The Terms of Acceptance: Richardson and Fielding: Two Traditions in the Novel

… For women novelists, the debate centred on [Samuel] Richardson's and [Henry] Fielding's work was important because it not only divided the novel tradition into two distinct strands, but sexualized the division. Fielding's fiction was clearly masculine, Richardson's feminine, in eighteenth-century terms. Expounding his theory of the novel as 'comic-Epic-Poem in Prose',⁴⁵ Fielding gave the new form legitimacy by claiming a place for it within the classical tradition, which was outside the range of most women novelists of the time, and, it might be added, outside the unlearned Richardson's range too. He also treated subjects that were now being found indecent, and therefore out of bounds for moral and modest women writers. On the other hand, Richardson's concentration on female characters and on feeling, and his exemplary morality, meant that he wrote as women were ideally supposed to write.

It is not surprising, then, that Fielding's and Richardson's successors tended to divide along sexual lines, men being more likely to follow Fielding and [Tobias] Smollett, women being more likely to follow Richardson. This was not by any means a clear-cut distinction. Many women novelists, including Sarah Fielding and Fanny Burney, drew inspiration from Fielding. What happened was more that certain expectations about women's fiction developed: that it would be, like Richardson's, an examination of the feminine heart and a display of exemplary morality. This was in fact a crystallization of the notions about feminine writing that we have already observed being expressed in the late seventeenth century. Richardson's entry into the women's camp did not alter these definitions, but accorded new prominence and prestige to the fiction which fitted them.

The Terms of Acceptance: Masculine Approval and Sarah Fielding

Richardson and Fielding profoundly affected women novelists in another way, too—by approving of them. Fielding praised some women novelists. He did a great deal to boost his sister's writing career. He revised her first novel, David Simple (1744) for a second edition, to which he added a preface praising the work. He contributed five letters and a preface to her second work, Familiar Letters Between the Principal Characters in David Simple (1747), which he advertized in his journal, The True Patriot, in 1746. He reviewed Charlotte Lennox's second novel, The Female Quixote (1752) in The Covent-Garden Journal, praising its humour and its moral lesson taught through satire.⁴⁶ Richardson was even more enthusiastic about helping women novelists. His 'much-esteemed Sally Fielding, the author of David Simple', became acquainted with him some time before 1748, and he seems to have taken over from her brother as her chief patron.⁴⁷ He subscribed to her novels and encouraged others to do the same, and he printed several of her works: The Governess, or Little Female Academy, one of the earliest children's books, in 1749; The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia in 1757; and The History of the Countess of Dellwyn in 1759. He was sometimes consulted about problems in her work, and sometimes made suggestions for alterations. Like Fielding, Richardson approved of Charlotte Lennox. To help her he gave her detailed criticism of the manuscript of The Female Quixote, and when the novel appeared he praised it to his correspondent Lady Bradshaigh, intimating his sympathy and respect for the author, who, he wrote, 'has genius … has been unhappy'.⁴⁸ Johnson, too, was an influential supporter of some women novelists, including Charlotte Lennox, Frances Sheridan, Frances Brooke and Fanny Burney.

Of course, this was not the first time that eminent male writers had enjoyed themselves by offering gallant compliments to ladies of letters who remained flatteringly inferior. What was new in the 1740s and 1750s was the combination of this complimentary style with serious encouragement of the woman's professional writing career. For this reason, the mid-century marked a new stage in the acceptance of women writers. Some earlier women, like Aphra Behn, had fought their way to success and recognition, but by the middle of the eighteenth century, eminent men of letters were giving practical help and encouragement to obscure or unknown women aspiring to a literary career.

