SOURCE: Introduction to The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, by Sarah Fielding, edited by Christopher D. Johnson, Bucknell University Press, 1994, pp. 15–31.

When Sarah Fielding published The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia in 1757, she was forty-seven years old and living in Bath under the patronage of Ralph Allen.¹ Known to many of the leading intellectuals of her day, she maintained important connections with Samuel Richardson and James Harris, each of whom contributed to her works.² From her correspondence, we know that her health was uncertain.³ Few other biographical facts of this period of her life have survived. The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia was Fielding's seventh complete work. She established her literary reputation in 1744 with the publication of The Adventures of David Simple, a two-volume episodic narrative which, in depicting the hero's search for a "faithful Friend," anticipated the sentimental fiction of the later eighteenth century.⁴ Fielding wrote two sequels to her first novel: the loosely organized epistolary collection Familiar Letters between the principal Characters in David Simple (1747), and the more somber David Simple, Volume the Last (1753), which anticipated the thematic concerns of Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (1759).⁵ In 1749 Fielding completed both The Governess; or, Little Female Academy, the first work of fiction to address centrally the issue of female education, and Remarks on Clarissa, a critical dialogue in the fashion of John Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668). The Cry, written in collaboration with Jane Collier and published in 1754, was Fielding's most ambitious work.⁶ Hoping to explore the "Labyrinths of the Mind," Fielding and Collier abandoned traditional narrative forms and presented an unusual psychological drama in which the protagonists reveal their private thoughts through an extended dialogue with an assembly of allegorical characters representing truth and error.

Although innovative, none of these works anticipated the accomplishment of the Lives, in which Fielding moved away from fiction and toward a uniquely imaginative form of biography. Set in the first century B.C., the Lives presents the stories of two famous women, each of whom played an instrumental role at the chaotic time when civil war threatened the Roman republic immediately before the golden age of Augustus Caesar. Fielding's work, however, only marginally explores historical events. Like other eighteenth-century biographers, she focuses on her characters' inner lives.⁷ She shows the turmoil of Cleopatra, the ruthless Egyptian queen who seduced and ruined the triumvir Mark Antony, and the ultimate felicity of Octavia, the patient and politic sister of Octavian Caesar who suffered under Antony's neglect and abuse. Fielding, however, fictionalizes her work by allowing her characters to speak from beyond the grave, creating narratives that defy easy characterization. Governed by historical events, the Lives resists the name fiction; told by ghosts, it mocks the name history. Yet through its blending of genres, Fielding's work achieves a self-justifying power. The use of first-person narration gives the Lives an intimacy hidden by a biographer's voice, while the recognition that actual people experienced the recorded events augments the force of Fielding's stories.

In spite of its achievement, however, the Lives has remained largely unnoticed by literary historians. Those who have acknowledged it have been generally dismissive. Austin Dobson, for example, finds the work "a testimony to the long-suffering character of the eighteenth-century reader."⁸ In his ten-volume History of the English Novel, Ernest Baker treats the Lives with curt hostility: "it is a performance in the manner of her brother's admirable Journey from This World to the Next, overweighted by habitual didacticism."⁹ Noting that "the re duction of all poetry and imagination to theory and intellect … is characteristic of the age," even R. Brimley Johnson, who produced an inadequate edition of the Lives in 1928, remains apologetic.¹⁰ In their condemna tion, these critics ignore the most interesting aspects of Fielding's work. Only recently, as scholars have sought to restore the reputation Fielding earned during the eighteenth century, has the importance of the Lives begun to be recognized. Perhaps the most imaginative work of classical scholarship produced during the Augustan age, it raises a number of questions about the ambiguous relationships in the eighteenth century between the novel, biography, and historiography. The Lives also explores Fielding's understanding of psychology, her attitudes toward marriage, her complex ideas about education, and her thoughts concerning the relationship between the individual and the state. Furthermore, because written by a woman about women, the Lives has a place in the recently initiated dialogue of feminist criticism. As literary historians continue to investigate unusual and neglected works, the Lives will become increasingly significant. Although something of an anomaly, it teaches us not only about Sarah Fielding, but also about the complexity and variety of eighteenth-century literature….

Composition, Printing, Reception

… Fielding's contemporaries greeted the Lives with a mixture of enthusiastic praise and mild criticism. The only known review of the work, which appeared in the Monthly Review for 7 July 1757, begins with high praise for Fielding and for her work's didactic purpose:

It were superfluous to compliment the Author of David Simple upon her merits as a Writer…. To excite an abhorrence of vice by exposing its deformity and wretchedness, tho' attended with the dazzling circumstances of pomp and power; and to inspire a reverence for even afflicted virtue, by exhibiting its present amiableness, and lasting felicity; is the manifest design of this publication: nor does History furnish any two characters stronger contrasted, or more adequate to this, certainly, commendable purpose, than those here chosen.

The review continues with five pages of quotations from the Lives, a substantial amount of type, particularly for a single-volume work. Perhaps because of Fielding's narrative style and her lack of scholarly apparatus, eighteenth-century readers reacted to the Lives as they would to a work of didactic fiction, not to a piece of historical writing. Elizabeth Robinson Montagu, in a comment written before she had even read the work, predicted that Fielding would sacrifice historical accuracy to a didactic aim:

As she [Fielding] is a virtuous maiden she will make Octavia the more agreeable of the two which will give history the lye & make Anthony appear the greater fool than ever he appeared.²²

Catherine Talbot, one of the subscribers, went so far as to criticize the Lives for not being didactic enough. Talbot questioned how Fielding could have made "Octavia self-sufficient under sufferings and trials, and not so much as hint the smallest degree of such uninstructed piety." She also feared that Fielding's Octavia would convince people that "they may live very happy, and be very remarkably good without any religion." Notwithstanding her objections, however, Talbot, who claimed not to "love any dialogues of the dead," conceded that the "story is enchantingly told, and in some parts made even me cry very heartily."²³

The public reaction to the Lives must have been encouraging, for in July 1758 Richardson printed a "Corrected" second edition, which, like the first, was published for Fielding and sold by Millar, Dodsley, and Leake.²⁴ The second edition, however, was not sold by subscription. Collated in duodecimo, printed with smaller type on less expensive paper, and priced at three shillings bound, it was intended to reach a larger, less affluent audience than the first edition….

