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Wicked Actions and Feigned Words: Criminals, Criminality, and the Early English Novel Author(S): Lennard J

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Wicked Actions and Feigned Words: Criminals, Criminality, and the Early English Novel Author(S): Lennard J Wicked Actions and Feigned Words: Criminals, Criminality, and the Early English Novel Author(s): Lennard J. Davis Reviewed work(s): Source: Yale French Studies, No. 59, Rethinking History: Time, Myth, and Writing (1980), pp. 106-118 Published by: Yale University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2929817 . Accessed: 24/01/2013 12:34 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Yale University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Yale French Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded on Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:34:50 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lennard J. Davis Wicked Actions and Feigned Words: Criminals,Criminality, and the Early EnglishNovel In 1725 JamesArbuckle wrote an articlein the Dublin Journalwhich condemned the reading of novels. He attacked those "fabulous adventuresand memoiresof pirates,whores, and pickpocketswhere- withfor sometime past thepress has so prodigiouslyswarmed." What particularlygalled Arbucklewas thatmembers of the middleclasses were being attractedto the kindof literaturethat had formerlybeen the fodderof the lowerclasses. Arbucklemakes thispoint saying that "your Robinson Crusoes, Moll Flanders, Sally Salisburysand John Shepards have affordednotable instanceshow easy it is to gratifyour curiosity,and how indulgentwe are to the biographersof Newgate, who have been as greedilyread by people of the bettersort as the compilersof lastspeeches and dyingwords by the rabble." I Arbuckle's words reflecta view widelyheld among the upper and middle class Englishduring the late seventeenthand earlyeighteenth centuries that novels were immoral,criminal, and dangerousprecisely because of theirassociation with popular culture.While it is clear thatnovelists like Richardsonand Fieldinghad a broaderapproval from the middle classes, earlierEnglish novels tendedto be regardedas vulgar,illicit, and irreligious.What I would like to suggestin thisessay is thatthe precise nature of the danger of novels in England duringthis time comes not so muchfrom the factthat novels depict low-life activities, robberies,sexual encountersand so on but thatthe whole projectof thenovel in thisperiod, its very theoretical and structuralassumptions, were seen as criminalin nature,and thatat leastpart of this perception ' Here and throughout18th century spelling and punctuationhave been modernized. JamesArbuckle, A Collectionof Lettersand Essays . .. LatelyPublished in theDublin Journal(London: 1729), I, p. 71 in Alan D. McKillop, The Early Mastersof English Fiction(Lawrence, Kansas: Universityof Kansas Press, 1956), p. 44. 106 This content downloaded on Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:34:50 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lennard J. Davis was specificallyassociated withthe fear of threatenedviolence and social unrestfrom the lower classes. I should quicklyadd, however, that the early novel in England could and did fulfillthe equally opposite goal ofkeeping that lower class in itsplace. The complexityof thisdouble functionremains to be exploredin the followingpages. The project of reading and writingnovels was taintedfrom the outset. Prefacesto novels in England duringthe seventeenthcentury are filledwith apologies of theircriminal associations.2 Richard Head beginshis book The EnglishRogue (1665) bysaying that in beingwith and writingabout criminals"I have been somewhatsoiled by their vicious practices."3 Daniel Defoe, in acting as "editor" to Moll Flanders's narrative,says that he has had to translateMoll's wordsinto more modest ones since the first-personaccount of a criminalis inherentlyillicit: "When a woman debauched fromher youth,nay, even being the offspringof debaucheryand vice, comes to give an accountof all hervicious practices . an authormust be hardput to it to wrap it up so clean. "4 Anotherwriter during the seventeenth centurymaintained that the literarytrade was on a par with the criminalone. In factwhores are betterthan authors because "a good, honestcarted whore . willmake ye some conscienceyet of turning up on the marketplace, whereas the other [the author]without so much as waitingfor the question,prostitutes himself upon everybulk to all comers."5 Even a topographicalstudy of London duringthe eighteenthcentury revealed that "the subcultureof Grub Street mergedelements of criminalLondon (derivingpartly from the actual surroundingsin whichthe writersworked, partly from the natureof their work) with elements of the 'literary'subculture. ..."6 It is difficultto escape the conclusionthat somethingabout the literary trade was consideredillicit, disreputable, and even criminal. 