domestic skills. . . . Women . . . must not risk direct experience of ‘the world’” (“Consciousness” 65). In this example, we can see that the male-centered society not only opposes the intellectual practice of women but also manages to close them within the domestic range. Moreover, as Cheryl Turner observes, the development of industrialization which occurs in the eighteenth century gradually separates “the locations of economic and domestic work”; the result is that “the bifurcation of family activity, moving commercial and industrial enterprise away from the home, helped to confirm and confine women’s influence within the domestic sphere” (42). The idea of confinement and “social control” is thus clearly shown (Armstrong 98). “Women of the upper and middle classes could partake in few of the activities of their menfolk, whether of business or pleasure. It was not usual for them to engage in politics, business or the administration of their estates,” observes Watt (44). Also, Armstrong shows us the.

(22) Lee. 16. loneliness of women at that time, for the role of wife, compared with husband’s being “entertaining” and “skillful in talk,” should “be solitary and withdrawn” and stay in a “boast of silence” (110). Being “deprived of work and meaningful opportunities for self-expression in social and public life” (Richetti 207), women are limited and confined within the domestic sphere leading “lives [that] in particular lacked occupation and obvious interest” (Spacks, “Consciousness” 62). Consequently,. “the. problem. of. female. boredom”. emerges. (Spacks,. “Consciousness” 63). Arabella’s addiction to romance reading suggests the intolerable boredom of her life, for she “had no other Diversion” (7). Although there are certain cases, noted by Pearson, in which “Domestic duties, especially sewing, frequently interrupt reading . . .” (4), the industrialization indeed makes “the old household duties of spinning and weaving, making bread . . . and many others . . . no longer necessary” (Watt 44). As Spacks indicates, the modernization of England “entirely deprived many middle-class women of meaningful occupation” (“Consciousness” 63), presenting “the emergence of the Conspicuously Leisured Wife as a totem of the middle classes” (Turner 42). As the result, even “Many of the less well-to-do women also had much more leisure than previously” (Watt 44), not to mention the women from the upper and middle classes, who “tended to be increasingly regarded as leisure exhibits engaging in no heavier economic tasks than the more delicate and supervisory operations of housewifery,” as Watt suggests (161). Watt also provides an interesting observation that upper and middle class women possess “a conspicuously weak constitution [which] was both an assertion of a delicately nurtured past and a presumptive claim to a similar future,” meaning after their marriages (161). The several scenes in which Arabella “sunk down in a Swoon”.

(23) Lee. 17. may support Watt’s statement (158). When Arabella suspects that Edward, who is misrecognized by her as a “concealed Lover,” has a plot to “steal her away,” she is so frightened that she has “no power to observe them any longer” with “the pale Looks” for which Lucy “gave her a Smelling-bottle” (92). In Arabella’s short-distance (“not more than two Miles”) escape, she, “unused to such a rude Way of Travelling, began to be greatly fatigued” and finally falls down throwing herself “into a Swoon” (95). After she awakes, Arabella even “had like to have relapsed into her Swoon” because of her fear of being left alone (99). Therefore, thus constituted, upper and middle class women are regarded as unfit for household chores and they thus have a lot of time at home. As Spacks notes, “in giving up both responsibility and occupation, many leisured women found their lives empty” (“Consciousness” 64). Being bored is dangerous to the stability of bourgeois society for there exists “the possibility of ‘irregular Desires’ generated by boredom” (Spacks, “Consciousness” 64), as Armstrong suggests: “Leaving her with little to do, however, created a situation designed to encourage the very forms of decadence” (99). Yet trying to get rid of boredom is even more dangerous: And so, renouncing the idea of female labor and yet recognizing the dangers of leisure, authors of conduct books generally insisted that the activities comprising the domestic arts—and therefore a woman’s duty—had to be carefully supervised precisely where they seemed the most frivolous. For it was there that a woman’s education might revert to the status of those unregulated amusements that were supposed to mislead her desire. (Armstrong 99-100) As such, it is urgent for the society to monitor and regulate the activities taken to fill.

