Schulz_article

groupdeal with the intricateplots and amoursof aristocratsand nunsin France,Spain,or Italy.

Obviously,AphraBehnwastom betweena tendencytowardgreater realismand the continuingappealof such highly romantictales of invincibleloveas "Agnesde Castro."In The FairJilt (i688) she assuresthe readerthatwhatshe offersis not "a feign'dStory,or any thing piec'dtogetherwith RomantickAccidents;but everyCircumstance,to a Tittle, is Truth" (p. 7). On the other hand, in the EpistleDedicatoryto Oroonoko(i688), she defendsthe fantastic elementswitha referenceto the far-awaysettingof thenarrative:"If therebe any thing that seemsRomantick,I beseechyour Lordship to consider,theseCountriesdo, in all things,so fardifferfromours, that they produceunconceivableWonders;at least, they appearso to us, becauseNew and Strange."Significantly,by farthe majority of Mrs.Behn'snovelsaretalesof "unconceivablewonders,"irresistible beauties,untrammeledpassions,incest, etc.

The predominanceof the "romantic" genre is even more conspicuous in the novellasof Mary Manley, who has often been called Mrs. Behn's successor. Realistic stories in the manner of "The Black Lady" are completelyabsentin her Power of Love: in Seven Novels (1720). The first piece in this collection, "The Fair Hypocrite,"is modeled on "The Duchess of Savoy" in William Painter's Palace of Pleasure. (Painter's story in turn goes back to Bandello via Belleforest'stranslation.) Mrs. Manley amplifiesand "embellishes"Painter's novella, and the result although genetically a novella, can with equal right be classifiedas a short romance. "The Fair Hypocrite" opens with an apotheosisof love and then goes on to describe the extreme beauty of the heroine, a tournamentin which the knights fight for the portraitsof their ladies, the appearanceof the strangerknight, the good knight who laterchallengesthe villain to single combat and rescues the distressedfair, etc. The idealistic characterof the novella is slightly undercut by elements of intrigue and by the heroine's "hypocrisy."

Severalof the remainingsix novellas in The Power of Love, e. g., "The Wife's Resentment,"two pieces entitled "The Husband'sResentment," and "The Happy Fugitives," are slightly modernized

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adaptationsof storiesin Painter. All except the latterhave tragic endings. Likemostof AphraBehn'snovellas,Mrs. Manley'snarra- tives are talesof intrigues,heroiclove, and sensationalacts of sacrilege and revenge. Although structurallythey are much simpler than the heroic romances,the lack of realismstrikesone no less in these tales than in the romans de longue haleine.

In her criticalstatements(if "critical" is not a too pretentiousterm here) Mrs. Manley shows the same indecision over the question of truth and realityas Mrs. Behn. In the Preface to The Secret History of Queen Zarah (I705) she condemns the heroic romance as not being close enough to reallife; in her Dedicationto The Powerof Love she claims that her novels "have Truth for their Foundation;several of the Facts are to be found in Ancient History" (p. xv). But in "The Happy Fugitives," in a passage which she (or some intermediary?)addedto Painter'snovella, she lamentsthe decline of heroic love: " Fashions are changed! alas the Time! ... The Constancy and and Fortitude of Lovers in ancient Times, instead of raising our Admiration,are called Stale, RomantickStories,and the Legends of the Nursery" (pp. 29 I-2).

The theme of "the power of love " was carriedon by Eliza Haywood. Her Love in Excess;or, The FatalEnquiry (17I9-20) recounts the variousamoursof the Count D'Elmont. Mrs. Haywood presents us with a curious mixture of neo-Platoniclove rhetoric and an endless seriesof breathtakingerotic scenes. Love in Excess and the other novels of Mrs. Haywood'searliercareerretain key conceptsof courtly and heroic romance,while at the same time depriving them of their idealistic content. The result is an ambiguousrhetoric,which seemingly adheres to ideological and stylistic patterns of romance, but actually undermines those patterns and supplants their idealism by lasciviousness.22(An exception, in this respect, is Philidore and Placentia, which falls into the same categoryof the highly romantic novella as Mrs. Manley's "Happy Fugitives.")

The subversionof romantic cliches is particularlystriking in the scandalnovels producedby Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Haywood.23 The

I' See Dieter Schulz, Studien zur Verfiuhrungsszeneim englischen Roman (z66o- 176o), Diss. Marburg (Marburg, privately published, I968), pp. 34-50.

