Frances Sheridan's Faulkland, the Silenced, Emasculated, Ideal Male

This paper argues for the feminine status of Orlando Faulkland in Frances Sheridan's Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph. In his constant display of excessive emotion; in his passivity and helplessness; in his silence and his being silenced; in his foreignness; and even in his one-time lapse of sexual control, the character displays his feminine standing within the novel. More particularly, his emasculation by various women within the novel confirms this status. Even Faulkland's so-called acts of masculine activity and power are undercut by signs of weakness and/or by their association with the genres of romance and comedy.