"Gendered Strategies in the Criticism of Early Fiction." Eighteenth-Century Studies 28.4 (Summer 1995): 363-378

American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)

Gendered Strategies in the Criticism of Early FictionAuthor(s): Laura L. RungeSource: Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Summer, 1995), pp. 363-378Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Sponsor: American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS).Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2739464 .

Accessed: 13/01/2014 17:22

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Johns Hopkins University Press and American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) arecollaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Eighteenth-Century Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 131.247.201.117 on Mon, 13 Jan 2014 17:22:38 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asecs

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asecs

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2739464?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


AENDERED STRATEGIES N mTHE CRITCISM OF EARLy FICJnoN

Laura L. Runge

Studies in early British fiction have reconfigured the territory tradi- tionally considered in the "rise" of the novel to include an array of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts that participate in the discourse of significant cultural issues. If the early novel provides an epistemological space for the mediation of social and economic conflicts, as Michael McKeon argues, then so too does the critical writing on that genre, largely found in the marginal spaces surrounding the work-in prefaces, dedications, addresses to the reader, and epilogues.1 Like other literary criticism of the period, the critical prose that describes or promotes early fiction relies on gendered distinctions, but contrary to criticism that celebrates the "manly" epic or tragedy, the fictional writings focus on the feminine.2 Despite recent attention to these critical materials, the role of gender in the ideological structuring of literary values remains insufficiently addressed.3 This oversight is all the more problematic given that early critical standpoints, so elusive in other ways, consistently overdetermine the association between fiction and the middle-class female. Through the figure of the female as reader or writer of fiction, the critical discourse negotiates the gender conflicts central to British society and hence assumes a gendered literary hierarchy.

Nancy Armstrong's Desire and Domestic Fiction, A Political His- tory of the Novel (1987) is unique in identifying the genre as a specifically feminine form of discourse that attributed to women moral and domestic authority capable of

LAURA L. RUNGE is an assistant professor of English at the University of South Florida-Saint Petersburg. She has published an article on Dryden's critical use of gendered language in Essays in Literature and recently finished a manuscript entitled Manly Words: Gender in British Literary Criticism 1660- 1789.

Eigbvteenth-Centuiy Studies, vol. 28, no. 4 (1995) Pp. 363-378.



364 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES 28 / 4

transforming culture. It is Armstrong's sophisticated treatment of the interrelation between the ideologies of gender and the formation of genres that informs my argu- ment. Adapting a Foucauldian conception of sexuality as a semiotic process, Armstrong argues that consolidating such a comprehensive sign-system by the nineteenth century "in fact depended above all else on the creation of modern gender distinctions. These came into being with the development of a strictly feminine field of knowledge, and it was within this field that novels had to situate themselves if they were to have cultural authority."4 Femininity becomes for Armstrong the novel's most significant feature because it allows domestic novels to renegotiate political and social relations under the guise of purely emotional changes. In this way, the popularity and omnipresence of the novel empowered the middle-class domestic female with some cultural control.

Although Armstrong's study focuses primarily on nineteenth-century texts, the striking femininity she identifies is characteristic of the early novel as well. However, the discursive strategies which enhanced and ensured the gendered associations of the genre also reveal a construction of femininity that jeopardizes Armstrong's claim for female power. Most representations of the feminine ideal incor- porate a patriarchal hierarchy, which both necessitates the presence of masculine authority and subjugates the feminine priorities. Armstrong asserts that the novel reflects and promotes a feminine subjectivity, and she quickly dismisses the actual tensions between masculinity and femininity in the early discourse: "despite unsuccessful attempts such as Fielding's to place the novel in a masculine tradition of letters, novels early on assumed the distinctive features of a specialized language for women."5 Per- haps unfortunately, attempts to establish a masculine context for the form were more widespread than Armstrong admits and had more enduring effects on our under- standing of novels, particularly those from the eighteenth century. Building upon Armstrong's study of the genre as a specific form of gendered knowledge, I argue that this gendered association contributed to and enabled the inferior status of novel writing.

Through discursive, social, and economic practices, fiction grew more consistently feminized throughout the eighteenth century, but at the same time the critical prose endorsing the genre attempted to reduce or deny the persistent femininity of fiction. The middle-class female, as reader, writer, or heroine, aided the capi- talistic enterprise of selling novels, but her femininity tainted the text and prevented fiction from achieving a "literary" status. The culture's definition of the female as subordinate to the male compromised the feminized genre. Over the course of the eighteenth century, some writers attempted to legitimate their novels through reference to more traditional literary practices, but after over a hundred years of regularly published fiction, the public still perceived the novel as inferior. In 1810 Anna Latitia Barbauld remarked that it was not "easy to say, why the poet, who deals in one kind of fiction, should have so high a place allotted to him in the temple of fame; and the romance-writer so low a one as in the general estimation he is confined to. "6

Through the figure of the middle-class female reader when the subordination of the genre became ideologically connected with the subordination of women, citing one of these inferiorities reinforced belief in the other. Seen in this light, it should not be surprising that the female novelist was excluded from nineteenth-



RUNGE / Gendered Strategies 365

century assessments of literary excellence. Dale Spender in her corrective study, Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen, explains the absence of women from the eighteenth-century canon by attributing a certain amount of malice and agency to recent male critics who have successfully erased the female author.7 However satisfying, this approach to what is essentially the result of historically con- tingent critical standards seems inadequate.

