"Love in Excess" by Eliza Haywood

Perhaps due to the rants of my parents constantly alluding to a purer time before our heathen generation came along, I imagined the eighteenth century as an exponentially simpler and more chaste time in history. After reading "Love in Excess" by Eliza Haywood, my mental images of a holier world have been destroyed completely. However, the characters of this early novel seem to also be battling against the moral expectations placed on them by an older society.
Being one of the first writers to experiment with the literary form of "the novel," Haywood seems aware of her audience. Although not much is known of her life, much is known of the society she lived in. Haywood lived in an English society that put high esteem in their Protestant-Christian values. Included in this moral code, and a particular focus of Haywood, is the virtue and chastity of women. Throughout the novel, women constantly struggle against the expectation that they should not openly profess their love unless the man has already done so. Yet, some "coquetish" women and even some virtuous women break this rule throughout the story. Ciamara and Anaret go so far as masking their identity to the object of their affection, D'Elmont, in order to acquire his physical body only and little interest in acquiring his heart.
This bold representation of women in society, partciuarly in a new literary form that garnered a lot of attention from the literate realms of society, possibly created a hazardous environment for the author. In thinking about this possible issue that Haywood faced, I created a hypothesis that I have little proof to back up (but what the hey, this is a blog and lends itself to some speculation!). I think that it is no accident the characters and setting of this novel are France and Italy (two Catholic countries that were seen as sinful and licentious). Therefore, while Haywood explores the real passions of women, seen as wrong but in truth were equal to the more acceptable passions of men, she places it in the context of a societies seen as despicable in their own right. In fact, she plays on these societal prejudices when her characters are in Italy. A threat comes to the life of Frankville because of his love for Camilla, and he is warned of the "Italian art of poysoning by the smell" (231). The footnote explains that this fits with the English stereotype of Italian witchcraft. I think that the sexually ambitious young men and women throughout this story, meant by Haywood to show a certain truth about love (a quality of novels present even early on), is subverted by the author's attempts to remain respected in her own soceity and tell a fantastical story about the sexual libertines in France that break all English moral codes. Again, this is speculation on my part and I wonder if any of you agree with this as a possibility?
On a side note, I'd like to remark on the tendency for hyperbole in the rhetoric of both men and women in coversation and letter-writing in this story. I wondered if this is actually how people communicated or if it was an intentional device used by the author to emphasize that love was experienced and though of in excess by the characters in the story. Any thoughts?