Women, Money and Debt in the 18th
Century Novel, Part 6:
Amelia, Section 3
Looking at the
prevailing obsession with money, the getting and managing of it (and what
happens when you can’t pay your debts), in eighteenth century English
literature – with specific reference to female heroines in Daniel Defoe’s Roxana (1724); Henry Fielding’s Amelia (1751), and Fanny Burney’s Cecilia (1782).
Last section, I continued the story of Amelia, heroine of
Fielding’s book of the same name – the perfect wife by the mores of the time,
who because of an inept husband, falls into financial troubles. The first part of her story was all about how
that happened, and debtor’s prison. The next part of my analysis of her story,
showed her journey as a woman in an alien financial world of the 1800s,
burgeoning free market capitalism, how she navigated its many pitfalls. Now its time to wind up her part of this
essay. Since her husband is in prison,
and she is surrounded on all sides by charlatans and false friends – how on
earth are we to provide her with a happy ending for them both? And one where, moreover, she retains her
virtue?! Read on…
***
And just in case you’re a trifle lost – here are the earlier
posts in this series:
=> that’s the Introduction and Abstract to this mammoth
undertaking!
=> that’s Roxana, Part 1…in a galaxy far far…etc…
=> that’s the last part of Roxana’s story and it’s
analysis.
=> the first part of Amelia’s experiences: her husband is
put in debtor’s prison.
=> how Amelia survives as a married woman but without
protection for herself and her children, in a cruel and corrupt city.
Welcome to part 3
(last part) of my analysis of Amelia
– the last novel written by Henry Fielding, and published December 1751. It’s part of what was referred to at the time
as ‘domestic’ novels. To cut along plot
short – Amelia, a good and quiet girl, runs off with a soldier to London after
a blisteringly romantic attachment and marriage, where he is then wrongly
imprisoned. Disaster. She is tempted on all sides by offers of help
from unscrupulous people, mainly men, and resists them; meanwhile her husband
is seduced by another woman in prison.
Their difficulties worsen and worsen, in the way of these novels, until
eventually Amelia passively manages to save the day – and how, we’ll go into
here. It’s a real eye opener to the
attitudes of the times, and just how few choices women had when men weren’t in
the picture.
***
americanenterprise.si.edu
In these early stages of the growth of the mercantile
capitalist economy, critics have noted that middle class women became limited
to roles that were not only constricting in spatial and economic terms (within
the private sphere of the home), but in terms of sexuality as well. Roxana, as we have seen, turned the tables on
sexual perceptions of women, using these roles for her own ends. It is much less obvious that Amelia would use
the image of middle class women as “passive consumers, display pieces and
erotic objects”[1]
to her own advantage. Nevertheless in a
pivotal moment in the novel, this is exactly what she does. After Atkinson’s declaration of love, Amelia
realises she has only one thing left to pawn, to save the family from financial
ruin: the miniature of herself that Sergeant Atkins stole, and now returns to
her. Her act of going to pawn the
miniature of herself, shows Amelia “[…] taking herself to market”, re-determining her own value, and thus helping
to save her family’s future and get them out of any further violence that
London could inflict on them[2]. Fielding describes, with irony, her image’s
evaluation at the hands of the pawnbroker:
The intrinsic value of the gold,
in which this picture was set, and of the little diamonds which surrounded it,
amounted to nine guineas. This therefore
was advanced to her; and the prettiest face in the world (such is often the
fate of beauty) was deposited, as of no value into the bargain. (p.495).
An example of an eighteenth century miniature, here sourced from pinterest.
It is here that the clash between private and public spheres
becomes most strained. It seems that by
going out into the world and pawning an image of herself (even though this
image celebrates her status as virtuous woman), that Amelia is in danger of
having her virtue sullied by the “taint of commercial transactions”[3]. This action however, shows a desperation to
protect her family that leads to the pawnbroker’s shrewd evaluation of her own
worth – in which it turns out that it is how she is framed that is worth more (ahh, little changes, eh?). In having the scene of Amelia at the pawnshop
(pp.495-6) follow so closely on the scene of Atkinson declaring love (p.490),
it is as if “Amelia is banking on the response that her looks have elicited in
Atkinson when she takes her portrait to the pawn shop”[4]. The fact that Amelia has the presence of mind
to calculate her own worth and manage to be paid for the presentation of it,
without tarnish to her reputation, is testament to her ingenuity. The reason why it works is that Amelia is the
object of “numerous” and conflicting “valuations”[5]. People compete over her because “she brings
together a competitive public and an affective private value by embodying a
secured object of competition that deserves an unflagging affection”[6].
(In other words, you want what you can’t have and the grass is always
greener.) In this safe and limited way,
Amelia has managed to come out of the private sphere sufficiently to ensure the
continued financial viability of her family, avoiding the confusion of
‘slippage’ in her moral value against which Conway cautioned in my last post
(see the index at the top).