As an alternative, I propose that certain practices developed in the criticism of the eighteenth-century enabled literary historians of later generations to ignore or diminish the prolific achievements of the early female authors. Because the literary hierarchy that criticism constructed reflected and reinforced gendered values, female authors were denied a place in the canon of excellence. Booksellers and publishers encouraged the association between females and fiction for commercial pur- poses, but the gendered packaging of the early fictions employed the language of heterosexual romance, thus reproducing and naturalizing a paradigm of female subordination and male control. In a separate development, authors attempted to dis- tance their fiction from association with femininity by aligning their works with tradi- tionally masculine genres. In the first strategy, the apparent propriety of the match between women and fiction provides an illusion of female mastery, while a pronounced gallantry masks the critical perception of the female artist's limited powers. In the second strategy, greatness is secured by denying femininity and initiating a tradition that celebrates the novel as the "comic Epic-Poem in Prose."

Despite historical evidence that suggests a primarily male reading audience, the literary discourse of the eighteenth century attributes the novel's widespread popularity to the developing reading habits of the middle-class woman.8 Once the fictional discourse fixed on the idea of the isolated female reader, the image mul- tiplied with rapidly homogenizing energy.9 If men did spend their time engaged with frivolous romances, the British critical discourse on fiction elided the fact.10 The Athe- nian Mercury answered the query "Whether 'tis lawful to read Romances" by satiriz- ing the ambition such books inspired in under-educated women: "and so for Women, no less than Queens or Empresses will serve 'em." Addison and Steele repeatedly censured the lazy female reader and warned her against the moral danger of "Ro- mances, Chocolate and like enflamers." Ambrose Phillips advertised his periodical The Free Thinker as an "elevating alternative" to "the insipid Fictions of novels and Romances in which most women indulged."'1 By the middle of the century, critics blamed women for the omnipresence of bad fictions: "So long as the British ladies continue to encourage our hackney scribblers, by reading every romance that appears, we need not wonder that the press should swarm with such poor insignificant productions."'12 The critical efforts gradually eliminated any presence of the male and relied on the inflated image of the middle-class female as the raison d'e^tre for fiction.

As the social and economic conditions in early modern Britain began to mark the novel as a feminine genre, in their discursive practices authors, edi- tors, publishers, and booksellers capitalized on the association. Most commonly, the critical discourse identified the female reader in an opening address entitled, "To the Ladies." This discursive gesture powerfully aligned the fictional work and its commu- nity of readers into a strictly female society serving feminine needs. The translator of




Madeleine de Scudery's Clelia (1655) focused [his] audience with a letter "to the La- dies" claiming, "'tis to the Altar of your perfections (fair Ladies) that the Incompa- rable Courage of the noble Clelia flyes for protection."13 George Mackenzie directed his Aretina, or the Serious Romance (1660) with a gallant address "To all the Ladies of this Nation." In The Maiden-head Lost by Moon-light: or, the Adventure of the Meadow (1672), Joseph Kepple manipulates the convention with an ironic dedication "To the Ladies" in which he satirizes feminine coyness. Mary Davys likewise mocks the traits of her purported audience in The Reform'd Coquet. A Novel (1724), dedi- cated "To the Ladies of Great Britain."'14 Whether straightforward or ironic, these opening letters create the sense of a homogenous audience for which the author cre- ated the work. The discursive presence of the female reader within the text legitimates the female reading experience and promotes an imaginary camaraderie within a com- munity of female readers.

The prefatory material generally encourages a bonding between the female reader and the female heroine or, as in the case of Clelia cited above, between the reader and the text personified as a woman. The personification of the fiction as female intensifies the overall femininity of the genre and creates the illusion of sameness or likeness between the purported reader and work. The noble Clelia shares with her readers a dramatic sense of worthiness: "But 'tis not so much the remembrance of her dangers past, as the Consideration of her paines willingly taken for your beautifull Sex in passing the Seas, and changing not only her Language but her Country, that invites her thus chearefully to caste her self on your Mercies. "" By emphasizing the worth of the text and inviting the female reader to condescend to read it, the translator situates the reader in a flattering position. The translator exalts the reader and creates an imaginary female coterie, an exclusive relationship between women.

Enlisting the reader's protection for a fiction personified as female both isolates the feminine and grants the female reader a sense of autonomy. In his dedication to The Unequal Match or, the Life of Mary of Anjou Queen of Majorca (1681), Jean de La Chapelle petitions the Countess Dowager of Tenet to shelter his fiction: "This Queen fancyed she could be nowhere so safe as under so Glorious a protection, and therefore was restless and impatient, till I had Ushered and Intro- duced her into your Ladyships presence."'6 La Chapelle's patron lends honor to his fiction whose reputation, like a woman's, is particularly subject to public scrutiny. Already established in society, the Countess Dowager extends a favor to the fiction- as-woman and allows her to enter respectable company on the patron's good name. By empowering the female patron with the right to approve the fiction, the author grants the women moral authority.

