Love In Excess By Eliza Haywood
Love in Excess
Eliza Haywood
2003 Edition
Broadview Press (first published 1719)
300 pages
Summary
Haywood's frankness about female sexuality may explain the later neglect of Love in Excess. (In contrast, her accomplished domestic novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, has remained available.) Love in Excess and its reception provide a lively and valuable record of the challenge that female desire posed to social decorum.
When I was assigned Love in Excess, I was a bit overjoyed. I had just been looking at the work and thought it sounded like an intriguing read on love and sexuality. The language of the novel took some getting used to, but after reading it awhile, it becomes a very readable tome on the nature female sexual relations even though the main lead is male. He seems to be a stock character for how males are in terms of the nature of desire. D'Elmont is in no hurry to court and lady for marriage. He rather woo women into his bed and get “some”. He comes into the text, as a hero right off. He is the embodiment of the masculine image of war hero, lover, and man driven by his sexual nature. He is not the image of wit, though. Due to his charming looks most of the female sex are drawn to him including one of the novels main female leads Alovisa ,Amena , Melliora, Camaria all embody the vastness of female resonse to men. Alovisa is smart, cunning and knows what she wants. While she has a tragic end, she does secure her marriage to her beloved , though for him it is more her wealth. Melliora though more innocent in her ways of getting to D, does use some tactics and goes to show that female intelligence was far over looked in this time. Camaria is the false image of what love should be and the very confident and yet way to sexual forward woman whose life ends tragically at her own hands.
The novel to me was an interesting look at gender politics. Haywood was writing for a male audience but her female characters come out to be the most well defined. Each of the females use different and interesting tactics to try to get what they desire. The novel also uses letters to tell some of the story. These letters allows the reader a futher look into the mind of the characters while also creating much of the misfortune that occurs The novel is filled with secrets and characters using ulterior motives to get what they desire as well as how one can misread context of something to change the meaning.
The novel becomes far more interesting during the second and third halves. There is a little bit death, fighting and misfortate as D has to deal with what occurs in the first half. While the novel ends fairly well for the lead and the beloved Melliora, I think that what occurs is a mark debate on marriage as an intuition of love. D seems to condone what he feels as love, but seems overall more like lust to me.
By far this novel was a great read that details the dangers of sexual lust and remarking on the struggle of women that seem to have more sway over men than what the men thought. By far my favorite characters were Alovisa and Viloetta both of which, sadly, meet fatal ends. Overall I would rate this novel five out of five stars and would gladly read more by this author.