Broken Images: Fantomina

Concept by: Monishita Pal, 4th Semester

This painting highlights how Eliza Haywood has reversed the gender stereotypes in terms of body and mind in her work Fantomina or Love in Maze. The multiple personae of Fantomina is used by the writer to throw light on how women are empowered, they have an autonomy over their mind and body even within the restrictive domain of the 18th century society, where voices of the females have been silenced. Strangely, an 18th century man is considered to be superior even if he’s sexually promiscuous, predictable, can be easily manipulated and fooled; yet will be considered to be superior to any woman who could be much empowered than him. A woman disguising herself in many different personas and performing each one with it’s individuality, just to approach a single man whom she loves; how could she be sexually or intellectually subdued? A carefree casual promiscuous tramp, the so called high-class- man, gets shadowed within the desire of the empowered woman, getting reduced to a mere object of her desire. All the four different personae of Fantomina represents the women of four different classes; here the writer tries to connect to the various class of readers and their imagination to visualize the multiple personae. The painting represents Fantomina as the objectified body of the man vis-à-vis the elevated images of the empowered women all entangled within a maze.