Because the prefatory material relied so heavily on the discursive presence of the female, certain authors made stylistic accommodations for their female audiences. The critical requirements for fictional styles begin to assert themselves through prefatory conventions that isolate the female reader and personify the text as female. Not surprisingly, this overdetermined femininity within the genre con- tributes to and is enhanced by an increasingly limited set of standards consistent with female social decorum. The most prominent restriction for fiction was the standard of modesty, which validated the perceived needs of a female audience. Henry Cogan, the




translator of Scudery's Ibrahim (1674), declares his code of delicacy directed to feminine purity: "You shall see there, Reader, if I be not deceived, the comeliness of things and conditions exactly enough observed; neither have I put any thing into my Book, which the Ladies may not read without blushing. "17 As in other appeals for a chaste writing style, the woman motivates the standard of modesty."8 In 1691 the translator of Scudery's Artamene insists on his maintenance of the feminine standard: the fiction contains "so far from the least fully [sic] of what might be thought vain or Fulsome, that there is not anything to provoke a blush from the most modest Virgin." In 1720 the anonymous author of the Jamaica Lady grudgingly submits to the virtuous requirements for his female audience: "I have taken care to write with all modesty the subject would permit, being very cautious of offending the fair sex."19 While these authorial assurances presuppose, and hence reinforce, the presence of a female audience, they also prescribe a certain writing style, which becomes fixed to an expressly feminine identity within criticism. The terms "modesty" and "innocence" relate specifically to the female as reader or heroine, and eventually these expressions become the highest critical praise for female authors as well.

Prefatory materials establish modesty in fiction as a norm and thus suggest a reexamination of British culture's alleged discomfort with the sexual metaphors used for writing, reading, and publishing. Wendy Wall argues that the first widespread publishing of texts in Renaissance England was perceived as a violent transgression of class boundaries. What had been reserved for an elite coterie was snatched away by the rapist-editor and exposed for public viewing. According to Wall, the prefatory material to these early productions aligned the text with the female body to arouse the prurient interest of a mass readership: "Writers frequently impressed upon their readers the intense privacy of their texts by figuring them as female bodies; in this way, publication is a striptease for the public. Another common metaphor ... equates textual production with reproduction. Writing is represented as childbirth, and the site of writing is the female genitalia, the veiled, enclosed space within the female body."20 The moral imperative that rises out of the critical discourse of the seventeenth century responds in part to these explicit sexual metaphors. The later discourse chastens the sexual metaphors; by personifying the novels as female and attributing to the text the character, concerns, and behavior of the proper female, the prefatory materials equate the published texts with the modest female body. I do not mean to suggest that this trend represented an absolute change in the metaphors for publishing or reading; the sexual body, for instance, continues to represent metonymically the text of pornographic fictions, which began to be translated into English with regularity in the late seventeenth century. Modesty, however, increasingly became a more important criterion for texts during the eighteenth century.

Likewise, the metaphor for writing as procreation maintains cur- rency within the later discourse, but the symbol takes on new dimensions as more women occupy the authorial position. Rather than exploit the sexuality of reproduction, Mary Davys highlights the troubles and responsibilities of the parental relationship; she describes the debut of her first work, The Lady's Tale (1704):

What success it met with I never knew, for, as some unnatural parents sell their offspring to beggars in order to see them no more, I took




three guineas for the brat of my brain and then went a hundred and fifty miles northward, to which place it was not very likely its fame should follow. But meeting with it some time ago, I found it in a sad ragged condition and had so much pity for it as to take it home and get it into better clothes.21

Davys adopts the sexualized metaphor for writing, and the description of her prod- uct, "the brat of my brain," suggests the illicit nature of the act. Unlike the explicit Renaissance metaphors, however, the issues Davys raises do not excite a prurient interest. On the contrary, the mothering metaphor suggests an involvement with the text that lasts beyond the offspring's initial delivery. As an author, Davys expresses a maternal investment in her book, which encourages the reader to treat the novel with care. Like other prefatory conventions, the metaphor of reproduction became feminized and, consequently, chastened to meet the perceived needs and interests of the female audience. The voyeuristic pleasures associated with Renaissance publications gave way to a moral imperative and a concern with specifically feminine domestic duties. Again, this transition should not be regarded as automatic or absolute. Ros Ballaster in her Seductive Forms: Women's Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740 ex- plores the political and artistic motivations behind the eroticism in the narratives of Behn, Manley, and Haywood. These works, which represent a period when authors consciously questioned the acceptable roles for men and women, persist in the established tradition of sexually explicit fiction. It was not until mid-century that "the pious polemic could be sure of the lion's share of the market. "22

The social, economic, and discursive practices in the field of fiction all demonstrate a pronounced femininity, which might suggest the evolution of female power or cultural authority identified by Armstrong. However, the absence of this female influence, at least in terms of critical appreciation, is readily apparent when we look at our lists of great eighteenth-century novelists. We need to begin to understand when and how the femininity of fiction became suspect, or conversely, how male authority became the mark of fictional excellence, even if this happened retrospec- tively. One explanation might be that the exaggerated femininity of fiction was and continues to be misleading; the construction of femininity in the discourse of the novel never existed outside of a hierarchical relationship with a corresponding masculinity. In fact, masculine privilege, or powers culturally invested in the male, actually controlled the feminized fiction through various ideological impositions. In the last half of the seventeenth century, the associations between fiction and women included identifying a female audience, defending fiction on the basis of female virtue, personifying fiction as female, equating fiction with the female body, and making accommodations for feminine style. By employing the language and forms of romantic love, the literary criticism imposes the social hierarchy of the sexes onto the literature itself, thus ensur- ing male control (protection, care) of the feminine text. Moreover by reproducing heterosexual paradigms, the novels make masculinity essential to femininity.

