Female literacy is a central motif in the play, as demonstrated by the frequent letter-writing and circulation of messages that occurs between various characters. The letters exchanged in the play between women and the men they love (or at the very least desire to seduce) reveal Sheridan’s perspective on courtship practices at the time. Lydia’s reading of novels is a particularly significant instance of female literacy in the play. In Act 1, Scene 2, the voracity of Lydia’s novel appetites are revealed in a conversation with her maid Lucy:
Lucy: Indeed, ma’am, I traversed half the town in search of it: I don’t believe there’s a circulating library in Bath I ha’n’t been at.
Lydia: And could not you get The Reward of Constancy?
Lucy: No, indeed, ma’am.
Lydia: Nor The Fatal Connection?
Lucy: No, indeed, ma’am.
Lydia: Nor The Mistakes of the Heart?
Lucy: Ma’am, as ill-luck would have it, Mr Bull said Miss Sukey Saunter had just fetched it away.
Lydia: Heigh-ho! – did you inquire for The Delicate Distress?
Lucy: Or The Memoirs of Lady Woodford? Yes indeed, ma’am.
Lydia’s long list of novels signifies her knowledge of a vast amount of contemporary literature—the fact that she is unsuccessful in acquiring any of them reveals just how popular this new form of writing is for women besides herself. Lydia’s romantic notions of love, built by her reading of literature, is one of her central character traits. Much of the play’s plot revolves around the resulting fantastical hopes that Lydia develops regarding her future spouse, as her desire to marry a poor man inspires Absolute to take up his disguise as Ensign Beverley in the first place.
It is important to note that Lydia does not exist with her head totally in the clouds; she is aware that her reading habits are undesirable to the older generation, as demonstrated by her rush to hide her novels from Mrs. Malaprop’s sight:
Lydia: Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books – quick, quick – fling Peregrine Pickle under the toilet[…] – so, so, now lay Mrs Chapone in sight, and leave Fordyce’s Sermons open on the table.
Lucy: O burn it, ma’am, the hairdresser has torn away as far as ‘Proper Pride’.
Lydia: Never mind – open at ‘Sobriety’ – fling me Lord Chesterfield’s Letters. Now for ’em.
The fact that Lydia hides her novels—covering her choice in literary pursuits with more moralistic texts—demonstrates a crucial divide between generational opinions on the role of women and the role of writing and literature. Lydia’s reading habits and the high-demand of the novels she seeks to acquire are prime examples of how texts that may have been deemed more “acceptable” to Sheridan’s contemporary society were not necessarily what people actually spent their spare time reading. Although Sheridan treats Lydia’s fanciful, novel-induced romantic notions as comedic, he does not portray the spread of female literacy as a negative phenomenon in and of itself. Rather, he warns against the overindulgence of literature at the expense of more realistic educational pursuits. In other words, it is not Lydia’s literacy that is the problem, but how she chooses to use it.