(24) Lee. 18. women’s leisure, “the matter of how to occupy women’s idle hours,” in Armstrong’s words (99). Women, however, unlike men, who “have a larger number of legitimate resources” to “escape boredom,” have to learn to amuse themselves “with limited possibilities” (Spacks, “Consciousness” 66-67). Women have to deal with the intolerable loneliness and “a great deal of leisure,” and the solution is often “omnivorous reading” (Watt 44). The image of a lonely confined woman amusing herself by reading can be seen in the example of Arabella’s mother, who is “in some sense abducted and imprisoned,” in Margaret Anne Doody’s words (xx). The Marchioness, leading a life of “Solitude and Privacy” (5), has nothing but “Books to soften a Solitude which she found very disagreeable” (7). Arabella is in the similar situation with “her Books being the only Amusement she had left” (67). A description of Arabella’s time management may show the importance of reading and the image of domesticity in women’s daily lives: “Arabella generally spent the Mornings in her own Chamber, where Reading and the Labours of the Toilet employ’d her Time till Dinner: Tho’ it must be confess’d to her Honour, that the latter engross’d but a very small Part of it” (281). The seclusion of her country life, as stated before, as well stresses the critical role of reading for Arabella, suggesting that the occupation of books, “which supplied the Place of all Company to her” (91), replaces her normal relationship (if there is one) with other people, such as friends and relatives, as Hunter asserts: “Books . . . provide a kind of companionship that was, however inadequately, often a substitute for human contact” (78). When Miss Glanville invites her to take a walk with Mr. Selvin and Mr. Tinsel, Arabella “at first positively refus’d; alleging in Excuse, That she was so extremely interested in the Fate of the Princess Melisintha, whose Story she was reading, that she could not stir.

(25) Lee. 19. till she had finish’d it” (281). Arabella’s addiction to romance reading ultimately causes an alienation from social contact, in which the importance of reading overtakes that of participation in the real world. “Omnivorous” reading expresses a concern about morality. Pearson indicates that “misreading tends to be gendered as feminine . . .” (5). Spacks also observes that there exists in the eighteenth century the anxiety of “female susceptibility to the temptations of the printed word . . . to more sinister temptations” (“Consciousness” 62). Other than Arabella, her servant Lucy is a good example of this “female susceptibility,” women’s vulnerability to the influence of romance reading and seductions from the outside world, for she is easily subjected to romance ideology through “reading” her lady’s behavior and discourse. Borrowing Armstrong’s interpretation of Jacques DuBoscq’s metaphor, which derives from the misogynist view out of Eve’s being seduced, we can interpret the “eyes” of Lucy as representing “portals of entry,” and Arabella’s behavior as “objects of visual consumption”; also, Lucy’s gullibility represents “targets of seductive images” and her “perception” is “the conduit of corruption from the outside world to subjectivity” (102). The “corruption from the outside world,” in this case, is the brainwashing of romance ideology activated by Arabella. When Arabella asks her to bring Mr. Hervey, who “would entertain some fatal Design” according to the rules of romance, the message to “command him to live,” Lucy immediately gets rid of her own rationally reasoning but instead believes in her lady: “Lucy now began to think there was something more, than she imagined, in this Affair. Mr. Hervey indeed, in her Opinion, had seemed to be very far from having any design to attempt his own Life; but her Lady, she thought, could not possibly be mistaken . . .” (15). Arabella thus becomes the source and the.

