The Exceptional Eliza Haywood: Women and Extralegality in Eovaai

Eliza Haywood's The Adventures of Eovaai (1737) has been read as satire and as oriental tale, but rarely as an engagement with political theory. The narrative argues for a revised legal standing for women by echoing colonial mythemes and manipulating pastoral conventions. Eovaai suggests that women will never become rational citizen-subjects without becoming temporally dislocated, passing through a state of nature in order to clear the ground for a more just constitution. The text wavers between optimistic and pessimistic assessments of that passage, for women in the state of exception also depend on a masculinized military power.