The novelist and critic Clara Reeve (1729–1807) gives us one indication of the encouraging effects of masculine approval on women with literary ambitions. In the preface to her first publication, Original Poems on Several Occasions (1769), she writes:

I formerly believed, that I ought not to let myself be known for a scribbler, that my sex was an insuperable objection, that mankind in general were prejudiced against its pretensions to literary merit; but I am now convinced of the mistake, by daily examples to the contrary. I see many female writers favourably received, admitted into the rank of authors, and amply rewarded by the public; I have been encouraged by their success, to offer myself as candidate for the same advantages.⁴⁹

The state of affairs Reeve outlines, had its drawbacks for women. If by this time men, instead of employing gallant hyperbole to concede victory over the empire of wit to a few splendid women, were more genuinely welcoming women in general to the literary world, it was because women were no longer considered a threat. Women writers, no longer seeing themselves as men's antagonists, had dropped the battle imagery in which their predecessors characterized their writing as an attack on male domination. They were not boldly staking a claim to the field of literature but modestly asking to be allowed to exercise their influence in a special feminine sphere. While on the one hand it was useful for the woman writer not to have to make her writing an attack, on the other this severing of the link between women's writing and the defence of womanhood had adverse effects on the development of feminist thought in the century. Women's writing, in fact, seems to have been limited in various ways by masculine approval, which many were so anxious not to lose that they became very careful to write in the way that men found acceptably feminine.

We can see some of the effects of cultural acceptance in the career of Sarah Fielding, who, as Henry Fieldings's sister and Richardson's friend, had the advice and approbation of the two major novelists of her time. Like many unmarried gentlewomen, Sarah Fielding suffered from the problem of having too small an income to live independently and no opportunity to earn wages. She tried what was becoming the obvious solution—writing. David Simple (1744) was followed by the two-volume Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters in David Simple in 1747, and by Volume the Last, a sequel, in 1753. Her other publications included several works of fiction, her book for children, and a translation of Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates (1762).

Her first work, David Simple, is both sentimental and satirical. David Simple is an early man of feeling, clearly to be admired for his simplicity and goodness, though his naivety is mocked at times. His friend Camilla (eventually his wife) and her brother Valentine are also the creations of a sentimentalist, good-natured and trusting, and suffering because of it. These gentle creatures seem to inhabit a different world from the malicious Spatter, who imputes evil to everyone; yet characters like Spatter are necessary to Sarah Fielding too, because they can make sharp reflections which, the reader suspects, have the author's judgement with them. For example, when David comments on a young woman's silence in company, Spatter explains that it is considered ill bred for a young unmarried woman to speak except when spoken to. 'I cannot tell the Meaning of it, unless it is a Plot laid by Parents to make their Daughters willing to accept any Match they provide for them, that they may have the Privilege of speaking'.⁵⁰

Cynthia, the most interesting and vital of all the characters, has something of Spatter's function of satirical speaker of the author's bitterest apprehensions about human nature and society; but unlike Spatter she is also amiable. Her story gives a vivid glimpse of some of the problems encountered by an intellectual young woman in Sarah Fielding's time. She tells David:

I loved reading, and had a great Desire of attaining Knowledge; but whenever I asked Questions of any kind whatsoever, I was always told, Such Things were not proper for Girls of my Age to know: If I was pleased with any Book above the most silly Story or Romance, it was taken from me. For Miss must not enquire too far into things, it would turn her Brain; she had better mind her Needle-work, and such Things as were useful for Women: reading and poring on Books, would never get me a Husband. (David Simple, p. 101)

Cynthia grows up into a vivacious and somewhat rebellious young woman. When a country gentleman condescendingly informs her, 'I like your Person, hear you have had a sober Education, think it time to have an Heir to my Estate, and am willing, if you consent to it, to make you my Wife'—going on to give her a catalogue of her duties in that position—Cynthia, as she reports to David, 'made him a low Court'sey, and thanked him for the Honour he intended me; but I told him, I had no kind of Ambition to be his upper Servant' (p. 109). Refusing such a marriage has only led to the miserable life of a lady's companion, continually scorned and insulted. Wit, Cynthia decides, brings a woman no happiness. 'I am very certain, the Woman who is possessed of it, unless she can be so peculiarly happy as to live with People void of Envy, had better be without it' (p. 102).

Cynthia seems to speak from her author's experience of prejudice against women of learning. One of Sarah Fielding's letters to Richardson, written some years later, complained of a man who thought women unfit to correspond with literary men. She and one of the Collier sisters 'were at dinner with a hic, haec, hoc man, who said, well I do wonder Mr. Richardson will be troubled with such silly women'.⁵¹ In the character of Cynthia Sarah Fielding denies that women are silly, endowing her creation with intelligence and a competence in dealing with the evils of the world that prevents her from ever really becoming its victim.

