Women, Money and Debt in the 18th
Century Novel, Part 5:
Amelia, Section 2
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 introduced you to 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. This is the next part of my analysis of her
story, her journey as a woman in an alien financial world of the 1800s,
burgeoning free market capitalism – how does she cope with the people around
her, all of whom seem to want something?
***
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.
Welcome to part 2 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
Amelia saves the day by inheriting some money from her mother – she pays off
the debt her husband was imprisoned for, and they make a run for it back to the
respectable country, from the wicked and dissolute city. The End.
It’s a real eye opener to the attitudes of the times.
***
Whilst Flanders comments on “the venal commercialism of
human relationships”[1]
within the prison, Thompson notes the importance of money to the action in the
wider London Milieu: “things are for sale that shouldn’t be for sale”[2].
Indeed, throughout the book, the rich take advantage of those poorer (little
changes…). Examples of two characters
who abuse their positions of trust to take advantage of those they have offered
help to, show Fielding aware that folly and vice are frequently rewarded in the
often corrupt arena that was public society.
'Henri Fane and His Guardians', by Gainsborough. This was the sort of image the aristocracy liked to present of themselves, though the cartoons of many commentators of the time, told a much more dissolute story.
Firstly, the Lord (an example of corrupt aristocracy) who
debauched Mrs Bennet offers to pay her husband’s debts, not as a form of
charitable aid but as a means to put her under obligation to grant him sexual
favours (pp.295-300). Secondly, Colonel
James (an example of the corruption within the military establishment) promises
to pay Booth’s debts and get him a foreign commission; but his real desire is
to remove Booth from the scene in order to seduce his wife(p.327, 344-5,
375). The Lord and Colonel James use the
financial problems of others as a means to their own ends. By placing Mrs Bennet and Amelia under an
obligation they can only repay with sex, these men attempt to force them into
liaisons that are akin to coerced prostitution.
Unlike Roxana, who seizes the situation of debt and
repayment and turns it to her own advantage (for a while), Amelia’s and Mrs
Bennet’s situations are complicated by the presence of their husbands, and
their strong Christian moral codes.
Amelia chooses to brave out the hardship rather than take on an
obligation she cannot satisfy, while Mrs Bennet lacks Amelia’s natural caution
and is ruined by the standards of the day, forced into a life of retreat
(wonderful double standards; man who seduces her not forced to any change at
all!). Mrs Bennets only weapon against
such instances later in life is to use her own story as a cautionary tale to
save others, as she does with Amelia.
Alison Conway comments that for Fielding, commercial vice is seen as
gendered: “In London, a woman’s beauty is understood to be for sale. Indeed, almost all social and commercial
transactions lead back to some kind of prostitution.[3]” She elaborates on this position, proposing
that Fielding has chosen to
[…] represent the sins of
modernity, and particularly of modern capital, in metaphors of the sexually
diseased, and usually female body. […]
The disease of commercial culture seems embodied in corrupt sexual
behaviour which circulates, like money, unseen and unnamed.[4]
In contrast to the goodness of the largely unseen Amelia
(unseen at least, for a good portion of the earlier part of the novel), the
women we do see are venal in the extreme: Mrs Trent, Colonel James’s wife and
Mrs Ellison (who actively pimps).
Fielding commonly presents both marriages and his portraits of female
friendships within Amelia as
manipulative and venal; Amelia is the only character in the whole of the book
who is always simply sincere and authentic, never using wiles. Even Mrs Bennet, when she is Mrs Atkinson,
uses her friend Amelia by dressing up as her at the masquerade, to try and get
military preferment for her husband (pp.416-7).
A cartoon by Rowlandson, called 'Launching a Frigate'. This satirised the way some older women in polite society often preyed upon younger less fortunate ones, luring them into prostitution with promises of security and a better, more protected life. The women were pimps at best, Madams more often.
Thompson views the novel’s partial focus on prostitution
(which he terms “domesticity’s contradiction”) as closely allied with Amelia’s general tone of antagonism
toward “capitalisation”[5]. He sees a pivotal comparison between Amelia,
her role as ‘the good wife’, safeguarding her integrity at all costs, and Mrs
Trent. Amelia is explicitly termed
Booth’s “Treasure” (p.235), as compared to the worthless Mrs Bath or Colonel
Trent’s wife, who is a commodity to be traded. “Wives are supposed to have use
but not exchange value”[6]. (Ah, economics!!!) Benedict also examines the other marriages
portrayed in the book, finding the Trents’ a pimping arrangement, the James’s
frigid and ambitious, and the Booths’ something of a role reversal, with a
woman all but heading the household. She
concludes that
[…] the pairing and mirroring of
marriages in the novel sketches a structure that continually reinforces the
possibility that a loose domestic union will create unhappiness and corrupt
public values and behaviour[7].
