Writing Masters and "Masculine Exercises" in The Female Quixote

Writing Masters and "Masculine Exercises" in The Female QuixoteDavid Marshall In book 2 of The Female Quixote, or The Adventures ofArabella the narrative of Arabella's history opens up to include the story of a character named Miss Groves. Following die death of her fatiier, Arabella's uncle and her cousin Glanville have left for London, hoping for a "Reformation " that will cure Arabella of her addiction to romances and her belief that tiiey "were real Pictures of Life."1 Contrary to die "Command " and "Will" of her father, Arabella has refused to marry Glanville, who leaves regretting "the little Power his Fatiier had over her" (pp. 6465 ). Wishing for "an agreeable Companion of her own Sex and Rank," Arabella attends church one day and meets Miss Groves; "this Fair one" (p. 67) reminds her of one of Scudéry's heroines. Approaching her as a voracious reader would pick up a new book, Arabella takes Miss Groves home and leads her "into the Gardens, supposing a Person, whose Uneasiness, as she did not doubt, proceeded from Love, would be pleased with the Sight of Groves and Streams, and be tempted to disclose her Misfortunes"; but even when faced widi groves Miss Groves will not be led into autobiography. She maintains "Silence," betrays an "absence of Mind," and speaks "not at all in die manner of an afflicted Heroine." Determined "to know her Adventures," Arabella 1 Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote, or The Adventures ofArabella, ed. Margaret Dalziel with an Introduction by Margaret Anne Doody. Chronology and Appendix by Duncan Isles (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 64, 7. References are to this edition unless otherwise noted. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 5, Number 2, January 1993 106 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION commands Mrs Morris, Miss Groves's attendant, "to relate, her Lady's History to her" (pp. 68-69). The next chapter is almost entirely devoted to Mrs Morris's "Narration" (p. 77) of Miss Groves's scandalous story—which Arabella manages to translate into the conventions of romance in order to read its protagonist as an afflicted heroine radier than a sexually transgressive juvenile delinquent attracted to die wrong sort of men. Arabella's quixotic identification of Miss Groves widi Cleopatra is both comic and an early warning against reading a cautionary tale for young women as a narrative of romantic adventures. The scene also fits into a pattern (remarked by recent critics) in which Arabella's interest in romance coincides with her investment in plots tiiat turn upon erotic desire.2 Yet we still might ask how Miss Groves's history relates to Arabella , and how the relation of her narrative might help us comprehend both Arabella's history and the narrative of The Female Quixote. As told by Mrs Morris, Miss Groves's life story includes a dangerous liaison at me age of fifteen, an affair with a rakish gentleman, two illegitimate children, and a secret marriage. The outline of this scandalous plot is all that is necessary to achieve the comic and didactic goals of die episode, but Lennox provides further details. According to Mrs Morris , as a child Miss Groves "delighted in masculine Exercises ... and by those coarse Exercises, contracted] a masculine and robust Air not becoming her Sex, and tender years." These masculine exercises include "leaping over Hedges and Ditches" but we are told that tiiey led to a different sort of sexual transgression when Miss Groves finds "a Lover in the Person who taught her to write." Despite Arabella's assumption mat this "Writing-master might have been some illustrious Person, whom Love had disguised," Mrs Morris insists tìiat he "was never discovered to be any thing better tìian a Writing-master," that he was dismissed "when the Intrigue was discovered," and that he "continues still to teach Writing" (pp. 71-72).» Recent criticism has focused on tiie problem of reading in The Female Quixote; but to understand the relation between women and romance, and 2 See Doody, Introduction, xxix; Patricia Meyer Spacks, Desire and Truth: Functions ofPlot in Eighteenth-Century Novels (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 24; Laurie Langbauer , Women and Romance: The Consolations ofGender in the English...