ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to concentrate solely on the female libertine by considering the figure in relation to cultural, philosophical, and literary contexts that contributed to her transformations from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth centuries in England. It suggests new ways of understanding the female libertine, particularly in the early novel, which prominently features heroines with characteristics of libertinism and sensibility, traditionally understood to be in opposition to each another. The libertine is more, however, than just a sexual revolutionary. Weber, Turner, and Chernaik, among others, have pointed out that libertinism relies also on philosophical underpinnings, and the movement involves the exercise of the mind as much as the body. Scholars have long noted the influence that Thomas Hobbess Leviathan exerts over libertines, but the chapter looks at another, earlier philosopher, Lucretius, whose Epicurean ideas shaped writers characterizations of the female libertine. Dale Underwood reminds us that the terms Epicure and libertine became synonymous during the late seventeenth century.