EESE 1/2003

Masks and Masquerades in the 18th Century Novel:
Sarah Fielding and Samuel Richardson

Ute Kauer (Marburg)

"I must put on the dissembler a little."1 - This quotation by Richardson's Pamela exemplifies the way in which the literature and culture of the 18th century were occupied with masks and masquerades. Shifting identities can be found both on the level of content and of narration itself: Richardson, for example, used the technique of narrative cross-dressing (a male author choosing a female narrator or vice versa) in Pamela and in Clarissa. This paper is to elucidate the narrative consequences of this technique and the underlying concepts of gender by comparing Richardson's novel Pamela and Sarah Fielding's The Adventures of David Simple.

The preoccupation with masks and masquerades in the "age of disguise"2 can be found both in literature and in everyday-life. The weekly masquerades at the Haymarket were visited by thousands, although they were regarded as somewhat immoral and corrupt. Terry Castle summarises the cultural significance of these masquerades:

Throughout the eighteenth century the masked assembly, that 'promiscuous gathering', was at once a highly visible public institution and a highly charged image - a social phenomenon of expansive proportions and a cultural sign of considerable potency.3

What does this cultural sign signify? Masks are a means of disguise, of course, but the disguise in itself reveals aspects of a cultural anxiety, and even more so when gender roles are concerned. Cross-dressing, be it literal or in the form of narrative cross-dressing, is not a means to become the other but rather an exploration of the possibilities of gendered identity. The mask itself does not necessarily imply a new androgynous concept of this identity, as Marjorie Garber points out: "The 'third' is a mode of articulation, a way of describing a space of possibility. Three puts into question the idea of one: of identity, self-sufficiency, self-knowledge."4 The high frequency of narrative cross-dressing in the novel of the eighteenth century shows that the categories supposed to define identity - of which gender is one - were no longer perceived as stable. Masking as the other questions traditional roles, and simultaneously reveals and causes uncertainty. Garber points out that transvestism not only problematises the categories "male" and "female" but implies a crisis of categorisation itself.5 Cross-dressing thus deconstructs the binary opposites of gendered identity, by exposing them as constructed rather than essential.

The reasons for a male writer to choose a female narrative voice are, of course, different from those of a female writer who chooses to write from a male point of view: "Women are borrowing the voice of authority, men are seemingly abdicating it."6 The effects of cross-dressing also depend on who uses which disguise. In her study on female cross-dressing, SusanGubar7 stresses that cross-dressed men are often perceived as clowns or psychopaths (as for example in films like Tootsie or Some Like It Hot), whereas women in men's clothes apparently have a certain erotic attraction (like Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It). The perception of cross-dressing is just as gender specific as the motivation. The choice of narrator therefore not only indicates a crisis of categorisation but also reveals the hierarchy of discourses on gender in a given society. The motivation to write from the point of view of the other can be an attempt to give a voice to a suppressed discourse, it can also mean that a writer wants to share the dominant discourse to authorise the text.

So what does an author gain by this kind of masquerade? In the case of Sarah Fielding, it is fairly obvious that she tried to imitate a "male" way of telling her story to invest her novel David Simple with more authority, even if she did not choose a straightforward cross-gender narration. Samuel Richardson' s disguise is motivated by another intention. Here Madeleine Kahn's definition of the term can be applied: "I use the term 'narrative transvestism' to refer to this process whereby a male author gains access to a culturally defined female voice and sensibility but runs no risk of being trapped in the devalued female realm."8 In the following, I will try to elucidate the consequences and effects of Fielding's and Richardson's narrative masquerades - why did they use the mask of the other sex, how did it influence the narrative structure of their novels as a whole, and how does it reflect on the cultural concept of gendered identity in the eighteenth century?