Fielding's Sources

The stories of Cleopatra and Octavia were available to Fielding in three forms: classical histories and biographies, modern histories, and works of imaginative literature. Although Fielding made use of all three types of sources, she relied most heavily upon classical works, particularly Plutarch's biography of Mark Antony, from which she obtained the basic characterizations, the chronology, and many of the individual episodes of her narratives. In spite of her considerable knowledge of Latin and Greek, Fielding used Charles Fraser's translation of Mark Antony, which was available throughout the eighteenth century in the many editions of Plutarch's Lives, Translated from the Greek by Several Hands. Fielding borrowed extensively from Fraser's work, often duplicating entire paragraphs with only slight modifications. Consider, for example, the scene in which Cleopatra first meets Antony. Fraser wrote:

At length she embarked upon a small Galley in the River Cydnus; the Head of the Barge did shine with inlaid Gold, the Sails were of Purple Silk, the Oars of Silver, which beat time to the Flutes and Hoboys; she her self lay all along under a Canopy of Cloth of Gold curiously embroider'd, dress'd as Venus is ordinarily represented, and beautiful young Boys like Cupids stood on each side to fan her, her Maids were dress'd like Sea-Nymphs and Graces, some steering the Rudder, some working at the Ropes;²⁹

Fielding followed Fraser's work very closely:

I embarked on the River Cydnus in a small Galley; the Head of which shined with inlaid Gold. The Sails were of Purple Silk: The Oars were Silver, which beat Time to the Flutes and Hautboys. I lay under a Canopy of Cloth of Gold, curiously embroidered; and I was dressed as the Goddess Venus is usually represented. Beautiful young Boys, like Cupids, stood on each Side to fan me. My Maids were attired like Sea-nymphs and Graces; some steering the Rudder; some working at the Ropes.³⁰

These and numerous other such passages exemplify Fielding's debt to Fraser. Not only did she borrow factual information from Plutarch; she also made wholesale use of Fraser's diction and phrasing.

Plutarch, however, was not Fielding's only classical source. She also drew upon the historical writings of Dio Cassius, Suetonius, Appian, Josephus, Athenaeus, Pliny, Florus, and Seneca the Elder. Most of these works, with the exceptions of those of Dio Cassius, Athenaeus, and Seneca the Elder, were available in English; but it is possible that Fielding relied upon the original Greek and Latin texts, for she did not borrow phrases directly from any other translation as she did from Fraser. Because these sources often contradict one another, Fielding would have realized that they were not entirely reliable.³¹ When faced with conflicting reports, Fielding sometimes conflated the accounts or chose the one best suited to her needs.³²

In addition to classical sources, Fielding gathered details from modern histories, such as François Catrou and Pierre Julien Rouille's Historie romaine, depuis la foundation de Rome (1725–37), to which the character Miss Gibson alludes in Remarks on "Clarissa"; Jean Baptiste Crevier and Charles Rollin's Roman History to the Battle of Actium (1739–50); Laurence Echard's Roman History from the Building of the City, to the Present Settlement of the Empire, 5th ed. (1702); and John Lockman's New Roman History, by Question and Answer (1749).³³ Although Fielding did not draw upon purely fictional works, such as Gauthier de Costes de la Calprenède's twelve-volume romance Cléopâtre (1647–56), which Henry Fielding mentions in the author's preface to Joseph Andrews, she adapted incidents from several dramas, including Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Dryden's All for Love, Thomas May's Tragedie of Cleopatra, Queen of Ægypt, Colley Cibber's Cæsar in Ægypt, and John Fletcher's False One.³⁴ With her excellent knowledge of the original sources, Fielding would have certainly known that these works contained embellishments, yet she used them in a work presented as biography.

Moreover, in her Introduction, Fielding states that she will present her biographies with "some Mixture of Romance."³⁵ Fielding not only has her characters speak from "the Shades below"; she also interpolates fictional correspondence and imaginary conversations into her narratives. More significantly, she fictionalizes her characters in order to develop her themes. Hoping to offer a perfect contrast to Octavia, Fielding darkens Cleopatra's character. For example, when confronting Anthony's suicide, Fielding's Cleopatra claims to have "A little Compassion for Anthony, and a good deal for myself."³⁶ Fielding's source, however, records that Cleopatra "almost forgot her own ills in her pity for his."³⁷ Although subtle, this distinction illustrates Fielding's willingness to modify her sources to fit the purposes of her own more negative characterization. Similarly, Plutarch records only that Cleopatra gave one of Antony's soldiers a "golden breastplate and helmet" and that the soldier later deserted to Caesar.³⁸ Fielding changes the story, stating that Cleopatra accompanied the gifts "with so winning a Grace, as pleased the Soldier much beyond the Present he received," and that Cleopatra arranged for the soldier to deliver Anthony's battle plans to Caesar.³⁹

