Fantomina
Though she continues to employ the ruse of "Fantomina" throughout the story, the protagonist drops this alias for a short time to pursue Beauplaisir to Bath.
The protagonist plots this encounter carefully and Beauplaisir's every reaction is drawn from him by her manipulation, but the lover believes he has ravished her in spite of some protest on her part.
When this identity again begins to lose favor with him, the heroine sends Beauplaisir a letter, signed "Incognita," declaring her undying love and passion for him.
Even more so, her inability or unwillingness to seduce Beauplaisir as her true self, heavily implied as a product of a respected social status, also touches on the issue of class in 18th century British society.
There are clear challenges to gender normative behavior Haywood is making throughout the story, while also portraying an honest depiction of the disparity between male and female social standings.
To seduce Beauplaisir, Fantomina adopts multiple feminine disguises, enabling her to paradoxically act out a masculine libertine identity.
[3] But, given the fact that Beauplaisir escapes the end of the novella unaffected, irresponsible for the consequences of his affairs, Haywood hits readers with a dose of reality regarding gender inequalities.
Despite the fact that men are easily manipulated, sexually promiscuous, predictable and even foolish, as Haywood seems to argue, they are still regarded as the superior gender.
She feels more comfortable coming forward with her sexuality in disguise at a brothel than she would at a party with her fellow middle-class men and women.
[6] The heroine is introduced as "A young lady of distinguished Birth, Beauty, Wit, and Spirit" visiting London from the country, who is "young, a Stranger to the World, and consequently to the Dangers of it; and having no Body in Town, at that Time, to whom she was oblig’d to be accountable for her Actions, did in every Thing as her Inclinations or Humour render’d most agreeable to her".
Instead, Haywood uses the disguise, wit, and sexual freedom common to Restoration comedies to show the similarities between the two genres, one tragic and the other comic.
As one editor of the text writes, "where the traditional moral might be expected, this story ends with a casual delight in 'an Intrigue, which, considering the Time it lasted, was as full of Variety as any, perhaps, that many Ages has produced'".
[11] Fantomina also draws from the culture of the political pornography of the seventeenth century, which unflatteringly portrayed London commoners as the source of democratic unrest and protest.
However, the political pornography of this time reversed the typical structure of these stories by portraying him as the villainous seducer and London as the "violated maiden".
Incognita sends Beauplaisir a letter promising an ardent lover if he can accept the condition of her not revealing her true name or face.
The protagonist does not receive the opportunity to fully play out this identity's trick before her enterprise come to an end with the return of her mother.
[16] The reasons for this have to do with gender, "the bias against didactic and popular literature, ... Haywood’s complicated experiments with genre", and the way that the history of the novel has been told in literary studies.
[16] However, since the rise of feminist literary criticism, Haywood's works and those of other early eighteenth-century female novelists have received attention from scholars and Fantomina has appeared in several anthologies since the 1980s.
[19][20] The show enjoyed further success the next year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival under the name "Bad Habits",[21] again receiving 4-star reviews during its two-week run.
"[22] Productions of the show require minimal set and a small cast of 6 actors, as well as a solo violinist who is present on stage throughout the performance.