(26) Lee. 20. authority of romance ideology to Lucy. Like Arabella, Lucy takes up the perspective of romance to perceive the world. In the scene in which Arabella persuades Lucy that Edward, the gardener, is “some person of Quality” (22) in disguise, Lucy says, “now you open my Eyes, methinks I can find I have been strangely mistaken; for he does not look like a Man of low Degree” (24). Hence Lucy’s “Eyes” are equipped with the “filters of amatory romance” (Richetti 205) and transform everything in the sense of romance. Not only interpreting things from the romantic viewpoint, Lucy, “having all her Lady’s Whims in her head” (300), also firmly believes in the power of romance heroines (in this case, Arabella herself) to order people to live (and to cause their deaths too). When Lucy is told by Arabella that Sir George “dooms himself . . . to a voluntary death,” she beseeches her lady: “cannot your Ladyship command him to live, as you did Mr. Hervey and Mr. Glanville, who both did as you bid them?” (175-76). The fact that Lucy the servant is corrupted (from the point of view of bourgeois ideology) reflects the concern and fear about the reading of the lower class and women. The supervision and selection of reading material thus becomes critical because reading as an amusement may keep women in the domestic world while it also provides a path with which women can communicate with the outer world, as “reading both symbolizes and opposes domestic values” (Pearson 2). The dangerous effect generated from this double-edged characteristic of female reading makes social commentators anxious about what women should read. Pearson indicates that “reading had to be policed because it was a crucial element in the ‘creation of femininity’” (42). The ideal female reading accepted by bourgeois ideology is the one that “preserves rather than compromises ‘domestic virtue’” (Pearson 3). However,.

(27) Lee. 21. considering that reading is such a complicated and profound exercise, even “the same commentator might display contradictory attitudes to the reading of the same books . . .” (Pearson 2). No matter what the reading material is, reading itself is unsafe and hard to control, as Spacks asserts: “the uncontrollability of texts” is the “source of danger and of appeal” (“Subtle” 33). According to Pearson, to eighteenth-century society, “all genres of reading, however apparently safe . . . however apparently harmless, could be read rebelliously and resistingly rather than compliantly” (43). The “apparently” safest reading material would be biblical and religious; however, “radicals and conservatives alike believed that tact had to be exercised in using it in the education of girls,” asserting that “Even the Bible might not be safe for young female readers” for it may be “encouraging not virtue but ‘affectation’” (Pearson 44-45). The anxiety over female reading “clustered especially around the power of reading to affect the emotions,” or “the heart,” implying the uncontrollability of imagination (Pearson 42). Another seemingly safe genre is the conduct books. Armstrong indicates that “The idea that literacy offered the most efficient means for shaping individuals was the raison d’ être of conduct books” (100). Conduct books play a critical role in female. education. for. they. are. “at. the. forefront. of. the. contemporary. reconceptualisation of domesticity, embodying ‘bourgeois and patriarchal’ ideologies in opposition to a bankrupt courtly culture” (Pearson 47). Conduct books convey “images of female silence and obedience,” and become a vehicle of education, observes Pearson (47). As Armstrong says, the role of wife is to take care of “the details of household management” (109). In the “households as the natural domain of a woman who was dedicated to making the place into a happy middle-class home,”.

(28) Lee. 22. women such as mothers and wives have to organize the order indoors (Armstrong 111). The task of ruling (though subject to patriarchal values) this domain includes regulating the goods and money, dressing delicately, and teaching children. The last is especially important because the modeling of the thinking of daughters is the exclusive responsibility of mothers (Armstrong 102). Mothers’ duties involved rearing girls, “in intellectual ways as well as nurturing ones” (Hunter 74), until they are married (Turner 68). The rules of everything, such as dress and speech, are taught by mothers with the usage of conduct books, which, in Spacks’s words, convey “a neat double bind”: “youthful female life should contain little of interest” while on the other hand “women must under no circumstances allow themselves to be bored” (“Consciousness” 67). With proper care and supervision, daughters can learn how to compliantly fill their leisure with acceptable domestic practices, without risking “the miserable state of being ‘lost’ if they try to avoid the miserable state of being bored” (Spacks, “Consciousness” 66). In the novel, Arabella, whose mother dies in labor, is educated by her solitary father how to write and read. Since the role of father is not suitable for teaching children, the Marquis carelessly lets Arabella read what she desires. The inadequate role of a father in children’s education is pointed out by Sir Charles: “My brother was to blame to take so little care of her education . . .” (63). Another example of improper education leading to corruption is the one of the scandalous Miss Groves, for her mother “never troubled herself about the Conduct of this unfortunate young Creature” (75). Having romances for her conduct books, Arabella exemplifies the outcome of loose education and the effectiveness/efficiency of reading as an educational tool: “Heroism, romantick Heroism, was deeply rooted in her Heart; it was her Habit of.

