Annotated: Fantomina's Response to Beauplaisir's Letters

Annotated: Fantomina's Response to Beauplaisir's Letters

Deception, betrayal, and relations to the mind.

Fantomina writes letters to Beauplaisir as multiple characters, and receives responses from each of them. The annotations explore the complexity of their relationship and what her initial response means.

Eliza Haywood

London: Dan Browne and S. Chapman

1725

Daniel Johnson

John Locke: "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding"
William Alexander: "The History of Women"
"Thomas Johnson"

Annotated Passage

English

Text

TRAYTOR! (cry'd she,) as soon as she had read them, 'tis thus our silly, fond, believing Sex are serv'd when they put Faith in Man: So had I been deceiv'd and cheated, had I like the rest believ'd, and sat down mourning in Absence, and vainly waiting recover'd Tendernesses. – How do some Women, (continued she) make their Life a Hell, burning in fruitless Expectations, and dreaming out their Days in Hopes and Fears, then wake at last to all the Horror of Dispair? – But I have outwitted even the most Subtle of the deceiving Kind, and while he thinks to fool me, is himself the only beguiled Person.

SHE made herself, most certainly, extremely happy in the Reflection on the Success of her Stratagems; and while the Knowledge of his Inconstancy and Levity of Nature kept her from having that real Tenderness for him she would else have had, she found the Means of gratifying the Inclination she had for his agreeable Person, in as full a Manner as she could wish. She had all the Sweets of Love, but as yet had tasted none of the Gall, and was in a State of Contentment, which might be envy'd by the more Delicate.

Alexander, William. The History of Women, from the Earliest Antiquity, to Present Times. Eighteenth Century Collections, 1782.

Haywood, Eliza. Fantomina: or, Love in a Maze. London: Dan Browne and S. Chapman, 1725.

Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Batoche Books, 2000.

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