These examples raise an important question of interpretation: Do we read the Lives as fact or fiction? Eighteenth-century readers, as the statements by Montagu and Talbot indicate, accepted the work as predominantly fictional. Modern critics, approaching the work without a complete understanding of Fielding's sources, have done the same. Deborah Downs-Miers, for example, finds incongruity in Fielding's claim to write "fictional autobiography." Calling attention to Fielding's Introduction, Downs-Miers asserts that Fielding "fictionalizes her own nonfiction statements, thus adroitly drawing the readers even further into the suspension of disbelief that makes fiction work as fiction."⁴⁰ In developing this argument, Downs-Miers places Fielding's work in a tradition that Michael McKeon has since classified as "extreme skepticism," which "discredits true history as a species of naive empiricism or 'new romance,'" and which sometimes moves narrative into the "autonomous realm of the aesthetic."⁴¹ When we recognize the extent of Fielding's research, however, such a reading appears insufficient. Certainly, Fielding did not undertake the arduous task of research only to show the futility of such a project.

For Fielding, biography was concerned less with truthfulness than with instruction. Although most incidents in the Lives can be traced to a source, we should not imagine that Fielding intended to construct history as a twentieth-century audience would understand the term. Nor should we assume that she intended to satirize the "naive empiricism" of other writers. Rather, as she states in her Introduction, Fielding writes about historical people because doing so allows her to instruct her readers more effectively: "Persons who have really made their Appearance on the Stage of the World" are "better suited to inform, and give us juster Notions of ourselves." Fielding presents a story with "a true Foundation," not a true story.⁴² Subordinating historical accuracy, Fielding often manipulates her sources to suit her needs, creating narratives that have a tenuous relationship with fact. Fielding follows established accounts only to the degree that they further her purposes. She feels free not only to modify historical evidence but to create incidents. For instance, Fielding completely fictionalizes Octavia's first husband, Marcellus, about whom the classical sources say little. Samuel Brandon, the only writer to characterize Marcellus, apparently mistakes Octavia's husband for his grandfather and presents Marcellus as a bellicose warrior.⁴³ Using Marcellus to provide a contrast with Anthony, however, Fielding presents him as the perfect complement to Octavia, the man whose "Reason constantly exerted itself" and who "kept his Passions under such regular and due Obedience."⁴⁴ Having no historical basis, Marcellus plays an entirely thematic and aesthetic role in the Lives, demonstrating that Fielding's primary purpose is not historical.

We can resolve the disparity between Fielding's thorough research and her overt embellishments by remembering that she wrote not only before the distinctions between fiction and history were clearly established, but also at a time when writers often subordinated historical accuracy to purpose.⁴⁵ In discussing the development of English fiction, J. Paul Hunter asserts that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, history functioned more as a "useful myth than an actual basis for comparative analysis or even an object of genuine curiousity" and that historical writers had a "tendency to organize [historical] narrative along thematic or ideological lines."⁴⁶ As with historians, eighteenth-century biographers frequently structured their works around specific themes, as Samuel Johnson did when he presented the Life of Savage in order to demonstrate that "the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed little to the promotion of happiness."⁴⁷ If we consider that Fielding wrote in an age when Roger North called for biographers to adorn their works with the devices of fiction, when William Mason suppressed and extensively modified Thomas Gray's correspondence, and when Boswell fictionalized Johnson's conversations, we see that, with the exception of Fielding's narrative form, the distinctions between the Lives and other eighteenth-century biographies are matters of degree, not kind.⁴⁸ Certainly, Fielding never intended to write scrupulously accurate biographies of Cleopatra and Octavia, but in modifying her sources to fit her needs, she followed the biographical and historical practices of her age.

Hoping to allow her readers to "form juster Notions" of themselves, Fielding uses historical material as did her contemporary David Hume, who asserts that history should depict "the constant and universal principles of human nature … from which we may form our observations and become acquainted with the regular springs of human action and behaviour."⁴⁹ To the degree that they augment the reader's understanding of such principles, Fielding's rhetorical structure of posthumous autobiography and her embellishments further her application of historical material. In mixing fact and fiction, then, Fielding achieves what Lincoln Faller, in his discussion of criminal biography, classifies as a "profitable confusion of realms."⁵⁰ By employing historical figures, Fielding distinguishes her work from mere "romance"; by manipulating her sources to suit her needs, Fielding creates uniquely effective biography.

Form and Themes

Without question, the work that bears the greatest formal resemblance to the Lives is the posthumous autobiography of Anne Boleyn written by Sarah Fielding. This observation, however, does little to place the Lives within a narrative tradition, for Sarah Fielding's contribution to A Journey from This World to the Next differs significantly from that of her brother. Henry's work follows the satirical tradition of Lucian in recounting the narrator's journey into the underworld and in providing the episodic and fictionalized adventures of Julian the Apostate, who functions more as a plot device than as a fully developed character.⁵¹ Sarah Fielding's more clearly focused narrative, however, evokes sentiment as it explores the psychological trauma of a historic person looking back on a life badly spent. By allowing Sarah to contribute to A Journey, Henry provided her with the opportunity to develop the narrative style she later used in the Lives; he did not, however, give his sister a model to emulate.

Neither can we find prototypes of the Lives in eighteenth-century novels, for the novel's developing emphasis on familiar characters and experiences differed sharply with Fielding's technique of having her characters speak from the underworld.⁵² Looking toward nontypical eighteenth-century fiction, April London identifies a connection between Fielding's work and Elizabeth Rowe's Friendship in Death (1728),⁵³ but the comparison remains superficial and overlooks crucial differences between the two works. Although the characters in Rowe's didactic narrative address the audience from beyond the grave, they do so by means of letters, not spoken words. In this way, Friendship in Death belongs more to the tradition of the epistolary novel than it does to that of the Lives. More importantly, Rowe does not share Fielding's interest in biography. The characters in Friendship in Death are fictional creations, not historical figures.