(29) Lee. 23. thinking, a Principle imbib’d from Education” (329). However, though conduct books seem to serve as the ideal vehicle of education, Pearson points out that the overemphasis on rules and decorum in conduct books might bring about an adverse effect: “conduct books would do more harm than good, discouraging young women by offering a model of behaviour achievable only by ‘angels’” (48). Therefore, it can be seen that the dangerous and hard-to-control nature of female reading regarded by eighteenth-century society occurs even in the most regulated genres, not to mention how the situation gets worse when it comes to novel/romance reading. Here, I use either of the terms, romance and novel, to refer to all fictional writing. Although romance and novel differ literary techniques and themes, “the difference between ‘novel’ and ‘romance’ remained elusive’’ (Spacks, “Consciousness” 64). Critics mentioning romance “sometimes referred to fiction in general—often signaled by their putting ‘novels and romances’ together as sharing the same faults,” as Spencer points out (182). The “faults,” of course, are the subversive effects brought by women’s romance reading. Romance and novel have a close relationship, for the evolution of novel actually involves inheritance from romance, depending “upon many of its stock situations and conventions” (McKeon 2); Spencer observes that the novel relies heavily “on those romantic elements at which novelists like to laugh” (181). And this is the foible of Watt’s argument that overemphasizes the unprecedented-ness, “to exaggerate alterity and difference,” of formal realism in the novel initiated by Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (McKeon 10). Many elements of romance are transformed and adopted under the umbrella of realism in the new genre: “the fairy godmother, the prince and the pumpkin are replaced by morality, a substantial squire and a real coach-and-six” (Watt 204). Richardson’s romances in.

(30) Lee. 24. disguise and Fielding’s intimacy with epic conventions and other literary traditions both suggest not the suddenness but the preexistent context for the birth of the novel, one of which is “the pervasiveness and persistence of romance elements” (Spencer 186). As Watt notes, the “combination of romance and formal realism applied both to external actions and inward feelings is the formula which explains the power of the popular novel”; and this is why the novel, like the romance, is under the attack of “severe moral censure,” for the novel portrays something else than the real world (205). Romance and novel actually have “the same reputation for unreality” (Spencer 182). Hunter also observes that sometimes both terms, while out of “little more than opprobrium or contempt,” are “used interchangeably” to identify literary narratives “whose factitiousness was uncertain” (25). Romances, being so dangerous, become the favorite of most women readers, as Watt writes: “as far as secular reading is concerned, it is likely that their [women’s] lower educational standards made classical and learned literature out of the question for the great majority, and that they therefore tended to devote much of their leisure to whatever lighter reading was available” (151-52). Women, possessing literacy in the loosest sense, compared to “literacy in its eighteenth-century sense—knowledge of the classical languages and literatures, especially Latin,” see romances as the easiest access to reading as a recreation. Romances offer an entertaining “light” amusement, “the effortlessness of the satisfaction afforded by fiction,” for women to while away their boredom (Watt 49). One does not need “enough education . . . in classical and modern letters” to acquire the pleasure of reading through an “easier form of literary entertainment” (Watt 48). Besides the accessibility of romances, the other reason why romances hold “an.

(31) Lee. 25. especially strong appeal for women” is that women want to make a psychological escape from “the neglect and tedium of women’s lives” (Spencer 182-87). Spacks points out this social phenomenon: “Middle-class female readers, perhaps lacking what they themselves could perceive as meaningful occupation, might turn to fiction for kinds of interest their lives could not supply. They might also seek in fiction representations of female experience relevant to their own” (“Consciousness” 64). Women are bored with the plain reality and need something that generates surprises and offers an imaginary platform, on which they can experience the significance and importance nowhere to be found in their “docile, immobile, nonquesting, and non-self-defining state” (Schofield 19), that is, “Stories in which a lot happens . . . about men or about unconventional women,” as Spacks suggests: “a woman . . . could feel a need for more excitement. She might, for instance, wish to read a novel” (“Consciousness” 61-64). Arabella reads French romances for the “excitement”: “The surprising Adventures with which they were filled, proved a most pleasing Entertainment to a young lady” (7). Watt as well indicates that romance functions as the pacifier for bored women, as the “compensations for the monotonous drudgery and limited perspectives of ordinary domestic life” (204). Female readers, “By projecting themselves into the position of the heroine[s],” are capable of transforming “the impersonality and boredom of the actual world into a gratifying pattern whose every element was converted into something that gave excitement and admiration and love” (Watt 204) to pursue “abstract pleasures” (Hunter 80). Richetti, employing Colin Campbell’s sociological research on the development of consumerism, examines female readers’ yearning for identity with the heroines so as to obtain a psychological escape as a form of the “modern bourgeois consumer.

