"The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless" was an interesting read. It definitly was not as racy as Fantomina but it had alot of similarities. The book reminded me of Withering Heights. The plot seemed to be similar. Woman loves man but doesn't do anything about it. Woman marries another man (not the one she loves). Regrets her descion the rest of her days. Both woman stayed with the men they chose until the end. Of course the men died first. Betsy actually left her husband because she was miserable. Not alot of woman would have done that. In the end she goes back and becomes the wife she should have been. In Withering Heights Cathrine never goes back to Heathcliff or even imagines a life with him because of his status. Status drove alot of descions at this time. In the end Betsy knew that her descion to marry for status and not love was wrong. In the end both women stuck it out with whom they chose.

The character of Betsy also reminds me of Jane Austen's "Emma". Both foolish girls that make mistakes. Emma thinks she knows everything about people but learns in the end she doesn't. In a way Emma is thoughtless like Betsy.

Haywood's novel "Betsy Thoughtless" is very different from "Fantomina". The subjects in "Fantomina are very racy and sexual. In "Betsy Thoughtless" the focus seems to be on Betsy's mistakes. Haywood is almost warning girls about being thoughtless and what can happen. All in all i didn't really like "Betsy Thoughtless". I found it hard to read especially being at the end of the semester but it was ok.

Can you say Sammy Brady. This woman will do whatever she can to get this man. She changes her image three times to get closer to the man she is in love with. In the beginning of the story she feels she needs to dress up like a prostitute to get some attention from Beauplaisir. Of course once she was a prostitute he finally was interested in her. In the book it says "Beauplaisir thought he could not have a better Opportunity than these Words gave him of enquiring who she was, and wherefore she had feigned herself to be of a Profession which he was now convinced she was not" (Haywood, 605). In order to keep him interested she had to keep on reinventing herself.
The issue of rape comes up in the story. After she becomes a Fantomina he of course expects sex but she is not ready to give her virginity up yet. She is pretending to be a prostitute so therefore the man would obviously expect sex. But no matter what no means no. In this time chastity was very important. If you were not a virgin and unwed you were consisdered a lost cause. In Fantomina when her mother found out she was pregnant and there was no way she was going to marry Beauplaisir she sent her to a nunnery. It was really the only option for Fantomina. No man would marry her because she was not a virgin. I thought this was an interesting story. Also it would have been very racy for the time it was written in.

I liked reading "A Known Scribbler". The diary really showed what life was like for young women back then. We learn what things were like by taking classes or watching movies but reading someones diaries that really lived a long time ago is fascinating. One part in the diary where she described the ball she was going to and what everyone was wearing was interesting. I the diary she says "My dress was, a close pink persian Vest [with long close sleeves to my wrists, it was] ... had a gause frill round the waist" (pg. 68). Today you can see what things looked like but for someone to describe it was different.
I also liked how the diary had different forms of literature. It switched between journal entries, poems and letters. This kept the book interesting. In the diary Frances Burney talks about how people did not think she should write because it was wrong for women to write. She was persistent and liked to write so she continued. Her father found one of her diary entries and said if he ever found another one that he would burn her diary or something like that. Anyways there would be consequences if he found out she was writing. One of the women thought she shouldn't write and told Burney this but she convinced the women that she should write because she is so good at it. Burney is also very detailed in her journal entries. It seemed that she did not want to leave anything out. Even though she wanted to keep her journals secret and private I found it fascinating reading the life of someone who lived so long ago.

Alexander Pope's poem The Dunciad is very interesting because it is a competion of wits. In his poem Pope is satarizing both political and cultural ways of the time. Like Swift, Pope is satarizing the Whig government and the Hanoverian regim. In the poem it says, "Still Dunce the second rules like Dunce the first,". In this quote Pope is making fun of George the second. Most people of the time did not like George the first and continued to hate his son. Most people hated them because they were not from England and they barley spoke the language. People felt that they did not belong in England and they wanted the Tudor line to be brought back. Swift also makes the same attacks on George the first in Gulliver's Travels. Swift hated the Whig government and all it standed for. In Pope's poem he call George the King of the Dunces. Obviously calling him dull.
Pope also satirizes the culture of the time. He believes that anyone who writes for money is wrong and that they do not believe in what they are doing. He thought it was wrong to write for money because the art form got lost in the business aspects. Once people started writing for money the art form would be lost. It wasn't the people who wrote for money to keep themselves alive that Pope hated but it was the people that wrote "on cue for the highest bid". If you wrote for the sole purpose of money not for the fact that you loved to write.
Pope reminds me of Swift in alot of ways. His hatred of the Whigs and women. It's interesting that Pope started this competion to see who could write the dullest poem. It kind of reminds me of us and all our blogging. But none of us are actually trying to be dull!!