‘I love a masquerade […] because a female can never enjoy the same liberty any where else’; Exploring the Relationship between Gender and Disguise in Eighteenth-century fiction
Public masquerades were a popular, and controversial, form of urban entertainment in England during most of the eighteenth century. Some of the controversy, and subsequent criticism, that surrounded the culture of the masquerades relate to the belief that they would encourage female sexual freedom, and possibly even female emancipation.[1]
