Maria Fluart in Hermsprong: Wit, Power and a Radical Heroine

Self-portrait in a Straw Hat (c.1782), Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Via Wikimedia Commons. A striking image of female self-possession and confidence; closer in spirit to Maria Fluart’s wit and independence than to the passive heroines typical of the period.

In the previous post, we saw how Hermsprong resists the cultural authority of London by shifting its intellectual life to the provinces. That same refusal of hierarchy operates at a more intimate level in the figure of Maria Fluart. To call her simply “a strong heroine” is to miss the point. Maria is not merely admirable; she is inconvenient.

In the fiction of the 1790s, women were expected to embody a familiar set of virtues: modesty, delicacy, compliance. Even when novels allowed them intelligence, that intelligence was usually contained within acceptable limits. It was to be exercised gracefully, not disruptively. Maria Fluart refuses those limits. As we discuss in the Introduction to this edition, one of Bage’s most striking achievements lies in his creation of a heroine whose intelligence, independence and wit place her among the most remarkable female characters of the eighteenth-century novel. Maria does not simply resist coercion; she dismantles it and does so, crucially, through humour. That humour is not incidental. It is her method.

Maria’s conversations are contests, but they are not blunt confrontations. She advances through wit, deflection and precision. Her repartee functions like a form of moral fencing: quick, controlled and exact. Pomposity is exposed not by denunciation but by being made ridiculous; arrogance collapses under the lightest pressure. She wields her mind like a rapier, and the men around her rarely see the blow coming until it has landed. This matters, because it allows her to operate within, and yet subtly undermine, the constraints of polite society. Outright defiance would risk exclusion. Anger would be dismissed. But wit travels differently. It disarms even as it challenges. It draws the reader in, inviting complicity in the exposure of folly. What might otherwise be uncomfortable or confrontational becomes, instead, irresistible.

The famous episode in which she brandishes a pistol when confronted by unwelcome advances captures this balance perfectly. It is comic, but it is not trivial. The humour sharpens rather than softens the moment. Maria does not merely resist; she controls the terms of the encounter. What is striking is that Bage allows her to do so without punishment. In much eighteenth-century fiction, a woman who overstepped the accepted boundaries of behaviour risked narrative correction, embarrassment, exclusion or worse. Maria, by contrast, emerges from such moments confirmed in her independence. She is not a cautionary example. The novel takes her seriously.

This seriousness extends beyond her exchanges with male authority to her relationships with other women, most notably Caroline Campinet. Maria does not simply oppose male dominance; she actively works to dismantle the structures that sustain it. Her wit here takes on a different tone: less combative, more persuasive. She encourages, cajoles and supports, helping Caroline to recognise the constraints placed upon her and to imagine a way beyond them.

This is where Bage’s treatment of Maria becomes most revealing. Throughout the novel, women are shown to bear the heaviest burden of social contradiction. They are urged to be rational yet denied autonomy, praised for virtue yet denied choice, celebrated in theory while constrained in practice. Marriage, in particular, emerges as a site where power is naturalised under the guise of affection and duty. Bage does not treat these tensions abstractly. He stages them through character and interaction. Maria’s wit is not decorative; it is a means of navigating, and exposing, these contradictions in real time. In this sense, Maria is not simply an isolated figure. She forms part of a larger moral structure within the novel.

Hermsprong and Maria are not rivals for authority. They operate differently, but they are complementary. His seriousness gives weight to her wit; her agility gives life to his principles. Together, they form a kind of moral alliance, one that challenges both masculine authority and the containment of women within it. This partnership reaches its fullest expression in their shared effort to liberate Caroline Campinet from the oppressive control of her father. Here, Bage moves beyond individual character to something more ambitious. The novel suggests that genuine moral progress cannot be achieved through domination, whether paternal or revolutionary, but requires cooperation, reciprocity and mutual recognition.

This is where Hermsprong distinguishes itself from simpler forms of radicalism. Bage is acutely aware of how easily the language of liberty can be appropriated without altering underlying structures of power. The novel repeatedly suggests that freedom bestowed from above is no freedom at all. It cannot be inherited, imposed or theatrically declared. It must be enacted in conduct, tested in relationships and sustained through mutual respect. Maria Fluart embodies this insight. She does not wait to be granted authority; she exercises it. She does not accept the terms of her confinement; she rewrites them, often with a lightness of touch that makes the act seem effortless. That lightness is deceptive. Beneath it lies a precise understanding of how power operates, and how it can be undone.

For contemporary readers, this would have been striking. Many would have recognised the constraints Maria resists, even if they could not resist them so openly themselves. The novel offers not a manifesto, but a demonstration: a way of thinking and acting that exposes the limits of the world it inhabits. That is why Maria still feels modern. Not because she anticipates later heroines in any straightforward sense, but because she refuses to behave as her own moment requires. She reveals the assumptions around her by declining to accept them, and does so with a wit that makes resistance both effective and compelling.

In Hermsprong, that refusal is not marginal. It is central.

Yet Maria Fluart’s wit and independence do not emerge in isolation. They are part of a larger argument running throughout Hermsprong about women’s education, autonomy and the structures designed to limit both; questions that would become some of the defining social debates of the age.

Read the final article: “Women, Education and Equality in Hermsprong.”

Volume I of Hermsprong is published on 12 May.

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