The Role of Romance in Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess

Hieronymus Bosch's Gardens of Delight depicts the triumvirate joys of heaven, hell, and purgatory in a nightmarish and, at times, pornographic display of cartoon-ish characters of half bodies and dramatically disproportioned figures. How fittingly do those disjointed and misshapen facsimiles of the human condition show themselves anew in Ms. Haywood's Love in Excess? Count D'Elmont is a 'person, the gaiety of his air, and the unequalled charms of his conversation, made him the admiration of both sexes; and whilest those of his own strove which should gain the largest share of his friendship; the other vented fruitless wishes, and in secret, cursed the custom which forbids women to make a declaration of their thoughts.' (Haywood 37) Behind this backdrop of such an eloquent introduction of the man, the private gardens of the Parisian elite become the Count's private, romantic playground.

The eighteenth century of Ms. Haywood was a misogynist culture that strove to protect the virtues and good names of the aristocratically landed gentry. Men were able to play and marry as 'mercenaries' to restore lost or fading family fortunes. Whereas, women had to 'swoon' and feign coy to their rightful feelings until propositioned or notified of a man's virtuous, matrimonial desires. However, in her own literary re-mastering of the Gardens of Delight, Ms. Haywood portrays the romantic machinations of the eighteenth century women in a less than virtuous and often desirous 'mercenary' role. She uses the garden as a backdrop to the true meaning of her characters wishes and desires.

In Love in Excess, Ms. Haywood's metaphorical walled gardens are the haunt and desire of everyman, especially Count D'Elmont, in the guise of that most fragrant of manly wants-the protected female virtue. Parts 1 & 2 of the book find D'Elmont seeking his claim first within the beautiful spaces of Amena's family garden. However, he is twice blocked in romantic parlance by the window of Amena's father's closet window and by the direct locked gate barring entrance into the holy garden. Read with a romantic eye the gardens represent that which holds the possession of Amena's virtue and that which D'Elmont exacts to conquer-all of course with a burning in his loins and a young girl fretfully designing to protect herself from the wicked feelings of her personal wants and desires.

The two lover's after a multitude of interrupted interludes and attempts at satisfying their wanton desires escape to the Tuilleries into the public sphere and broadcast their forbidden love to the public eye. (17) In true romantic fashion, Amena's father, upon hearing the disgrace his young daughter has brought to the family name banishes her to a convent where, in under the rapture and re-instilled virtuousness of the church, she casts off the desires and wants that haunted her through D'Elmont and has her secular desires squelched by the holy spirit.

D'Elmont experiences the walled gardens again during his courtship with the virtuous nature and heart-rending beauty of his beloved Melliora. She faithfully defends her virtue even as D'Elmont stoically and determinately whiles away at the walls of her protected flower. Through persistent designs, Melliora, as Amena, falls to the charms and wit of the irascible, libidinous Count. However, on the night designed in conspiracy with the Baron, the Count's wife, the unwaveringly jealousy original temptress of the story, conspires to expose her undiscovered rival for the Count's love and, in a comical twist of narration exposes an equally evil plot designed by the aggressive Melantha. During the double cross, the house is awakened and Melliora finds a naked and embarrassed Count in the obvious coital confusion of an unprovoked tryst with Melantha. A plot twisting night ensues and D'Elmont loses his wife, literally, Aloyvisa, and the weakening virtue defending mores of Melliora to fate. Melantha, the capitulator of the disastrous night, goes on to happily wed and live unburdened by her ill-conceived, murderous designs.

The general themes of the privately walled gardens, the resounding return to nature, the greater than the common-folk characters (Aristocrats), and the twisting love triangles lend to the eighteenth century Romance novel. Moreover, the general shift of point of view moves us from Behn's first person to the novel third person. The shift in point of view takes reader from, my opinion, having to hear a reliable narrator to wanting to hear a great story. The salaciousness of content and the brazen depictions of sex, female desire, and a stretch to escape the traditional roles of 'coy' woman, in my opinion, has to credit this novel as one of the first feminist cries to equality; albeit an eighteenth century rendering of gender equality.

Works Cited
Haywood, Eliza. Love in Excess. 2nd. Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, LTD, 2000.