Errors and Reconciliations: Marriage in the Plays and Early Novels of Henry Fielding
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ERRORS AND RECONCILIATIONS: MARRIAGE IN THE PLAYS AND EARLY NOVELS OF HENRY FIELDING ANACLARA CASTRO SANTANA SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF PHD THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE SEPTEMBER 2013 ABSTRACT This thesis explores Henry Fielding’s fascination with marriage, and the importance of the marriage plot in his plays and early novels. Its main argument is twofold: it contends that Fielding presents marriage as symptomatic of moral and social evils on the one hand, and as a powerful source of moral improvement on the other. It also argues that the author imported and adapted the theatrical marriage plot—a key diegetic structure of stage comedies of the early eighteenth century—into his prose fictions. Following the hypothesis that this was his favourite narrative vehicle, as it proffered harmony between form and content, the thesis illustrates the ways in which Fielding transposed some of the well-established dramatic conventions of the marriage plot into the novel, a genre that was gaining in cultural status at the time. The Introduction provides background information for the study of marriage in Fielding’s work, offering a brief historical contextualization of marital laws and practices before the Marriage Act of 1753. Section One presents close readings of ten representative plays, investigating the writer’s first discovery of the theatrical marriage plot, and the ways in which he appropriated and experimented with it. The four chapters that compose the second part of the thesis trace the interrelated development of the marriage plot and theatrical motifs in Fielding’s early novels, namely Shamela (1741), Joseph Andrews (1742), Jonathan Wild (1743), and The Female Husband (1746). By drawing attention to the continuities between Fielding’s plays and novels, my research challenges the conventional Richardson-Fielding dichotomy, proposing alternative readings that demonstrate that Fielding’s novels are more indebted to their author’s theatrical past than to the factual, but frequently overstated, rivalry with Samuel Richardson. A key argument, which this thesis offers as an innovative contribution, is that the novel form as moulded by Fielding at mid-century has an explicitly theatrical bearing, which has hitherto not been studied. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................... vii AUTHOR’S DECLARATION .................................................................................... viii Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 Historical contexts ........................................................................................................... 10 I. Eighteenth-century marriage in England, a brief overview .................................... 10 II. Fielding and marriage ............................................................................................................ 24 Critical contexts ................................................................................................................ 27 Chapter 1. Fielding’s staging of marriage, 1728-1737 ................................. 35 1. The early eighteenth-century stage: a bird’s-eye view ................................... 37 2. “What’s a Play without a Marriage?” ..................................................................... 53 3. Fielding’s theatrical debut ........................................................................................ 56 3. Discovering the courtship plot ................................................................................ 63 3. Thickening and subverting the courtship plot: The Temple Beau and The Author’s Farce .................................................................................................................... 69 4. Laughing tragedy, dwarfish heroism, and eager wives: the Tom Thumb plays ...................................................................................................................................... 82 6. National and domestic (petticoat) government: The Welsh-Street Opera 94 7. The elopement plot of Rape upon Rape/The Coffee-House Politician ....... 101 8. Tyrannical husbands: The Letter Writers and The Modern Husband ....... 109 9. Fielding’s “scandal-shop” ........................................................................................ 120 Chapter 2. The “Great Mogul” turned novelist ............................................. 130 1. Seizing momentum .................................................................................................... 130 2. New interests .............................................................................................................. 141 3. An observation on terminology ............................................................................ 151 Chapter 3. From “sham marriage” to Shamela and the proper marriage ceremony in Joseph Andrews .............................................................................. 156 1. Shamela and the Pamela phenomenon .............................................................. 156 2. Steering away from the Richardson-Fielding dichotomy ............................ 162 3. The new “Pleasures of the Town” ......................................................................... 165 4. The sham-marriage plot of Shamela ................................................................... 170 5. The proper marriage ceremony in Joseph Andrews ....................................... 178 Chapter 4: The marriage (sub)plot of Jonathan Wild ................................. 190 1. Jonathan Wild and the theatricality of crime ................................................... 192 2. Scenes of ominous courtship and modern marriage ..................................... 197 3. The “silly” Heartfrees and the downfall of Wild .............................................. 209 4. Mrs Heartfree and Amelia ...................................................................................... 215 5. A hanging and a wedding: the (happy) ending of Jonathan Wild ............... 217 Chapter 5: The criminal marriage plot of The Female Husband ............. 220 1. From criminal biography to marriage plot ....................................................... 224 2. Discovering (criminal) love: Methodism ........................................................... 230 3. Becoming a husband ................................................................................................. 234 4. Shifting genders, eschewing genres .................................................................... 252 5. Theatrical roots: cross-dressing, castrati, and the wherewithal ............... 255 6. Hamilton as Caeneus; or Fielding’s modern metamorphosis ..................... 262 iii Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 266 ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................................................................... 272 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 273 Primary sources .............................................................................................................. 273 Author unknown .......................................................................................................................... 273 Primary sources with known author ................................................................................... 275 Secondary sources .......................................................................................................... 285 iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page FIGURE 1 Anon., The Pleasures of a Married State, c.1774 Hand-coloured mezzotint 12 ©Trustees of the British Museum FIGURE 2 Anon., The Miseries of a Single Life, c.1774 12 Hand-coloured mezzotint ©Trustees of the British Museum FIGURE 3 John June, A Fleet Wedding Between a Brisk Young 18 Sailor & his Landlady's Daughter at Rederiff, 1747 Etching ©Trustees of the British Museum FIGURE 4 John June, The Sailor's Fleet Wedding Entertainment, 18 1747 Etching ©Trustees of the British Museum FIGURE 5 William Hogarth, The Laughing Audience, 1733 37 Etching ©Trustees of the British Museum FIGURE 6 William Hogarth, A Just View of the Stage; or Three 44 Heads are Better than One, 1724 Print on paper ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London FIGURE 7 William Hogarth, Masquerades and Operas, 1724 44 Etching and engraving ©Trustees of the British Museum FIGURE 8 William Hogarth, Frontispiece to the Tragedy of 90 Tragedies, 1731 Engraving by Gerard Vandergucht © Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Yale University FIGURE 9 Anon., The Judgement of the Queen of Common Sense, 131 1736 Etching ©Trustees of the British Museum FIGURE 10 John Bowles (?), Justice Hall in the Old Baily [sic], 194 1723-24 Etching and engraving v ©Trustees of the British Museum FIGURE 11 Anon., The New Sessions House in the Old Bailey, 1748 194 ©Trustees of the British Museum FIGURE 12 Simon Verelst, Eleanor (‘Nell’) Gwyn, c. 1680 201 Oil on canvas, feigned oval © National Portrait Gallery, London FIGURE 13 Thomas van der Wilt,