Morris Golden sums up the London scene perfectly:
The stakes are mean – military
promotion, prestige at the expense of others, sexuality without a trace of
exuberance – and the game is wearying.
Ant reminder of virtue is a roaring joke[8].
He adds that this is the environment in which Booth succumbs
to temptations, and in which Amelia is left to dodge the attentions of
dissipated men. Booth’s reaction is to
become “overwhelmed by the perplexing, dominant superficiality of society”,
which has imprinted its own external “chaos” within his internal self[9].
The idea of the 'angel in the house', women's natural calling to the glorious private sphere was celebrated most in Victorian times, but it was a cult well underway in the eighteenth century, with the paintings of artist Pehr Hilleström, a Swede, much to thank for it. Mini propagandist works as these genre scenes were, showing women going peacefully and contentedly about their domestic bliss, they did much to prop up the seperate roles theory,along with religious conditioning.
Booth’s only respite from the unrelenting corruption of the
public sphere is his very different life at home, with Amelia. Even here, Fielding’s narrator informs us,
financial strains are beginning to create trouble between husband and wife:
[since] how is it possible that
without running in debt, any persons should maintain the dress and appearance
of a gentleman, whose income is not half so good as a porter? (p.184)
As well as this problem with necessary appearances[10]
(which was proved necessary by the behaviour of those like Justice Thrasher),
all the tempting offers of loans and help from rapacious ‘friends’ confuse
Booth. He can only look to Amelia, and
hope for once his moral compass is guiding him rightly, when he worries
I own I am afraid of obligations,
as the worst kind of debts; for I have generally observed that those who confer
them, expect to be repaid ten thousand fold.
(p.235)
Amelia always gives Booth good advice (whether he takes it
or not); and occasionally even subsumes her own good sense, by not rebuking him
when he has been particularly irresponsible of gullible, resulting in yet
another loss of money for the already fragilely balanced family. A typical incident, to illustrate Amelia’s
devotion to her family, and easy practise of frugality, is summed up by
Fielding, one day when Booth is late home for dinner:
Having sat some time […], reflecting on their distress’d
situation, her spirits grew very low; […] she [nearly rang] the bell to send
her maid for a half pint of white-wine, but check’d her inclination in order to save them the little
sum of sixpence. […] And this
self-denial she was very probably practising, […] while her husband was paying
a debt of several guineas incurred by the ace of trumps being in the hands of
his adversary. (p.439)
Cartoons of the eighteenth century took joy in pointing out the dangers of gambling - for all classes, not just the poor. Some gaming was illegal and houses could be raided.
The aristocracy were no better - Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire here depicted gambling for her usual huge sums, by cartoonist Rowlandson, a figure as famous in those days, as we remember Hogarth to be now.
The wider portrayal of the London mis-en-scene, together
with an incident like this, with its clear boundaries between the good matron
at home suffering for the sake of goodness and Christian prudence, contrasted
with the obviously ruinous world of gaming, allows several critics to make
rather bald assumptions about Fielding’s intentions. These critics maintain that he wished us to
see public affairs through the medium of private issues. As Benedict puts it: “Fielding is equating
domestic and political arrangements”[11]. Although it is true that the novel lays heavy
emphasis on the goodness of Amelia at home versus the rapaciousness of social
relations away from the sanctity of hearth, other critics have found the theme
of corrupt elites and microcosmic examination of private affairs leading to
conclusions on public affairs a trifle trite and incomplete. Zomchick for example, comments: “corruption
in the public sphere and honest affection in the private are necessary representational
antitheses for the more accurate representation of Amelia as a character[12]. They are not there simply to draw a binary
moral opposite within the didactic scheme of the novel.
Many critics have deplored the failure of this scheme in the
novel. Castle, for example, views the
first half of Amelia as having no
plot, because its incessant didactics get in the way. Indeed, Castle sees the novel as akin to
Booth’s desultory “perambulations around the prison yard, from one sense of
iniquity to another” (p.199). Michael
Irwin views this in a kindlier way, feeling that “since the story has so heavy
a didactic load to carry, it is not surprising the structure should be subject
to strain”. Castle also comments that
the basic “embedded issue” of Booth’s financial situation is often lost in the
“welter” of small incidents of hypocrisy and setback.[13].
I incline more towards Zomchick’s assessment, as I think the
containing of Amelia within the home sphere causes her to be both tellingly
circumscribed and almost iconic, as a presentation of the plight of
‘respectable’ females in the mid eighteenth century (remember, Amelia was published in 1751). The path Amelia has chosen, that of wife – adoring wife – has limited her power as
an individual, both economically and emotionally. However, as Roxana’s fragmented identity
showed us in her sections, perhaps clinging to a small and constricting role is
safer for a woman of Amelia’s or
Roxana’s middle class background at that time.