2. Sarah Fielding and her Male Mask(s)

Sarah Fielding is mostly known as the sister of Henry Fielding and hardly as a writer in her own right. Typically, the chronology of her life in the Oxford edition of her novel The Adventures of David Simple begins with the entry "1707 Henry Fielding born."9 However, with her contemporaries she was quite popular. Samuel Richardson was one of her great admirers, which, of course, put her in a peculiar position between the two rivals, her brother and Richardson. In spite of her own admiration for Richardson's novels, she followed her brother's example in her own novel and chose the picaresque style. This is even more surprising as the two ways of writing, Richardson's sentimental epistolary novel and her brother's picaresque novel, were indeed associated with a feminine and masculine style.10

Why then did she choose to write "male" fiction? Her general motivation for writing at all was rather profane: she had to earn a living. Her contemporaries, however, did not regard writing as an appropriate occupation for women, as a comment by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu underlines: "I [...] heartily pity her, constrained by her circumstances to seek her bread by a method I do not doubt she despises."11 Sarah's brother wrote a rather condescending preface to the second edition of David Simple, to disclaim his authorship of the novel, as his career was threatened by a number of anonymous publications. He also corrected Sarah's style for the second edition, and although he declares his corrections to be minor in the preface, Kelsall's comment on the extent of his interference suggests something different: "One wonders what he would have done with Richardson."12

Sarah Fielding's choice of a writing style associated with masculinity is in itself a kind of masquerade. In a way, she represents the meeting point of different traditions: of her brother's ideal of a classical humanist education and Richardson's middle-class morality, of a sentimental and an ironically detached writing style. The narrative structure of her novel shows this inner conflict. Out of reverence for her beloved brother, she chose the picaresque novel, although certain elements of the genre, like for example the erotic adventures of a Tom Jones, were regarded as inappropriate for her as a woman. Paradoxically enough, she seems to have admired Richardson's writing style more than Henry's. In her letters, his art is described as the unsurpassed ideal of fiction: "In short, Sir, no pen but your's can do justice to Clarissa. Often have I reflected on my own vanity in daring but to touch the hem of her garment [...]."13 Richardson's admiration for Sarah equalled hers: he not only printed three of her novels, but ranked her as a writer higher than her brother, as his letter after Henry's death underlines: "What a knowledge of the human heart! Well might a critical judge of writing say [...] that your late brother's knowledge of it was not (fine writer as he was) comparable to your's."14 Sarah Fielding's indecisive position between the two rivals led to her selection of the "wrong" genre and to inconsistencies within the narrative structure of her novel as a whole. "Small wonder that the result is like a beefsteak pie without the steak,"15 as MacCarthy puts it.

Within the mask of the "male" genre, the disruptive effects of her divided loyalties manifest themselves mainly in specific strategies to authorise the text, in a feminisation of the plot, and in the mask behind the mask, her male hero. One the one hand she needed a male hero not only because of the genre but also to give her text more (male) authority, on the other hand she endowed her hero with all the traits of the sentimental tradition. It is mainly the figure of her hero which leads to the divergent assessment of her novel. The judgements range from "Fielding's position is profoundly feminist [...]"16 to "the novel is not overtly feminist."17 The criticism is based on the evaluation of the feminised hero and, closely connected with this, the feminised plot. Both are either perceived as critical feminist statements on gendered identity or simply as inconsistencies. Fielding's male mask, David Simple, can be seen as a de-sexualised male, as sexuality would destroy the concept of tenderness,18 or he can be classified as an "anti-phallic male".19 Just like masquerade in general, the feminised hero questions the existence of a "true" self firmly rooted in fixed notions of male and female. If this concept can be classified as "feminist" or subversive must be doubted - the reasons for David's feminisation lie in the sentimental philosophy which is central to the novel. His care, benevolence and tenderness of course somehow discredit him as a picaresque hero. His intention and his adventures are of a different nature than those of Tom Jones: his quest is for true friendship, for a "perfect Union of Minds", (26) regardless of the sex. Furthermore, his social position and his lack of power is similar to that of the female characters. The ambiguous identity of the hero results from Fielding's wish to construct a "new" man, whereas the genre demanded a convincing masculinity. The hero is, for example, allowed to shed tears because of a sad story he is told, but not without comment: "for he did not think it beneath a Man to cry from Tenderness, tho' he would have thought it much too effeminate to be moved to Tears by any Accident that concerned himself only." (63) Obviously, the narrator is suggesting that men cry because of compassion, whereas women's crying is self-absorbed. The difference between pity and selfishness is presented as gender specific, thus exemplifying the conflict between the need for a male authority and the wish to deconstruct gendered identity.

