In Catherine Craft’s essay, she attempts to examine “the possible encoding of female discourse” to “locate the effects of gender on writing” (822). Craft argues that Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina portrays the “once fallen, forever fallen” story (828) as Fantomina eventually succumbs to her masquerade and becomes the very thing she sets out impersonating. Fantomina takes on one disguise after another to secure Beauplaisir’s transient and waning affections. The subtle irony therein lies in the fact that although her impersonations rise in status, yet she becomes more readily available. Craft points out that this plays out the conventional “male sexual fantasy” (829) that also ultimately culminates into Fantomina’s fall from grace, as she becomes “publicly exposed and sent of to a convent” (829). Yet, what is unconventional is the degree of freedom Fantomina possesses with respect to the women of her time. Craft argues that her masquerades are a resistance to the “dominant social and moral codes” (830), a portrayal of the empowerment of women. Fantomina is not repulsed by her actions, but rather prides herself upon them as a conscious act of her choice. Yet, through the guise of this seemingly empowered female endowed with a great amount of freedom, Craft also contends that the novel carries deeper underpinnings of the powerlessness of women, as portrayed through the characters of Fantomina’s disguises who are victimized by the male sex. Craft asserts that matrimony should not be the desired ending to the novel as it undermines the woman’s autonomy. She reads the sending off of Fantomina to the convent not as a punishment for her misdeeds, but rather a “continuation of [the] female society”, to “a place where Fantomina’s pleasures and freedom will suffer no abatement” (832). She concludes: “ Writing with feminine ‘artfulness and deceitfulness’, [] women novelists manage to embody, within conservative tales, subversive female stories, tale