In Sarah Fielding's later work, the sharp, rebellious note often sounded in David Simple is muted. There is no explicit change of views, for in all her works Sarah Fielding consistently defends women's right to learning on the one hand, and endorses female subordination on the other; but there is a change of emphasis, a new and more anxious insistence on the respectability and submissiveness of the intelligent woman. There is less satirical wit and a more straightforward didacticism. This change was probably influenced by a general feeling among the circle she belonged to that a learned woman could be a respectable figure, but only on certain conditions. Like the novelists Frances Sheridan and Sarah Scott, both of them her acquaintances in later life, Sarah Fielding was a friend of Richardson and agreed with his views, expressed in Clarissa, of the compatibility of learning and womanly duties. Delighted to find an argument that made intellectual study acceptable in them, and a champion of their sex like Richardson to promote it, these women novelists of the mid-century sought to keep masculine approval by disclaiming any intention to overturn the sexual hierarchy.

Sarah Fielding, too, was anxious to keep approval for the learned woman by repudiating the views of earlier women writers that proof of women's intellectual abilities challenges male supremacy. This is especially clear in The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia (1757), where the famous women of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and Dryden's All For Love: or, The World Well Lost are imagined resurrected from the dead to tell their histories. Shakespeare had made Cleopatra an enigmatic and compelling figure; Dryden had presented her more simply as a tragic heroine devoted to Antony; Sarah Fielding paints her as a thoroughgoing villain. Her Cleopatra does not love Antony at all, but manipulates him for her own ends by means of a cunning pretence of female weakness, as she flatters him with the notion that 'his own Wisdom must enable him to judge better than it was possible for a weak woman to do'.⁵² Because Antony is so easily taken in by these wiles, a woman like Octavia, who uses her intelligence honestly, is at a disadvantage. All Sarah Fielding's sympathy in this work is given to Antony's wife, wronged, virtuous and, in this version, a woman of learning.

In this work, as in David Simple, Sarah Fielding criticizes men for misjudging women, but her defence of the learned woman is carefully qualified. Antony is not criticized because he fails to recognize women's rights but because he fails to recognize the ideal woman. In contrast to Cleopatra, 'an haughty, false, and intriguing Woman', the 'amiable and gentle Octavia' is 'an Example of all those Graces and Embellishments worthy the most refined Female Character…. a sincere Friend, an affectionate Sister, a faithful Wife, and both a tender and instructive Parent' (Dedication, n. pag.). The defence of the woman of learning has been modified from a feminist statement to an adjunct of conventional morality.

We can compare Sarah Fielding's presentation of the learned woman with Jane Barker's earlier in the century. Barker's Galesia is a self-portrait of a learned woman and writer as heroine: Sarah Fielding, constantly defending the intellectual woman, is also in a sense defending herself, but she does not dramatize herself within her narrative. Jane Barker, though in one sense a pre-eminently modest—i.e., chaste—writer, is immodest by comparison with Sarah Fielding because of her picture of herself as ambitious, rebellious Galesia. Through this persona she challenges the accepted feminine role, while Sarah Fielding denies that women's learning will have any effect on it.

The Terms of Acceptance: The Diffident Success: Fanny Burney

Sarah Fielding's career shows us one instance of a general trend in the mid-eighteenth century: as women writers' talents were more generally acknowledged they began to claim less for themselves. We might expect that when women novelists became more acceptable to the public, and especially to eminent men of letters, they would show increased confidence, whether individually or collectively. In fact, excuses and apprehensions became the order of the day for women novelists from the 1740s onwards. 'Perhaps the best Excuse that can be made for a Woman's venturing to write at all', explained Sarah Fielding at the beginning of David Simple, 'is that which really produced this Book; Distress in her Circumstances: which she could not so well remove by any other Means in her Power.'…⁵³

Seduced Heroines: The New Moral Novel: Sarah Fielding's The Countess of Dellwyn (1759)

[Mary de La Riviere] Manley and [Eliza] Haywood both used the seduction tale for feminist social criticism. Manley directed her attack at the masculine manipulaton of the ideology of innocence, while Hay-wood depicted an alternative to the seduced woman's dependence on her lover and her eventual despair. Later women novelists also used the scenario of seduction and betrayal to carry their criticisms of society's treatment of women; but because of the different position of the woman novelist later in the [eighteenth] century, their novels of seduction carried very different messages.

