Widening Conduct Literature: Courtship Novels and the Harlot’s Progress

In the eighteenth century there was a noticeable reinforcement of the kind of

“masculine power that in many ways narrowed rather than expanded the possibilities for women” (Kraft 2008: int 6). However, in spite of this, many women writers successfully uncovered ways to express desire and oppose, even if just subliminally, the marked, culturally assigned roles they supposedly needed to fulfil.

These women writers who did not blindly adhere to the status quo delineated by endless conduct books and courtship novels took a ‘radical’, dissenting position through which they managed to surpass the image of the ‘domestic woman’. Instead, these

‘radical’ writers offered an alternative position through which women who suffer social ostracism, usually because of their (sexual) transgressions, trigger “social critique rather than self-abasement or violence” (Eberle 2012: int 4). Eberle’s argument challenges the narrative expectation that any transgressive act serves mainly as a dreadful warning and, instead, suggests that, without denying the compelling presence of a moral judgment, the focus should perhaps be placed on the type of social criticism that can be extracted.

120 This intriguing remark opens up the way for an exploration of the ramifications that the departure from expected ‘proper’ behaviour might entail:

As to the opinion of the world, by which is meant the malice of a few spiteful old cats, I am perfectly unconcerned about it; but your Ladyship’s esteem is necessary to my happiness: I will therefore to you vindicate my conduct; which, though indiscreet, has been really irreproachable. Though a widow, and accountable to nobody, I have ever lived with Colonel Bellville with the reserve of blushing apprehensive fifteen; whilst the warmth of my friendship for him, and the pleasure I found in his conversation, have let loose the baleful tongue of envy, and subjected my reputation to the malice of an ill-judging world; a world I despise for his sake; a world, whose applause is too often bestowed on the cold, the selfish, and the artful, and denied to that generous unsuspecting openness and warmth of heart, which are the strongest characteristics of true virtue … I would not sacrifice my own passion for him, but his happiness; which, for reasons, unknown to your Ladyship, is incompatible with his marrying me (vol i:

233)

Lady Anne’s attitude is unrelenting: she refuses to be subject to ‘scorn’ by what she considers an unjust world that would never truly understand her situation. As a widow, she feels her position is secure and ‘frees’ herself from the restrains that single or married women must submit to. In this passage, Lady Anne’s attitude is clearly ironic, playful. This suggests her clear unwillingness to become a submissive wife.

Once more, Lady Anne manages to assert her narrative authority with a clear, steady tone.

In domestic narratives, whenever a heroine departs from the ‘established path’ of conduct, especially sexual conduct, the immediate expectation is the presence of a clear

121 punishment that will set the moral of the story in its ‘right’ course⁵². Curiously, in Lady Anne’s case, her disorderly disposition does not meet a clear and indisputable punishment, though at the end of the narrative her situation is far from ideal, she does not suffer for her lack of female compliance, which might entail a certain, however limited, lenience from Brooke’s part on this demand for punishment whenever women deviate from ‘their right path’.

In the case of women writers, if this punishment/reward scenario is expanded to an analysis of the possible (implicit) censure of the very same rules that are supposedly being endorsed, then, as critics like Eberle rightly note, one feels compelled to

“reconsider our historical constructions of women’s writing at the end of the eighteenth century”⁵³.

Conduct material unceasingly highlight the vital importance of certain modes of (restrained) behaviour which successfully block ‘dishonourable’ urges but, at the same time, these same conduct books “betray anxiety about the perception that manners may provide an impenetrable screen for unacceptable thoughts, feelings and intentions”

(Spacks 2003: 12). The preoccupation, then, lies in the suspicion that certain manners do not simply erase unacceptable instincts but rather stimulate those even more strongly. Hence the need for constant, unremitting modes of social control that would, supposedly, prevent this presence of improper impulses, especially in the case of women.

52 A clear example of this is to be found in Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story (1791), in which Miss Milner’s sexual transgression cannot be forgiven. She is severely punished for her deviance from the

‘right’ path. Once she commits adultery, no redemption is possible and her fate is doomed: first, to exile, and then, to death.

53 Eberle identifies this as proto-feminist in which women writers produce works in which one can distinguish “the ascension of a sexually transgressive but articulate speaking subject” (2002: int 4).