2"Atypology of early i8th-centuryfiction would perhapsdeal with the chronique

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mostnotoriousexampleof the genreis Mrs.Manley'sNew Atalantis

(I709). Hereis howoneof the characters,the Dukeof Portland, faresafterhe has rapedhis ward: "He staida whole Week with Charlot,in a Surfeitof LoveandJoy!. . . he neglectedMarsto devote himself wholly to Venus; abstractedfrom all Business,that happyWeek sublim'dhim almostto an Immortal" (Part I, p.

The lofty dictionof romanceservesonly to heightenthe salacious appealof the rapeand seductionepisodesthat makeup the larger portionof thesenarratives.Despitetheirsatiricalbent, the chroniques scandaleuses"are grossly deficient as 'realistic' novels"

(Richetti,p. Insteadof a more faithful depictionof social behavior,the demolitionof romanticidealsleadsto amatoryheroics andsensationalism.

The productionsof AphraBehn, Mary Manley, and especially Eliza Haywoodmust have been tremendouslyimportantfor the image of the "novel" in the early eighteenthcentury. All three authorswerewidelyreadin the firsthalf of the century.Mrs.Haywood'sLovein Excesswas (besideGulliver'sTravelsand Robinson Crusoe)oneof thethreemostpopularworksof fictionbeforePamela. Indeed,accordingto JohnRichetti,Mrs. Haywoodestablishedherself as "the most importantproducerof popularfiction before

Pamela" (p. I79). Clara Reeve, writing in I785 on popular fiction beforeRichardson,mentionsfirstof all "the Frenchand Spanish

Romances, and the writings of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manly, and Mrs. Heywood."24

Several statementsby Defoe, Fielding, and Richardsontestify to their awarenessof these authors. In Mist's Journal (12 April I7I9) Defoe asks: "What think youLof all the feigned Stories, the Romances,the SecretHistories,and the Accountsgiven of Kings'Courts and Persons,in which we have been made to take the Charactersand Historiesof Personsof the best Quality from the Inventions of Men, nay, and sometimesof Women too, who have by that means vented

scandaleuseas a distinct genre. For my purpose a differentiationof, e. g., novella and chronique scandaleuse is unnecessary, as both genres were referred to as "novels" (cf. Williams, P. 450, n. i to Queen Zarah).

"The Progressof Romance (2 vols. in I, Colchester, I785), 1, I38.

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at "the modernNovel andAtalantisWriters,"and Richardsoncomparesthe scandalousmemoirsof his contemporarieswith similarproductionsof the previousgeneration:"Mrs. Pilkington,Constantia Phillips,LadyV.. . . whata Set of Wretches,wishingto perpetuate theirInfamy,have we-to makethe Behn's,the Manley's,and the Heywood's,lookwhite."28

If one relatesthe popular"novel" to the polemicalstatementsof the seriouswriters,it becomesclearthat the indiscriminateuse of

" " "

"romance and novel cannotbe dismissedas lackof criticalperception.The confusionof termsaccuratelyreflectsthe rapprochement of novellaand heroicromancein a type of "novel" that can with equalrightbe definedas a shorterand debasedvariantof the heroic

Defoe, Richardson,and Fielding,becausethe "novel,"in the hands of its mostprolificpractitioners,had acquiredthe samequalitiesof absurdityand remotenessfromeverydaylife as the romance.Timid attemptsat realism,such as Behn's"BlackLady,"or the remarkable achievementof Lindamira,remainedisolated.Congreve'sIncognita, as RonaldPaulsonpointsout,is "essentiallya nouvelle,"but, as Pro- fessorPaulson goes on to say, "its stylizationremovedit far from the

26 Quoted from William Lee, Daniel Defoe: His Life and Recently Discovered Writings (I869; rpt. New York, I969), II, 35.

26Letter to Mrs.Chapone(6 Dec. 1750; rpt. Carroll,SelectedLetters,p. 173,

lation of a pleasantAdventureor Intrigue, a short Romance" (quoted from English Theories of the Novel, Vol. II: Eighteenth Century,ed. Walter F. Greiner,English

using "romance" simply in the sense of "prose narrative,"without qualitativeand pejorativeconnotations. For further instances of this neutral usage see Fielding's Preface to Joseph Andrews; cf. Homer Goldberg, "Comic Prose Epic or Comic Romance: The Argumentof the Preface to Joseph Andrews,"PQ, XLIII (I964), 193-215. Relatively rare before 1750, the neutral use of "romance" became fairly common in the second half of the century. The difference between "novel " and

was not sufficientlystrikingto the majornovelists to be taken into account in their theoreticaland polemical statements.

