Fantomina

“He was transported to find so much Beauty and Wit in a Woman, who he doubted not but on very much easy terms he might enjoy; and she found a vast deal of Pleasure in conversing with him in this free and unrestrained Manner.”

The Lady’s disguise as a prostitute allows her and Beauplaisir conversational freedoms that they might not have had otherwise. Because Beauplaisir is certain that he can “enjoy” her, he does not have to go through elaborate courtship rituals with her and can instead talk to her frankly and openly. The Lady enjoys this lack of ceremony and is at the same time able to surprise and impress Beauplaisir with her ladylike cultivation. 

“He could not imagine for what Reason a Woman, who, if she intended not to be a Mistress, had counterfeited the Part of one, and taken so much Pains to engage him, should lament a Consequence which she could not but expect, and till the last Test, seem’d inclinable to grant, and was both surpris’d and troubled at the Mystery.” 

Beauplaisir is understandably confused by the mixed signals that the Lady has given him, over the two days of their acquaintance. He fails to understand that the Lady herself is confused and is simply trying to navigate the many roles and masks that are expected of her, as an eligible young woman. 

“He had no Reason to distrust the Truth of this Story, and was therefore satisfy’d with it; but did not doubt by the beginning of her Conduct, but that in the end she would be in Reality, the Thing she so artfully had counterfeited; and had good Nature enough to pity the Misfortunes he imagin’d would be her Lot; but to tell her so, or offer his Advice in that Point, was not his Business, at least, as yet.”

Beauplaisir believes that the Lady will become the desperate creature that she has pretended to him to be—that is, a prostitute—and he feels a detached pity for her. He does not see the real nature of the Lady’s desperation, one that has to do not so much with a particular societal role as with a gathering sense of emptiness and facelessness. He also does not see his own role in provoking this desperation.  

“She had Discernment to foresee, and avoid all those Ills which might attend the Loss of her Reputation, but was wholly blind to those of the Ruin of her Virtue; and having managed her Affairs so as to secure the one, grew perfectly easy with the Remembrance she had forfeited the other.” 

The Lady is scrupulous about keeping her disguises a secret from her social milieu. She is, at the same time, reckless with herself. In referring to the Lady’s “ruined virtue,” the author is alluding to the Lady having had sex outside of marriage, an act that in her time was reserved for prostitutes. But she is also referring to the Lady’s increasingly obsessive attachment to Beauplaisir and her abandonment of all other facets of her life and person, as a result of her sexual rebellion.  

“The odious word Forsaken will never wound my Ears; nor will my Wrongs excite either the Mirth or Pity of the talking World:—It will not be even in the Power of my Undoer himself to triumph over me; and while he laughs at, and perhaps despises the fond, the yielding Fantomina, he will revere and esteem the virtuous, the reserv’d Lady.” 

The Lady imagines that by splintering herself off into different disguises, she can also protect her feelings. She can in fact become all the different women whom she is pretending to be. She fails to account for the extent of Beauplaisir’s fickleness, or for her anger at being rejected, regardless of whatever disguise she is wearing. 

“Not but a Woman of her Beauty and Accomplishments might have beheld a Thousand in that Condition Beauplaisir had been; but with her Sex’s Modesty, she had not also thrown off another Virtue equally valuable, tho’ generally unfortunate, Constancy.” 

The Lady is hopelessly faithful to Beauplaisir, even while acknowledging his flaws to herself. At the same time, she is far from constant in the many guises that she assumes to keep his interest. This is because she is ashamed of her fidelity to Beauplaisir, seeing it as a sign of feminine weakness, and rightly guessing that he would soon grow bored of it. The variety of her costumes and mannerisms, then, compensates for the narrowness of her preoccupations.  

“With a gay Air, therefore, though accompany’d with the greatest Modesty and Respect, he turned the Conversation, as though without Design, on that Joy-giving Passion, and soon discover’d that was indeed the Subject she was best pleas’d to be entertained with; for on his giving her a Hint to begin upon, never any Tongue run more voluble than hers, on the prodigious Power it had to influence the Souls of those possess’d of it, to Actions even the most distant from their Intentions, Principles, or Humours.” 

