Luhning 1 Entertainment and Didacticism: Eliza Haywood’s The Unequal Conflict and Fatal Fondness

Eliza Haywood produced innovative, socially meritorious, and entertaining literature throughout her career. In particular, her novels often told stories about people who did not always make socially or morally correct choices; their missteps made them interesting and provided the basis for stories that examined what happened when people defied the status quo. Alexander Pettit observes that " [i]nstead of making her characters fit prescribed moral standards of behaviour, Haywood often preferred characters that broke social taboos " (16). Haywood's novels investigate how people come to find themselves at the margins of respectable society. Her work considers not only how a character arrived at such a juncture but also questions the fairness of the social limits the characters encounter. Her writing often adheres to social norms on one level while incorporating subversive social criticism on another. Specifically, Haywood's novels often criticize beliefs about gender, class, health, and sexuality while the resolution of her novels reaffirms the strength and influence of these cultural systems. These sorts of contradictions signal cultural anxieties regarding the body, women's sexual agency, class, and wealth; Haywood's writing represents apprehensions and shifting perceptions about social hierarchies and gender roles. Her subject matter is often scandalous and entertaining; at the same time she weaves social criticism throughout her narratives. Haywood's ability to simultaneously embrace yet critique the social standards of her time allow her to synthesize and expand on specific manifestations of these social apprehensions, particularly in regard to women's social and sexual conduct. The companion novels, The Unequal Conflict (1725) and Fatal Fondness (1725) reflect a knowledge of and engagement with several tenants presented in ladies' conduct literature, Luhning 2 yet often contest the advice these texts give in regard to achieving the model behaviour these texts promote. In these novels in particular, Haywood creates texts that are both broadly entertaining to readers, yet engaged with an established dialogue about ladies' conduct. Haywood's didacticism is made possible by her text's ability to entertain; as Kathleen Lubey posits " in order for readers to derive lessons from fictive events, Haywood must present them in the titillating and inflammatory manner in which characters receive them " (309-10). In contrast to the dry, moralizing advice or admonitions presented in conduct literature, this combination allows Haywood to embody a socially convincing didacticism in her stories. Background On The Texts The Unequal Conflict and Fatal Fondness have not been published in a modern …