Chastity as a Class Restriction in Eliza Haywood's Fantomina Sabrina Balliana College

In Eliza Haywood’s novella Fantomina, the main character is a high-class woman who takes it upon herself to explore her feminine and sexual agency during a time of suffocating and expected purity. The narrative begins with Fantomina’s attraction to Beauplaisir at a London playhouse, and her pursuing him sexually under various feminine characters, who all embody different types of female archetypes. Through these various costumes, Fantomina is able to achieve sexual agency and demonstrate how purity and virginity is a social construct rooted in class, as she experiences pleasure and freedom when she is not constrained to chaste class rules. This can be seen in the way Fantomina explores her sexuality through costuming, giving her a sense of sexual freedom her class normally prohibits, and only feels the weight of her actions once her mother condemns her for her pregnancy, ultimately showing purity is a social construct rooted in class.

In the beginning, Fantomina does not necessarily want to have intercourse with Beauplaisir, but wants to engage in the act of romance and flirtation without compromising her virtue. She is intrigued by him in the playhouse, but her class prohibits her from going to engage with as she is. She takes...