Many novelists of the 1790s found gender-to their minds a primary constituent of character-problematic. Conventional eighteenth-century assumptions about gender will even now sound familiar. Women defined their femininity by passivity, concern for others, and «natural» preoccupation with pleasing those around them. The good woman, rigorously chaste, devoted her life to service: to caring for parents, husband, children, to charitable efforts in the community. Emotion dominated her character and often determined her actions; reason belonged especially to men, although the novel of sensibility had established the -250- principle that feeling might also signify male virtue and that women too must cultivate reason. Men were above all manly-a word novels obsessively reiterate to imply courage, fortitude, assertiveness, and moral uprightness. Men's superior intellectual powers and superior strength entailed the obligation of leadership. Men decided-'naturally'-what women should do.
None of these truisms remained unchallenged as the century neared its end. A new wave of feminism, stimulated by the French Revolution and its doctrine of equality, affected even conservative writers. Hannah More herself, who held fast to old truths and was unwilling even to read Mary Wollstonecraft Vindication of the Rights of Woman (on the ground that women already had more power than was good for them), believed that women deserved education to bring them closer to parity with men. And far more radical ideas made their way into fiction.
Perhaps the most economical novelistic expression of the challenge to gender categories appears in Walsingham. Its protagonist whines interminably about his persecution by his cousin Sidney, who has deprived him of a privileged position with his aunt and uncle and who Walsingham believes has seduced his beloved Isabella. Isabella marries another, announcing that she has always considered Walsingham a brother. The novel's last two pages explain everything: Sidney is a woman. She has lived in male disguise from infancy, the victim of her mother's avarice. (Her father's will provides greater rewards to his widow if she bears a male child.) She loves Walsingham as a prospective husband. Ecstatic, Walsingham writes his confidante of
the heroic virtues of my transcendent Sidney! Indeed, so completely is she changed, so purely gentle, so feminine in manners; while her mind still retains the energy of that richly-treasured dignity of feeling which are [sic] the effects of a masculine education, that I do not lament past sorrows, while my heart triumphs, nobly triumphs in the felicity of present moments.
A woman with heroic virtues and feminine manners, with 'dignity of feeling' (not sloppy, feminine feeling) and energy of mind, feminine in manners, masculine in education, a woman who transcends the limitations ordinarily attached to her gender-such a woman can compensate a man for any suffering.
The androgynous ideal suggested by Sidney's rather unconvincing transformation invested other newly imagined characters as well. Anna St. Ives (1792) and its eponymous heroine exemplify the fresh novelis-251- tic possibilities. The fairy-tale plot of low-born lover winning rich and beautiful lady assumes an unfamiliar form, given Thomas Holcroft's innovative conception of female thought and action. The result-a work that retains dramatic excitement despite an abundance of doctrinal lectures by its virtuous characters-demonstrates how assumptions about gender delineate the parameters of novelistic action.
From Clarissa and Pamela through Evelina and
On what basis, Holcroft's novel inquires, do men and women accept preestablished limits on their opportunities for action? Why can't a woman kiss a man, if a man can kiss a woman? Why can't a woman climb a wall? Why can't a man be instructed by a woman? Why can't a woman initiate moral action? To imagine such possibilities fulfilled surpasses all bounds of 'realism'-although aspects of Clifton's response seem almost comically realistic, as he experiences the frustration of dealing with a woman who refuses to act like one. Clifton belongs to the world as it is. Anna, behaving as though no such world exists, provides a blueprint for the future.
Frank and Anna resemble other eighteenth-century protagonists in their marked «sensibility» and in their orthodox insistence on the importance of controlling passion by reason. But they differ from their -252- fictional predecessors in maintaining an equation between pure energy and passion under the control of reason. Both characters, as they repeatedly stipulate, place the good of society before their own. Both test their own conduct by its utility for social improvement. Both see themselves (and each other) as energized by their high social goals. Initially Anna sees Clifton too as a possessor of striking energy, as someone worthy of her effort. As it becomes clear that Clifton believes the fulfillment of his individual desires to be a sufficient reason for his existence, Anna feels increasingly contemptuous toward him. When he confronts her, intending rape, she sounds like Clarissa as she argues that her soul is above him, but she invokes no religious authority, instead claiming androgynous internal power. 'Courage has neither sex nor form: it is an energy of mind, of which your base proceedings shew I have infinitely the most.' Given that fact, it follows, in her view, that she will triumph, and so she does.
Not only does Anna kiss Frank, she tells Clifton's sister and Clifton himself about it. Her fiancé feels angry, but he dissembles. Anna does not anticipate his anger. Her motives, she considers, are pure, for her highest principle is 'truth.' Because of her conviction that truth will always prove its power, it does not occur to her that her action, and her proclamation of it, might be misinterpreted. The kiss-and-tell episode may seem to support the charge of psychological implausibility frequently brought against Holcroft, but in fact this novel's enterprise depends on the transposition of psychological terms into moral ones. Although the major characters announce their intense and complicated feelings, those feelings express themselves most persuasively through their convictions. Even Clifton, making atrocious plans for kidnap and rape, invokes hallowed principles of male supremacy to justify his behavior toward Anna and truisms about class hierarchy to explain his detestation of Frank. Frank's avaricious and reprehensible father acts on the basis of self-love, a principle he explicitly endorses. He feels as profoundly justified in embezzling money as Frank and Anna feel in planning their own union in order to improve the state of society.
The text never explicitly suggests that rationalization allows these characters to fulfill their desires. Indeed, the elevated tone in which Frank and Anna declare their high intentions seems to endorse them. Yet meretricious as well as admirable behavior allows for justification by principle. If the central characters' energy derives, as they claim, from their ability to use their passions under the control of reason, the novel's -253- energy stems partly from its capacity to hint at the ways in which passion may direct reason even as reason loudly proclaims its dominance. Frank and Anna, after all, get what they want most: each other. And they take subtle revenge on Clifton, forcing him to exist within their domestic system. They accomplish the aims of passion by dedicating themselves- passionately-to the service of principle. Clifton, with more dubious principles, suffers from conflicting passions. He can't win.
Holcroft does not demonstrate a capacity for delicate psychological analysis. But his imagining of a somewhat androgynous hero and heroine shows his ability to depict the use of abstract concepts to serve personal ends. Anna (like Sidney in Walsingham, but more convincingly) has the courage, knowledge, and moral force of a man, with the gentleness, grace, and compassion of a woman. Frank, likewise possessed of courage and integrity, willingly subordinates himself to a woman's leadership. His ambiguous status as the son of a servant, prevented by his father's greed from receiving university education, provides a metaphorical equivalent for his «feminized» aspect, which is signaled most loudly by his unfailing compassion and helpfulness. Both characters embody political ideals. They thus indicate new ways to imagine fictional heroes and heroines.
The woman possessed of male as well as female virtues appears even in novels by writers of politically conservative orientation. About Mary Ann Hanway, Gina Luria observes in the introduction to a modern facsimile
