Anti-Pamela; or, Feign'd Innocence Detected

by Eliza Fowler Haywood

Eliza Haywood (1693-1756) (born Elizabeth Fowler) was an English writer, actress and publisher. Since the 1980s, Eliza Haywoodas literary works have been gaining in recognition and interest. She wrote and published over seventy works during her lifetime including fiction, drama, translations, poetry, conduct literature and periodicals. Haywood is a significant figure of the long 18th century as one of the important founders of the novel in English. Her writing career began in 1719 with the first two installments of Love in Excess. Many of her works were published anonymously. Amongst her other works are Fantomina; or, Love in a Maze (1724), The Fortunate Foundlings (1744), Lifeas Progress Through the Passions; or, The Adventures of Natura (1748) and The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751).

Genres: Classics, Novels

172 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1741

About the author

Eliza Haywood (1693 – 1756), born Elizabeth Fowler, was an English writer, actress and publisher. Since the 1980s, Eliza Haywood’s literary works have been gaining in recognition and interest. Described as “prolific even by the standards of a prolific age” (Blouch, intro 7), Haywood wrote and published over seventy works during her lifetime including fiction, drama, translations, poetry, conduct literature and periodicals. Haywood is a significant figure of the 18th century as one of the important founders of the novel in English. Today she is studied primarily as a novelist.

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading the more aged works written by the non-demographically compliant can be thankless work at times. The writing drags on and on in the telling without the showing, the themes that were oh so novel back then range from obnoxious to hateful stereotype today, and biographies of both work and author have sometimes been so ridiculously neglected over the years that one acknowledges that the ruin is not in the fires of the Library of Alexandria, but the spiteful neglect of untold mediocrities whose insecurity over their standard of living outweighed their professional commitments. In the days of the Internet, everything is for the learning and yadda yadda yadda, but the calcified monstrosities of the grant writing system of "first world" countries means that what pays today is often what paid two to three centuries ago, and the straight facts that my combined edition had to tell of the disparity of publications and known histories between the two works says more than I ever could on the matter. Still, it didn't make getting through this piece any easier, reminding me that, for every older woman's work that proves on the delightful level of a Evelina, there's always one (or more) that settle for the quality of a Belinda. And yet, to carry it further, had there never been a Haywood, I have a hard time imagining how there could ever been a Burney, just as had there been no Wollstonecraft, there likely would not have been nearly as magnificent an Austen. Such is the trail that (WASP) women's writing rides on the bridge from the 18th century to the 19th, something I had to repeatedly (and yawningly) remind myself through reading this, but at any rate. At least this one was short.

So, back in the day, CEOs used their publishing industry connections to put themselves on money-making literary blast, individuals who were allowed to become egregiously educated but not consequently egregiously rich bitched about it in plays and prose, and every so often a woman broke through the endlessly rapacious constraints of her society and literally wrote herself into history. As I said, my edition was a crossed work between Haywood and Fielding, and a combined chronology of the two juxtaposed Fielding's "Began school. Graduated school. Began university. Dropped out of university. Etc, etc." with Haywood's publishing anywhere between one to thirteen individual works to a hilarious degree. As for this particular work, it's actually less rhetorically convoluted than the footnotes would lead one to believe, but as is the case with a great deal of Anglo writing, there's so much hotfooting around what could potentially be conceived as too "out of bounds" for print/public consumption and so little left to the moral parable imagination otherwise that there's not much in the way of sympathizing with a character, or marveling at the prose style, or suspending one's disbelief long enough to enjoy the piece beyond what it offers as an artifact explicitly shaped by its time and place. I acknowledge that Haywood demonstrated a great deal more sense in her portrayals of the predatory socioeconomics of the "marriage market" gender relations of her day that still crop up every so often today (The last piece of communication I (mistakenly) read from my mother involved her telling me to essentially prostitute myself at a local gym due to how it was frequented by economic big wigs in the area. She's never really forgiven me for dropping out of engineering in addition to not being born with a ding-a-ling between my legs), but this isn't the kind of satire that's nasty and/or clever enough in the right ways to be absolutely delicious when read two and a half centuries later. I'm glad that Haywood and her standing in the halls of literature were basically resuscitated in the 1980s, but if I ever pick up another work of hers (for probably extremely practical challenge related reasons), I hope the length continues to have a linear relationship with the quality.

This wasn't the oldest work I've read thus far this year (indeed, it ranks at a rather measly number six in that regard), but it's aged enough for me to cut myself some slack in finding it less than engaging. The word "competition" is so obtusely misused these days that I don't want to commit to it anymore that I have to, but I still have to wonder whether, if Haywood and co. weren't obscenely more equipped than the vast majority of their fellow 18th c. WASPS in regards to being able to simply engage with that thing known as "literature," let alone significantly shape it, whether the writing would have benefitted from audiences having a great deal more to chose from. Sure, every era has its personage who's still being read today because they really were that good in human ways that have survived the many decades/centuries since their passing, and the effect that needing to put food on the table has had on creative output has done far more harm than good over the millennia, but one does wonder what could have come from perspectives too busy being bought for a pittance by those who make more in a day than they do in a year to put their writerly mark on the map. Haywood put out a bibliography that's easily ten times the size that most writers have left us in the last few centuries, but if I could swap that for a baker's dozen of women writers, each with a comparably significant reputation in conjunction with a comparably sized combined output between the group? One wonders what might have been.

P.S. This was first published on June 16th, 1741, for whenever I get around to the edition adjusting business.

[Honey Ryder · Rating 2 out of 5]

as fun as a relentlessly misogynistic novel based on Richardson's 'Pamela' that I'm cram reading before my exam tomorrow (today) could be.
hilarious that the worst possible punishment anyone can conceive of is moving from London to Wales.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eliza Haywood really doesn't have a good opinion on her own gender, huh?
I definitely enjoyed the writing style of this novel and can see myself enjoying Haywood's original novels. As a reaction to Pamela, this is certainly an interesting text. It's very nuanced and thus hard to get grip on what she's exactly saying about Pamela and women. Certainly, she believes women can be manipulative and greedy and use their construction within patriarchy to obtain wealth through men. And it seems that she's warning men against these kinds of women? It's obviously upsetting that Haywood perpetuated this myth about women and is quite unsympathetic to women. But moreover, it's confusing as to how this is a critique of Pamela. There are quite a few "good" women in this work and it's quite baffling to me that Haywood can't see Pamela as one of those good women. Perhaps then Pamela's rise through the classes is the main issue here.
Anyway, I'm not quite sure what to make of this work, which is part of the reason for the rating. I didn't mind reading it at all, but I do think that perhaps it was a bit too long as her point had already been made by the 5th man that Serena dupes. It was pretty entertaining and, as I said, Haywood is a good writer, but it's difficult to determine how much you enjoyed a reactionary, unoriginal text that was created solely for the purpose of telling people that women are awful. Definitely problematic and a bit of a head scratcher, but interesting nonetheless.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book details a period in the young life of Syrena Tricksy, and her "four Years incessant Application, and such a Variety of Adventures" -- Compare the earlier story of another young woman, Moll Hackabout, illustrated in A Harlot's Progress (1731/32), by William Hogarth.

[Kate Winslow · Rating 3 out of 5]

syreeeena

[Justan Autor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb :)