This paper seeks to examine the fictional representations of masquerade in Eliza Haywood`s Fantomina and Daniel Defoe`s Roxana in an attempt to demonstrate how these texts reflect and inscribe the conflicting responses to the cultural institution of the masquerade in eighteenth-century England. While the anonymity of disguise allowed the very principles of normal sexual, social, and metaphysical hierarchies to be challenged, many viewed the license offered by masquerades with great concern and fear. By exploring how the theme of masquerade is linked to female representation and spectatorship in feminist film theories, this paper contends that Haywood presents the masquerade as positive and liberating for the female protagonist and ends with a vision of feminocracy. Defoe, on the other hand, problematizes the female masquerade and its association with female liberation and gender transgression. Paradoxically, his complicated portrayal of Roxana`s masquerade draws attention to the cultural economy of the patriarchal society where women are forced to assume the status object and symbol of masculine desire for security and autonomy. As such, Hayrwood and Defoe both dramatize how the theme of the female masquerade is inextricable from complex questions such as sexual desire, independence and freedom, and the female body bound to biological or familial ties in the patriarchal society.