Allegory In Eighteenth Century Literature

In The Secret History of Domesticity (2005), Michael McKeon quotes Sir Henry Marten who argues against the affirmation of the customary locus of sovereign power in the monarchy. Marten declared that people would, "presently fall to arguing and reasoning and descanting what sovereign power is.I wish that the sovereign power of the King might ever be kept in tacit veneration, and not had in public examination" (Marten: 1628: See McKeon: 2005: p.5). This desire for "tacit veneration" is pivotal to those seeking to maintain an absolute authorial rule. As McKeon suggests, "Once postulated.the conception of absolute, self-justified authority could be detached from the "body natural" of the absolute monarch and embodied elsewhere: in the courier, in parliament, even in the common people" (2005: p.5). This process of making the "tacit" knowledge of absolute sovereignty "explicit" encourages the "depersonalization of state authority" (McKeon: 2005: p.6) thus eradicating the mystification surrounding such influence. Consequently, the divine connotations attached to this rule are diminished; the possibility of its acquisition by the "common people" becomes tangible. What happens when this process is reversed? Whilst investigating Susanna Centlivre's A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718), Daniel Defoe's Roxana: Or The Fortunate Mistress (1724), and John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (hereafter referred to as Fanny Hill) (1748), I shall demonstrate how each make "explicit" knowledge "tacit," through the re-personalisation of society, and thus appropriate authorial sovereignty for their favoured governmental model.

Frank O'Gorman, in The Long Eighteenth Century (1997), discusses the political aftermath of 1688 by stating that, "although the Glorious Revolution had removed the threat of autocratic monarchy it actually inaugurated a period of further instability, seen in the intense bitterness of party competition" (p.160). This "bitterness" pervaded eighteenth-century society, particularly literature. Brean Hammond, in his article "Is there a Whig Canon?" (2000), describes the partisan authors as, "speaking for distinctly different sections of the social elite, who ground their authority with respect to different events ? Tories to King Charles's Restoration in 1660, and Whigs to the Glorious Revolution of 1688" (Hammond: 2000: p.379). A Bold Stroke for a Wife, Roxana, and Fanny Hill are not exempt from these categorisations; the background to each plot is framed as a domestic "problem" which directly correlates with the source of political conflict. When discussing her first marriage to the Brewer, Roxana laments on her ill-advised decision to marry a "Fool" by saying, "he was a conceited Fool...everything he said was Right, was Best, and was to the Purpose, whoever was in Company, and whatever was advanc'd by others" (p.8). Here, the allegory of marriage is being used as a conditioning instrument in order to debate the articles surrounding the abdicated sovereign of between the sovereign of James II. The spousal relationship here is evoked to present the complicated, and thus evasive questions regarding parliamentary sovereign in a domestic light. This serves to not only simplify the arguments in order that they become more digestible, and thus adequately debated, but also to re-personalise the figure of James II. In doing so, James II is once more humanize, and as such fallible. The observation that everything that the Brewer/James II said was "to the Purpose.whatever was advanc'd by others," relates to James II attempt at an autocratic rule, based on his belief in the Divine Right of Kings (O'Gorman: 1997), and the legal battle for sovereign supremacy between the Monarch and Parliament. This ties in with Aristotle's claim regarding the presence of an analogical relationship between the family and the state who suggested, "The rule of the household is a monarchy, for every household is under one head: whereas constitutional rule is a government of freeman and equals" (Aristotle:1255b-1259 a-b: See McKeon: 2005: p.8). Roxana's confession that this "autocratic" situation between herself and the Brewer was, "very insufferable" (p.8) articulates the necessity of .both James II forced abdication and the instatement of William III and Mary II. In this way, Roxana falls into the Whig camp, with the application of the analogy of a marriage between society and state serving to appropriate what Ian Watt terms "individualised entities" (1957) for the body of society also. As such, this results, too, in the "humanising" of society. Consequently, the allegorical marriage between Monarch and society evokes a familiarity within the reader, which thus inspires an empathetic and influential response. Similarly, the domestic backdrop of A Bold Stroke for a Wife addresses the limitations of Hobbes's theory of government. His assertion that those in possession of sovereignty are thus entitled to "self-perpetuating" sovereignty (Macpherson: 1962) is debated using the analogy of Mrs. Lovely's inheritance from her autocratic father, "He [Mrs Lovely's father] hated posterity, and wished the world would expire with himself" (I.i: 74-75: p.54). Wittily illustrating the selfish tendencies provoked by those in possession of absolute rule, Centlivre furthers this analogy by insinuating the potential for a paradoxical political standstill, should no safeguard be imposed against self-perpetuating rule:

He died worth thirty thousand pounds, which he left to this daughter, provided that she married with the consent of her guardians. But that she might be sure never to do so, he left her in the care of four men as opposite to each other as light and darkness. Each has his quarterly rule, an three months in a year she is obliged to be subject to each of their humors. (I.i: 78-84: p.54) The use of the political lexical set containing, "quarterly rule," "obliged," and "subject," within the confines of a fundamentally domestic and familial arena, works to identify a metonymical link between the political and domestic, and thus the "public" and "private" spheres (Arendt: 1958). Moreover, this directly mirrors the argument laid down by John Locke in response to Hobbes' theory of self-perpetuating rule:

To make way for this doctrine they have denied Mankind a Right to Natural Freedom, whereby they have not only, as much as in them lies exposed to all Subjects to the utmost Misery of Tyranny and Oppression, but have also unsettled the Titles and shaken the Thrones of Princes: (For they too, by these Mens systeme, except only one, are all born Slaves and by Divine Right are Subjects to Adam's right Heir. (Two Treatises of Government: Locke: 1689: p.142)

The qualifications stipulated by Mrs. Lovely's father in his will, are a metaphorical representation of Locke's Treatises of Government: Mrs. Lovely is still a "slave" under her father's autocratic rule, even after his rule has ceased. Her inability to access her rightful property, alongside her (theoretical) incapacity to appoint a new ruling body in the form of a spouse, demonstrates how a domestic text can successfully debate the complex political theories regarding of government, through allegory. So far, I have shown some ways in which Whig writers use allegory to champion the benefits of self-perpetuating rule. As Douglas Butler explains in "Plots and Politics in Susanna Centlivre's: A Bold Stroke for a Wife" (1991), "Although the Whigs do not believe in democracy.they believe that the individual has the right to resist tyranny" (Butler: 1991: 362). However, for their Tory contemporaries, the absolute rule of the monarchy was far from tyrannical. In Patriarchalism in Political Thought (1975), Gordon J. Schochet places the restoration of Charles II, "at the center of disputes about the nature of government authority" (Schochet: 1975: p.192). Although, as C.B. Macpherson contests that, "England was governed successfully, at least from 1689 onwards, by a body, the King in parliament, which was sovereign." (1962: p.92) many felt that William III was not the rightful king. Jacobites insisted that parliament had overstepped its legal bounds by summoning the William III and Mary II, and were ultimately ruling illegally (Schochet: 1975). As such, Tory novelists present a rather different version of history than their Whig counterparts. Fanny Hill is just such a Tory novel. Cleland places emphasis on the "secret and abrupt" (p.55) manner with which James II left England. The plot of Fanny Hill, focuses on the exploits (mostly sexual) of an orphaned country girl, who gets seduced into the dark underworld of London prostitution. Things begin to look up for the hapless heroine when she meets, and falls in love with, the strategically named "Charles." Events spiral for Fanny when Charles is secretly "forc'd on a long voyage" (p.55) by his cruel and jealous father. The novel resolves itself with the "restoration" of Charles, and Fanny kissing him as if she would "consolidate lips with him" (p.178). Not only does the plot directly mirror those events surrounding the abdication of James II but, once again, the language is highly suggestive. That the words "restoration" and "consolidate" appear in such vicinity to each other makes it very difficult not read the novel as an allegory which calls for the restoration of the "rightful" heir to the throne. Akin to the Whig writers already mentioned, the personalisation of society through Fanny Hill, and the re-personalisation of James II through the character of Charles is a clear attempt by a partisan writer to influence public opinion through the mode of fiction. Ascertaining the "intentions of the author" is a subject which Quentin Skinner stresses the importance of in "Social Meaning and the Explanation of Social Action" (Skinner: 1972: see Laslett: 1972: p.71). However, in Virtue, Commerce, and History (1985), J.G.A. Pocock lists some objections to this route of enquiry which include whether literary scholars can "recover the authors intentions from his text without becoming imprisoned in the hermeneutic circle" (Pocock: 1985: p.4). This is a valid reservation; the desire to "know" an author's intentions can be a misleading and counter-productive operation. As Pocock suggests, "The author inhabits an historically given world that is apprehensible only in the ways rendered available by a number of historically given languages" (Pocock: 1985: p.5). This statement makes eighteenth-century fiction even more remarkable as, despite the linguistic restrictions imposed them, these writers have managed to "appropriate" (Bakhtin: 1957) the political lexicon to advocate the validity of their preferred mode of government. So, if these writers can appropriate language to politically interpret the past and so evoke a partisan outcome, what is to oppose them from influencing the future? J.G.A Pocock implies that there is not a great deal:

The more complex, even the more contradictory, the language context in which he is situated the richer and more ambivalent become the speech acts he is capable of performing, and the greater become the likelihood that these acts will perform upon the context itself and induce modification and change within it. (Pocock: 1985: p.5)