This conflict is also mirrored in David's attitude towards the female characters, Cynthia and Camilla. Both are first described from his point of view, but without any reference to their outward appearance, which is surprising, as David is, in both cases, quickly convinced that he will marry the ladies. Only at the end of part one does them narrator realise that he has not given a description of his main characters so far and justifies his way of narrating:

Perhaps it may be here expected I should give some Description of the Persons of my favourite Characters; but as the Writers of Novels and Romances have already exhausted all the Beauties of Nature to adorn their Heroes and Heroines, I shall leave it to my Readers Imagination to form them just as they like best: It is their Minds I have taken most pains to bring them acquainted with [...]. (303)

The preoccupation with the characters' thoughts and feelings is of course part of the sentimental tradition, but it also leads to a lapse in the structure of the text: as David does not give a description of the ladies, it is omitted altogether. Thus, the two female characters remain somewhat flat. Furthermore, the omission characterises David as a sexless male. David's passion seems to be purely metaphysical: he experiences "Raptures" (170) because of the gratitude of the two ladies. Neglecting the body and the erotic component of the male-female relationships in the novel result in a de-sexualised hero who endangers the narrative structure of the novel, as Pettit points out: "The credulous and sexless Simple cannot bring the novel's plot to its conclusion [...]."20

The feminised hero finds his equivalent in a feminised plot and a refusal of closure. Peter Brooks defines plot as the "principal ordering force" of narrating, even of experience in general.21 According to him, the driving force underlying the structuring of experience and narration is desire. This is certainly true for picaresque novels like Tom Jones. The female plot, on the contrary, redefines the dynamics of ambition. David's desire is not sexual, but sentimental. As a sentimental hero, he is by definition anti-capitalist. He refuses a social existence and withdraws into the comfort of a group of friends. His passive resistance towards ambition, money and the social hierarchy leads him out of society, whereas the initiation into social paradigms is usually the outcome of the picaresque hero's quest. This feminisation of the plot also results in a deconstruction of the traditional happy ending. Comedy usually demands a positive solution of the conflicts, but David Simple ends as "one of the most melancholic of all sentimental prose-fictions."22 All the protagonists, apart from Cynthia, die in the end. Fielding refuses comic closure, thus again counteracting the demands of the genre. She presents an alternative narrative that questions the binary oppositions of gendered identity, even if she cannot envision a masquerade which actually changes traditional concepts of narrative and social existence.

The ambiguity inherent in the hero and the structure of the plot can also be found in the role of the narrator. The need to give the text male authority is juxtaposed by the attempt to undermine this very authority. Thus, the narrator wears a male and a female mask. His comments are a mixture of uncertainty and humility on the one hand, and attempts to state his superior knowledge on the other hand. The comments are not only an ironical game, playing with the boundaries of fiction and reality, but indicate a narrator that is just as ambiguous as the hero. Ironical comments on the way of narrating demand a narrator who overlooks the events with a certain distance, but he is just as overwhelmed by his own story as the hero: "I must pause a while before I can relate it" (32). Furthermore, the male authority displayed in comments that underline the narrator's knowledge of the world is undermined by his omissions: As a woman, it would have been inappropriate for Sarah Fielding to have her narrator comment on matters like gambling or sex, and therefore the narrator has to justify those omissions. He apologises for mentioning gambling (81), and leaves out some ambiguous remarks because they are "not worth repeating" (179). All in all, the double mask of the male hero and a narrator who is supposed to display authority fails because it undermines the "discursive authority",23 as Lanser calls it, of the whole text. Facing the double paradox of two conflicting genres and lacking the cultural authority to speak independently, Fielding's masquerade reflects her anxiety about gendered identity, but disrupts the narrative structure of the novel as a whole.

Identity and Masquerade in Pamela

In contrast to Sarah Fielding, Richardson chose a more obvious form of masquerade for his novel Pamela: his first-person narrator is female. In one of his letters he complains about authors who do not take this kind of transvestism seriously: "they take up their Characters of Women too easily".24 In the same letter, he justifies his own knowledge of the female character by denying any major differences between the sexes: "[...] the two Sexes are too much considered as different species." This attitude is probably a result of his own social status: in contrast to his rival Henry Fielding, his lack of a classical education put him in the same position as most women of his time. The main question, however, is not the credibility of his heroine, but the aim of the masquerade. As pointed out at the beginning, the reasons for men to choose a female mask are different from women's intentions. The answer lies, according to Madeleine Kahn, in the concept of transvestism itself, as it includes the refusal to be defined by one category only.25 But does Richardson's mask really result in a liberation from the constraints of a clearly defined gendered identity?

