ABSTRACT
The libertinism that critics like Constance Clark, Anne Kelley, and Heather King have overlooked in Love at a Loss is foreshadowed in Olinda's Adventures. Though the critics argues that Trotter was a moral writer throughout her career, Trotter's heroines, Olinda, Lesbia, Miranda, and Lucilia, feel tension between their libertine longings and their sense of morality. Trotter's texts are caught between two paradigms, or two social worlds, and the heroines in them are important for understanding how the female libertine is depicted during the 1690s as a humane figure as much in moral distress as she is in psychological and emotional turmoil. Relatively little is known about Trotter's early life, but the details are relevant because they significantly influenced her Humane Libertine. Like Delariviere Manley, Trotter creates an autobiographical sketch of herself in Olinda, who appears to struggle with the same kinds of issues that Trotter likely did as a young woman, when she began her writing career.