Gambling was endemic in the eighteenth century, and mostly unregulated, it would have been easy for Booth to fall foul of the idea of Lady Luck. (This image sourced from mikerendell.com)
However, it is Booth who needs to rearrange his moral values
in the long run, as Amelia can only do so much to shore up the situation
against the almost inevitable ruin into which Booth will precipitate them if
left unchecked. Amelia has always had
her strong religious beliefs to bolster her, whereas Fielding has made it clear
that Booth is labouring under a misapprehension, namely:
That a larger share of
misfortunes had fallen to his lot than he had merited; and this led him […]
into a disadvantageous opinion of providence. […] that every man acted merely
from the force of that passion which was uppermost in his mind, and could do no
otherwise. (pp.23-24)
It is this belief in his own innocence and non-culpability,
his conviction that he can do no other than follow every whim, with no
discipline (of either philosophy or religion), that have caused him to fall
into the debt and other entanglements he exposes his family to. At the altar of this misapprehension can be
laid: his thoughtless gaming (p.438), feeble attempts at bribery for preferment
(p.457 and 481), as well as the troublesome affair with Miss Matthews, that
almost causes his death by duelling at the hand of one of his ‘friends’,
Colonel James, who has also fallen under Miss Matthews spell. The only reason this fails, is that another
of his ‘friends’, Trent, has him arrested for debt (p.499-501). He is finally ‘cured’ of his irresponsibility
when he “discards the false doctrine that men act from their predominant
passion, and its corollary that moral struggle is futile”[7]. Furthermore, he has to stop thinking that his
errors resulted more from his impecunious situation than from any inherent
weakness of judgement.
Williams argues that “Fielding portrayed [Booth] in the vise
of circumstances”[8]. Booth’s utter uselessness in the outside
world have led critics to misjudge his entire personality, but as Angela
Smallwood has pointed out, Booth has always been a good and liberal husband
where matters financial were not concerned[9]
– and that his “ability to feel for Amelia in the distress he imposes on her
[…] maintain the orientation of his nature toward goodness”[10]. Booth’s encounter with “the law make [him]
realize that both satisfaction and power lie within the circumscribed sphere of
family life where bands of affection remain intact”[11]. It may be that Brittain Williams is correct
when she suggests that for each of his three imprisonments, Booth has learned
something, and this may account for his somewhat abrupt religious conversion
after reading Barrow’s Sermons. Brittain
Williams describes him encountering a different philosophical position in a
conversation with an inmate in each incarceration, each time learning something
he can use to become a better man and a more responsible husband[12]. This may be true, but these learning
encounters are also an example of Fielding’s being inclined to allow Providence
begin its actions: after Amelia’s pivotal act of taking her destiny under her
control, followed by Booth’s sudden reform, the scene is set for a happy ending
for the couple.
The sudden restoration of the money out of which Amelia was
swindled near the beginning of the novel (by a rather unlikely coincidental
meeting), and the couple’s earnestly desired relocation to the countryside,
leave some uncomfortable questions for readers about limitations and dependency. Michael Irwin suggests that it underlines the
fact that Amelia is a story of “love and money”[13]
(and what wasn’t in those days if aimed at female readership – practicalities
were all survival was about…). Money is
earned: but ‘gentlemen’ cannot earn, as society is too corrupt, as Booth
discovers to his cost; so Fielding simply helps his protagonists escape London
(the worst of society). Money can only
ever aid escape from corruption, not fix the corruption itself. If that is the case, moral virtue is the
strongest weapon against corruption.
Indeed, Fielding also implies that “perfect virtue is unassailable”, as
Amelia survives what Mrs Bennet does not.
So “the ethics of self-preservation in a corrupt society are left
unclear”[14].
Though this is an early 19th century example of a 'rural idyll', it shows all the elements that townies, now nostalgic for a countryside their parents/ grandparents were forced to abandon to look for work invested in the dream that became - and for many of us urbanites, still is... The Countryside. The peace, the tranquility - the odd way that it all looks very clean! (This image from denzilgrant.wordpress.com)
Booth has a very weak grasp on moral virtue (as we have
argued), and the implication is that without both Amelia’s influence and removal from the site of temptation,
he and others like him will not survive uncorrupted. This is an important point. Irwin is not the only critic to feel
uncomfortable with the abruptly executed
happy ending for the Booths, and Malvin Zirker notes the retrograde aspect
of going to live in the country at the
end, which is on one sense “the abnegation of the modern commercial world”[15]
– the couple could not survive in
modern reality, you could say. Booth had to go into the country, as there was
a danger “of moral recidivism”[16].