As with the novel, the autobiographies and fictional autobiograpies of the eighteenth century bear little resemblance to the Lives. These genres, in addition to assuming live narrators, were dominated by apologia and spiritual autobiographies, the former often defending an individual's character from libelous rumor, the latter depicting a Christian pattern of repentance and conversion. In the Lives, neither Cleopatra nor Octavia hopes to modify her earthly reputation, and neither experiences a spiritual conversion. Guided by their predominant passions to the end, both Cleopatra and Octavia die as they lived.

By alluding to several classical authors in her Introduction, Fielding offers some insight into the narrative traditions upon which she draws. But even here the distinctions overshadow the similarities. Certainly the precedents of Homer, Virgil, Aristophanes, and Lucan legitimize Fielding's journey to "the Shades below," but their frequent employment of dialogue and their use of voices from the underworld to further historic, patriotic, and satiric ends differ sharply from the psychological and didactic interests of Fielding's monologues. By presenting a pair of biographies, Fielding invites comparison with Plutarch. The similarities, however, remain cursory. Although both Fielding and Plutarch depict their characters through a series of anecdotes, Plutarch writes in the third person and includes detailed comparisons of his subjects. More importantly, whereas Plutarch's biographies explore the subtleties of the individual, Fielding paints her characters with broad strokes. If Plutarch inspired Fielding to present two portraits, then Fielding modified his model to fit her purposes.

Perhaps the closest formal analogues to Fielding's work can be found, as Ann Marilyn Parrish suggests, in the Mirrour for Magistrates tradition, which included first-person posthumous narratives of historical figures.⁵⁴ Although this tradition, particularly as defined by Thomas Sackville's Mirrour for Magistrates (1563), contained mostly narratives by famous men who committed political crimes, it also included the narratives of women who fell victim to sins of passion. For example, in Samuel Daniel's Complaint of Rosamund (ca. 1592), Henry II's mistress tells the story of her seduction and death in order to remind her reader "How most it hurts that most delights the sense."⁵⁵ Daniel's use of a historical figure's first-person narration to further a didactic purpose parallels Fielding's use of the lives of Cleopatra and Octavia. And for this reason, we must look to Renaissance poets like Sackville and Daniel for the traditions that Fielding adapted in writing the Lives.

In the Cleopatra narrative, Fielding follows the Mirrour for Magistrates tradition by showing her reader the terrible consequences of a life governed by pride and ambition. Cleopatra reveals that she has caused not only the unbroken chain of death and misery that colors the background of the Lives, but also her own discontent and eventual demise. Cleopatra tells how her ambition often blinded her and frustrated her intentions. Moreover, she asserts that pride made her unable to find genuine happiness because even the modest success of others gave her great displeasure; she became "a Loser by whatever Good others enjoyed."⁵⁶ Her pride also prevented her from experiencing love, even that of her own children. Only after death does Cleopatra recognize that a mind tortured by ambition can never achieve "Tranquility and Happiness." Her tragedy rests in the fact that she sees the destructiveness of her ambition only after committing suicide in order to placate her pride. Like the characters in the Mirrour for Magistrates tradition, Cleopatra speaks to her readers from beyond the grave in order to offer a staunch warning through a graphic picture of a life wrongly lived.

By providing a positive exemplary history, the Octavia narrative continues Fielding's didactic intention. If Cleopatra functions as a warning of what one might degenerate into, Octavia represents the ideal one should strive to become. The complete opposite of Cleopatra, Octavia is governed by love, and, like Jenny Peace, the heroine of The Governess, she has structured her life around selfless devotion to others. Whereas Cleopatra could look upon suffering with "Calmness and Composure," Octavia became deeply affected by the misfortunes of others and strove constantly to mitigate evil. Octavia tried to end the ruthless bloodshed of the Proscription, and she tried to prevent civil war. She twice expressed a willingness to enter an unwanted marriage for the good of the state, and when first married to Anthony, she put aside her personal objections and made "his Interests [her] chief Concern."⁵⁷

Octavia's goodness also gave her earthly contentment unknown to Cleopatra. While Cleopatra's indulgence of passion led to self-absorption and self-destruction, Octavia's selflessness fostered emotional strength and stability. After the death of Marcellus, for example, Octavia escaped from the sorrow of mourning and found purpose first in the care of her children and then in her marriage to Anthony. She later acknowledges that her practice of subduing passion "restrained within some Bounds" her sorrow at the death of her son.⁵⁸ In perfect contrast to Cleopatra's violent suicide, Octavia, like Camilla in Volume the Lust, met death with the same serenity with which she lived.⁵⁹ Although exemplary characters like Octavia do not often appear in the Mirrour for Magistrates tradition, Fielding's two biographies continue the didactic impulse of poets like Sackville and Daniel by presenting the negative repercussions of sin and the positive benefits of virtue.

Fielding, however, differs from her predecessors in offering a more complex psychological investigation of her subjects. Sackville's and Daniel's interests lie predominantly in the effects of human action; Fielding also explores the causes. Early in her monologue, Cleopatra states that she will "reveal those secret Motives of [her] Action, which were once so little known," for having died, she understands her earthly existence more fully. It is, Cleopatra asserts, impossible "to be acquainted with all the Secrets of our Souls, whilst imprisoned in the Body, and blinded by Passion."⁶⁰ The formal characteristics of the posthumous autobiography, then, do more than allow Fielding to convey a didactic message similar to that of the Mirrour for Magistrates poets; they also allow her to probe the human psyche more fully than do traditional first-person narrative forms.