Like other authors in the failing patronage system of the late seventeenth century, the male writer or translator of fiction addressed his female readers and patrons through the forms of exaggerated praise. Many panegyrics contain veiled references to sexuality, but the male petitions for female favor found in dedications to fiction explicitly mirror the standard relationship in traditional love affairs. In his




letter "To the Ladies," the translator of Scudery's Clelia adopts the role of the suitor to all his readers: "For my part (Ladies) the Grand Inducement I had to bestow those few vacant howers (I sometimes enjoy) on this worke was chiefly to pleasure you."23 The translator assumes a typically romantic stance, offering his service for the ladies' diversion. This address likewise imitates the accepted sexual double standard by grant- ing the translator access to many female readers, while the isolated female enjoys the work of one man.

Mackenzie insinuates a similar promiscuity in his rather optimistic address "To all the Ladies of this Nation." Initially, he focuses the sexuality of the fiction with the provocative image of himself as a "trembling mother" with her literary newborn. Mackenzie capitalizes on the free use of sexual metaphors to describe himself alternately as mother and male lover. He quickly switches back to his gendered role as gallant and declares all the women of England as his patronesses: "there is none of your never enough admired Sex, but may lay claime to the patronage of all that drops from my pen."24 The author propositions his readers with the titillating image of the male instrument, aligning reading with insemination. The patronage Mackenzie desires these women to claim clearly differs from the traditional offering of money or status; instead, he solicits from female readers a sexual relationship with the text.

Conventional addresses to the female patron relied so heavily on tropes of heterosexual romance that even female authors adopted the forms. In her dedication to "The Most Illustrious Princess The Duchess of Mazarine," Behn em- ploys all the standard panegyric devices and places herself in the role of devoted lover:

I was impatient for an Opportunity, to tell Your Grace, how infinitely one of Your own Sex ador'd You, and that, among all the nu- merous Conquests, Your Grace has made over the Hearts of Men, Your Grace has not subdu'd a more entire Slave; I assure you, Madam, there is neither Compliment nor Poetry, in this humble Declaration, but a Truth, which has cost me a great deal of Inquietude.25

Behn proved herself a master of the romantic forms in her fiction, and this dedicatory letter continues for some length in the same vein. Because of the exaggerated conventions of the dedicatory epistle, it is difficult to determine how much of Behn's fulsome praise is in earnest. Clearly, Behn adopts the stance of a would-be-male lover, and her enthusiasm for the Duchess focuses on physical details rather than moral abstrac- tions. She celebrates the sexual female body as spectacle: "And how few Objects are there, that can render it so entire a Pleasure, as at once to hear you speak, and to look upon your Beauty."26 Behn's address acknowledges its own transgression of gendered roles; she aligns herself with the Duchess' male conquests, but her separateness from the men causes "a great deal of Inquietude."27 In addition to exemplifying the use of heterosexual conventions in fictional prefaces, Behn's dedication is also an interesting illustration of the problems female authors confronted in a male-controlled genre.

In contrast to Behn's dedication, Mary Pix domesticates the conventions of the dedicatory epistle in The Inhumane Cardinal; or, Innocence Betray'd (1696). Pix addresses "Her Royal Highness The Princess Ann, of Denmark" and praises




her family lineage, her "Christian Piety," her "Royal Partner," and her "Lovely Bloom- ing Prince." This later panegyric reflects a changing attitude toward the ideals of femininity, celebrating the proper female roles of wife and mother. Pix assumes the position of an admirer of the same sex, not the would-be lover of heterosexual romance. Still, the formal conventions raise tensions for Pix as she closes the standard epistle; after praising the virtues of Anne's new son, Pix awkwardly shifts to the cus- tomary authorial voice:

I ought now to say something, in reference to the following Sheets; but my ravish'd Pen hath been entertain'd upon so sublime a Theme, that it disdains to descend; and my heart full of Rapture, that is, full of your Royal Highness, will only give me leave to endeavor the ex- pressing, how much I am, Madam, your Royal Highness's Devoted humble Servant.28

Like most conventions, Pix's appeal to the lowness of the critical task appears insin- cere, and her awkward use of stock phrases from sexual panegyric reveals further inadequacy. Her "ravish'd Pen" has not been employed in sexual metaphor until that point, and her heart's "rapture" seems so out of place as to require an explanation. Although Pix attempts to adapt masculine standards for prefatory materials to fiction, she loses confidence and finds herself caught between the gendered roles of female author and male gallant. Her inconsistency evokes the paradox of the overtly feminine genre determined and controlled by masculine conventions.

The second explanation of the question of how male authority came to represent excellence in the overtly feminized genre lies in the strategies eighteenth- century critics used to accommodate or minimize the inferiority associated with femininity. Spender suggests that eighteenth-century critics accepted the work of female writers without compromise, and, indeed, critics praised the feminine fiction in terms that nominally empowered the female.29 But how the early critics packaged and praised the work of women, or any novel for that matter, contributed to the subsequent negative perceptions of feminine fiction. By claiming a male focus for feminized fiction or by aligning the novel with masculine antecedents in epic or tragedy, the critical appraisals of fiction reinforced the subordinate role of the female and asserted the right of masculine control.

One of the earliest and most respected critical statements on fiction came from the Bishop of Avranches, Pierre-Daniel Huet. Huet's essay, translated by Stephen Lewis as The History of Romances (1715), acknowledges the femininity of fiction, but he argues that the genre is actually homocentric for just that reason. His thesis makes explicit the heterosexual dynamic the gallant gestures in the prefatory matter suggest; the male controls the female through love and sex. Huet claims that though France "has yielded the Bays for Epic Poetry, and History," it has perfected the romance. To explain the superlative French performance, Huet appeals to gender relations in France: "We owe (I believe) this Advantage to the Refinement and Polite- ness of our Gallantry; which proceeds, in my Opinion, from the great Liberty which the Men of France allow to the Ladies."30 Because the romance concentrates on the love of women, it follows that frequent interchange with women ensures the mastery of this fictional writing.