First of all it has to be noted that Pamela's account is authorised by a male editor, "because an Editor can judge with an impartiality which is rarely to be found in an Author" (31), as he states at the beginning. The only other interference of the editor can be found at the end of the first volume, where he has to bridge the gap caused by Pamela's journey to Lincolnshire. His subsequent inclusion of diary entries is justified, as Pamela is no longer allowed to send letters. His comments function to enhance the credibility of her account. At the same time, the editor's comments on Pamela's writing prevent her from being judged as less feminine, as the very act of writing, of rationalising one's thoughts, threatens the hierarchy of gender roles. In the case of Richardson's other novel Clarissa, her use of the dominant discourse is punished at the end by Clarissa's ultimate silence, her death. Here the editor finishes the story. "Thus her death is the working out, on the level of the plot, of the inevitable movement away from the female body of the text, back to his reassuringly male editorial stance."26 Now, as Pamela is allowed to survive, one might come to the conclusion that she is not silenced by her author. Her master and husband gives her permission to continue her "scribbling", but she has to follow certain rules. Even though he promises never to use words like "command" or "obey" again, he still demands that Pamela quits discussing his requests, whether or not she finds them reasonable (469). Thus the hierarchy of gender roles is reinscribed at the end. Pamela is rewarded with a husband and a higher social position, but she has to subject her will to Mr. B's. The narrator's double mask - male editor, female narrator - allows empathy and distance at the same time, as the editor protects the author and prevents an identification with the supposedly inferior female discourse. The aim of the masquerade is not a dissolution of the self, or a "radical example of sympathetic identification", as Carson puts it,27 but a reassuring of the (male) self. The dialectics of the narrative cross-dressing result in a disguise that in the end reveals, not hides, the true self. Gwilliam even states that Richardson's narrative transvestism is his expression of the fear that his sex will lose its purity.28 The female mask constitutes male identity.

Disguise and dissembling are important elements in the text, and not only on the level of narrative. Even Pamela has to disguise herself in order to survive. Doody points out that the masquerade as leitmotif in the novel stresses that we ar e all "fictional creators of ourselves."29 If this were true, Richardson would indeed offer a modern (or better: post-modern) concept of identity. The evaluation of the masquerade within the text is closely connected to the gender hierarchy. In the figure of Mr B., Richardson doubles his own cross-dressing: Mr B. disguises himself as a woman in order to gain access to Pamela's room and to seduce/rape her. His masquerade is condemned on moral grounds and, according to Carson, functions to express "anxieties about [...] authorial activities."30 As a contrast, Mr B.'s female dress justifies the author's mask: If the disguise is grounded in empathy and understanding of the opposite sex, it is sanctioned, but if it is motivated by lust and ignorance, it has to be censured. Furthermore, Mr B. is in danger of destroying his self, as his dissembling is characterised by a loss of control. A transgression of gender boundaries is not intended, it is even seen as dangerous.

Pamela's own disguise is not meant to be a masquerade but is perceived as such. She dresses very simply in order to underline her low social status and the virtues connected with it. The dress reflects on female masquerade in general. For Pamela, it is an attempt to gain freedom, for Mr B. the "disguise" implies that she is sexually available. Female masquerade in general was not approved of socially, as it suggested "female sexual freedom, and beyond that, female emancipation in general",31 as Castle points out. As a result, Mr B. finds her even more attractive in her new dress: "I was resolved never again to honour you with my notice; and so you must disguise yourself, to attract me [...]" (90). For Pamela, the new dress means that she puts aside the mask of social superiority and returns to "her own self" (89), as she states. Paradoxically, though, her real identity is perceived as a disguise to enhance her sexual attraction. Her authentic self is threatened because she cannot control the effects of her masquerade.

In eighteenth-century culture, the masquerade mirrors a preoccupation with the concept of self and identity: Castle stresses that "[i]t was both a personal abdication from the responsibilities of identity and a group abdication from the strictures of the social order itself."32 Richardson's narrative cross-dressing is an experiment with gendered identity, but it shows that the mask in itself is not necessarily a liberation from the confines of traditional stereotypes. The censuring of female masquerade and of cross-dressing in general within the text shows that a real transgression of gender boundaries is not intended. Stereotypes about gender roles are used to contrast middle-class virtues and upper class vices, but they are not deconstructed.

