On The Double Metaphor Of Women’s Space In Love In Excess

Eliza Haywood(1693-1756) is one of the most popular Britain female authors in the early 18 th century. Along with Delariviere Manley and Aphra Behn, she is regarded as one of“The fair triumvirate of wit”. Love in Excess(1719-20), as one of the most popular novels in her early works, represents the heroines’ desire and resistance. At present, the special study of Love in Excess is rarely seen in China, but many scholars abroad have studied it mainly from the perspective of feminism, style, female morality and so on. However, not due attention has been given to the relationship between the spacial metaphor and power in order to explore the woman’s life trouble in the 18 th and about how women could fight against their fate, keep their own mind and gain their own happiness in the limited living space.Foucault holds that power is not only productive but also never one-dimensional because the people whom power is imposed upon are also executing their own power. When the female suffer the oppression from the male, they can also revolt or exert their power on the men in return, though not necessarily in a direct and positive way. This paper, by using Foucault’s power theory, aims to analyze the dual spatial metaphor of the room as the discursive power, garden as the gazing power and monastery as the pastoral power in Haywood’s Love in Excess. To the women characters, these three spaces represent the dual meanings of power: discipline and resistance. Besides, they are also heroine’s prison and the free land.This thesis is made up of three chapters to explore the relationship between women’s space and power. The first chapter focuses on the room as the dual discursive power. Due to the construction of discourse in the 18 th century Britain, women have low status: they have to obey their fathers or husbands and are of no discursive power in decision-making. To the heroines, the room is like a prison where they were subjected and had low status: Alovisa’s marital life was solitary and dull because her husband D’elmont chose her as his wife just for her vast possessions. Alovisa regarded quarreling with her husband as a way to attract his attention and express her discontent, worsening their relationship. But on the other hand, the room is also a free and relaxed space for the heroines to obtain their freedom of mind and actions through secret activities. In her room, Alovisa wrote love letters to D’elmont inanonymity, by which Alovisa gained the discursive power to deliver her love freely without shame and fear. The second chapter discusses garden as the dual gazing power. Garden is like a “panopticon”, where the heroines’ happiness and freedom are under surveillance. Actually under men’s gaze, the heroines’ body and mental secrets in the garden seemed to be transparent. Thus, the heroines became the object of the men’s desire. When Melliora read love stories, D’elmont was seeing her through a gallery with a large window facing the garden.In the process of his gaze, Melliora’s hidden passion became transparent. However, in order to pursue their love, the heroines were no longer content with being the gazed object. On the contrary, Camilla attempted to make use of the darkness in the evening, and Ciamara equipped herself with the veil against the men’s gaze, and even became the gazing subject on men in the garden. The pastoral power of monastery was explored in the third chapter, which acts with an aim to discipline the individual in mind and soul. The monastery strictly controls women’s mind and soul through pastoral power, making the heroines become the moral objects. For the female characters, the monastery was a closed space to imprison their thoughts and body. On the other hand, the monastery was, to some extent, the women’s free spiritual land as well. Amena, who was sent to monastery by her father, under the cover of her confession, secretly wrote love letters to D’elmont. To Amena, the monastery was a safer place than the outside world to give the rein to her love by writing letters covertly, without the moral insult from her father and vicious plot from Alovisa.From the above analysis, it reveals that the patriarchal society in the 18 th century Britain, restricted women’s living spaces with an aim for the comprehensive control through a variety of powers. However, the application of power and the limitation of the space do not reduce women into one-dimensional beings; instead they take advantage of spaces in a strategical way to fulfill their desire and trigger their counter-power. This reflects Haywood’s concern and sympathy to women who have their limited space under the pressure of the patriarchal society, as well as her hope that women should execute the power initially and struggle for their own happiness.