Daughters of Misfortune
The Seducer
To seduce is to die as reality
and reconstitute oneself as
illusion.
--Baudrillard.
"As for the seducer-what is he but the Devil with a modern face
and worldly tastes?" (Saint-Amand 5). Just as Lucifer was first seduced
by divine power to imitate God, "the hypocrite-seducer begins to play at
God, to ape pious devotion" (Saint-Amand 100). In the context of 1790s
seduction novels, a seducer is a man, or a libertine, who, with or without
the consent
of the lady whom he desires, robs her of her virtue. Many critics have
drawn a parallel between the seducer archetype and Satan, or a lesser
demon, since the seducer plays at God in his assertion of social and
sexual power over his victim. Further, in Satanic lore it is told that
Satan will take whatever form necessary to trick or seduce men and women
into his service (Reed 26).
Major Sanford, the notorious seducer of Eliza Wharton in Hannah
Webster Foster's The Coquette, writes to his confidant, "I endeavor
to detach her from [her other suitor], and disaffect her towards him;
knowing, that if I can separate them entirely, I shall be more likely to
succeed in my plan" (148). Sanford is clearly planning tricks in a
Satanic style. Moreover, he writes, "Not that I have any thoughts of
marrying her myself; that will not do at present. But I love her too well
to see her connected with another for life. I must own myself a little
revengeful in this affair. I wish to punish her friends, as she calls
them, for their malice towards me; for their cold and negligent treatement
of me whenever I go to the house" (148). Sanford's presumption to punish
others and his open admittance of a vengeful nature place him squarely in
the category of the "demon-lover."
This term is central to Toni Reed's discussion of the seducer in
British fiction. It includes incubi, succubi, vampires, ghosts and demons
along with Satan himself, and refers to a historical fear of destructive
sexuality. "The supposed pact between Satan and so-called witches is, in
a sense, a demon-lover arrangement whereby suggestible women are tempted
by certain promises to compromise their will and are persuaded to embark
on a course of self-destruction" (Reed 29).
The seducer's imitation of God is echoed by the more concrete
imitations that take place in the texts of seduction novels, where young
seducers imitate older, accomplished seducers. In The Upstart
Peasant, a French seduction novel by Marivaux, young Jacob idealizes
the
Count d'Orsan, his "ego-ideal" (Saint-Amand 78). The Count's seductive
skills reveal Jacob's own shortcomings as a seducer, and a challenge to
his manhood while also providing him with a homoerotic camaraderie. A
similar but more educational relationship occurs in Crebillon's The
Wayward Head and Heart, where Versac lectures Meilcour on the "art of
pleasing" (Saint-Amand 89). In reference to Meilcour's imitation of
Versac, critic Pierre Saint-Amand hits on the paradox of imitating a
master seducer with his question: "How indeed-even if one possesses his
ultimate secret-can one imitate the ultimate imitator?" (91). Indeed,
it seems a difficult task to achieve the status of Satan, the ultimate
imitator of God.
The motives of seducers in these novels vary, since some seducers
are portrayed as purely evil and spiteful, such as the aforementioned
Major Sanford and Ambrosio, a depraved monk involved in a seduction
subplot of Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk. These seducers never
intend to marry their victims. Other seducers, such as Montraville from
Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple and Harrington from William Hill
Brown's The Power of Sympathy, seem to be men of some good
character who have fallen temporarily into vice. It is these more
ambiguously evil seducers who bring readers to consider the seduction
story as a social critique instead of an indictment of the individual
criminal.
Another factor which distinguishes seducer types is nationality.
Leonard Tennenhouse advances a theory that the libertines of American
seduction stories transcend class boundaries in ways threatening to the
British. "The omnipresence of the libertine as the embodiment of
masculinity creates a situation hostile to an earlier system of arranged
marriages implicitly if not explicitly attributed to the British" (13).
The American libertine is in this view a critical thinker and an
anti-religious character who threatens the status quo with his European
immorality.
Works Cited
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