Fielding bases her psychological investigations of Cleopatra and Octavia on the theory of a predominant passion: pride controls Cleopatra; love governs Octavia.⁶¹ The idea that a single passion defines an individual developed out of the "physiology and psychology of the four humours," and received frequent expression not only in Henry Fielding's and Sarah Fielding's works,⁶² but throughout eighteenth-century literature, notably in Pope's Essay on Man:

Hence diff'rent Passions more or less inflame,
As strong or weak, the organs of the frame;
And hence one master Passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.⁶³

The theory of a predominant passion, however, tended to limit free will and to excuse inappropriate behavior. Consequently, by midcentury, writers were voicing dissatisfaction with the idea. In Amelia, for example, Henry Fielding ridicules those who quit "the Directions of Prudence" and follow "the blind Guidance of a predominant passion."⁶⁴ In the Rambler, Samuel Johnson asserts the limitations of such a passion: "Nature will indeed always operate, human desires will be always ranging; but these motions, though very powerful, are not resistless; nature may be regulated, and desires governed."⁶⁵ Like Johnson, Sarah Fielding suggests that although a single passion may predispose a personality, it does not maintain sovereignty over it. Nurturing and education also shape the individual. Cleopatra notes that the way she was treated as the daughter of a king contributed to her natural pride. She adds that her disposition to gratify her desires was "improved by Education."⁶⁶ Similarly, Octavia states, "From my Infancy … I was taught to contract my Desires, to command my Passions, and to share my Pleasures with others."⁶⁷ These statements mark a significant departure from the predominant passion theory, which can be roughly aligned with the introduction in the eighteenth century of Lockean psychology.⁶⁸ In Sarah Fielding's work, their significance lies in the power they give individuals to cultivate desirable characteristics, a potential Fielding and Collier explain in The Cry:

Every thing in the physical world, actuated by stated laws, is either communicative of its own qualities, or submits to the general power of attraction. The human mind, and every part of intelligent nature, is exempt from these laws, and hath the power of cherishing one seed and stifling another.⁶⁹

By suggesting that individuals have power over their dispositions, Fielding mitigates the determinism found in the predominant passion theory. Even if Cleopatra could not repress the complementary forces of her natural inclination and her education, Fielding's readers can take comfort in the fact that through education, they can prevent themselves from repeating Cleopatra's mistakes. This understanding shows the relationship between Fielding's psychological interests and her didacticism. By exploring the labyrinths of Cleopatra's mind, Fielding's reader will become less susceptible to the prideful self-deception that destroyed Cleopatra; by following Octavia's example, Fielding's reader can learn to nurture natural goodness through the exercise of reason and understanding.

Although Fielding's primary objectives are moral and didactic, the Lives also expresses her dissatisfaction with gender roles. Throughout the work, Fielding offers critical commentary on the way men and women misunderstand each other, as illustrated in the Cleopatra narrative, where Fielding shows how deceptive women can manipulate social expectations and gain control over unsuspecting men. Cleopatra reports that when she first met Anthony, she captured his heart by falling to her knees. Anthony immediately picked her up and placed her on a "Chair of State."⁷⁰ The episode is, of course, emblematic of Cleopatra's entire relationship with Anthony—the more she pretended to be a weak, helpless, and emotional woman, the more power she had over him. As Lissettet Carpenter asserts, Cleopatra employed "feminine affectation" to twist "powerlessness into cunning and manipulation."⁷¹ For Henry Fielding, affectation is "the only source of the true Ridiculous," and functions as the basis of his humor.⁷² For Sarah Fielding, however, affectation represents more serious evil. Not only did Cleopatra's feigned emotion cause Anthony to postpone the Parthian expedition, but her frown caused one of Anthony's soldiers to be beaten, and her tears caused her sister Arsinoe to be assassinated.⁷³

Although Cleopatra brutalized Anthony, he was far from innocent. By allowing Cleopatra to gain control over him, Anthony empowered her affectation. As Carpenter argues, Fielding criticizes not only Cleopatra's art but also the "system which is both creator and victim of women who adopt a life of feminine affectation."⁷⁴ Cleopatra learned to manipulate men from experience. Her technique worked first with Caesar, then with Pompey, and finaly with Anthony. Cleopatra was as much a product of their expectations as of her own cunning. Consequently, Fielding suggests, society, or at least the men in charge of it, caused Cleopatra's unlikely rise to power. And here we find the basis for Fielding's irony. Throughout the Lives, Anthony scorns women, never recognizing that he has fostered the characteristics he most despises. Certainly Fielding does not intend to excuse Cleopatra's actions. To do so would disrupt the didactic intention of her work. Rather, by showing the susceptibility of men, Fielding suggests that Cleopatra's practice of weeping her way to authority reflects badly not only upon her but also upon the society that created her.

