"Ruin'd": A Cautionary Tale

In Richardson’s Pamela, there is so much talk of the title character’s being “ruined” should she submit to the sexual advances of Mr. B., that I was immediately struck by a far different, though equally pejorative, use of the word early on in Haywood’s Anti-Pamela.  Rendered uneasy by the idea that her daughter, Syrena, could feel genuine emotion for a man with whom she engages romantically or sexually, Mrs. Tricksey warns, “I hope you do not stand in need of any Caution against indulging a secret inclination for him; for if it once comes to that you are ruin’d!—No Woman ever made her Fortune by the Man she had a sincere value for” (66).  Indeed, as Syrena’s various failed exploits seem to imply, women are in danger whenever inclination plays a role in their strategic approach to “love,” for as Catherine Ingrassia asserts in Anti-Pamela’s introduction, every time “Syrena approaches ‘success’—e.g. marriage or a financial settlement—her own sexual desires undermine her” (38).  Syrena is not, then, “ruined” when she compromises, according to the customs of her time, her virtue by engaging in pre- or extramarital affairs, for here she is using her sexuality to exert power over the various men in her life.  Rather, it is in those situations in which her own desire controls her, such as when she hazards her comfortable arrangement with the Mercer in order to aid the Gallant by whom she is taken, or risks her potential marriage to Mr. W. for the sexual gratification of a brief affair with his son, in which she meets her demise (38-39).  This notion of control seems of great import to Haywood, as the narrator takes pains to point out the disastrous potential of a loss of such control: “And here, methinks, it is worth remarking, how the indulging one Vice, destroy’d all the Success she might have expected from the other; for had she been less leud, her Hypocrisy, in all Probability, had obtain’d end” (198).  It is not, then, Syrena’s lack of virtue, but her lack of self-discipline that aborts her best-laid plans. 

Ingrassia posits Anti-Pamela as “a complex novel that offers an alternative didacticism that teaches cunning, duplicity and, ultimately, self-sufficiency within the treacherous financial and sexual economies women confront” (37).  Necessary to “self-sufficiency,” it seems, is the idea that no woman can allow herself to be manipulated by affection or sexual desire, or any motivation other than the strictly pragmatic, when navigating these economies.  Were not Syrena’s experiences sufficient, then certainly the sad circumstances of the myriad virtuous female characters of Anti-Pamela validate this idea.  If Haywood urges, as Ingrassia asserts, that female readers of Anti-Pamela recognize “the dangers and desires of the men who court them, employ them, or, potentially, marry them,” then the tragic end of the loving Maria and the jealous misery of Mrs. E. and Mrs. C indicate that even when marriage is pursued honorably, women often proceed at their own peril when not attending strictly to the practical aspects of the union (43).  The only female character ultimately rewarded with a happy, mutually loving relationship is, in fact, the Mercer’s wife, and her prize is an adulterous husband who, one may note, is reformed only after he learns of his mistress’s own infidelity and nearly brings his family to financial ruin. 

All of this recalls, of course, Haywood’s Love in Excess, in which female desire manifests itself in a variety of ways but generally to the misfortune of those women who experience it.  Ingrassia claims that, in Anti-Pamela, “Haywood seems to be offering a cautionary tale to the women—and men—who misread not only Pamela but her earlier fiction as well” (36).  If this is true, then perhaps Love in Excess’s heroine, Melliora, is meant to serve as an example of proper conduct not only for her maintaining her virtue in the face of D’ Elmont’s advances, but also for maintaining self-control in the midst of strong emotion.  Her self-exile after Alovisa’s death, for instance, indicates that, despite her love for D’Elmont, she retains the self-sufficiency Haywood advocates in Anti-Pamela.  This idea also sheds new light on an aspect of Love in Excess that troubled me well after I had completed the novel, that of the meaning of Violetta's death.  Certainly this minor character’s love for D’Elmont, given its utterly selfless nature, could be said to be even more virtuous than that of Melliora.  It surprised me, then, that such an affection, that which incited Violetta to follow her beloved to another country with the intention only of advancing his happiness, would be rewarded, by Haywood, with death.  Perhaps, however, Haywood offers, in Violetta, that which she later echoes in Anti-Pamela, a warning to women of the dangers of loving without at least some element of pragmatic self-interest.