Although eighteenth-century writers may not have agreed on who possessed the legal right to supremacy, they each agreed that a governing head needed to be in place to safeguard, "freedoms which are his own and looking to government mainly to preserve and protect his individual activity" (Pocock: 1985: p.60). However, before these "freedoms" can be safeguarded, these writers must qualify their entitlement to such protection. Michael McKeon discusses the shift from the inheritance of political power to one based on "the abstract principle of merit" (McKeon: 2005: p.12). In this way the emerging "merchant class" should be entitled to political power due to their acquisition of "mobile" property, and not exclusively the inherited, "fixed" property of land. (Arendt: 1945): p.43). Roxana tackles this debate head on. McKeon states that, "Political sovereignty is a function of familial inheritance, (p.11). The episode with Roxana and her daughter, Susan, turn this statement on its head. Names are a significant feature in the fiction of Daniel Defoe. As I have already discussed, eighteenth-century writers created a personalisation of society through the domestic characters in their fiction. Ian Watt notes, "Defoe's use of proper names is casual and sometimes contradictory; but he very rarely gives names that are conventional or fanciful" (p.19). This makes Defoe's decision to give his "Fortunate Mistress" a pseudonym rather curious. The reader does not have access to Roxana's heritage, and thus cannot attach her to any. The upshot of this is that the reader is viewing Roxana solely in her "merchant" capacity. In doing so her agency (both political and personal) is accumulated at the same rate as her wealth. As Sandra Sherman puts it in, Finance and Fictionality, in the Early Eighteenth Century, Roxana is a "construction of the market." (Sherman: 1996: p.757) As such, Roxana herself becomes an allegory for the benefits of trade. J. H. Plumb notes in, England in the Eighteenth Century that, "All his contemporaries were agreed with Defoe that trade was the cause of England's increasing wealth" (p.21). Roxana's material wealth is directly linked with her political agency and thus the benefits of traded interest over a landed one are domesticated and humanised. The reader only learns Roxana's true name in a passing manner, towards the very end of the novel, and in relation to her daughter "SUSAN (for she was my own name)" (p.205). The fact that Susan did not "have" Roxana's own name, but instead "was" her own name is crucial. Here Susan has become dehumanised, and is merely an extension of Roxana's own self and a physical example of familial inheritance. Unfortunately, for Susan, this is precisely what Roxana, as the personification of the new merchant class, is trying to break away from. As J.H. Plumb notes, "Eighteenth-century politicians realised with great clarity that wealth meant power" (Plumb: p.22). And so did the merchants. Michael Shinagel reveals in Daniel Defoe and the Middle Class Gentility (1968), "They [merchants] gravitated, significantly, not to the Court, which they saw as monopolized by the aristocracy, but to the government, by which manoeuvre they helped to consolidate and enhance their position politically as well as economically" (Shinagel: 1968: p.108). This would mean that the merchants, fully aware of the significance of capital over heritage would undoubtedly hold this dearer than familial ties. The lengths which Roxana (and Amy) work through to ensure the familial severance is irreversible, is a public demonstration that familial inheritance has become defunct. Returning to my earlier discussion of the author's intentions; the land/trade debate would certainly form an aspect of Daniel Defoe's authorial awareness. This is because, as Maximilian E. Novak succinctly puts it, "at heart he was a businessman who himself desired to accumulate wealth" (Novak: 2001: p.618). This claim is substantiated in by Defoe himself in his discussion on the "General History of Trade: This new Method of living, saving the Errors of it, as it May be recon'd a Vice; is however the great support of Trade in the World; again, that Trade encreases Wealth, raises Families, lifts the Poor up from the low and necessitous way of living to subsisting comfortably and plentifully on their Labour. (Defoe: See Novak: 2001:p.p. 622-623) Such a declaration by a novelist is upsetting news for a character such as Susan, who has become surplus to requirements. The trade with which Roxana experiences a deeper affinity with than her own children, is the trade of her person, "The point is that property was a juridical term before it was an economic one; it meant that which was properly one's own, that to which one properly had claim," (Pocock: 1985: p.56). Here, Pocock's definition keys into Roxana's ideology of trade and property. Her body, once her "true husband" had "abdicated" from the familial home, was entirely in her own possession. As such, as long she has earned political sovereignty. Her reasons for refraining from remarrying illustrate this concept adeptly:

I had no Inclination to be a Wife again.a Wife is treated with Indifference, a Mistress with a strong Passion; a Wife is look'd upon as but an Upper Servant, a Mistress is a Sovereign; a Wife must give up all she has.whereas a Mistress makes the saying true, that what the Man has, is hers, and what she has, is her own. (p. 216) Not only does this episode assert Roxana's appropriation of her own rightful property, but also that of "what the man has." In this way, typical gender roles are turned on their head; Roxana is an equal. In fact, Roxana is "a Sovereign." What is noteworthy here is the use of the article "a;" Roxana is not the sovereign, but instead trades power with her masculine counterpart. This is at variance with J.G.A. Pocock's findings that, "Land, or real property, tended to make men independent citezens, who actualized their natural political capacity, whereas mobile property tended to make them artificial beings, whose appetites and power could and must be regulated by a sovereign" (p. 67). To a degree, this is conducive to Roxana's social position. Superficially, she is an "artificial being." She lives, and trades, under the pseudonym of "Roxana," and thus her identity itself is not fixed. Similarly, her national identity is up for debate, "I was born, as my friends told me, at the City of POICTIERS.from whence I was brought to England" (p. 5).