Fantomina

The Lady at the center of this story is mysterious not only to Beauplaisir, but to the reader as well. We know little about her, other than that she is young, wealthy, and beautiful. She has also been “bred for the most Part in the Country” (Paragraph 1), which makes her, despite her wealth and cultivation, naïve and unworldly. It is out of this unworldly curiosity, we are told, that she first pretends to be a prostitute—as well as the fact that she has “no Body in Town, at that Time, to whom she was obliged to be accountable for her Actions” (Paragraph 1). At the beginning of the story, she has no particular love object in mind; she simply wishes to be someone other than herself.

It is only once the Lady and Beauplaisir have their first sexual encounter that the Lady decides that she is in love with him and begins to adopt different disguises with the sole purpose of ensnaring him. At the same time, we are told that this encounter is an occasion of shame for her; the implication is that she was a virgin beforehand. As she is unable to hide either her distress or her virginity from Beauplaisir, she settles on telling him a version of the truth.