The Injur'd Husband and Lasselia

Soon after the phenomenal success of Eliza Haywood's last part of Love in Excess in 1720, her publisher William Chetwood announced that a collection of new Haywood works-The Danger of Giving Way to Passion, in Five Exemplary Novels- would soon appear. The collection failed to materialize. Between April 1722 and December 1723, however, Haywood did bring out five new novels-The British Recluse, The Injur'd Husband, Idalia, Lasselia, and The Rash Resolve-each of which deals with the dangerous consequences for women who succumb to their own passion. In his new edition for the Eighteenth-Century Novels by Women series from University Press of Kentucky, Jerry Beasley offers two of these novels as examples of Haywood's "youthful experiments with the character of the aberrant female as figure of monstrous evil and with the more sympathetic figure of the good girl ruined" (xxiv).

Because The Injur'd Husband and Lasselia have not yet been popularized the way The British Recluse, Fantomina, and Love in Excess have, Beasley provides those new to Haywood with a decade-by-decade overview of her life and career as a context for the novels. While he states there will be "special emphasis upon the biographical background" (vii), this emphasis mostly involves laying to rest the three "major errors of Haywood's biographers" (ix). These errors, more than a decade after Christine Blouch's seminal article on details about Haywood's life, are no longer an issue; however, they do indicate the problems one might encounter in trying to piece together a personal history for this prolific woman writer whom the eighteenth century assumed it knew so well. Beasley goes on, very capably, to introduce the predominant themes, metaphors, and technical achievements in Haywood's writing. He rejects the notion of Haywood as a feminist because her works obviously demonstrate a real ambivalence to female characters that attempt to rebel against their social and moral constraints.

Bound together in one edition, these two novels give readers the spectrum, in miniature, of Haywood's female characters. Lasselia: or, The Self-Abandon'd tells the story of a woman who valiantly attempts to lead a virtuous existence and shuns an illicit affair with Louis XIV only to fall in love with a married man. The Injur'd Husband; or, The Mistaken Resentment focuses on the married Baroness de Tortillée, an evil woman with a voracious sexual appetite, who revels in her libertinism. The sheer energy and exuberance of the Baroness make her appealing, allowing readers vicarious sexual freedom, while her gruesome death reaffirms the "accepted standards of female thought and conduct" (xxix).

Beasley offers the possibility that The Injur'd Husband may actually be a personal secret history. He suggests that the Baroness is based on real life Martha Fowke Sansom, author and former friend of Haywood; Beauclair, the virtuous man tricked by de Tortillée and her lackey, Du Lache, is inspired by Aaron Hill; and the silent heroine, Montamour (literally, "lover of Hill"), a representation of Haywood herself. In addition to this new biographical argument, Beasley also explores Haywood's concern for the relation between fiction and truth. De Tortillée is described as "a maker of fictions who perverts the storyteller's art by using it to lie" (xxv): she ruins Montamour's reputation with Beauclair by encouraging Du Lache to circulate artfully constructed stories about her. Sensitized to this reading, we notice that rumours, gossip and lies abound in the tale. When one character "finish'd his monstrous Lye; … Du Lache, tho' he had order'd him to form some Story which might seem plausible to scandalize Montamour on the account of Galliard, was himself astonish'd at the Power of the Invention which out of nothing cou'd create such a well connected Pile of Falshood" (34). Haywood's own "Power of Invention" and her concern for art's representations of truth are just beginning to be investigated by the scholars in relation to her political works like Eovaai. Beasley's edition invites us to apply similar criticism to her amatory novels. After his tantalizing glimpse of Haywood's "interesting experiment with the relations between fiction and contemporary history" (xx), Beasley moves on to make brief points about The Injur'd Husband's dual plot and its language. Any one of Beasley's observations could be developed into an essay in itself.

Lasselia is described as "milder," "much shorter" and less well constructed than The Injur'd Husband (xxix). The heroine, a virgin too weak to resist her own passion is, understandably, not as compelling as the sexually deviant Baroness. Neither is Beasley's analysis of Lasselia as provocative as that of The Injur'd Husband. He points to the awkwardness of the interpolated tale of the Douxmourie sisters, but shows that in its actions it parallels the main plot; he mentions the motif of Chance that renders the characters, female and male, virtually helpless in their actions; and he concludes with a reference to "the rhythms of Lasselia's emotive language" (xxxii).

Jerry Beasley is to be commended for making these two amatory novels accessible to the modern reader. The novels themselves are lightly annotated, helpfully defining obscure words, identifying historical persons and places, and translating the characters' French names to show Haywood's playfulness and irony. Only once did I think Beasley's interpretation was just a little too ingenious to be credible (see note twelve on "Omer," page 152). But this is a very minor quibble. The notes as a whole are a fascinating read. The edition also includes a Chronology of Events in Eliza Haywood's life-always a useful tool when trying to keep in order the over 72 works she authored. This edition is a welcome addition to the classroom and should finally stimulate some critical interest in these too long neglected texts.