Yet, even as Huet insinuates the generosity of Frenchmen to their women, he reinforces the idea that men retain the right to control women's speech: the men "allow" the ladies to talk. According to Huet, men of other nations do not enjoy the same interactions with women, and this disadvantage denies them the specific sexual knowledge crucial to the success of romances:

But in France, the Ladies go at large upon their own Parole; and being under no Custody but that of their own Heart, erect it into a Fort, more strong and secure than all the Keys, Grates, and Vigilance of the Douegnas. The Men are obliged to make a Regular and Formal Assault against this Fort, to employ so much Industry and Address to reduce it, that they have formed it into an Art scarce known to other Nations.3"

Romance reading for Huet is ideally suited to the male audience, and he claims that the reader will gain knowledge from the fiction. The knowledge, however, is specifically sexual; men can better satisfy themselves if they know how to seduce women. Huet's extensive use of conventional battle imagery suggests a gender conflict in which the romance literally empowers the male reader. By providing essential information about the object of attack, the romance arms men. The romance itself remains primarily concerned with female sexuality, but it is not, according to Huet, designed for female benefit; instead, this critical treatise casts women as prey.

With the growth of sentimental values in the later eighteenth century, the image of woman as prey lost favor in popular fiction and the less carnal configuration of the domestic woman took shape. The normalizing force of the ideology of domesticity, however, drew sharp lines around the field of acceptable female writing and caused popular female authors such as Behn, Manley, and Haywood to suffer in literary criticism. Jane Spencer argues that the cultural notions of sentimen- tality, which focused on the unification of feeling and morality in the figure of the domestic female, began to influence critical values by mid-century:

The moral utility of literature was an all-pervasive concern of eighteenth-century critics; modesty in the writer and his work was be- coming an important term of praise; and simplicity and spontaneity in writing became greatly admired as the century progressed. What was happening, in fact, was that the properly 'feminine' and the properly 'literary' were both being redefined along the same lines.32

Spencer rightly notes that such literary values restricted the creativity of the female artist to the "natural" sphere of domestic concerns, but she looks to this critical cel- ebration of the feminine as the starting point for women's acceptance as authors. Such limited critical approval, however, contributed to the denial of female genius.

The critical tendency to attribute to female writers qualities consistent with their social decorum, combined with the culture-wide prescription for polite novels promoted the discursive identification of the female novelist as inferior. As a correlate to this subordinate status, the critical practice granted woman a prominent place in the discourse of fiction but deemed women non-threatening and pleasing.




Most criticism identified features in women's writing that conveyed a sense of the author's femininity. One critic claims a novel "by a Young Lady" was "written on the whole in an agreeable manner, and adapted to afford entertainment, without leaving any improper impression." Another female author is praised for her "facility of expression, and tenderness of sentiment," and a third receives the following recommen- dation for her novel: "The volumes are pleasingly, and, with some few exceptions, very correctly written; and the lessons in virtue and morality do the greatest honour to the writer's heart."33 The critical appraisal of female writers usually consisted of complimentary phrases or references to amateurishness. The critical discourse not only limited the female writer to domestic or private affairs, it rendered her ineffective in any professional sense.

Still, the novel gained some critical acceptance during the eighteenth century, and the strategies most successful for achieving this credibility reveal the work of the cultural bias in favor of masculinity. Despite or because of the exaggerated femininity of the novel, critics drew on masculine literary precedents, such as the poetic genres of epic, tragedy, or, in some cases, comedy. Although available to women in translation, the writings of the Ancients were perceived to be a more powerful tool for men who enjoyed a more "authentic" experience by reading them in their original language. In an effort to gain critical status, novelists sought to parallel their works with the highest forms in the literary hierarchy. Few critics of fiction compared their works to genres primarily associated with women, such as love poetry, pastorals, or social letters. Hence, critics sought to ally fiction with the rules of the Ancients, and quite early on issues of unity, plot, and character became questions within critical discourse.

Few authors, translators, or critics sustained any consistent parallel between their fictions and the forms of epic or tragedy. Consequently, many of the same prefaces mentioned earlier include among their various strategies for critical definition an appeal to the rules of the Ancients. Scudery includes a dissertation on the epic in her preface to Ibrahim (translated by Henry Cogan): "I have seen in those famous Romanzes of Antiquity, that in the Epique Poem there is a principal action whereunto all the rest, which reign over all the work, are fastned, and which makes them that they are not employed, but for the conducting of it to its perfection."34 Scudery claims to borrow her "light" from "those great Geniusses of antiquity" and maintains her lengthy comparison in detail. Ultimately she claims that the rule of "true resemblance is without question the most necessary."35 Her familiarity with the works of the ancients recommends her to the educated (and male) audience. By aligning her work with the most celebrated literature, she grants the romance authority and entices the reader to engage it. Furthermore, the primary critical issues she addresses, the structure of plot and the realism of portrayal, remain important criteria for the judgment of a novel throughout later criticism.

