Fielding, Sarah | Betty Rizzo (essay date 1994)
Betty Rizzo (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: "Satires of Tyrants and Toadeaters: Fielding and Collier," in Companions Without Vows: Relationships Among Eighteenth-Century British Women, The University of Georgia Press, 1994, pp. 41–60.
[Below, Rizzo discusses the concept of the "toadeater" in eighteenth-century literature and Fielding's use of the motif to explore unhealthy relationships maintained by unequal distributions of power.]
The toadeater—certainly a common type of humble companion—is often, and sometimes unjustifiably, first thought of when the subject of humble companionship arises. The word toadeater as applied to a political lackey (or toady) was new when in 1742 Horace Walpole called Harry Vane "Pulteney's toadeater."1 Sarah Fielding, using it two years later in The Adventures of David Simple (1744) in its sense of a humble companion, defined it: "It is a Metaphor taken from a Mountebank's Boy eating...
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