(32) Lee. 26. ethic” (209). To explain this, we have to explore the fundamental nature of the relationship between the “satisfaction of needs” and the “pleasures” (Campbell 65), for it is crucial in understanding the motivation of Arabella’s behavior. As Campbell indicates, the pleasure obtained by satisfying a need, such as a hungry man’s “eating of food,” though a “byproduct of his endeavour to end his state of hunger,” is indeed a “real and integral part of his experience” (65). However, the intensity of the pleasure will decrease and vanish if the individual is in “a state of permanent and perfect satisfaction” because the pleasure is linked with the relief of the “discomforts associated with deprivation” (Campbell 65). To resolve the problem of the “loss of pleasure” in the lives of those people whose “regular satisfaction of needs can be guaranteed” (65), two kinds of “hedonism” emerges, as Campbell observes: “traditional and modern hedonism” (58). While both hedonisms are for “the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake,” traditional hedonism emphasizes the various sensational pleasures from the satisfaction of physical needs by deliberately going back to the state of deprivation, recreating “artificially the cycle of need-satisfaction experience” (Campbell 65). On the other hand, modern hedonism seeks mental pleasure, “an emotion [that] links mental images with physical stimuli” (Campbell 69). As Richetti says: Why, asks Campbell, did a huge and insatiable market develop at this time (chiefly among the middle classes) for consumer goods that went far beyond the satisfactions of normal needs or the improvement of everyday life? A large part of the traditional answer to this question is social emulation, the imitation of their social betters by the English middle classes who now, thanks to modern production and distribution, have the.

(33) Lee. 27. opportunity and the means to ape the aristocracy. (209) Behind the mode of modern hedonism is the idea of “social emulation,” the prototype of the motivation of the consumerism developing in the past three hundred years. People buy luxury products, such as jewelry and fancy cars, to imitate the lifestyles of the social classes above them. Spacks also observes the phenomenon of social emulation in eighteenth-century society: “Trying to emulate the aristocracy and to distinguish themselves from lower classes, such [leisure and middle-class] women sought servants to perform the tasks of the household” (“Consciousness” 64). In addition to the material fulfillment for emulation, Watt, discussing Pamela’s longing for higher social identity, points out that Pamela’s “full possession” of a weak body, or her tendency to faint, suggests that she is so desperate to move upward to be an upper or middle class woman that even her body is unconsciously subjected to this yearning by mimicking a weak body: “her total being has been so deeply shaped by ideas above her station that even her body exhibits . . . a not uncommon form of what can only be called sociosomatic snobbery” (161). Arabella, being the Marquis’s daughter, has already taken the upper social position and leads a leisured life with lots of servants at her service; however, she still presents the features of social emulation, as Richetti remarks, “Although Arabella is too rich to desire any particular consumer goods, her substitution of romantic ideals for modern reality is essentially like the always deferred fulfillment offered by modern consumer goods . . .” (209). Arabella, as stated before, is also delicate of body while sometimes she, unlike the unconscious expression of Pamela’s body, consciously and actively presents “sociosomatic snobbery” by making herself faint to imitate her superiors, which are the heroines in her romances. When Arabella, hearing.