Certainly, the financial troubles caused by her husband’s ineptitude
forces all kinds of strain on Amelia’s sense of her public self, and forces her
several times from the private to the public sphere – to her detriment.
George Cruikshank's depiction of street fighting in London, as late as 1823, shows just one of the many dangers of London. Many caused by drinking and gambling debts - both of thos eoften linked to extreme poverty. Note the fighters in this pic are not poor; records of the time show minor street fights as incredibly common, even in the better parts of town. This carried on from the early seventeenth well into the late 18th century.
Fielding makes clear her danger in the world outside,
through a number of symbolic incidents.
A ready example would be Amelia fainting when she visits Booth for the
first time in the public sphere of the prison (p.153), as a figurative way of
showing she cannot survive outside the private sphere. (This is a likely assumption, as Fielding is
fond of symbols, such as the extended use of Sophia’s muff as a symbol for her
virtue in Tom Jones.) Conway eloquently describes Fielding’s
characterization of Amelia as a “miniature portrait” – and elaborates on this
image, discussing Amelia’s literal forays into the public domain, as echoed by
the fact of her actual miniature, stolen by Sergeant Atkinson, being carried
out into the public domain. What happens
to a woman – or to the idea of a virtuous woman – outside, without male
protection, is very different from her reception when perceived to be with a
man. Conway notes that
The difficulty of establishing an
icon of virtue whose meaning cannot be misunderstood emerges in Fielding’s
attempt to render Amelia as an active heroine in a place [the public sphere]
where no one will recognise her moral value[14].
She goes on to explain what happens to Amelia in public:
“[her] meaning is necessarily altered when she enters the corrupt public
domain, and neither her appearance nor her actions can rectify that
slippage.” Thus it would follow that
Amelia’s place is safely within the home, where she excels, exercising her
“talents of cookery, of which she was a great mistress, from the highest to the
lowest” (p.496); whereas in public she is twice mistaken for a prostitute
(pp.401-2, 405-6). Amelia’s rejection of
the values of the public sphere, as she unknowingly tries to comfort her
husband, explain her success in the private.
She says:
Great fortunes are not necessary
to happiness. For my own part, I can
level my mind with any state; and for those poor little things, whatever
condition of life we breed them to, that will be sufficient to maintain them
in. […] For it is not from nature, but
from education and habit, that our wants are chiefly derived. […] Industry will always provide us with a meal;
and I will take care, that neatness and cheerfulness shall make it a pleasant
one. (p.157)
She manages, “without demanding autonomy” for herself, to
provide by her labour what her husband apparently cannot[15]. Due to her supervision of an adequate (if
undeniably thrifty) household order, Amelia produces an alternative to the
extravagant economies of the public sphere.
In this way, she usurps Booth’s role as breadwinner, in the sense that
she is the more efficient manager of the two.
Despite the restriction of her circumstances, as physically the Booths
cannot go too far from the court, and must hide indoors lest they are seized by
creditors, for a good portion of the novel (p.202); and economically, Amelia
proves that her understanding of the rules that manage her sphere is superior
to Booth’s understanding of his. Booth’s incapacity to manage money causes a bleeding
of the public world into the private. Family life and privacy have their cost:
“In Amelia, to lack wherewithal means
exposing the private world to the demands of another’s self-interest”[16].
***
We’ll leave Amelia there for now, stuck between the need to
go outside and the fact that it was fundamentally unsafe to do so, as a certain
sort of woman, in those times. What can she do? How can she get her husband out
of debtor’s prison? Her friends cannot or will not help. What will happen to
her? How does Fielding resolve the tale?
The last part of Amelia’s tale next time…and then we will look at what
happens to an heiress, a woman who has all her own money. Surely THAT can’t
go wrong?!
Think again…
[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.292.
[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.39).
[3]
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.143.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Thompson, p.155.
[6]
Ibid.
[7]
Barbara M. Benedict, Framing Feeling:
Sentiment and Style in English Prose Fiction,1745-1800 (New York: AMS
Press,1994), p.39.
[8]
Morris Golden, Fielding’s Moral
Psychology (Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts press,1966), p.51.
[9]
Golden, p.98.
[10]
Muldrew notes this is a very real problem for the ‘middling sort’ of the age:
“What mattered was not an internalized or autonomous self, but the public perception
of the self in relation to a communicated set of both personal and household
virtues,” - Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of
Creditand Social Relations in Early Modern England (London: Macmillan
Press, 1998), p.156.
[11]
Benedict, p.35.
[12]
John P.Zomchick, Family and the Law in
Eighteenth-Century Fiction: The Public Conscience in the Private Sphere
(Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1993), p.131.
[13]
Both critics comments taken from Henry
Fielding: The Tentative Realist (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1967), p.122.
[14]
Conway, p.144.
[15]
Zomchick, p.142.
[16]
Zomchick, p.137.
