A Life in Opposition

Abstract

Written over twenty years after the deaths of Sophia Baddeley and Mary Robinson, The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, Written by Herself (1825) has only recently come to scholarly attention, despite Harriette Wilson’s status as a celebrated Regency courtesan and her innovative approach to life writing. Wilson’s interactions with the literary culture of the Regency have been the focus of critical studies by Sharon Setzer and Lisa O’Connell.¹ Building on these much-needed re-assessments of Wilson, I consider the Memoirs’ depiction of female relationships and its place within traditions of the scandalous memoir, the fashionable silver-fork novel, and aristocratic female authorship. In contrast to the narratives of social exile associated with the ‘fallen’ woman, Wilson presents the collective history of a coterie of demireps and, like Robinson, engages in cross-class identifications with female aristocrats. Wilson exploits the sociability of the memoir form in order to depict female networks, conversation, and correspondence, yet it is never a shared life story comparable to the Memoirs of Elizabeth Steele and Sophia Baddeley. Rather, Wilson constructs her identity in opposition to a range of female figures, presents rivalries and betrayals, and above all ensures that she remains the heroine of her own narrative. These rivalries are at their most explosive in the Confessions of Julia Johnstone (1825), putatively written in answer to Wilson’s Memoirs by her friend and fellow demirep.