(34) Lee. 28. the screams of Lucy, who is infected by her lady’s romantic fantasies, misinterprets Mr. Tinsel’s trying to have a conversation with her as some “unjust Attempt” to “carry her away,” she actually “plays swoon”: she gave herself over for lost, and fell back in her Chair in a Swoon, or something she took for a Swoon, for she was persuaded it could happen no otherwise; since all Ladies in the same Circumstances are terrify’d into a fainting Fit, and seldom recover till they are conveniently carried away; and when they awake, find themselves many Miles off in the Power of their Ravisher. (300) Unlike Pamela, who has concrete others (ladies from the upper and middle classes) to emulate, Arabella acquires her illusory abstract models from romance, as Richetti concludes: “Her solipsism and self-enclosure are rarefied and elegant versions of the more commonplace longings encouraged by modern consumer goods such as the romantic novel, and indeed Arabella’s affluence leaves her nothing concrete to desire except the perfect and always receding world of romantic perfection” (209-210). This mode is termed “modern, autonomous, imaginative hedonism” by Campbell; since this pursuit of pleasure is less concrete than the external social emulation of Pamela and other bourgeois women, it appears to be “autonomous” (88). Arabella is not satisfied by owning the romances, the “products,” but by the “pleasure from the self-illusory experiences” constructed through “the imaginative pleasure-seeking to which” the romances lend themselves; therefore the satisfaction from romance reading that Arabella and other female readers experience stems from the operation of the imagination, “the habit of covert day-dreaming” (Campbell 89). The material of the imagination, unlike the conspicuous models of social emulation, is diverse and.

(35) Lee. 29. personal concerning the subject’s private experience; it could be an image that is arbitrarily associated with an element of daily life, or a bizarre fantasy, like Arabella’s, obtained from individual psychological practice. However, this practice of imagination is considered hazardous to the values of the middle class as discussed above: “Reading novels, many commentators suggested, encouraged forbidden fantasies” (Spacks, “Consciousness” 64). Imagination has the potentiality to make readers dissatisfied with the status quo and produce false expectations, to “heighten expectations or fire desires” (Hunter 77-79); for example, Arabella’s mind is “wholly filled with the most extravagant Expectations” (8). As the spokesman of bourgeois ideology, “The Pious and Learned Doctor of—” (366), sees it: “those contemptible Volumes, with which Children are sometimes injudiciously suffer’d to amuse their imaginations” (374). To the norms of bourgeois society, reading. “senseless. Fictions,”. which. “vitiate. the. Mind,. and. pervert. the. Understanding,” is directly opposed to the idea of restraint and confinement. The dangerous nature of imagination, “its liberating potential,” may make female readers desire more than a plain prosaic life, as Helen Thomson writes (116). Romance reading is thought to “encourage those who ought to be subordinate—men of the lower orders, and women of all ranks—to indulge in dangerous dreams of pre-eminence, imagining themselves kings and queens”; this remark of Spencer well depicts society’s anxiety over class instability and the uncontrollability of female education/modeling (186). Spacks also notes that in bourgeois society “women—or at least girls—must be assigned tasks to keep their imaginations under control” (“Subtle” 19). The issue is concerned especially on “the young,” who are thought the most “impressionable” to the influence of printed materials (Hunter 79)..

(36) Lee. 30. As the Doctor, one of “the voices of male authority” (Thomson 114), indicates, “It is the Fault of the best Fictions, that they teach young Minds to expect strange Adventures and sudden Vicissitudes . . .” (379). Thus the worry of bourgeois society about women being distracted from their fixed and static destiny is presented. Several other male characters in the novel embodying the commentaries from male-dominant society as well show the dislike of and scorn for female romance reading. The Marquis, when he encounters his daughter’s obstinacy against the arranged marriage with Glanville, utters, “The Girl is certainly distracted. . . . These foolish Books . . . have turned her Brain!” (55). Arabella’s uncle, Sir Charles, arguing with her about romance heroes’ suicidal actions out of the lamentation for their lover’s death, claims, “What, I warrant you, they [heroes] are to be found in the Fairy Tales, and those sort of Books! Well, I never could like such Romances, not I; for they only spoil Youth, and put strange Notions into their Heads” and thinks that “a young Lady . . . should not be so fond of such ridiculous Nonsense as these Story-Books are filled with” (61). Glanville is also vexed that Arabella has been tainted “with the ridiculous Whims they [romances] created in her Imagination” (50). The “surprising Effect these Books had produced” in female imagination is seen as the irrational force that corrupts women’s minds (50). When Lucy, another victim of romance ideology, tells Mr. Tinsel that, if he is “in Love” with her lady without permission, he will certainly die, he responds, “I vow thou hast mighty pretty Notions . . . hast thou been reading any Play-Book lately?” (298). Furthermore, besides the printed source of romance, Sir George’s oral narration of his pseudo “History,” “a young Rake’s Account of himself,” also arouses Sir Charles’ caution of its implied indecent content: “I do not imagine his History is fit to be heard by Ladies . . . for your Infidels live a strange kind of Life” (206-208)..

