Dangerous Women, Libertine Epicures, and the Rise of Sensibility, 1670-1730

Laura Linker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409418115
• eBook ISBN: 9781317154839
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In the first full-length study of the figure of the female libertine in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century literature, Laura Linker examines heroines appearing in literature by John Dryden, Aphra Behn, Catharine Trotter, Delariviere Manley, and Daniel Defoe. Linker argues that this figure, partially inspired by Epicurean ideas found in Lucretius's De rerum natura, interrogates gender roles and assumptions and emerges as a source of considerable tension during the late Stuart and early Georgian periods. Witty and rebellious, the female libertine becomes a frequent satiric target because of her transgressive sexuality. As a result of negative portrayals of lady libertines, women writers begin to associate their libertine heroines with the pathos figures they read in French texts of sensibilité. Beginning with a discussion of Charles II's mistresses, Linker shows that these women continue to serve as models for the female libertine in literature long after their "reigns" at court ended. Her study places the female libertine within her cultural, philosophical, and literary contexts and suggests new ways of considering women's participation and the early novel, which prominently features female libertines as heroines of sensibility.

British Literature in Context in the Long Eighteenth Century

Series Editor: Jack Lynch, Rutgers University, Newark, USA

This series aims to promote original scholarship on the intersection of British literature and history in the long eighteenth century, from the Restoration through the first generation of the Romantic era.

Both “literature” and “history” are broadly conceived. Literature might include not only canonical novels, poems, and plays but also essays, life-writing, and belles lettres of all sorts, by both major and minor authors. History might include not only traditional political and social history but also the history of the book, the history of science, the history of religion, the history of scholarship, and the history of sexuality, as well as broader questions of historiography and periodization.

The series editor invites proposals for both monographs and collections taking a wide range of approaches. Contributions should be interdisciplinary but always grounded in sound historical research; the authoritative is always preferred to the merely trendy. All contributions should be written so as to be accessible to the widest possible audience, and should seek to make lasting contributions to the field.

Dangerous Women, Libertine Epicures, and the Rise of Sensibility, 1670–1730

Laura Linker

North Carolina State University, USA

First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

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Copyright © 2011 Laura Linker

Laura Linker has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Linker, Laura.

Dangerous women, libertine epicures, and the rise of sensibility, 1670–1730. – (British literature in context in the long eighteenth century)

1. Libertines in literature – History – 17th century. 2. Libertines in literature – History – 18th century. 3. Mistresses in literature – History – 17th century. 4. Mistresses in literature – History – 18th century. 5. Women in literature – History–17th century. 6. Women in literature – History–18th century. 7. English literature – Early modern, 1500–1700 – History and criticism. 8. English literature – 18th century – History and criticism.

I. Title II. Series

820.4’093522-dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Linker, Laura.

Dangerous women, libertine epicures, and the rise of sensibility, 1670–1730 / by Laura Linker.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. English literature—17th century—History and criticism. 2. English literature—18th century—History and criticism. 3. Women in literature. 4. Libertines in literature. I. Title.

PR428.W63L56 2011

820.9’352209032—dc22

2011001137

ISBN 9781409418115 (hbk)

ISBN 9781315575834 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781315575834

For my husband, Tim, our son, Luke, and my parents, Glenn and Helen

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Lady Libertine
• 1 Lady Lucretius
• 2 Lady Sensibility
• 3 The Humane Libertine
• 4 The Natural Libertine
• 5 The Amazonian Libertine
• Conclusion: The Fate of the Female Libertine
• Works Cited
• Index

Acknowledgments

I write these acknowledgments with a tremendous sense of gratitude for the support of many people. To those who made constructive comments on drafts of my manuscript, I am deeply grateful. I am most indebted to James Evans, who read endless versions of each chapter, offered meaningful evaluation of my writing, and gave me his time, patience, and encouragement during the entire process of writing this book. I also wish to acknowledge Jennifer Keith, who read and made helpful suggestions about large sections of this manuscript and who first inspired me to write about women writers. I continue to benefit from the wit and expertise of John Morillo, who read drafts of several chapters and helped me to see the larger implications of the entire argument. I am also grateful to him for inspiring me to give this book a livelier, more descriptive title. All writers owe a debt to their editors. Jack Lynch and Ann Donahue worked tirelessly on my behalf and gave me encouragement at moments when I most needed it. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my husband, Tim Linker, and my parents, Glenn and Helen Alexander, who believe in the life of the mind. Without their ceaseless love and support, I never could have written this book.

I would like to thank the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which awarded me a travel grant to present some of the material in Chapter 1 at the April 2007 faculty seminar, “The Mental World of Restoration England.” All parts of Chapter 1 originally appeared in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research 24.1 (Summer 2009), and a version of Chapter 4 originally appeared in Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 50.3 (Summer 2010); I wish to thank the editors of those journals for permission to republish this material.

Introduction: Lady Libertine

What is the female libertine? According to the OED, the term “libertine” is “rarely applied to a woman,” ¹ though most critics now assume that women, both real and fictional, participated in libertinism during the Restoration, when the movement reached its height in England. Warren Chernaik, Pat Gill, Janet Todd, James Turner, and Harold Weber have suggested that women helped to redefine libertinism, and their studies ask us to interrogate the essentialist assumptions attached to the libertine figure. ² Each of these critics examines the complex negotiation between women’s agency and literary and social constraints, but no one has offered a study that concentrates solely on the female libertine. This book aims to do that by considering the figure in relation to cultural, philosophical, and literary contexts that contributed to her transformations from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth centuries in England. It will suggest new ways of understanding the female libertine, particularly in the early novel, which prominently features heroines with characteristics of libertinism and sensibility, traditionally understood to be in opposition to each another.

No single period or writer can claim the female libertine exclusively; we find her in Homer, in Ovid, in Chaucer, in Shakespeare. But something unique happened in England during the late seventeenth century: Charles II made female libertines important members of his court. Dramatists began modeling their heroines after his most prominent mistresses: Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, Nell Gwyn, Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, and Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin. ³ plays, now performed by male and female actors, featured witty, rebellious characters often vehemently vilified by satirists eager to draw connections between the king’s sexual and political weaknesses. ⁴ Writers’ interest in the court mistresses spurred literary depictions of them well into the eighteenth century, long after their “rise” at court was over in 1685. Satirists, most of them male, frequently targeted female libertines in poems or plays during the 1670s and early 1680s. By the end of the seventeenth century, more sympathetic female authors began to feature libertine heroines in a different, more fluid literary mode that they found better suited to exploring their heroines’ emotional and erotic desires, fiction. Their interest in the female libertine directly resulted in the creation of the novel of sensibility in the late seventeenth century.

Before I define the varying kinds of female libertines that emerge in literature written between the late Stuart and early Georgian periods, I first have to tackle the burden of defining libertinism, which, as Turner points out in “The ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Frontmatter 1
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Lady Libertine
• 1 Lady Lucretius
• 2 Lady Sensibility
• 3 The Humane Libertine
• 4 The Natural Libertine
• 5 The Amazonian Libertine
• Conclusion: The Fate of the Female Libertine
• Works Cited
• Index