The Inhumane Cardinal is a work of transition written in the early years of the narrative tradition in England. Following the mastery of renown precedents like Aphra Behn, Pix explores the possibilities the new genre offered her, standing on the liminal space between an old-fashioned mode ─ romance and its aristocratic conventions ─ and the new literary and social space opened by the novel, which leaves the elevated topics and audience of romance writing behind. She does so by creating a work of great narrative complexity, characterized by a multiplicity of subplots inserted in the narrative as embedded stories. The main plot deals with Cardinal Antonio Barbarino’s lustful plan to obtain young Melora’s sexual favours, aided by Donna Olympia, an influential woman in the court of Rome. The seduction episode, which encircles the narrative, is interspersed with a number of romantic stories that are devised to induce Melora into accepting the Cardinal’s proposal, whom she believed to be the destitute Duke of Ferrara. All the texts inserted are meant as examples for the too innocent Melora, who is taught by way of romantic love affairs and their happy results to act likewise. She realizes her folly too late, and her story works as a cautionary tale for prospective women readers. The value of Pix’s project in this work resides, then, in her peculiar use of the concepts of fiction and truth, as she relates them to different narrative levels, associating the former with the conventions of romance, and the latter ─ the sad events of Melora’s ‘true’ story ─ with those of the novel.
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