In one way, the tradition of protest in women's novels expanded during the second half of the century. The incorporation of wide-ranging discussions of society and morality into the love-story, always a tendency in the epistolary novel and increasingly common in all kinds of novel after [Samuel] Richardson, meant that women's role was more often explicitly discussed. Novels carried attacks on contemporary marriage customs, particularly on the parents' authority over the daughter's choice of husband, and on the wife's subjection to her husband. There were arguments for recognizing women's educational capacities, for better education for women, even an early call for votes for women.¹⁶ Yet some of the strengths of earlier women writers were no longer found. Manley and Haywood acknowledged the existence of sexual desires in women, without presenting them (as male writers tended to do) as grotesque. Being beyond the respectable pale themselves, they were free to do so. Later women novelists defended their own respectability by banishing all hints of sexual desire in their heroines. Moreover, as the idealization of womanhood gained ground, novelists based their arguments for a better deal for women on a belief in essential female purity. The feminist analysis of the ideology of femininity which distinguished Manley's work was lost.

The new morality of women novelists meant that, for a period stretching from about the 1720s to the 1760s, their sympathy for the seduced woman was much reduced. Penelope Aubin's Charlotta du Pont, published the year after The British Recluse, contains an early example of severe judgment on the fallen woman. The pure heroine is contrasted to her persecuting stepmother Dorinda, whose wickedness dates from her 'ruin' years ago. Even though she was given money to help her return to a virtuous life, Dorinda went of her own accord into a brothel, for 'alas! Youth once vitiated is rarely reformed, and Woman, who whilst virtuous is an Angel, ruined and abandoned by the Man she loves, becomes a Devil.'¹⁷ Frances Sheridan's Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, published in 1761, expanded on the point made by Aubin almost forty years before. In this novel, the heroine and her mother make the mistake of feeling too much sympathy for Miss Burchell, who has been seduced by the heroine's suitor, Orlando Faulk-land. They see her as an injured innocent, but she returns treachery for their kindness. Sidney persuades Faulkland to marry Miss Burchell in reparation of the wrongs he has done her, but the seduced woman turns into an unfeeling wife and an adulteress. In these novels, the woman who felt sexual desire was shown to be a devil. The prevalence of this view meant that the seduced heroine, to retain any authorial sympathy, must feel no desire for her seducer. Haywood's Cleomelia might have been 'seduc'd by [her] own heavenly Innocence, and the Force of … Passion', but later in the century these two could no longer be allowed to coexist. Innocence had to include passionlessness.

… Sarah Fielding's work was strongly marked by the woman novelist's new need to conform. One of her novels, The Countess of Dellwyn (1759), is a good example of women's treatment of the seduction theme in the new moral climate. The tradition of women's protest runs through this work, but is compromised by the moralism of the author's outlook.

The Countess of Dellwyn is an unusual seduction novel, because its seduced heroine is a married woman. This reflects the age's increasing interest in the problems of marriage. The second volume of [Richardson's] Pamela (1741), the second volume of Mary Collyer's novel Felicia to Charlot (1744), and Henry Fielding's Amelia (1751) had already made the problems of life after marriage central. In these three works, an important question is the heroine's adjustment to the results of her husband's premarital sexual lapses, or to his infidelity after marriage. In The Countess of Dellwyn, however, it is the wife's infidelity that is portrayed. Sarah Fielding was not the first novelist to write the story of a wife's adultery—[Aphra] Behn, Manley and Haywood had all done this earlier; but she was the first of the new 'moral' women writers to make this a central subject, and the first novelist to combine the story of a woman's adultery with a detailed study of the marital relationship that it destroys.