Other writers simply refer in passing to the ancients or glide over the resemblance between epic poetry and their fictions. J. D., the translator of Astrea, begins his epistle to the reader in the first volume: "Of all the Books that Mankind hath convers'd with, since it was first refin'd by Letters, none hath contributed so much to the civilization thereof, or gaind that esteeme and Authority with it, as those




of Poetry, by which terme I meane, FICTION, in the largest extent. Under this, are com- prehended the highest & noblest productions of man's wit."36 By expanding the category of poetry to encompass all that is written in a fictional vein, J. D. justifies the comparison of his romance with the works of classical literature. If J. D. stands for John Dryden, as James Winn suggests, then we can be certain J. D. knew the rules of the classics well enough to elaborate.37 We can assume that he deemed a lengthy expo- sition inappropriate for the needs and capacities of the romance audience. His broad allusion thus has only the effect of a ploy for status. Roger Boyle's reference to the ancients is even less precise. In his preface to Parthenesia (1655), Boyle calls Virgil's Aeneid a "Romance in Numbers."38 Just as Scudery labels epics "Romanzes of Antiq- uity," Boyle redefines the epic as a romance and indirectly compares the masterpiece of Virgil with his own production. Such gestures reveal the critical impulse to claim a literary paternity regardless of its legitimacy.

As dramatic criticism gained prestige in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, writers of fiction turned to these theories for authori- zation. While recognizing the hierarchy of genres, William Congreve's famous preface to Incognita tenuously adapts the precedents of drama to his construction of fiction: "Since all Traditions must indisputably give place to the Drama, and since there is no possibility of giving that life to the Writing or Repetition of a Story which it has in the Action, I resolved in another beauty to imitate Dramatick Writing, namely, in the Design, Contexture and Result of the Plot."39 Congreve's extreme respect for the established genres both challenges the perceived inferiority of the novel and reinscribes it. His tone is mildly self-mocking, but his own skill at drama and his friendship with Dryden suggest that Congreve regarded drama as the highest literary form. Despite his claim for originality of method-"I have not observed it before in a Novel"- Congreve's criticism offers nothing substantial. Because he does not specifically ana- lyze the plots of any plays or novels, his critical analogies operate on a general level; while he aims to redirect fictional writing from episodic plots to a more coherent narrative, his appeal to the laws of drama is primarily a critical posture that aligns the writer's work with established cultural authority.

The practice of comparing fictional works with the more presti- gious genres so pervaded the critical discourse that it became conventional. In the dedication to Luck at Last, or the Happy Unfortunate (1723), Arthur Blackamore considered it a commonplace: "If I understand the nature of novels aright, the design of them in general is much the same with that of poetry-to profit and delight the reader. "40 Blackamore attests to the ambiguity of the critical discourse on prose-fiction in his tentative embrace of the general laws for poetry. Mary Davys defends her narratives with a similar nod toward what we now consider Augustan ideals: "I have in every novel proposed one entire scheme or plot, and the other adventures are only incidental or collateral to it, which is the great rule prescribed by the critics, not only in tragedy and other heroic poems, but in comedy too."'41 Davys identifies the more rule-bound genres of tragedy, comedy, and epic poetry as her literary models. Clearly these authors seek critical acceptance of their work, and these discursive gestures are not restricted by sex. Women as well as men search for ways to dignify their productions by association with traditional authority.




These critical conventions opened a conceptual space within the discourse on fiction for Fielding's famous discussion of the rules of criticism in his preface to Joseph Andrews (1742). With a greater degree of precision, Fielding draws the same inferences; as Scudery, J. D., Boyle, and others before him; his prose fiction follows the generic conventions of the ancient epic:

The Epic as well as the Drama is divided into Tragedy and Com- edy....

And farther, as this poetry may be Tragic or Comic, I will not scruple to say it may be likewise either in Verse or Prose: for tho' it wants one particular, which the Critic enumerates in the constituent Parts of an Epic Poem, namely Metre; yet, when any kind of Writing contains all its other Parts, such as Fable, Action, Characters, Sentiments, and Diction, and is deficient in Metre only; it seems, I think, reasonable to refer it to the Epic; at least, as no Critic has thought proper to range it under any other Head, nor to assign it a particular Name to itself.42

Though later critics would tend to find the meter an essential aspect of the epic, its lack posed no particular difficulty for Fielding, who draws upon the best known critical principles to define and guide his new creation in prose. He alludes to the confu- sion of labels and categories associated with the novel-form and confidently filters through the disorder using Aristotelian vocabulary. He establishes the applicability of these terms through the example of Telemachus (1699) by Franqois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon, an eighteen-book fiction he distinguishes from "those voluminous Works commonly called Romances, namely, Clelia, Cleopatra, Astrea, The Grand Cyrus." The former, he claims, has more in common with "the Epic Kind" than with the latter, which "contain . . . very little Instruction or entertainment."43 The ex- tremely popular French romances clearly provided pleasure and edification to some audiences, but they failed to meet Fielding's qualifications for the "comic Epic-Poem in Prose." His general and dismissive criticism of French romances does not identify specific ways in which Telemachus and implicitly Joseph Andrews differ in their ex- ecution of fable, action, character, sentiment, or diction. His main contention in the preface lies in distinguishing both the burlesque from comic writing and the mon- strous from the ridiculous, distinctions that apply to the genres of drama, poetry, prose, and even painting. Nonetheless, the critical preface to Joseph Andrews and the extensive critical apparatus in Tom Jones indicate Fielding's intent to establish for the novel a classical heritage.