122 As Green observes, courtship novels produce a fundamental switch in the way women were perceived⁵⁴. Removed from the role of mere ‘victim’, in courtship narratives women become much more than that, they become “heroines with significant, though modest, prerogatives of choice and action” (1991: int 2). Unlike in other narrative formats, in courtship tales women were analysed as individuals, and this allowed for a rich exploration of the various “emotional difficulties” (Green 1991: int 2) that such female individualism entailed from women’s perspective. This female individual subjectivity was integrated into a macrocosm of feminine territory, a space in which the preoccupations that surrounded the courtship process were carefully examined and tested. Throughout the courtship process, it was expected that a woman would not give any outward indication of preference towards a man, but lady Anne’s acute observation surpasses such propriety-dictated rule and she refuses to believe that what Lady Julia feels towards Henry Mandeville is friendly affection:

There was a constraint in her behaviour to Harry all evening – an assumed coldness – his assiduity seemed to displease her – she sighed often – nay once, when my eyes met hers, I observed a tear ready to start – she may call this friendship if she pleases; but these very tender, these apprehensive, these jealous friendships, between amiable young people of different sexes, are exceedingly suspicious (vol i: 107-8)

The ways in which women ought to conduct themselves during the courtship process were endlessly reproduced through conduct material. Courtship works, then, became the perfect medium through which express dominant ideologies, such as the ever-present ‘proper woman’ figure but, significantly, it also offered opportunities to

54 Green also notes that, thematically, this switch allows for a revisionist perspective that enlarges the parameters within which female characters are inscribed (1991: int 2).

123 expose the limitations of such prevailing configurations. In this respect, while these work’s overt didactic component meant their adherence to conventional modes of female behaviour, mirroring conduct book’s vision on modesty and restraint, they also managed to display “the incipient feminism that had begun to question received roles for women” (Green 1991: 13)⁵⁵.

Resistance becomes imperative. As Green argues, even within a (masculine) hegemonic environment, there is room for the exposure of points of conflict, such as women’s commodification and, especially, “the insufficiencies of masculinist representations of women” (Green 1991: int 7)⁵⁶. Thus, the courtship genre becomes a powerful medium through which to bring to light ‘feminist’ ideals or, at least, to recognise the importance of the ‘woman question’, beyond the mere reproduction of established patterns. For instance, the theme of marriage was one that was evolving throughout the eighteenth century and this became noticeable in courtship novels, as these “championed women’s rights to choose marriage partners for personal, relational reasons rather than familial, economic ones” (Green 1991: 161). Lady Anne introduces this very idea when she claims that : “Then, as I am a declared enemy to interested marriages, the young people are allowed to chuse for themselves, which removes the temptation to vice, which is generally caused by the shameful avarice of parents” (vol ii:

39)

Another well-established trope regarding the role of the heroine which could be identified within courtship material was known as ‘the Harlot’s Progress’. This trope focused on the figure of the ‘fallen’ woman, whose ruin was intended as a warning of

55 Green argues that this allowed the disclosure of various elements that somehow menaced women’s peace of mind, such as “authoritarian parents, rakish suitors, and even fashionable London” (Green 1991:

14).

56 Green stresses the vital role language plays in such representations. As he rightly notes, “courtship novelist demonstrate what is now a commonplace, that language has too frequently been appropriated by male hegemony or that women often find themselves, in one way or another, at a loss for words” (Green 1991: int 6-7).

124 the dangers that indulging into passionate states brought upon. However, the image of the fallen heroine became “an attractive rhetorical tool for early feminists precisely because of its seemingly inevitable trajectory as well as its paradoxical ability to allow for variation” (Eberle 2002: int 4).

As Eberle claims, the Harlot’s Progress allows for a thorough assessment of the tensions between moral virtue and chastity⁵⁷, as this kind of narrative implies is that sexual transgressions will inevitably be “severely and fatally punished” (2002: int 6).

Yet, a revisionist version of this narrative draws attention to the instances where this pattern of ‘crime’ and subsequent punishment is replaced with an emphasis on

“systemic sexism, moral hypocrisy, and patriarchal privilege” (Eberle 2002: int 6).

4.1.3. The Search for a ‘True’ Female Account: Tensions between Representation