The New Atlantis, The Female Spectator, and Classical Dialogue for the Proto-Feminist Cause
Manley incorporates contemporaneous female Tory authors (in addition to her own self) such as Margaret Cavendish and prominently Aphra Behn in the dialogic character of Astrea (and the less all-encompassing, brief embedded encounter with “Afra”) into her Princess de Cleves (1678) esque foray of displacing contemporary courtly scandal into a distant setting, this time not an older version of her own country as in Lafayette’s work but into a fictional Mediterranean world called The New Atlantis (1687). Also unlike Lafayette, Manley boldly, and wisely considering seditious libel laws at that time, published her scandalous stories with a separately published key so that people could match up who was who, without her going to prison long term for it (though she did go to trial).
Cavendish, in her Blazing World (1666), two decades before Manley, incorporated her own self into her own “fictional,” utopic, female-run realm. Cavendish recorded herself as the scribe and female friend for the Blazing World’s empress, while Manley uses Behn’s spy code name Astrea to provide commentary on the innerworkings of the New Atlantis.
Further, certain passages in Delarivier Manley’s The New Atlantis seem straight out of Eliza Haywood’s Female Spectator playbook, and though The Female Spectator (1744-46) graced the royal realm roughly six decades later, it was dedicated at its outset to some characters/historical figures with which readers of the New Atlantis would be familiar: Juliana Colyear, Duchess of Leeds (1706-1794), granddaughter of Sarah Churchill and descendent of both Marlborough and Godolphin so prominently figured in Manley’s New Atlantis.
The overarching dialogic format of The New Atlantis between Behn/Astrea and female godlike figures such as Intelligence, calls forth to Haywood’s early periodical by and for women. (See page 94 in Manley and “Haywood’s” response to Claribella’s letter invoking “Euphrosene” regarding Aliena’s story) Haywood, whose amphibious political affiliation continues to elude countless scholars, is thought to have begun as a Whiggish author then to have morphed into a Tory, perhaps, in her later more “conservative” and reformed days of her life. (I would debate that notion, and have). In her dedicatory epistle at the outset of her successful Female Spectator project she writes that “It is not … that you are descended from a Marlborough or a Godolphin, dear as those patriot-names will ever be” but for her “happy choice of a partner” where shines her “penetration” in having “singled out him who alone was worthy of you” (Haywood). In a similar spirit to the New Atlantis, the Female Spectator—recall also, that NA and TFS reference directly Addison/Steel’s Whiggish periodical—value female “penetration.” Both works are encircled by the opinions and philosophical debates of women figures under classical pseudonyms. Haywood’s periodical, at the outset, celebrated Colyear’s singular ability to “penetrate” the correct male partner, her second husband, actually, and the one who could truly appreciate her for her virtue and positive qualities. Manley in the New Atlantis shines a fictional spotlight in a roundabout yet also directly straightforward way, on the vices and sexuality that surrounds and encompasses the political underpinnings of the Queen Anne and William-and-Mary regimes. Of course, both classical dialogue forms harken back to that of Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy as well as, for Manley’s at least, but perhaps also for Haywood’s nonfictional female-run periodical for her community/readership of women, his Utopia during the political nightmare that was his imprisonment and eventual execution under Henry VIII. Remarkably, both Manley and Haywood were imprisoned but savvy enough to be able to escape permanent political prosecution, a testament either to the changing times since the Henry VIII regime post Restoration and post beheading of Charles I, or to their political, Machiavellian (Manley, p. 274-275) moves.
Works Cited
Haywood, Eliza. Dedicatory epistle to The Female Spectator, ed. Kelly Plante. Human Abstracts, 2020.
Manley, Dalarivier. The New Atlantis, ed. Ros Ballaster. Taylor & Francis, 2016.
