Fantomina Summary

A beautiful young lady attends a London theater, where she sees gentlemen flirting with a prostitute. Curious to learn how gentlemen treat prostitutes, she dresses as a prostitute the next night to attend the theater. Men remark on this “prostitute’s” resemblance to the lady, but none guess her identity. Then Beauplaisir, a gentleman whom the lady has previously admired in polite society, approaches her. They flirt throughout the play.

The lady avoids leaving with Beauplaisir by claiming to have an appointment with another man, but she agrees to meet Beauplaisir the next night. To meet him in her own territory, she rents rooms near the theater. After the play, Beauplaisir insists on accompanying her home. There, he demands sex. When the lady tells him that she is not a prostitute but a disguised gentlewoman—she claims her name is “Fantomina”—Beauplaisir rapes her regardless. Afterward, he offers her money. She scornfully refuses it, telling him that he can only make up for assaulting her virtue by loving her forever.

The lady cleverly conducts an affair with Beauplaisir without anyone guessing that she and Fantomina are the same person. When Beauplaisir tires of Fantomina and insists on going to the resort town of Bath without her, the lady decides to trick him. She dyes her hair, dresses as a working-class girl, “Celia,” and gets a job as a maid where Beauplaisir is staying in Bath. Taken with Celia, Beauplaisir begins an affair with her. When he grows tired of Celia, the lady dresses as a grieving widow and waylays his carriage on the way back from Bath, claiming desperately to need a ride. During the ride, Beauplaisir becomes curious about whether he can arouse the grieving widow’s passion—and, when they stop at an inn between Bath and London, initiates sex with her.

After Beauplaisir and the lady-as-widow part in London, she writes him two letters, one from the widow and another, in different handwriting, from Fantomina. Beauplaisir responds passionately to the widow and coolly to Fantomina. The lady marvels at how much men prize novelty: Beauplaisir can only like the widow better because he met her more recently—after all, the widow and Fantomina are the same lady.

The lady writes Beauplaisir another letter, claiming to be a high-born lady who has fallen madly in love with him and wants to conduct an affair without revealing her true name or face. Styling herself “Incognita,” she rents a splendid house and receives Beauplaisir while wearing a fancy mask. She and Beauplaisir have sex. After Beauplaisir tries and fails to trick her into revealing her face, he tells her he won’t come back until she trusts him enough to share her identity. The lady doesn’t care—she assumes he’ll cave first, and if not, she can simply hatch another plot to start another affair with him.

Yet the lady discovers that she is pregnant—and shortly after, the lady’s strict mother unexpectedly arrives in London, preventing the lady from hatching more plots. The lady hides her pregnancy until she goes into labor, at which point her horrified mother refuses to get her a midwife unless she reveals the name of her baby’s father. Eventually, the lady names Beauplaisir. When the mother summons Beauplaisir, he denies having improper relations with the lady—at which point the lady, who has just birthed a baby girl, confesses all her plots. Beauplaisir goes away shocked to have been so tricked, and the lady’s scandalized mother sends her to a nunnery in France.