The Lady is often able to smuggle hidden parts of herself into her disguises, in the way of all good actors. In her disguise as the Widow Boomer, she is able to confess to the unsuspecting Beauplaisir how much her passion for him has transformed her and derailed her life. This talk would alarm him, were it coming from her Fantomina persona. But because it is coming from someone whom he thinks to be a prim stranger, he finds it to be a relief.  

“It may, perhaps, seem strange that Beauplaisir should in such near Intimacies continue still deceiv’d: I know there are Men who will swear it is an Impossibility, and that no Disguise could hinder them from knowing a Woman they had once enjoy’d.” 

We are told that the reason Beauplaisir is so easily fooled by the Lady’s disguises, and never once imagines her to be only one person, is because she is such an accomplished actress. Another reason, though, might be that Beauplaisir is not accustomed to looking at women—especially women with whom he has been intimate—very closely. They fulfill a specific need and function for him, one that he keeps separate from the rest of his life, and he is unable to see them as creatures who are as complex and faceted as he is.  

“Traytor! (cry’d she.) as soon as she had read them, ‘tis thus our silly, fond, believing Sex are serv’d when they put Faith in Man […] But I have outwitted even the most Subtle of the deceiving Kind, and while he thinks to fool me, is himself the only beguiled Person.” 

The Lady is angered by Beauplaisir’s increasing evasiveness, both with her Fantomina and her Widow Boomer personas. While she has employed these disguises as a way of keeping him faithful to her, the disguises have also ironically given her firsthand knowledge of his fickleness; he is always cheating on one of her personas with the other one. The more that she struggles to hold on to him, the more her stratagems come to seem like those of war, rather than seduction. She seems increasingly concerned not so much with winning Beauplaisir’s love as with keeping him in the dark and maintaining the upper hand.  

“This, indeed, must be said of Beauplaisir, that he had a greater Share of good Nature than most of his Sex, who, for the most part, when they are weary of an Intreague, break it entirely off, without any Regard to the Despair of the abandon’d Nympth.” 

Beauplaisir is slightly more decent than he has to be, even while he is also fickle and caddish. It is this very patina of decency and courtliness that makes him dangerous to the Lady; it allows him to keep stringing her along and insulates him from the consequences of his own behavior. All the childish behavior seems to be on the Lady’s side, and she is the only one who is ultimately punished for their affair. 

“Finding her in an outer Room, he made no Scruple of expressing the Sense he had of the little Trust she reposed in him, and at last plainly told her, he could not submit to receive Obligations from a Lady, who thought him incapable of keeping a Secret, which she made no Difficulty of letting her Servants into.”

Beauplaisir is initially intrigued and drawn in by the Lady’s final role of Incognita, but he rapidly grows frustrated by the elaborate secrecy that she demands. While he complains to her about the lack of trust that this secrecy implies, it is also probable that he is bothered simply by the secrecy being so overt. There has been a certain amount of feigning and coyness in all the Lady’s personas, as well as in Beauplaisir’s own behavior with her. In her persona as Incognita, the Lady has simply taken this mystery one step farther and made it a central aspect of their involvement.  

“She was with Child; and though she would easily have found Means to have skreen’d even this from the Knowledge of the World, had she been at liberty to have acted with the same unquestionable Authority over herself, as she did before the coming of her Mother, yet now all her Invention was at a loss for a Stratagem to impose on a Woman of her Penetration.” 

The Lady realizes that she will be unable to fool her mother in the same way that she has fooled Beauplaisir, her mother being an observant—and domineering—female. The word “skreen’d” suggests that the Lady has only wished to hide her pregnancy, rather than to terminate it.  

“And ‘tis difficult to determine, if Beauplaisir, or the Lady, were most surpris’d at what they heard; he, that he should have been blinded so often by her Artifices; or she, that so young a Creature should have the skill to make use of them.” 

This quote suggests that while Beauplaisir and the Lady’s mother are shocked by the news of the Lady’s deceptions, they are also a little impressed. They register the degree of artfulness and observation that these deceptions have necessitated, and that is surprising in someone so young and inexperienced. As neither one of them are very reflective people, they do not see the extent to which the Lady has been molded by her environment. Instead, they regard her as an oddity.