Sarah Fielding attributes her Countess's downfall to the mistaken concept of marriage upheld by her father and her husband, both backed by all the force of society's conventions. Lord Dellwyn, having ruined his health with debauchery in youth, suddenly decides at 63 'that to live soberly, with a virtuous young Wife, might possibly render him more solid Happiness, than he had ever hitherto enjoyed',¹⁸ and proposes to Miss Lucum. Her father, an unsuccessful politician who now hopes for preferment from a rich and influential son-in-law, threatens to turn her out of the house if she refuses the match, 'being perfectly convinced that if his Daughter would not be a Countess, it was very reasonable that she should be abandoned to any Misfortunes or Miseries whatsoever' (The Countess of Dellwyn, I, 31). Miss Lucum eventually agrees to a union she first called 'Prostitution' (I, 30), because she wants to live the life of a fine town lady. The marriage, not surprisingly, turns the couple into 'a haughty, discontented, extravagant Wife; and … a morose, covetous, and disappointed Husband' (I, 153).

When Lady Dellwyn has an affair with the practised seducer Clermont, she is cast off by her husband, her father, and fashionable society—all of them to blame for her situation. Lord Dellwyn, disappointed in what the narrator ironically terms 'his reasonable Hopes of purchasing the affections of a young Beauty by his Pomp and Title' (I, 149), has no mercy on her. Mr Lucum, who ought to have 'reflected that his own Ambition had been the first Cause of his Daughter's Ruin', tells Lord Dellwyn to be as severe as he likes towards his wife if only he will remain a patron to his wife's father. Lord Dellwyn sues for divorce, and Clermont flees the country to avoid being fined for seduction. Lady Dellwyn becomes an outcast from society.

In this story everyone seems to be to blame, and Sarah Fielding's satiric vision sweeps over the whole of society. The mercenary concept of marriage is seen as a force corrupting all kinds of human relationships. Lady Dellwyn's adulterous amour has none of the dignity of a fatal passion. It is vanity, 'her first and last Seducer', not love, that makes her enjoy Clermont's admiration and eventually yield to him (II, 205). Sarah Fielding's attitude to her heroine's motivation is somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, Lady Dellwyn is the less excusable and her affair more sordid because she does not love her seducer. She is a contemptible figure when shown 'bewailing the fatal Effects of a too tender Passion' she has never even felt (II, 207). On the other hand, it appears that vanity is less of a crime than sexual desire, and Lady Dellwyn preserves a kind of innocence because she has no passion. The remnants of her original virtue ensure that she gets no pleasure from her liaison, being constantly aware of her guilt. 'She could not film over the Odium of her own Actions, by applying to them the Words Gallantry, Intriguing, Coquetting, with many other softening Terms, … which have been imported to England' (II, 50–1). Once she is cut off from husband, father, and lover, she becomes the target for men's immoral suggestions, and 'As Vanity was the only Vice that had ever actuated Lady Dellwyn's mind, she felt something that bore a near Resemblance to the Indignation of Virtue itself at [an] insolent Proposal' (II, 210). Sarah Fielding adapts the seduction-tale convention of the victim's innocence. Lady Dellwyn is not innocent, but nor is she so guilty as the fashionable people around her; and that is why society singles her out for special punishment.

Unlike Manley and Haywood, Sarah Fielding does not extend sympathy to her seduced heroine. Her cool, detached, ironical narrative allows none of the sympathetic identification with the victim found when the heroine tells her own tale. This cool tone suits the didactic purpose of analysing the errors which lead the Countess to fall a prey to the world's snares. Her moral scheme is evident at all times—perhaps excessively so. Clermont, for example, seems to seduce women for the sake of providing his creator with examples in support of her warnings rather than because of his own desires:

[He] never failed endeavouring to succeed with Ladies he liked, who had sacrificed willingly their Youth and Beauty to the Gratification of Vanity and Ambition; … To those young Women, who, in marrying for interested considerations, had regard only to the obeying of Parents and Guardians, Lord Clermont seldom made any Addresses; apprehending that they might be actuated by Principles which could not possibly incline them to satisfy his Inclinations. (II, 40)

Here we see the limitations of Sarah Fielding's attack on contemporary marriage customs. Marrying for money and title, it seems, is acceptable if the motive is filial obedience. This rather spoils her attack on Mr Lucum, who would have liked such obedience in his own daughter.

