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

Swooning, hair-pulling rages, and coquettish scenes haunt the story lines of Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess. Haywood masterfully creates a cast of antipodal women that range from virtue protecting, cloistered women to independent, damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead vixens of self-driven desires and determination. From the simply heavenly Melliora and Camilla to the conniving and derisive Alovysa and Ciamara, Haywood paints an imposing picture that highlights the affects and demeanor of sex and felicity in 18^th Century French and Italian courts. However, through death themes and captured loves, Haywood illustrates a deeply complex attitude toward her heroines and vanquished throughout seemingly setting the stage for further reductionism of her modern societies' views toward the female role in love and sexuality.

Taken at face value, Love in Excess is an anti-woman treatise attacking the establishments of condescension, virtuousness, and deportment towards the female's role with the opposite sex. Throughout the story, the virtuous women are portrayed as weak and unmastering of their own desires and whims. Only under the pre-coital spells of D'Elmont and the equally as debonair Monsieur Frankville are the virtuous heroines Melliora and Camilla driven to sexual misadventures that fling them into fits of sexual rage. However, their respective virtues are protected through comical scene interruptions or by allowing their cooler heads to prevail and assuage their gentlemen of desires through conversation.

On the other hand, Ciamara and Alovysa, regardless of the respects of conventional knowledge the courts may view their dalliances with the men of their wants are fiercely independent lovers willing to reach for any limits to conquer the men of their wishes and quench their feminine designs. Unfortunately, their promiscuity leads to both women's demise and the crux of my argument that Love in Excess is actually a pro-woman work of art.

I strongly believe to view Love in Excess as an anti-woman piece is to go against the true intent of Haywood's literary aspirations. First, we have to look at the author herself. Although little is known, we do know she was a single mother with two children, entertained many lovers, and was an independent businesswoman through her writing, acting, and publishing career. To assume she was anti-woman is myopic; contrarily I think we have to see her as staunchly pro-female. Alovysa and Ciamara, in my opinion, are the worst that could befall a female in Haywood's opinion societal and particular.

Haywood portrays Alovysa as an independent woman with 'one of the largest estates in Paris' as is Ciamara in the Italian court. The story unfolds with Alovysa exposing her love to the Count through anonymous love letters. Sadly, the Count mistakenly believes Amena authors the letters of adoration. He courts the young Amena who in the throes of the Count's unbelievable amorous talents is 'brought to the very brink of ruin' as D'Elmont seduces her and 'possible contriving means to compleat it'-steal her virtue that is. (47) On the fateful night the Count and Amena are betrayed by Anaret, Amena's father's discovery of the Count and Amena's romance finds Amena banished to a convent to never see the Count again and the eventual restoration of her sorted family name. Thus enters the mercenary wishes of the Count to restore his diminishing estate, marry Alovysa's wealth, and take advantage of her unwavering love.

Alovysa is driven wild by the beauty and comportment of the lovely and unequalled Count. She is a woman of taste and desire. She seeks the Count out of modern convention and truly loves the man. However, her love and determination, out of step with the mores of the day, lead to her premature death at the sword of the man she loves in a confusing and comical turn of plot.

Haywood's Alovysa represents the self-driven woman torn to pieces by the modern approbation of proper English society. She strives to marry for love and is determined to make the Count love her. She goes outside of the societal box and pursues her love interest. The portrayal of her character makes her appear older and more accomplished than her rival Melliora. By this nature, her age and character represents an older society confined by the restraints of a strict patriarchal system. The deaths of Alovysa and Ciamara represent what Haywood sees as a constraint on women's rights to rise above the mire of imposed compliancy and the characters; women in general are delegated to lesser citizens.

Contrapuntally to the stories of Alovysa and Ciamara you have the two characters of Melliora and Camilla that are spectrally opposed to the worldly and divisive older ladies conniving plots. The younger women are fawned on and adored by their respective suitors; however, they also face hardships to ascertain the loves they seek unlike the two older women that easily gain their marks whether it be through artifice or mercenary machinations. I strongly feel Haywood is here trying to luster over the current trend of her modern society by making the younger ladies appear at times comical, immature, and superficial pandering more to protecting their virtue than realizing self desire. Harmonically the contrapuntal plot lines find tenor when they all ultimately get what they want from love-albeit with very different outcomes.

Here in lays the crux of Haywood's argument more specifically dealing with the love interests of D'Elmont. The two older ladies die trying to rein in the dalliances of our young, promiscuous Count; however, the young woman Melliora wins the Count's heart and they leave to be faithfully wed and live the unspoken fairy tale. However, from what we have learned from the Counts amorous tale, can we truly believe that he will be faithful to the newly wed Melliora? Did he not plea passion with Alovysa until he took charge of Melliora? Did the Count not feint interest when Alovysa foist the letters of desire and intention his way while he was still amorously employed with Amena? Is Haywood trying to ask polite society if the ways of the virtuous can actually be protected and marrying for real love successfully prosper in a quickly liberalizing society with a rising leisure class?

I think Haywood is ultimately asking for society to stop murdering the desires and wishes of its independently minded women. Haywood wants them to live and get what they so desire. The 18^th century's refusal to allow women the freedom and right to seek their wanton desires and speak a free mind is blight on Haywood's views of a woman. Haywood strives for independence like hers rather than the 'back of the bus sister' attitude that is prevalent in 18^th century England. Although Melliora has the Count now, I think the unspoken inclinations are the Count will find someone else. Although their nuptials lend a minor catharsis, I think the story leans more towards a future downfall of the virtuous woman and the rise of another independent woman in the Count's life. Once the hunter's instinct is again aroused by another younger, more virtuous stunner or another independent cougar arises what happens to Melliora's catch then?