A headlong novel about Ardelia, so lovely that any handsome man who sees her loves her, even if he's hunting down her last lover for having abandoned his sister Elvira¹. (She is inconstant tp every love, even to a holy Vow.) Her final fatal folly is to tell two rivals to get her over the same convent wall at the same quarter-hour; they meet, they duel, all three die calling for mercy, Elvira is left weeping:
This alarmed the Rest of the Sisters, who rising, caus'd the Bell to be rung out, as upon dangerous Occasions it used to be; which rais'd the Neighbourhood, who came time enough to remove the dead Bodies of the two Rivals, and of the late fallen Angel Ardelia. The injur'd and neglected Elvira, whose Piety designed quite contrary Effects, was immediately seiz'd with a violent Fever; which, as it was violent, did not last long: for she dy'd within four and twenty Hours, with all the happy Symptoms of a departing Saint.
Behn is known as 'the first English woman to earn her living by her pen', and really this is no compliment to English reading tastes - 's works are none so galumphing. I was thinking of blaming it on technology; Behn's readers paid less per word; slower text production might have higher quality; but no, there are classical pop romances that are just as awful.
¹ "Elvira" has turned up before - in Behn, but from a historical source - as the scorn'd Spanish maiden. When did it get into US pop discourse? Is the Gothick Elvira a direct descendant?
So wrote clew in Fiction (17th c.). | TrackBack