The eighteenth-century practice of alluding to the masculine traditions of epic and drama, whether with broad categorical claims or with attention to critical detail, constructed a level of artistic credibility for fiction. The need to justify fiction with superficial claims for a distinguished literary heritage responds to a perception of the genre's inferiority. The perceived femininity of the novel, established through various discursive gestures repeated over the decades, confirmed the genre's subordinate status. The claims for paternity did little to lessen the association between fiction and femininity, but they provided authors and critics with an empower-



RUNGE / Gendered Strategies 3 75

ing strategy. By aligning their work with a heritage and rigor acccepted as masculine, authors and critics could ignore or deny the stereotypical femininity of fiction and gain legitimacy within critical circles. In turn, the authority associated with masculine genres, whether cultural prestige, classical pedigree, or hierarchical superiority empowered the critical gesture. While fiction remained associated with the feminine, criticism of that genre became more overtly masculine. A warning from the Critical Review in 1792 illustrates the force of masculine critical privilege: "Women we have often eagerly placed near the throne of literature: if they sieze it, forgetful of our fondness, we can hurl them from it."" This critic vividly describes the precarious position of the female writer within the critical discourse of the eighteenth century. Outside of the closely defined genre of domestic moral fiction, the female author risked oblivion.

By the end of the eighteenth century the conditions of critical acceptance for the novel denied women the possibility of literary excellence by incorporat- ing the ideology of gender in two separate but complimentary ways. In the first, women were granted a legitimate place within the literary discourse as the purveyors of domestic morality. Like the domestic works they dispersed, female writers were celebrated in their tangential status. In the second, fictional excellence depended theo- retically on masculine privilege. Any critical judgment that invoked the sexual hierarchy depended on the established power relation between the sexes. Femininity was constructed as antithetical to masculinity, and masculinity represented mastery in intellectual and artistic fields; hence, the feminine fiction was automatically judged in- capable of excellence. The critical and economic success of the domestic narrative encouraged women to publish more fiction, but the area in which criticism recognized female success was so restricted that the larger discourse of criticism easily dismissed it. The gallant gestures in early prefaces and the benign complimentary appraisals in later criticism ultimately mask the masculine control of the overtly feminine fiction.

Though the critical statements that attempted to establish a presti- gious lineage for the novel were often only symbolic, the repeated appeals suffused the discourse with the aura of masculine authority. These critical judgments assumed the status of "truth" on which later critics based their own distinctions. Criticism placed female authors in a specific and confined critical sphere while it located male authors in another, more respected field. Female novelists conformed to the standards of modestly written, pleasing tales of domestic harmony, while male authors strove for original plots and intellectual challenges. These gendered expectations were retro- spectively reinforced by the canon-making decisions of critics in the nineteenth century. One might be tempted to identify these early critics as misogynists with a plan to deny women any literary achievement; even if this were the case, the language and strategies deployed by critics of early fiction were so inextricably bound to the changing ideologies of gender that they could scarcely admit the possibility of female literary excellence. On the other hand, the excellence of male authors was readily granted since these same ideologies inflated the respect due their sex and the qualities attributed to it. The gendered values, positive or negative, interfere with any objective as- sessment of artistic achievement, and the use of these gendered strategies, once recognized, complicates the entire history of evaluating the novel.




NOTES

1. Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel 1600-1740 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1987).

2. Following the eclecticism of the early criticism, which shares with the amorphous fictions themselves a notable lack of distinction among the available prose genres of romance, history, and news, I will include statements on romance, mock-romance, scandal literature, and more traditional novels and novel- las as evidence or support for claims made about the criticism of fiction in general.

3. In his landmark discussion of the novel, Ian Watt identifies the socio-economic conditions which lend the novel femininity, especially the increased literacy and leisure of middle-class women that allowed them to indulge in 'omnivorous reading," (The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding [Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1957], 44). More recent works, including Lennard Davis' Factual Fictions (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1986); McKeon's The Origins of the English Novel; Geoffrey Day's From Fiction to the Novel (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987); and J. Paul Hunter's Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1990) are not concerned with gender in any appreciable way. Feminist literary histories like Jane Spencer's The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986) and Janet Todd's The Sign of Angellica: Women, Writing, and Fiction 1660-1800 (London: Virago, 1989) focus solely on the work of female authors as a corrective to a tradition of criticism on the male novelists, but these feminist works only peripherally discuss the role of gender in the criticism of novels.

4. Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (New York: Oxford Univ. Press 1987), 14.

5. Ibid., 32.

6. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, The British Novelists, New Edition (London, 1820), 1.2.

7. Dale Spender, Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen (London: Pandora Press, 1986), 119.

8. See Patricia Crawford, "Women's Published Writings 1600-1700," in Women in English Society 1500-1800, ed. M. Prior (London: Methuen, 1985), 211-82, for an analysis of the statistics for literacy and authorship for women in the seventeenth century. Ros Ballaster examines evidence of low wages and the high cost of books as well as statistics on literacy to determine that "few men, and even fewer women, in late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century England had the ability to read or could afford to buy amatory fiction" (Seductive Forms: Women's Amatory Fiction 1684-1740 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992], 37). These fictions, like most novels, were printed in the cheapest form.

9. See Kathryn Shevelow, Women in Print Culture: The Construction of Femininity in the Early Peri- odical (London: Routledge, 1989) for an excellent discussion of the figure of the middle-class female reader as it developed in periodical literature. Ballaster examines the construction of the female reader in the context of amatory fiction and sees "the 'figure' of the bourgeois woman reader as the signifier of a newly constituted cultural order." She argues that "'Woman,' defined as a category of reader in Addison and Steele's journals, comes to represent the boundary or margin of that sensitive and disinterested critical awareness that they sought to encourage in their (male) readers" (Seductive Forms, 38, 39-40).

