Amelia

Amelia is one of the late works of Henry Fielding and his last novel. It was published on the 18th of December 1751 (Banerji 224). This novel represents Fielding´s changed attitude towards brothels, prostitution, adultery, and the loose living (Dickie 115). According to Dickie his early works were shaped by his notorious libertinism and impiety of his youth (ibid.). Now he tries to deal with the loose living in a different way.

In Amelia Fielding tried to used sentimentality which he before had often criticized and despised, e.g. in Richardson (Banerji 236). And for the first time he put an idealized female figure at the center of his fiction (Dickie 115). But this novel was not a success, it was criticized for its imperfection and low style (Banerji 225). And indeed, Fielding made many mistakes which The London Magazine calls “glaring anachronisms” in his novel (ibid.). A famous mistake is that he has forgotten to mention that the nose of his heroine, which was destroyed during an accident, had been fixed afterwards (ibid.). This mistake enabled many of Fielding´s enemies and critics to make fun of him and his novel. “In a culture in which flattened or disfigured noses were the funniest of all deformities and inevitably associated with syphilis, Fielding´s noseless heroine provoked a torrent of travesties and lewd commentaries that turned Amelia into a whore” (Dickie 116). So there was a huge gap between Fielding´s intention to draw the picture of an ideal and moral woman and the way people, and especially critics have read the novel. According to Dickie, Fielding´s intention was to show that Amelia´s bodily imperfection is a verification of her virtue. For him her looks were not as important as her charming personality (117). But than again one asks oneself why he corrected his mistake in later editions and stresses the fact that her nose was fixed and everything that is left is a tiny scar which rather added to her beauty (Banerji 228).

There is another character in the novel who has a deformed nose, and that is Blear-Eyed Moll who is a prostitute. And “most critics describe Moll as a purely negative foil, a particularly vivid embodiment of the depravity and brutal absurdity of the world, an emblem of everything that Amelia is not”( Dickie 121). Even if Fielding wanted to draw an ideal picture of Amelia, one tends to associate her with Moll, and by this she gets a negative connotation (ibid.) According to Dickie “Amelia is a gravely compromised exemplar of female chastity […]”(ibid. 119). And indeed, Amelia is not as ideal as one supposes. “At several points the narrator suddenly looks us in the eye to declare that Amelia is vain and easily flattered just like every other woman. She feels a secret satisfaction at the compliments of Mrs. Ellison”(ibid. 129). For Dickie this uncertain handling of sexual morality is not surprising, because almost anywhere else Fielding treated chastity rather skeptically (119). Fielding even suggests that chastity is something unnatural and he creates many very likable lewd women characters throughout his early works (ibid. 120). But as I mentioned above this view on sexuality has changed in his later works. Still one can see that it is difficult for Fielding to create an ideal character, and thus Dickie concludes that he fails in his attempt to do so (116).

According to Banerji many critics have seen autobiographical aspects in this novel.E.g. Fielding´s first wife Charlotte should have been the model for Amelia. “Many circumstances in Amelia´s life history as related in the novel, for example, her living with her widowed mother and sister at the time Booth courted her, her mother´s bequest of the bulk of her property to her and the chequered course of her married life, leave little room for doubt that Fielding´s beautiful and devoted first wife was the original of the heroine of his last novel”(Banerji 231). Charlotte too had an accident where her nose was damaged (ibid. 230). Still Banerji warns that “[…] it would be hazardous to carry the identifications any further than this, though one is greatly tempted to read something of the history of Fielding´s own life in Booth´s experiences”(231).

Bibliography

Banerji, H.K.: Henry Fielding. Playwright, Journalist and Master of the Art of Fiction. His Life and Works. New York: Russell & Russell, 1962.

Dickie, Simon: "Amelia, Sex, and Fielding´s Woman Question". In: Henry Fielding (1707-1754). Novelist, Playwright, Journalist, Magistrate. A Double Anniversary Tribute. Claude Rawson (ed.). University of Delaware Press. 2008. [pages???]