Fielding continues her social critique through the Octavia narrative. Although readers might disagree with an anonymous reviewer who, in 1928, asserted that Octavia "was clearly a stupid woman," the fact remains that Octavia lived an unhappy and largely unappreciated life, in spite of her admirable balance of reason and emotion and her nurturing effect on Anthony.⁷⁵ Virtuous and submissive, Octavia at first appears to belong to a tradition of eighteenth-century heroines who "affirm a social order that limits them" and who use virtue to overcome "sexual aggression and [transform] male desire into middle-class love."⁷⁶ Following historical precedent, however, Fielding refuses to grant Octavia the domestic felicity that rewards other eighteenth-century heroines, such as Richardson's Pamela. Recognizing this fact, readers may be tempted to view the Octavia narrative in terms of a "female fantasy" in which the heroine transcends "the perils of plot with a self-exalting dignity" and in which "suffering seems to have its own rewards."⁷⁷ The recollection of Octavia's life after Anthony's death and the narrative form of the posthumous autobiography, through which Octavia expresses her moral and intellectual superiority, certainly support such a reading. Fielding, however, appears more interested in showing the reader how Anthony's expectations for women caused Octavia's misery. Although Octavia remained obedient to her husband, Anthony felt threatened by her intelligence, a phenomenon Fielding also recognized in the men of her own time.⁷⁸ More importantly, both Cleopatra and Octavia acknowledge that Anthony had become so accustomed to the manipulation of feminine affectation that he could not recognize genuine love.⁷⁹ Ironically, Anthony found in Octavia exactly the type of companion he desired, but because she did not deceive him through an artificial display of weakness, he looked upon her real love as feigned. His expectations caused him to prefer the pretended obsequiousness of Cleopatra to the genuine devotion of Octavia. In the end, of course, Anthony's delusions became tragic. Fooled by Cleopatra's arts, he committed suicide while Octavia remained willing to forgive him. He had been deceived not only by Cleopatra but also by his, and his society's, expectations about women.

Fielding places her social commentary in relief by offering a picture of what marriage could be if men understood and appreciated women. Before his death, Marcellus and Octavia enjoyed an apparently perfect marital relationship, largely because they were not restricted by the same mores that enslaved Anthony and that empowered Cleopatra. From the beginning of their relationship, Fielding suggests, Octavia and Marcellus ignored the gender roles of their society. Octavia, for example, took the "Opportunity of creating an Acquaintance" with Marcellus, and it was Octavia who made Marcellus her Pygmalion.⁸⁰ Their marriage, like their courtship, was as unconventional as it was pleasant. With Marcellus, Octavia found her ideal man, one who made "artful Behaviour" needless, one who satisfied both her "Reason" and her "Inclination." Not surprisingly, their life together fostered blissful equality; they rejected artifice and embraced "mutual Confidence, Sincerity, and Truth."⁸¹ Moreover, their relationship, in total contrast to that of Anthony and Cleopatra, encouraged growth: "our mutual Love … banished all tumultuous Passions from our Breasts, and left us no other Thoughts but those of Peace, Tranquility, and Joy."⁸² In depicting Octavia's marriage to Marcellus, Fielding distinguishes herself from other eighteenth-century female authors who were largely "unable to imagine, even for a perfect heroine in an unreal world, any solution to women's psychic dilemma."⁸³ Fielding reminds us, however, that such ideal relationships were as rare in the Roman republic as they were in eighteenth-century England. Immediately after Marcellus's death, social expectations forced Octavia into the kind of marriage she always feared. Unable to live her preferred life of solitude, Octavia entered a relationship in which gender expectations prevented her from achieving happiness and appreciation. The ultimate tragedy of the Lives rests in the recognition that these expectations are entirely superficial.⁸⁴ There are, Fielding demonstrates, people like Octavia and Marcellus who govern their lives with reason and love. There are also people like Anthony and Cleopatra who are controlled by passion. The social conventions that devalue reason in women and ignore self-indulgence in men, however, blur these distinctions, and in doing so, they empower the ambitious Cleopatra, blind the helpless Anthony, and enslave the virtuous Octavia.

Although Fielding's discussion of gender issues remains overshadowed by her condemnation of pride and ambition, it nevertheless plays a substantial role in the Lives and attests to the rich variety of the work. Certainly, Fielding's narratives are more sophisticated than either eighteenth-century readers or modern critics have realized. Ostensibly a didactic work with a historical foundation, the Lives raises important questions about society's institutions and its underlying assumptions. Sarah Fielding's genius lies in her ability to celebrate a seemingly conventional moral order based on duty, fidelity, and love, while simultaneously exposing the commonplace hypocrisies that cause misunderstanding and injustice. Complex and varied, The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia testifies not only to Sarah Fielding's creative imagination, but also to the unique responsibility of a thinking woman in eighteenth-century England.

Notes

¹ After Henry Fielding's death, Ralph Allen paid Sarah Fielding an annual pension of £100. See F. Homes Dudden, Henry Fielding: His Life, Works, and Times, 2 vols. (1952; reprint, Hamden, Conn.: Archon Press, 1966), 2:1059.

² For Richardson's assistance with Fielding's works, see "Editor's Introduction," 17–18, 20. James Harris contributed two satirical dialogues to Familiar Letters. He later read and corrected the manuscript of The Cry, assisted Fielding with her translation of Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates (1762), and worked in collaboration with Fielding on a biographical sketch of Henry Fielding. See Battestin, Life, 414; see also Probyn, The Sociable Humanist, 133–39.

³ See Richardson, Correspondence 2:69, 71, 101, 108.

⁴ See Gerald A. Barker, "David Simple: The Novel of Sensibility in Embryo," Modern Language Studies 12 (1982): 69–80.

⁵ See April London, "Sarah Fielding," Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 39 of British Novelists, 1660–1800, ed. Martin C. Battestin (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1985), 195.

