Praise in Excess?

I was surprised, when reading Love in Excess, by many of Haywood's characterizations and representations of Count D'Elmont, and these observations gave me pause to consider, admittedly for the first time, some of the unique creative opportunities available to an author when choosing as her medium the novel. While reading Love in Excess, I often observed a dissonance between the narrator's descriptions of D'Elmont's character and what I would likely have inferred to be the quality of his character based solely on his actions. I believe this troubled me throughout my reading of the novel, but it first became strikingly apparent when D'Elmont, questioned by Frankville regarding his and Melliora's relationship, and in an effort to pacify the concerned brother, "entertained him with the whole history of his adventures . . . disguising nothing of the truth, but some part of the discourses which had passed between him and Melliora that night when he surprized her in her bed" (185). The narrator goes on to offer the following justification of D'Elmont's significant omission: "[H]e was too tender of Melliora's honour, to relate any thing of her, which modesty might not acknowledge, without the expence of a blush" (185). This moment led me to more closely consider Haywood's choice of the novel as her form for, had this interaction instead been represented, for instance, on stage in the form of a dialogue between the two men, D'Elmont's decision to not relate to Frankville the extent of his and Melliora's dalliances would certainly have been perceived as an effort to avoid the further ire of a protective brother. Contributing to this conclusion, too, is D'Elmont's earlier response to Frankville's accusations of impropriety: "That I do love your sister is as true, as that you have wronged me – basely wronged me. But that her virtue suffers by that love, is false!" (181). As he here conveniently fails to mention to Frankville that this statement is true only because his best efforts to the contrary were unsuccessful, it seems quite clear that it is not, despite the narrator's claims, only Melliora's interests D'Elmont wishes to protect. I find it interesting that I, as a reader, doubt the statements of an omniscient narrator; certainly, though, my doubt renders the character of D'Elmont only ambiguous in my view. Were he a character in one of Haywood's many plays, however, and had I only, barring the excessive use of soliloquy, his dialogue and actions, and not the direct characterization offered by the narrator, by which to judge his character, I would likely, by this point in the novel, have denounced him as thoroughly a scoundrel. I am wondering, then, if Haywood's use of the novel form allows her to play a bit more liberally with her characters.

While I, for the moment, am simply intrigued by the possible conflict between direct and indirect characterization perhaps more readily found in the novel than in other literary forms, Manley, in a preface to The Secret History of Queen Zarah, takes a firm stance: "['T]is not by Extravagant Expressions, nor Repeated Praises, that the Reader's Esteem is acquired to the Character of the Heroe's, their Actions ought to plead for them; 'tis by that they are made known, and describe themselves" (36-37).

The validity of this statement is perhaps best evidenced by the relatively short scene in Love in Excess in which D'Elmont is represented by the narrator as falling rather victim to the seduction of Ciamara. While the narrator insists that "it was impossible for any soul to be capable of a greater, or more constant passion than he felt for Melliora, tho' no man that ever lived, was less addicted to loose desires," certainly, had this scene unfolded on stage, where an audience would bear witness to D'Elmont's giving "his hands a full enjoyment" of Ciamara's "charms," the purity of his desires would have been rendered far more dubious than they are in the novel (225). It is for moments such as these that Love in Excess leads me to consider the potential in a novel for significant tension between what a narrator pleads for his or her characters and what their actions plead for themselves.