(37) Lee. 31. In the novel, not satisfied with merely dreaming about the freedom through romance reading, our protagonist actually takes action to make the escape come true, an “active escape from a fixity wished upon her,” in Doody’s words (xxix). Arabella is not willing to be confined as other women in the eighteenth century. The reality for a young lady in bourgeois society can never be as exciting as the one in romances, as the Doctor indicates: A long Life maybe passed without a single Occurrence that can cause much Surprize, or produce any unexpected Consequence of great Importance; the Order of the World is so established, that all human Affairs proceed in a regular Method, and very little Opportunity is left for Sallies or Hazards, for Assault or Rescue. . . . (379) The life of “the celebrated Countess of—” (324) defines the ideal and destined life for women in bourgeois society: I was born and christen’d, had a useful and proper Education, receiv’d the Addresses of my Lord— through the Recommendation of my Parents, and marry’d him with their Consents and my own Inclination, and that since we have liv’d in great Harmony together, I have told you all the material Passages of my Life, which upon Enquiry you will find differ very little from those of other Women of the same Rank, who have a moderate Share of Sense, Prudence and Virtue. (327) Arabella’s desire to “experience joy, sorrow, and activity” is denied by “a woman’s ideal history” (Doody xiv). As Hall points out, “To be good is to be careful and restrained; it is to act according to the norms and values of bourgeois society” (114). Spencer also notes that an ideal woman in bourgeois ideology is the one “about whom.

(38) Lee. 32. there is nothing to say” (190); a respectable woman will never draw any attention (Spender 19). Therefore, the only way for Arabella to make her escape come true is through constructing a romantic reality, which is parallel to bourgeois reality, by practicing imagination’s power of manipulation not just in mind but in the real world. I will discuss how Arabella alters/manipulates the reality in both verbal and behavioral ways, both actively directing and passively perceiving, in chapter two; in the remainder of this chapter I want to examine her motivation: the desire of being significant. Arabella is looking forward to a significance which can only be achieved by a series of “misfortunes” and “adventures” (68). Spacks describes the thinking pattern of Arabella’s not willing to be ordinary: “Ordinary women have no place in history; ordinary life leaves no space for ‘high and noble adventures’” (“Subtle” 14). Arguing with Miss Glanville over the appropriateness of going to “the Assembly-Room” as an entertainment, Arabella remarks: What room . . . does a Lady give for high and noble Adventures, who consumes her Days in Dressing, Dancing, listening to Songs, and ranging the Walks with People as thoughtless as herself? How mean and contemptible a Figure must a Life spent in such idle Amusements make in History? Or rather, Are not such Persons always buried in Oblivion, and can any Pen be found who would condescend to record such inconsiderable Actions? (279) In another scene, Arabella also reveals her eagerness for being part of the history: Your History, said Miss Glanville! Why, will you write your own History then? I shall not write it, said Arabella; tho’, questionless, it will be written.