Sarah Fielding's scathing satirical attacks on society are considerably weakened by many other instances of praise for obedience and subordination in women. After clearly showing why Lord Dellwyn has never deserved his wife's respect, the novelist goes on to scold her for not giving it to him, because wives ought to respect husbands in all circumstances. Her former contempt is the reason he is quick to divorce her after her affair, and Sarah Fielding draws the moral that 'Lady Dellwyn was a memorable Instance of the great Imprudence a Woman is guilty of, when she fails in due Respect to her Husband. If he deserves such a Treatment, the Contempt justly returns redoubled on her own Head for consenting to be the Wife of a Man she despises' (II, 161).

Though Sarah Fielding acknowledges the difficulties her female characters face in society, she does not let this affect her judgment of their conduct. This is seen in her treatment of Miss Weare, who becomes companion to the outcast Lady Dellwyn because she has no other way of making a living. An orphan, she has squandered her small inheritance on keeping up genteel appearances in the hope of getting a husband. Having failed, she must now descend to the servant class or live with Lady Dellwyn. Because she chooses Lady Dellwyn, people assume that she too is an immoral woman, and Sarah Fielding points out how unfair this is: 'the Reputations of more Women have suffered by keeping Company with the infamous Part of their own Sex, than from any real Guilt or Imprudence with the other' (II, 220). Yet she shows no sympathy for Miss Weare, commenting only that 'she chose rather the Venture of blasting her Character, than the more disagreeable Alternative of relinquishing her Rank' (II, 220–1). Thus the novelist makes trenchant criticisms of the way a woman's reputation is handled in a world that judges, falsely, by appearances; yet blames her female characters if they do not manage to maintain the appearance of virtue. This self-contradictory treatment of female virtue and reputation is found in many eighteenth-century women novelists, including Fanny Burney. It shows one of the limitations placed by moral respectability and a didactic role on the women novelists' feminist criticisms of society.

In The Countess of Dellwyn Sarah Fielding is a satirist painting a dark picture of a society where marriage has become an exchange of old men's wealth for young women's beauty. Her ironic gaze is turned on a set of fashionable people bent on material gain and superficial pleasures. Her heroine's acceptance of their values is her real downfall—seduction is only the consequence. Though her moral stance precludes this writer from her predecessors' defence of female desire and their sympathetic treatment of the seduced heroine, it means that she attacks, from a different direction, the society that makes women saleable commodities, and she gives a chilling account of a heroine led to ruin by only the pathetic pretence of love….

Notes

⁴⁵ Preface to Joseph Andrews (London: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 4.

⁴⁶ See Covent Garden Journal no. 24, March 24, 1752; ed. G. E. Jensen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1915), I, p. 282.

⁴⁷ See letter to Sarah Fielding, 7 December 1756, in Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, ed. A. L. Barbauld (London: Richard Phillips, 1804), II, p. 101. For an account of Richardson's printing of several of Sarah Fielding's works, see W. M. Sale, Samuel Richardson: Master Printer (New York: Cornell University Press, 1950), pp. 113–14.

⁴⁸Selected Letters of Samuel Richardson, p. 223.

⁴⁹Original Poems on Several Occasions. By C. R. (London, 1769), p. xi.

⁵⁰David Simple, ed. M. Kelsall (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 87.

⁵¹ Sarah Fielding to Richardson, 8 January 1749, Correspondence, II, p. 59.

⁵²The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia (London, 1757), p. 45.

⁵³The Adventures of David Simple [first edn] (London, 1744), I, pp. iii–iv….

…..

¹⁶ The hero of Frances Brooke's Emily Montague observes that among the Huron Indians the women choose the chief, and suggests that it would be a good idea if European women could vote for their rulers (I, pp. 67–9).

¹⁷Charlotta du Pont, in Aubin, Collection, III, p. 17.

¹⁸ Sarah Fielding, The History of the Countess of Dellwyn (London: A. Millar, 1759), I, pp. 16–17….