“Good Heads and Good Hearts”: Sarah Fielding’s Moral Romance

Abstract

“GOOD HEADS AND GOOD HEARTS” : SARAH FIELDING’S MORAL ROMANCE STEWART J. COOKE McGill University I n book 6, chapter 5, of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, Sophia Western, surprised by her aunt in the act of reading a novel, hastily shuts the book. Stung by Mrs. Western’s suggestions of impropriety, Sophia defends both herself and the novel by singing the praises of its author: Upon my Word, Madam . . . it is a Book which I am neither ashamed nor afraid to own I have read. It is the Production of a young Lady of Fashion, whose good Understanding, I think, doth Honour to her Sex, and whose good Heart is an Honour to Human Nature. (1: 286) Mrs. Western, conceding that “the Author is of a very good Family” but objecting that “she is not much among People one knows,” then admits that she has “never read [the work]; for the best Judges say, there is not much in it.” The confession provokes Sophia into delivering an impromptu review: I dare not, Madam, set up my own Opinion . . . against the best Judges, but there appears to me a great deal of human Nature in it; and in many Parts, so much true Tenderness and Delicacy, that it hath cost me many a Tear. (1: 286) Sarah Fielding, who is probably the “young lady” whose sensibility Sophia finds so affecting (1: 286 nl), was, indeed, of a good family, and the book that provokes Sophia’s tearful response to its fine sentiments, The Adventures of David Simple, published anonymously in May 1744, was the first of Fielding’s eight novels. Contrary to Mrs. Western’s declaration, Sophia’s appreciation of the novel was shared by many of the “best Judges” who, like Sophia, “love[d] a tender sensation” (1: 286). The anonymous “lover of virtue” who wrote the Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, for example, preferred the character of David Simple to that of Richardson’s paragon Grandison, and applauded “the ingenious authoress of David Simple, perhaps the best moral romance that we have” (19). Arthur Murphy, the playwright and biographer, wrote that “Sarah Fielding . . . is well known to the literary world by the proofs she has given of a lively and penetrating genius in many elegant performances, particularly David Simple” (231). And Clara Reeve, the novelist and critic, thought Sarah’s works “not unworthy next to be 268 mentioned after her brother’s, if they do not equal them in wit and learning, they excell in some other material merits, that are more beneficial to their readers” (1: 142). In contrast to their eighteenth-century predecessors, twentieth-century critics have until recently belittled Sarah Fielding as the moon snatching her pale fire from her brother’s sun. Wilbur Cross, for instance, in his biog­ raphy of Henry Fielding, condescendingly writes of David Simple that altogether the novel was a rather pale yet delicate reflection of the master, just such a book as should come from the sister of Henry Fielding, who had lived with him, listened to his wonderful conversation, and read the books he thought not too hard for her. (2: 7) Another of Henry’s biographers, F. Homes Dudden, describes the novel’s “shrewd observation of human nature,” its “occasional strokes of gentle ironic humour,” and its “tolerance of harmless weaknesses combined with a healthy hatred of hypocrisies and shams” as “reflections, though perhaps somewhat pale ones, of Fielding’s characteristics” (1: 506).1 It is only in the past few years, now that feminist critics have turned their attention to her, that Sarah Fielding has begun to receive once more the respect she enjoyed two centuries ago, if not for the same reasons. Mary Anne Schofield, for example, commends her ability “to explore and uncover the hidden caverns of the female mind” (10), Deborah Downs-Miers sees “the real subject of Fielding’s work” to be “the liminality of women, the suspension of their consciousness between being-object and becoming subject” (309), and Carolyn Woodward praises David Simple as the most “radically feminist” of Sarah Fielding’s novels (61). The writer at the centre of this renewed critical activity occupies a unique position in literary...