2Clearly,I am skirtingthe issue of what constitutes a novel, a questiontoo broad to cover adequatelyhere. However, I am mainlyconcerned with examining those works which depict ordinarylife or low-lifeand am thereforearbitrarily excluding romances, which are forthe mostpart idealized versionsof upper-classlife. See mybook FactualFictions: Studies in the Originsof theEnglish Novel (in progress)for further clarification on thisissue. 3RichardHead, The EnglishRogue (Boston: New Frontiers,1961), p. 8. 4Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders(New York: Norton,1973), p. 3. 'Anon., Poor Robin's Memoireswith his Life, Travelsand Adventures(London: 1677), I, p. 1. 6Pat Rogers, Grub Street:Studies in Subculture(London: Methuen,1972), p. 291. 107 This content downloaded on Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:34:50 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Yale FrenchStudies Readers were no less culpable thanwriters. The habitof reading novels was a sure sign that a youngman or woman was on the way down. A libertinein JohnDunton's The NightWalker: Or Evening Ramblesin Search of Lewd Women(1696) admitsthat he foundpleasure at an earlyage in readingnovels; Mary Carleton, the forger and thief,is depicted as fallinginto themire of criminalityby readingnovels at an early age and, like Don Quixote, "believing all she read to be true . supposed herselfto be no less thana heroina;"Mr. Badman ofJohn Bunyan's allegory is linkedto thosewho read "tales [that]must needs be adornedwith lies."7 The road to perditionin theseventeenth and earlyeighteenth centuries was paved withnovels and led inevitably to the gallows. It was the reader,according to Daniel Defoe, who was ultimatelyresponsible for the criminal application of literature. "If the reader makes a wronguse of the figures[in Roxana] thewickedness is his own."8 Thus, at least accordingto theseaccounts, those who read novels were implicatedin the generalillicit enterprise of fiction. The frequencywith which the earlyEnglish novels of the seven- teenth and early eighteenthcenturies focused on the criminalis significant.There seems to have been somethinginherently novelistic about the criminal,or ratherthe form of thenovel seemsto demanda criminalcontent. Indeed, withoutthe appearance of the whore,the rogue, the cutpurse,the cheat, the thief,the outsider,it would be impossibleto imaginethe genre of thenovel coming about. The image of the criminalis complexand seemsto serveat least twodiffering and opposingpurposes. On theone hand,the criminal signifies sinfulness, evil, and degeneration.His lifeis to be avoided and hisfate deplored. On the otherhand, the criminal'slife, especially as it was depictedin criminalbiographies and novels,serves as a meansto lead thecriminal (and the reader) to repentanceand salvation. Thus, the criminal's historyserves a double functionas both an example of a life to be avoided and an exampleof a self-scrutinyand repentanceto be imitated. 7SpiroPeterson, ed., The CounterfeitLady Unveiledand OtherCriminal Fiction of SeventeenthCentury England (Garden City, New York: Archer, 1961), p. 98; John Dunton, The NightWalker: or EveningRambles in SearchAfter Lewd Women(October 1696), p. 1; JohnBunyan, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman and The Holy War (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1905), p. 23. 8Daniel Defoe, The FortunateMistress or. Roxana (Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare Head, 1928), p. x. 108 This content downloaded on Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:34:50 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lennard J. Davis Public execution,or the threatof execution,is a requiredelement in the criminalnovel, as is the repentencethat usually results from the gallows encounter. Moll Flanders, for example, when faced with Newgate Prison's "hellishnoise, the roaring,swearing and clamour, the stenchand nastiness"and herimminent death, becomes "covered withshame and tears forthings past, and yethad at the same timea secret surprisingjoy at the prospectof being a truepenitent.... 9 Even those unrepententcriminals, like the notoriousJonathan Wild who picks the pocket of the Chaplain of Newgate on his way to the gallows,serve to emphasizethe power of thelaw and ofreligion if only by dis-example.But, it is throughthe momentof executionthat the ordinaryfelon becomes transformed,as it were, into a speaker of truth.According to Michel Foucault, the criminal'sbody becomes a surface onto which was emblazoned the judgment of the state. However, in exchangefor the corporealpunishment, the criminalis given temporarypower
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