(39) Lee. 33. after my Death. (110) Moreover, before she jumps into the Thames to imitate Clelia, who swims over the Tyber, Arabella gives a speech that demonstrates her willingness to “immortalize” her fame: “Like her [Clelia], we may expect Statues erected to our Honour: Like her, be propos’d as Patterns to Heroines in ensueing Ages . . .” (363). As Ros Ballaster points out, the nature of Arabella’s significance-seeking ambition is “to commit an act of greatness to commit her name to posterity” (194), to become someone “whose life is worth writing about” (Brownstein xxiv). Romances, of which “the blurring of boundaries between history and fiction . . . is the stock in trade” (Ballaster 194), thus become the female version of history, or “herstory”, for Arabella (Craft 833). Women, because of their limited literacy, are blocked from male-centered history; while romances offer “alternative versions of an ancient world” (Thomson 114). Despite Sir Charles’s accusation of romances’ improbability: “these are all very improbable Tales” (62), Arabella, “supposing Romances were real Pictures of Life” (7), treats romances as the true accounts of real great people instead of fiction; history does not have to deal with probability. When she asks Lucy to relate her history, Arabella shows her rejection of falseness (Thomson 121): “There is no Occasion . . . for you to make a History: There are Accidents enough in my Life to afford Matter for a long one” (121). The female version of history, like the world of romance, is governed by love as the ruling principle, as Spencer points out: the romance writers relate “historical events with the stress on romantic love as the cause of actions that changed the world” (184); thus it subverts the male-centered history by promoting that women, who are marginalized in the patriarchal culture, are “the hidden agents for historical change” (Pearson 204). As Ballaster concludes:.

(40) Lee. 34. The French romance presented love as the sole motivation and engine of change behind every major historical event and centered its attention upon the more obscure female characters in conventional history. It thus fictionalized history at the expense of the masculine ‘public’ sphere and privileged women as the primary force in culture and civilization by their judicious use of their power to inspire love in the nation’s heroes. (193) Mr. Selvin, whose historical knowledge is “indeed but very superficial,” is confused by the female view: “these Particulars have all escaped my Notice; and this is the first time I ever understood, that Pisistratus was violently in Love; and that it was not Ambition, which made him aspire to Sovereignty” (264-66). Arabella, as Spacks puts it, asserts “the agency of women and of love” and replaces “the stereotypically male value of ambition with a female valuation of love” (“Subtle” 23). The love-ruled female history together with its unlimited imaginative potential presents that romances are the better substitute for the history of male merits to Arabella: “The prodigious Acts of Valour, which he has recounted of those accomplished Princes, have never been equaled by the Heroes of either the Greek or Roman Historians: How poor and insignificant are the Actions of their Warriors to Scudery’s . . .” (62). Arabella’s eagerness for being recorded in the female version of history indicates the authorial position of romances, which “compose the most valuable Part” of Arabella’s library (49) and can be seen as the canonized female versions of classics. To view romances as classics does not contradict their role as the female history, for the traditional literature is concerned with “what could and would happen either probably or inevitably,” as indicated in Aristotle’s Poetics; since romances are seen as the history by Arabella, then they are also qualified to serve as classics representing.

(41) Lee. 35. “some actual occurrences being the sort of thing that would probably or inevitably happen . . .” (35-37). Therefore, I will put romance and novel in an opposing pattern as ancients versus moderns, using romances to replace the position of the traditional literature before the novel. As Hunter observes, “the central conflict in the eighteenth century [lies] over the whole question of ancients and moderns, tradition and the past versus originality and innovation” (26); the traditional pattern of thinking “looked backward for its values rather than forward as did the novel” (87). Despite the controversy over the indivisibility between romance and novel concerning the latter’s problematic statement of realism, Watt’s comparison of these two over their different attitudes to theme, time, space and diction comes in handy for the structure of romance versus novel (11-30). Through the contrast, one can see that the assertions of the novel, as a bourgeois form of literature, fit bourgeois ideology considering its emphasis on newness, private experience, and individualism; on the other hand, romance, resembling the traditional classic literature in many ways, is capable of serving as the female tradition, “on which they could rely, and a body of lore upon which they could draw” (Doody, xix). As Watt points out, classical authors, under the influence of Poetics, mostly draw themes and plots from “past history or fable” and rely on “disguises and coincidences”; they “habitually used traditional plots . . . because they accepted . . . that, since Nature is essentially complete and unchanging, its records, whether scriptural, legendary or historical, constitute a definitive repertoire of human experience” (13-14). About “disguises and coincidences,” Miss Glanville’s revealing her disguise as Arabella in the grand finale (357) and Glanville’s double identity as Ariamenes (349) reminds us the critical “reversal” and “discovery” in Poetics.