Mustary Akter
Dr. Nandra Perry
English 231.503
December 8, 2013
Week 14: Reflection Paper
Fantomina, or, Love in Maze was written by Eliza Haywood where the character Fantomina demonstrated the difficult relationships between women and men. Fantomina, the young girl was very naive so the readers could see in her character that she had a curiosity to learn new things. In Fantomina or Love in Maze, Haywood presented stereotype about how a man sees women through the different character that Fantomina played. Haywood also tried to represent sexuality as a performance where women can easily fool a man with their beauty; in this case Beauplaisir was fooled by Fantomina.
Haywood presented Fantomina as a very cunning and inexperienced character.…show more content… As incognita she showed more power where she was demanding Beauplaisir to have sex with her unlike the other characters she played. Haywood showed that when Fantomina’s social status changed her identity changed as well. Compare to when she was a prostitute and a maid, she had more power when she became Incognita.
After changing to various personas, Fantomina was certain of that the men only wants sex and gets tired of one person after being sexually involved with her once. So in order to get love from Beauplaisir she kept on changing her character from prostitute and maid to widow and incognito, so that she can still have him. Haywood presented a fascination insight of women in eighteen century. In Fantomina, or, Love in Maze Haywood showed Fantomina as character who takes control of her life and with intelligence she also manages Beauplaisir as well. In Fantomina, or, Love in Maze, Haywood presented Fantomina as an intelligent woman who controls a man while she presented Beauplaisir as a fool. Beauplaisir slept with same woman four different times but yet he could not tell that it was the same woman. In Fantomina, or, Love in Maze, Haywood showed women empowerment. Even though Beauplaisir was to first one to forcefully have her sex with him but later she took control of fulfilling his sexual
