The Politics of Sophia Western’s Muff

Abstract

In this article, I read Henry Fielding’s jokes about Sophia’s muff in Tom Jones (1749) in relation to the novel’s historical context: the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. I complicate earlier readings by scholars who have argued that the government of Sophia is an allegory for the government of the nation. I trace how the embedded it-narrative of the muff figures Sophia’s marriage contract as an analogy for the social contract, one that considers whether govern ment should be decided by paternal authority or consent of the governed. Sophia’s muff foregrounds this analogy and the novel’s political allegory because muffs, as references to vaginas, metonymize the body part that determined how monarchies, money, and property were transferred. By attending to the debate about political right around this metonym for sex right, I examine how Fielding’s muff jokes directly engage with the fundamental question posed by the Jacobite rebellions: which family had a better right to inherit the crown, the Stuarts or the Hanovers?