⁶The Cry has traditionally been considered a collaborative work by Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier. Clive Probyn, however, asserts that it is the work of Jane Collier exclusively. His evidence is an unpublished letter in which Collier refers to The Cry as "My Book," and in which she states, "My being the Author is now one of those profound Secrets that is known only to all the People that I know." It seems possible, however, that Collier's statement refers only to the fact that The Cry was published anonymously, for the evidence of Sarah Fielding's contribution to the work is considerable. Robert Dodsley, for example, paid Fielding £50 in 1753 for half the copyright to The Cry. There are also thematic similarities between The Cry and Fielding's other works. Moreover, on 17 January 1757, Richardson wrote to Fielding suggesting that she publish a second edition of The Cry through Dodsley. Certainly, these facts, in conjunction with the observation that throughout The Cry the narrative voice is the plural "we," suggest collaboration. See Probyn, The Sociable Humanist, 134; Dodsley, Correspondence, 31; Richardson, Correspondence 2:108.

⁷ This tendency can be seen throughout eighteenth-century biographical writing, particularly in "spiritual conversion" biographies like Gilbert Burnet's Some Passages on the Life and Death of the Right Honourable John Earl of Rochester (1680), and Philip Doddridge's Some Passages in the Life of the Honourable Col. James Gardiner (1747). See also Roger North's General Preface (ca. 1718); Samuel Johnson's Rambler no. 60 (Saturday, 13 October 1750); Oliver Goldsmith's Life of Richard Nash (1762); and J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1990), 346.

⁸Notes and Queries, 6th series, vol. 9, 26 January 1884, 77.

⁹The History of the English Novel, 10 vols. (London: H. F. and G. Witherby, 1934), 5:38.

¹⁰The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, ed. R. Brimley Johnson (London: Scholartis Press, 1928), xxv….

…²² Elizabeth Robinson Montagu to Sarah Robinson Scott (Montagu Collection, MO 948, Hutington Library), quoted in Lissetter Ferlet Carpenter, "Sarah Fielding: A Mid-Century Link in Eighteenth-Century Feminist Views" (Ph.D. diss., Texas A & M University, 1989), 175.

²³ See "Miss Talbot to Mrs. Carter. Cuddeson, July 29, 1757," in A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the Year 1741–1770, 4 vols. (1804; reprint, New York: AMS, 1975), 2:252.

²⁴ Sale, Samuel Richardson, 171….

…²⁹Plutarch's Lives, Translated from the Greek by Several Hands (1716) 5:7.

³⁰ See below, "The Life of Cleopatra," 61.

³¹ During the eighteenth century, many scholars recognized the inaccuracies of classical histories, particularly Greek histories. Conyers Middleton, for example, noted that the works of Plutarch, Appian, and Dio Cassius, "though they are all very useful for illustrating many important facts of ancient history … are not to be read without some caution; as being strangers to the language and customs of Rome and liable to frequent mistakes, as well as subject to prejudices." See The Life of Cicero, 2 vols. (1744; reprint, London, 1824), xiii–xiv.

³² See below, "The Life of Cleopatra," nn. 4, 51, 74, 101, 105, 121, 130, 141, 142, 183.

³³ See ibid., nn. 4, 114, 130, 132, 137. See also Remarks on Clarissa, 6.

³⁴ See Joseph Andrews, ed. Martin Battestin (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), 4. See also below, "The Life of Cleopatra," nn. 7, 21, 28, 50, 52, 58, 68.

³⁵ See below, "Introduction," 55.

³⁶ See below, "The Life of Cleopatra," 122.

³⁷ Plutarch, Antony 77.3.

³⁸ Ibid., 74.3.

³⁹ See below, "The Life of Cleopatra," 119.

⁴⁰ See "Springing the Trap: Subtexts and Subversions," in Fetter'd or Free?: British Women Novelists, 1670–1815, ed. Mary Anne Scholfield and Cecilia Macheski (Athens and London: Ohio University Press, 1986), 317.

⁴¹ See The Origins of the English Novel (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 88, 119–20.

⁴² See below, "Introduction," 55.

⁴³ See Samuel Brandon, The Virtuous Octavia (1598) (New York: AMS, 1970), where Octavia describes her life with Marcellus: "When that I found the musicke of my minde, / Tunde to the concorde, of Marcellus blisse: / And sawe, true vallour had his life assigned, / To haughty Mars, whose course most dangerous is. / I liu'd in him, he spent his royall dayes, / In bloudie bosom of life-scorning" (p. 19). See also below, "The Life of Octavia," n. 5.

⁴⁴ See below, "The Life of Octavia," 128.

⁴⁵ See Donald Stauffer, The Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941): "The gradations between actual and fictional narratives are infinite…. Sarah Fielding argues that biography is more informative and just than fiction…. But her long panegyric on biography comes in the preface to The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia (1757), in which she records what that pair of noble dames tell her on her trip to the underworld. The more strange and wonderful the talespinning becomes, the more the title-pages swear authenticity and seek to document what follows" (p. 66).

⁴⁶Before Novels, 339, 344.

⁴⁷Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill. 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), 2:321.

⁴⁸ See Roger North, General Preface and Life of Dr. John North, ed. Peter Millard (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1984): "the same ingredients that are usually brought to adorn fiction may come forward, and be as well applied to the setting forth of truths; that is, choice of words, charming periods, invention of figures, interspersion of sentences, and facetious expressions" (59–60). Although North's comments address the form more than the content of biography, writers like Mason felt free to change historical evidence. Calling attention to Mason's frequent and substantial alteration of Gray's correspondence, John Draper notes that "it was quite the usual way of treating letters and private papers during the period…. Doubtless the Neo-classical sense of decorum and the feeling that biography existed to point to a moral rather than a literal tale had something to do with these editings." As Russell Brooks states, Boswell embellished much of Johnson's dialogue: "he [Boswell] could even transform into Johnson's best style conversations reported to him." See John W. Draper, William Mason: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Culture (New York: New York University Press, 1924), 270–71; and Russell Brooks, James Boswell (New York: Twaine, 1971), 92.