3. Beyond the Binary Opposites?

The division of private and public selves, of the self and its masks, is part of our western concept of individuality. The foundations of this concept are to be found in the eighteenth century. As Benson, a cultural psychologist, notes, terms like "self, self-knowledge, self-made, self-knowing, self-deception [...]" were first used in the 17th century.33 The culture of the sentimental tradition, the retreat to the inner world, and the concentration on an authentic self that has to be maintained against influences from outside - all this is part of the development of a modern concept of identity. In the eighteenth century, the definition of the self took place in the context of binary opposites, as Castle underlines: "Eighteenth-century English culture was founded on a set of institutionalized oppositions: European and Oriental, masculine and feminine, human and animal, natural and supernatural, and so on."34 The masquerade was a means of transcending those opposites momentarily. It could indeed open up a new space beyond the cultural constraints. However, the analysis of the two novels has shown that the masquerades in the end result in a return to traditional paradigms. The reasons for the masquerades and their outcome are obviously gender specific. Sarah Fielding's criticism of the binary opposites on the level of contents is qualified on the level of narrating. Therefore the novel does not and indeed could not present a convincing whole.

Richardson disguises himself for different reasons, but again the result is not a utopian or androgynous concept of identity. He re-inscribes the binary opposites male/female, as the female mask only functions to strengthen male identity. Masquerade is not in itself subversive, even if the two novels suggest a dissatisfaction with the limited possibilities of social roles. Neither Fielding nor Richardson were able to enter a utopian space "beyond the binary difference that governs the decorum of all codes, beyond the opposition feminine/masculine", as Derrida envisions it.35 Nevertheless, Richardson's attempt is still seen as the more revolutionary and convincing narrative disguise, and not only because of the obvious shortcomings of Sarah Fielding's text. Richardson created a myth of femininity that corresponded to the cultural climate and continued to influence the gender discourse well into the next century.

Works Cited

Primary Sources

Fielding, Sarah, The Adventures of David Simple (1744). Oxford, New York, 1994.

Richardson, Samuel, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740/41). Harmondsworth, 1985.

Secondary Sources

Battestin, Martin C./Battestin, Ruthe R., Henry Fielding: A Life. London, New York, 1989.

Battestin, Martin C./Probyn, Clive T. (eds.), The Correspondence of Henry and Sarah Fielding. Oxford, 1993.

Benson, Ciarán, The Cultural Psychology of Self. Place, Morality and Art in Human Worlds. London, 2001.

Brooks, Peter, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Oxford, 1984.

Carroll, John (ed.), Selected Letters of Samuel Richardson. Oxford, 1964.

Carson, James, "Narrative Cross-Dressing and the Critique of Authorship in the Novels of Richardson." Elizabeth C. Goldsmith (ed.), Writing the Female Voice. Essays on Epistolary Literature. Boston, 1989, 95-113.

Castle, Terry J., Masquerade and Civilization. The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century Culture and Fiction. Stanford, 1986.

Derrida, Jacques, "Choreographies". Interview with Christie McDonald. Diacritics 12:2 (1982), 66-76.

Doody, Margaret Anne, "Disguise and Personality in Richardson's Clarissa." Studies in the Eighteenth Century 7 (1988), 18-37.

Eaves, Thomas Cary Duncan/Kimpel, Ben D., Samuel Richardson: A Biography. Oxford, 1971.

Garber, Marjorie, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. London,1993.

Gubar, Susan, "Blessings in Disguise: Cross-Dressing as Re-Dressing for Female Modernists." Massachusetts Review: A Quarterly of Literature, the Arts and Public Affairs 22:4 (1981), 477-508, 483.

Gwilliam, Tassie, Samuel Richardson's Fictions of Gender. Stanford, 1993.

Hall, K.G., The Exalted Heroine and the Triumph of Order. Class, Women and Religion in the English Novel, 1740-1800. London, 1993.

Kahn, Madeleine, Narrative Transvestism: Rhetoric and Gender in the 18th Century English Novel. Ithaca, London, 1991.

Lanser, Susan Sniader, Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice. Ithaca, London, 1992.

MacCarthy, B.G., The Female Pen. Women Writers and Novelists 1621-1818. Cork, 1994.

