Difeng Chueh
Assistant Professor, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan. Email: difeng.c@gmail.com
Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.07
Abstract
This paper aims to explore Beauplaisir’s disabled libertine identity in Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina; or Love in a Maze (1725) in order to understand how “disability” was conceptualized by eighteenth-century authors. Beauplaisir is a libertine obsessed with pursuits of sexual pleasure with various women. In those sexual adventures, Beauplaisir constructs his abled libertine identity through his observation skills. In fact, Beauplaisir’s observation skills also render him disabled. Haywood’s portrayal of Beauplaisir’s disabled libertine identity offers another way to examine meanings of disability in eighteenth-century literary works. As I will contend, the definition of “disability” was not limited to a person’s physical or mental impairment in the eighteenth century. Instead, an eighteenth-century person could become disabled when s/he lost certain qualifications for becoming a member of a particular group. The word “disabled” or “disability” was used in this way by eighteenth-century writers such as Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift. As I will show, Beauplaisir’s disabled libertine identity is a result of his being excluded from the abled libertine group. This exclusion results from a trick imposed on him by Fantomina. Thus, examinations of Beauplaisir’s disabled libertine identity will point out another side of “disability.”
Keywords: disabled libertine, eighteenth-century libertinism, eighteenth-century disability studies, exclusion