⁴⁹An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 8.1.65, in Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. SelbyBigg and P. H. Nidditch, 3d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). See also J. B. Black, The Art of History: A Study of Four Great Historians of the Eighteenth Century (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965), 85–89. Vincent Carretta argues that by midcentury, Hume had softened the "uniformitarian" view presented in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and had become an historical relativist by the time he wrote The History of England, 6 vols. (1754–62). Still, Carretta asserts, Hume acknowledged that "Certain general statements about human nature … could be drawn from the study of history [because] All men, past and present, are motivated by such universal passions as lust, greed, and ambition." See The Snarling Muse: Verbal and Visual Political Satire from Pope to Churchill (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 221.

⁵⁰Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 173.

⁵¹ See Henry Fielding, A Journey from This World to the Next, ed. Claude Rawson (London: Dent; New York: Dutton, 1973), viii.

⁵² See Ian Watt's discussion of "formal realism" in The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957): "Formal realism … is the narrative embodiment of a premise … which is implicit in the novel form in general: the premise, or primary convention, that the novel is a full and authentic report of human experience, and is therefore under an obligation to satisfy its reader with such details of the story as the individuality of the actors concerned, the particulars of the times and places of their actions, details which are presented through a more largely referential use of language than is common in other literary forms" (32). Watt's statement, although made in 1957, is still useful for understanding Fielding's departure from novelistic narrative, as is J. Paul Hunter's more recent discussion of the novel in terms of contemporaneity, credibility and probability, and familiarity. See Before Novels, 23.

⁵³ "Sarah Fielding," in Battestin, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 201.

⁵⁴ "Eight Experiments in Fiction" (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1973), 144.

⁵⁵The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Samuel Daniel, ed. Rev. Alexander B. Grosart 6 vols. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), 1:101.

⁵⁶ See below, "The Life of Cleopatra," 130.

⁵⁷ See below, "The Life of Octavia," 116, 130, 127, 133, 141.

⁵⁸ See ibid., 143.

⁵⁹Volume the Last, 413.

⁶⁰ See below, "The Life of Cleopatra," 56.

⁶¹ For Fielding, these predispositions define Octavia and Cleopatra as representations of good and evil: "There appears to be but two grand master passions or movers in the human mind, namely, LOVE and PRIDE…. Thus a man may be more or less proud; but if PRIDE be his characteristic, he cannot be a good man. So a man may be more or less attracted to love, and rouzed to benevolent actions; but whilst he preserves LOVE as the characteristic of his mind, he cannot be a bad man." See The Cry 3:129–30.

⁶² See George Sherburn, "Fielding's Amelia: An Interpretation," ELH 3 (1936): 4. See also Henry Fielding, A Journey from This World to the Next, where the narrator describes the process by which unborn souls receive "The Pathetic Potion": "This potion is a mixture of all the passions, but in no exact proportion, so that sometimes one predominates, and sometimes another" (29). For Sarah Fielding's statements on the predominant passion, see The Cry, 3:129–30; Familiar Letters, 171; and David Simple, 15.

⁶³ Alexander Pope, The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, vol. 3, An Essay on Man, ed. Maynard Mack (London: Methuen; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), 2.129–32. See also Epistle to Cobham, lines 174–77.

⁶⁴Amelia, ed. Martin C. Battestin (Oxford: Clarendon Press; Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), 16.

⁶⁵ No. 151, Tuesday, 27 August, 1751, The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 5, The Rambler, ed. W. J. Bate and Albrecht B. Strauss (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), 42.

⁶⁶ See below, "The Life of Cleopatra," 56.

⁶⁷ See below, "The Life of Octavia," 126.

⁶⁸ See The Governess, p. 51, where Jill Grey identifies a similarity between the educational principles in The Governess—which are almost identical to those of Octavia—and the ideas presented in John Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education: "Locke considered that the fundamentally important thing in education … was to train the judgment rather than the memory, to impart good manners rather than mere information; and to prepare for life in the social world."

⁶⁹The Cry 2:123.

⁷⁰ See below, "The Life of Cleopatra," 62.

⁷¹ "Sarah Fielding: A Mid-Century Link in Eighteenth-Century Feminist Views," 173, 176.

⁷²Joseph Andrews, 7.

⁷³ See below, "The Life of Cleopatra," 74, 70, 66.

⁷⁴ "Sarah Fielding: A Mid-Century Link in Eighteenth-Century Feminist Views," 178.

⁷⁵ "Fielding's Sister," review of The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, ed. R. Brimley Johnson, Times Literary Supplement (4 April 1929), 273.

⁷⁶ Patricia Meyer Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1976), 57; Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 6. See also April London, "Placing the Female: The Metonymie Garden in Amatory and Pious Narrative, 1700–1740" in Scholfield and Macheski, Fetter'd or Free, 121.

⁷⁷ See Nancy K. Miller, "Emphasis Added: Plots and Plausibilities in Women's Fiction," PMLA 96 (1981): 40, 41.

⁷⁸ See Fielding's statement about men "inveterately prejudiced in Disfavour of the Fair-sex" in the Introduction, 55.

⁷⁹ See below, "The Life of Cleopatra," 84; "The Life of Octavia," 133.

⁸⁰ See below, "The Life of Octavia," 127, 128.

⁸¹ See ibid., 130.

⁸² See ibid., 130.

⁸³ Spacks, Imagining a Self, 62.

⁸⁴ See Carpenter, "Sarah Fielding: A Mid-Century Link in Eighteenth-Century Feminist Views," 192….