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go "Novel,""Romance,"and PopularFiction

realismsoughtby the eighteenth-centurynovelists" (Satireand the

Novel, p.

The salient featuresof the "novel " before I 740 are sensationalism and erotic sensualism,thinly veiled by the rhetoricof romance. The "extravagancies"of romance were thus replaced by new outrages against "common sense," "nature,"and morality. In his Preface to Clarissa,William Warburtonconcedes that the authorsof "the little amatoryNovels "avoided"the extravaganceof the French Heroism," but he continues: "yet, by too natural a representationof their Subject, they opened the door to a worse evil than a corruptionof Taste; and that was, A corruptionof Heart" (Williams, p. Charles Sorel had noted the beginning of this development earlier in France. In De la connoissancedes bons livres (Paris, I67I), he laments the fact that the potentially realistic nouvelles tended to degenerateinto a vehicle for slander and vice. Not only were they offensive to good taste, but they also often violated their own pretended goal of factual truth by inventing outrageous instances of adultery,poisoning, and murder: "Si le Siecle n'en fournit pas assez d'examples,on en invente de toutes les sortes" (Ch. iv, p. i68).

The convergenceof romanceand novella in a fiction characterized by frivolousnessand lubricityhad fatal consequencesfor the already somewhat outmoded heroic romance. The rhetoricof romance, still genuinely idealisticin La Calprenede,Mlle. de Scudery, and others, came to be associatedwith scenesof illicit sexuality. As a consequence of this development,Richardsonlater uses the hyperbolic,"Roman" style to designatethe languageof the villainousseducer. Richardson's chargesagainst "mere novels and romances" always have an unmistakablemoralring. In Fielding'sattitudeone can perhapsdistinguish three elements. Like Smollett, he above all criticizes the extravagancies, the remotenessfrom "nature." Another target is the lack of learning. One of the above-quotedpassagesfrom Tom Jones can be aligned with other neoclassicistattacks on Grub Street, such as Pope's satire in The Dunciad (see Pope's vicious attack on Eliza Haywoodin Bk. II, 11.149-80). And thirdly,Fielding sharesRichardson's moralisticposition when he sets his "history" off against "a Swarm of foolish Novels, and monstrousRomances,"against "those

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Works,whichoneof the wittiestof Men regardedonlyasproceeding froma Pruritus,or indeedratherfrom a Loosenessof the Brain" (Tom Jones,Bk. IX, Ch. i).

I do not denythatDefoe,Fielding,Richardson,and Smollettconsideredtheir fiction as an alternativeto the chivalricand heroic romances,still read in the eighteenth century.28But future study of the originof the novel mightdo well to pay moreattentionto the partplayedby popularfictionin shapingthe theoryand practice of the greatnovelists.I suggest,cautiously,that theirpolemicswere aimedmoreimmediatelyat bookslike Love in Excessthan at the romancesof the seventeenthcentury,and that, even when they explicitlymentionedthe heroicromanceas their target,their notion of "romance"wasprofoundlyinfluencedby the productionsof such writersas Behn,Manley,and Haywood.

The perspectiveoutlinedhere couldpossiblyfacilitatea reassessment of the developmentof the novel. In contrastto most critics, whoviewthe riseof the novelin termsof a rejectionof the romance, SheridanBakerand Karl Heinz Goller have recentlyemphasized the continuityof the narrativetraditionby pointingout the persistenceof romanceelementsin the eighteenth-centurynovel.29This position,which at firstglanceappearsto conflictnot only with currentcriticalopinion,but alsowith the "anti-romantic" statementsof the mastersof realisticfiction,becomesmoreeasilyacceptableonce we recognizethat the novelistsconceivedof theirown worknot so much as an antithesisto the "high" heroicromances-ithas been questioned,incidentally,whetherFieldinghad any extensiveknowledge of themBO-but ratheras an alternativeto a subliteraryhybrid of novellaandheroicromance,which was the mostpopulartype of fictionwhentheystartedtheircareersasnovelists.

Stuttgart University

""See Thomas P. Haviland, The Roman de longue haleine on English Soil (University of PennsylvaniaPress, 193I), esp. Part v.

"'Baker, "The Idea of Romance in the Eighteenth-CenturyNovel," Papers of the Michigan Academyof Science, Arts, and Letters,XLIX (I964), 507-22; G6ller, Romanceund Novel: Die Anfiinge des englischen Romans, Spracheund Literatur: RegensburgerArbeiten zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik,I (Regensburg, 1972).

80 Arthur L. Cooke, " Henry Fielding and the Writers of Heroic Romance," PMLA, LXII (I947), 993.

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