The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza HaywoodWhicher, George Frisbie
General
The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood
Whicher, George Frisbie
Haywood, Eliza Fowler, 1693?-1756
From the standpoint of structure, too, "The Fortunate Foundlings" is an
improvement over the haphazard plots of Mrs. Haywood's early romances,
though the double-barreled story necessitated by twin hero and heroine
could hardly be told without awkward interruptions in the sequence of
one part of the narrative in order to forward the other. But the author
doubtless felt that the reader's interest would be freshened by turning
from the amorous adventures of Louisa to the daring deeds of Horatio,
while a protagonist of each sex enabled her to exhibit at once examples
of both male and female virtue. And in spite of inherent difficulties,
she succeeded to some extent in showing an interrelation of plots, as
where Dorilaus by going to the north of Ireland to hear the dying
confession of the mother of his children, thereby misses Horatio's
appeal for a ransom, and thus prevents him from rejoining Marlborough's
standard. But there is nothing like Fielding's ingenious linking of
events and careful preparation for the catastrophe, nor did Mrs. Haywood
make much out of the hint of unconscious incest and the foundling motif
which her book has in common with "Tom Jones." Occasionally also she
cannot refrain from inserting a bit of court gossip or an amorous page
in her warmest manner, but the number of intercalated stories is small
indeed compared to that in a romance like "Love in Excess," and they are
usually dismissed in a few paragraphs. Here for the first time the
author has shown some ability to subordinate sensational incident to the
needs of the main plot.
When Mrs. Haywood's inclination or necessities led her back to the novel
four years later, she produced a work upon a still more consistent, if
also more artificial plan than any of her previous attempts. "Life's
Progress through the Passions: or, the Adventures of Natura" avowedly
aims to trace the workings of human emotion. The author's purpose is to
examine in "what manner the passions operate in every stage of life, and
how far the constitution of the _outward frame_ is concerned in the
emotions of the _internal faculties_," for actions which we might admire
or abhor "would lose much of their _eclat_ either way, were the secret
springs that give them motion, seen into with the eyes of philosophy and
reflection." Natura, a sort of Everyman exposed to the variations of
passion, is not the faultless hero of romance, but a mere ordinary
mortal. Indeed, the writer declares that she is "an enemy to all
_romances, novels_, and whatever carries the air of them ... and as it
is a _real_, not _fictitious_ character I am about to present, I think
myself obliged ... to draw him such as he was, not such as some sanguine
imaginations might wish him to have been."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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