Fantomina displays masculine characteristics of intelligence and reason

Haywood embodies Fantomina with the masculine characteristics of intelligence and reason throughout her entire seductive scheme. This is first seen at the beginning of Haywood’s narrative when Fantomina’s curiosity is awakened and she desires to know how prostitutes are approached and treated. Fantomina does not just ignore the questions she has raised; she goes after the answer and she comes up with a plan to satisfy her curiosity.

Fantomina’s plan of disguising herself shows her intelligence by her recognition that there could be possible consequences if her true identity was to be discovered. The personas of Fantomina, Celia, Widow Bloomer, and Incognita are a creative demonstration of the young woman’s cleverness. For each character, she had to create a different look and personality; she performed their respective roles so well that Beauplaisir, who was intimately acquainted with her person, was unable to recognize that he was the lover of four personas of one woman: “…she was so admirably skill’d in the Art of feigning, that she had the Power of putting on almost what Face she pleas’d, and knew so exactly how to form her Behaviour to the Character she represented, that all the Comedians at both Playhouses are infinitely short of her performances…” (Haywood 722).

Fantomina also has the reason and foresight to procure separate lodgings for each character. The purpose of having this lodging was to keep her true identity a secret so that her reputation remained in tact and to keep Beauplaisir from guessing her true identity.

Possibly the most important proof of Fantomina’s intelligence was her recognition that Beauplaisir’s passion for her different personas could grow cold: “And if he should be false, grow satiated, like other Men, I shall but, at the worst, have the private Vexation of Knowing I have lost him; the Intreague being a Secret, my Disgrace will be so too: I shall hear no Whispers as I pass, -She is Forsaken…” (Haywood 718). This of course becomes the case, multiple times.