10. Ruth Perry cites William Temple and Samuel Pepys as avid readers of the romance in Women, Letters, and the Novel (New York: AMS Press, 1980), 18.

11. loan Williams, ed., Novel and Romance: 1700-1800; A Documentary Record, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), 29; Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), no. 365; The Free Thinker, vol. 1 (London, 1718) quoted in Alison Adburgham, Women in Print: Writing Women and Women's Magazines from the Restoration to the Accession of Victoria (London: Allen and Unwin, 1972), 75.

12. Monthly Review vol. 23 (1760), 523.

13. Madeleine de Scud6ry, Clelia, trans. anon. (London, 1655) a2r. The use of the bracketed masculine pronoun indicates that the sex of the translator is officially unknown; the male gender is assumed because men dominated the publishing field at the time.




14. George Mackenzie, Aretina, or the Serious Romance (1660; reprinted with intro. Charles Davies, Augustan Reprint Society, no. 42, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1953); Joseph Kepple, The Maiden-head Lost by Moonlight: or, the Adventure of the Meadow (1672; reprinted Restoration Prose Fiction, ed. Charles C. Mish, Lincoln, Nebraska: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1970); Mary Davys, The Reform'd Coquet (1724; reprinted with intro. Josephine Grieder, Foundations of the Novel, ed. Michael F. Shugrue, New York: Garland Publishing, 1973).

15. Scudery, Clelia, a2v.

16. Jean de la Chapelle, The Unequal Match, or, The Life of Mary of Anjou, Queen of Majorca (Lon- don, 1681), n. p.

17. Scud6ry, Ibrahim, trans. Henry Cogan (1674; reprinted Augustan Reprint Society, no. 32, ed. Ben- jamin Boyce, Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1952), 8.

18. For example, see John Dryden in 'A Parallel Betwixt Poetry and Painting"; he claims that Virgil's Aeneid is the epitome of chaste art: "Neither is there any expression in that story which a Roman matron might not read without a blush," (W. P. Ker ed., The Essays of John Dryden [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926] 2:129).

19. Preface to Artamene (1691; reprinted Williams, Novel and Romance), 26; W. P. Jamaica Lady, or, the Life of Bavia (1720; reprinted and ed. William McBumey, Four Before Richardson: Selected English Novels, 1720-1727, Lincoln, Nebraska: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1963), 87.

20. Wendy Wall, "Disclosures in Print: The 'Violent Enlargement' of the Renaissance Voyeuristic Text," SEL: 29 (1989): 40.

21. McBurney, 236.

22. Ballaster, 33.

23. Scud6ry, Clelia, A2r.

24. Mackenzie, n. p.

25. Aphra Behn, The History of the Nun; or, The Fair Vow Breaker (1689; reprinted and ed. Charles C. Mish, Restoration Prose Fiction), 96.

26. Ibid.

27. The Duchess of Mazarin, Hortense Mancini, evidently led a colorful, if scandalous, life, and some speculate that Behn and she were actually lovers. Maureen Duffy contends that this dedication evinces Behn's sadness at being kept from court: "It was a year since Nell Gwynn's death and now she had looked at the 'whole tour of ladies at court' and singled out the duchess to tell her 'how infinitely one of your own sex adored you'. She wouldn't have done this while Nell Gwynn was alive, but once she was dead the bisexual, cultured and romantic Mazarin was the obvious choice" (The Passionate Sbepherdess: Aphra Behn 1640-1689 [London: Jonathan Cape, 1977], 277). Behn's dedication follows in the tradition of playing the breeches-part and upsetting gendered expectations. Her petition to another woman subverts the heterosexual norm at the same time that it appropriates the conventions of the fictional paradigm.

28. Mary Pix, The Inhumane Cardinal; or, Innocence Betray'd (1696; reprinted and intro. Constance Clark, Delmar, New York: Scholars and Facsimiles & Reprints, 1984), n.p.

29. Spender, 139.

30. Pierre-Daniel Huet, The History of Romances (1715), trans. Stephen Lewis; reprinted Williams, Novel and Romance, 52.

31. Ibid., 53.

32. Spencer, 32.

33. Review of The Parsonage House, "by a Young Lady," in The Monthly Review 63 (July 1780), 70; review of The Fatal Falsehood; a Tragedy, by Hannah More, The Monthly Review 62 (Feb. 1780), 134; review of Darney Vale; or Emelia Fitzroy by Mrs. Bonhote in The Monthly Review Second series vol. 1 (Feb. 1790), 223.



378 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIEs 28 / 4

34. Scud6ry, Ibrahim, 2.

35. Ibid., 3.

36. Honore d'Urfe, Astrea, trans. J. D. (London, 1657), A2r.

37. James Winn, John Dryden and His World (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1987), 147.

38. Roger Boyle, Parthenesia (1655; reprinted and intro. Charles Davies, Augustan Reprint Society no. 42, Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1953), n. p.

39. William Congreve, Incognita and the Way of the World, ed. A. Norman Jeffares (Columbia, SC: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1966), 33.

40. McBurney, 4.

41. Ibid., 235.

42. Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews and Shamela, ed. Douglas Brooks-Davies (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), 4.

43. Ibid., 3-4.

44. Critical Review (Second Series) vol. 5 (1792), 132.



Documents

"Gendered Strategies in the Criticism of Early Fiction." Eighteenth-Century Studies 28.4 (Summer 1995): 363-378