Several critics have suggested that Robinson was meant to be
seen as Booth’s double:[17]
though he reforms, he stays in the city and then relapses into his old ways,
hung eventually as a highwayman. In
Robinson’s fate, Fielding warns against the dangerous temptations of the
city. Thus this implies that Booth
survives despite his many travails, because he has the private sphere strongly
behind him (and a means of escape to a place where he can concentrate on it) –
whereas poor Robinson, who only had himself to rely on, succumbed to the many
public sphere temptations, as there was nothing else in his life.
Liz Bellamy reads the ending of Amelia in a rather negative and passive light, viewing the whole
action of the novel as being a play on Amelia’s name: simply a move toward an
‘amelioration’ of circumstances[18]. Richard A. Rosengarten concurs with this view
of the ending as a retreat. He sees the
running away to the country at the end of the book as exactly that, seeming to
forget that the Booths were catapulted to London in the first place not be
choice but by financial necessity[19]. Once the necessary evil of a stay in the city
is no longer a consideration, Fielding returns his characters to their original
setting: the innocent and uncorrupted countryside. Samuel L. Macey believes that Fielding
subscribes to an Austen-like ‘realism’: he wants his protagonists to end up
happily married in the country, living good and simple lives. He points out that Fielding never loses sight
of the need for “a sufficient competence” and “the highly realistic monetary
requirement of providing the funds to make such a promising outcome possible”[20].
What Fielding intended by this ending is not clear, and
whilst I am inclined to believe the booths removed themselves to a site of
greater defensibility for Booth’s weak moral state, I am also inclined to view
this as a victory for Amelia and her command of the private sphere. Though she was at a serious disadvantage
throughout the novel, dependent on a man she adored but who was hapless, she
nevertheless turned the situation around to her own advantage, as the pattern
of life they are living by the end, is one of her design: “nothing could equal the serenity of their lives”
(p545).
In the next part of this long essay, I shall focus on a
novel in which the female protagonist is forced (like the Booths), into the
city and experiences, like them, a range of severe difficulties. Unlike the Booths however, Cecilia is both
single, and in receipt of a huge inheritance.
In Fielding’s novel, it was made to seem that if only they had money,
this would cure all their problems; but in Burney’s novel, Cecilia finds that
money is her worst burden and almost wrecks her life…
Until next time!
[1]
W. Austin Flanders, Structures of
Experience: History, Society and Personal Life in the Eighteenth Century
British Novel (Colombia, S. Carolina: University of South Carolina Press,
1984), p.174.
[2]
James Thompson, ‘Patterns of Property and Possession in Fielding’s Fiction’, in
Eighteenth Century Fiction, Vol. III,
No.1, October 1990, pp.21-42 (p.155)
[3]
John P. Zomchick, Family and the Law in
Eighteenth Century Fiction: The Public Conscience in the Private Sphere
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p.132.
[4]
Alison Conway, Private Interests: Women,
Portraiture, and the Visual Culture of the English Novel, 1709-1791
(Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 2001), p.148.
[5]
Zomchick, p.132.
[6]
Ibid.
[7]
Muriel Brittain Williams, Marriage: Fielding’s Mirror of Morality (Alabama:
University of Alabama press, 1973), p.98. The ‘predominant passion’ was a
notion present in society since the concept of Greek humours had become
fashionable, but had recently been popularised by Pope, poet and satirist.
[8]
Brittain Williams, p.111.
[9]
Booth’s behaviour falls into the liberal husband type described by Lawrence
Stone as an integral part of an eighteenth century “companionate marriage”. The sort of husband who values his wife’s
opinion and both consults and listens to her views. Stone describes these marriages as love
matches, where the power distribution is not equal, but there is less emphasis
on wifely obedience. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England:
1500-1800 (London: Penguin, this edn. 1979), p.218-9.
[10]
Zomchick, p.133. Beth Swan argues that
Booth did not learn as much from the law, as from Amelia’s attitude, her
“consistently holding the moral high ground”.
Beth Swan, Fictions of Law
(Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1997), p.186.
[11]
Angela J. Smallwood, Fielding and the
Woman Question: The Novels of Henry Fielding and the Feminist Debate, 1700-1750
(New York: St. Martin’s Press/ Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), p.169.
[12]
Brittain Williams, pp.111-114.
[13]
Michael Irwin, Henry Fielding: The
Tentative Realist (Oxford: Clarendon press, 1967), p.132.
[14]
Ibid.
[15]
Malvin Zirker, Fielding’s Social
Pamphlets (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 139.
[16]
Zomchick, p.152.
[17]
John Richetti, The English Novel in
History, 1700-1780 (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p.153.
[18]
Liz Bellamy, Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth Century Novel
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.89.
[19]
Richard A. Rosengarten, Henry Fielding
and the Narrative of Providence: Divine Design and the Incursions of Evil
(New York: Palgrave, 2000), p.94.
[20]
Samuel L. Macey, Money and the Novel:
Mercenary Motivation in Defoe and His Immediate Successors (Victoria,
British Colombia: Sono Nis Press, 1983), pp. 144-5.
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