Nussbaum, Felicity, "Effeminacy and Femininity: Domestic Prose Satire and David Simple." Eighteenth Century Fiction 11:4 (1999), 421-44.

Pettit, Alexander, "David Simple and the Attenuation of 'Phallic Power'". Eighteenth Century Fiction 11:2 (1999), 169-184.

Spencer, Jane, The Rise of the Woman Novelist. From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen. Oxford, 1986.

Todd, Janet (ed.), Dictionary of British Women Writers. London, 1989.

---- , The Sign of Angellica. Women, Writing and Fiction, 1660-1800. London, 1989.

---- , Sensibility. An Introduction. London, New York, 1986.

Notes

1 Samuel Richardson, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740/41). Harmondsworth, 1985, 164. All further quotations are taken from this edition.

2 Margaret Anne Doody, "Disguise and Personality in Richardson's Clarissa." Studies in the 18th Century 7 (1998), 18-37, 18.

3 Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilization. The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction. Stanford, 1986, 2.

4 Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. London, 1993, 11.

5 See Garber, Vested Interests, 17.

6 Madeleine Kahn, Narrative Transvestism: Rhetoric and Gender in the 18th Century English Novel. Ithaca, London, 1991, 2.

7 Susan Gubar, "Blessings in Disguise: Cross-Dressing as Re-Dressing for Female Modernists." Massachusetts Review: A Quarterly of Literature, the Arts and Public Affairs 22:4 (1981), 477-508, 483.

8 Kahn, Narrative Transvestism, 6.

9 Sarah Fielding, The Adventures of David Simple (1744). Oxford, New York, 1994, xxvii. All further quotations are taken from this edition.

10 See Jane Spencer, The Rise of the Woman Novelist. From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen. Oxford, 1986, 90.

11 Quoted in Janet Todd (ed.), Dictionary of British Women Writers. London, 1989, 246.

12 Kelsall, "Note on the Text", xxiii.

13 8.1.1748/49. Martin C. Battestin,/Clive T. Probyn (eds.), The Correspondence of Henry and Sarah Fielding. Oxford, 1993, 123.

14 Letter to Sarah Fielding , 7.12.1756. Battestin/Probyn, Correspondence, 132.

15 B.G. MacCarthy, The Female Pen. Women Writers and Novelists 1621-1818. Cork, 1994, 233.

16 Alexander Pettit, "David Simple and the Attenuation of 'Phallic Power'". Eighteenth Century Fiction 11:2 (1999), 169-184, 169.

17 Felicity Nussbaum, "Effeminacy and Femininity: Domestic Prose Satire and David Simple." Eighteenth Century Fiction 11:4 (1999), 421-444, 425.

18 Janet Todd, The Sign of Angellica. Women, Writing and Fiction, 1660-1800. London, 1989, 165; see also Janet Todd, Sensibility. An Introduction. London, New York, 1986, the chapter "The Man of Feeling".

19 Pettit, "David Simple and Phallic Power", 169.

20 Ibid., 171.

21 Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Oxford, 1984, xii.

22 K.G. Hall, The Exalted Heroine and the Triumph of Order. Class, Women and Religion in the English Novel, 1740-1800. London, 1993, 61.

23 Susan Sniader Lanser, Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice. Ithaca, London, 1992, 6.

24 Letter to Lady Bradshaigh, 1751. John Carroll (ed.), Selected Letters of Samuel Richardson. Oxford, 1964, 292.

25 Kahn, Narrative Transvestism, 10.

26 Ibid., 148.

27 James Carson, "Narrative Cross-Dressing and the Critique of Authorship in the Novels of Richardson." Elizabeth C. Goldsmith (ed.), Writing the Female Voice. Essays on Epistolary Literature. Boston, 1989, 95-113, 97.

28 Tassie Gwilliam, Samuel Richardson's Fictions of Gender. Stanford, 1993, 10.

29 Doody, "Disguise and Personality", 27.

30 Carson, "Narrative Cross-Dressing", 110.

31 Castle, Masquerade and Civilization, 33. 32 Ibid., 73.

33 See Ciarán Benson, The Cultural Psychology of Self. Place, Morality and Art in Human Worlds. London, 2001, 67.

34 Castle, Masquerade and Civilization, 78.

35 Jacques Derrida in an interview with Christie V. McDonald, "Choreographies", Diacritics 12:2 (1982), 66-76, 76.