Sarah Fielding

1710-1768

LIFE

      Our knowledge about Sarah Fielding’s life initially comes from biographies of her much more famous brother, Henry Fielding, that author of Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews.  Sarah Fielding was three years younger than Henry, the fourth of seven children of Edmund Fielding, a soldier, and Sarah Gould, the daughter of a wealthy magistrate.  Her mother died when she Sarah was eight years old, and the children were left to be cared for by their maternal grandmother.  When her father remarried in 1719, he returned to the farm in Dorsetshire that his in-laws had purchased, and resumed the care of his children.  However, relations between her father and her grandparents were not friendly, so her father and stepmother returned to London, and Sarah and two of her sisters were sent to a boarding school – a rather unusual experience for girls at that time.  Her grandmother later sued her father for custody of the children, resulting in a rather public display of the family’s private life; Ward notes that this may be reflected in the “number of wicked stepmothers and weak and/or negligent fathers” in her subsequent writing (9).

      Her grandmother won the lawsuit in 1722; the rest of Sarah’s youth is relatively unknown, but it is assumed that she continued in boarding school and otherwise lived with her grandmother.  This changed when her grandmother died in 1733, leaving her without stable financial support.  In 1744, when she was 34, Sarah Fielding became the housekeeper for her brother Henry upon the death of his first wife; she moved in with her sisters when he remarried three years later.  Neither Sarah nor any of her sisters married, probably because their relative poverty prevented them from having dowries sufficient to entice gentlemen to marry them (Ward 11).  When Sarah’s sisters died, she moved in with a childhood friend, Jane Collier, with whom she collaborated on several literary works.  She had a solid reputation as a writer, but her works did not produce sufficient income to provide her with economic independence.  During her 40s and 50s, she was rather sickly; nevertheless, she lived longer than any of her siblings, dying at the age of 57.

      Sarah Fielding’s earliest published work appears as part of her brother Henry’s writing – she contributed a fictional letter to his novel Joseph Andrews (1742) and a fictional autobiography of Anne Boleyn in his book, A Journey from This World to the Next (1743).  The following year, she published her first full-length novel, The Adventures of David Simple; like all of her works but one, it appeared anonymously, and was at first believed to have been written by her brother; he denied its authorship in a preface to the second edition but identified its author only as “a young Woman…nearly and dearly allied to me, in the highest Friendship as well as Relation” (Ward 19).  The only book Sarah Fielding published under her own name was her last, a translation from the classical Greek of Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates, a rather astonishing work of scholarship to come from a woman at that time, when few women received even slight training in classical languages and philosophy.

The Governess

      “…you are not to give way to any Passions that interfere with your Duty: For whenever there is any Contention between your Duty and your Inclinations, you must conquer the latter, or become wicked and contemptible.”  (NACL 1830)

       In 1749, Fielding published The Governess, an intentionally didactic book that is sometimes credited as the first English novel written for children, and is almost certainly the first such novel written specifically for girls. Grey argues it is “the first realistic account of children as ‘characters taken from ordinary life and using ordinary everyday speech’” (qtd. in Burdan 8). This “ordinariness” is shown right away in the story of the “fray” among the girls over an apple; both the argument itself and the girl’s reaction to it (i.e., trying to place the blame on one another, asserting innocence, etc. – NACL 1822) appear as common, predictable child behavior, as does the surface peace arrived at initially; the girls continue to hold their grudges until the process of healing socially undesirable character traits is completed at the end of the novel.

      The book was immediately successful, producing two editions within the first year of publication and a total of five in Fielding’s lifetime.  As with Robinson Crusoe, the success of The Governess led to other writers producing imitations, including one by Mary Martha Sherwood in 1820 which basically took all of Fielding’s text, removed the fairy tales – which Mrs. Sherwood detested on religious and pedagogic grounds – and re-inserted religious content that Fielding had deemphasized.

      Similar to other early novels, The Governess contains a number of shorter narratives within a larger frame story, including the fairy tales “The Cruel Giant Barbarico, the Good Giant Benefico, and the Little Pretty Dwarf Mignon” and “The Princess Hebe,” along with animal fables, like the story of the Magpie from her Preface, and the individual autobiographies the girls at Mrs. Teachum’s school relate to one another.  The narrative frame shows the girls participating in various everyday school activities, including writing lessons and field trips; Burdan suggests that both the ordinary activities and the shorter narratives are significant “in that they draw forth… carefully individualized confessions” from the girls (10).

      As Ward points out, Mrs. Teachum’s academy follows educational principles associated with the English philosopher John Locke, although she does not share Locke’s disapproval of fairy tales (29).  However, she urges her eldest student, Jennie Peace, to emphasize that giants and other fairy-tale figures are only vehicles to demonstrate moral values, and not to be taken literally (NACL 1832-33).  Also, as Linda Bree notes, The Governess moves beyond Locke in taking the principles that he developed for the education of boys and applying them for the first time to girls (qtd. in Ward 30).

      Eighteenth-century educational theory was moving away from older concepts of harsh physical punishments as an inducement to learning, in favor of more subtle and psychological approaches; Locke had argued that control of children’s behavior was more effective when it was invisible; “the child is shaped through the influence of external means which are first rendered invisible and then gradually internalized” (Burdan 8).  Central to this process was careful parental observation of children and the use of the confession, “which demanded that the child speak for herself and tell her own story” (Burdan 8).  Both are evident in the development of The Governess (Burdan 8).

      The overall narrative structure of The Governess reflects 18^th-century concepts of the superiority of reason or intellect over passion or emotion.  At the beginning of the novel, the girls allow their passions to overcome them and engage in a “fray” – an argument/physical fight over a trivial desire.  The various stories told thereafter contribute to each girl’s realizing her own particular folly and thereafter resolving to behave properly, to the end that a happy, harmonious society takes shape by the novel’s conclusion.  Ward observes the secular nature of this process, as opposed to the more openly religious orientation of many earlier works: “…children are led by reason to see the rewards of virtuous living”(33) rather than responding to religious admonitions.

      Fielding’s introduction clearly lays out her pedagogic intent:

      “The Design of the following Sheets is to prove to you, that Pride, Stubbornness, Malice, Envy, and, in short, all manner of Wickedness, is the greatest Folly we can be possessed of; and constantly turns on the Head of that foolish Person who does not conquer and get the better of all Inclinations to such Wickedness.”                                        (NACL 1819)

Note that these faults – which would be termed “sins” in a more religious discourse – are primarily to be discouraged, not because they are evil in themselves or because they are against the will of God, but because they are “folly” – i.e., not reasonable, or foolish.  Many of the girls’ faults reflect the traditional cardinal sins of pride (see Sukey Jennett’s reasons for holding on to her anger, NACL 1823), greed (the conflict over who should get the largest apple, NACL 1821-22), luxury/extravagance, envy (Sukey again, 1824), gluttony (again, the fight over the apple), anger or wrath, and laziness or sloth.  In the excerpts given in the NACL, there is only one significant mention of God – when Jenny’s mother advises her to pray and give thanks (1830).

NAMES:   The characters’ names, both in the novel itself and in the fairy tales, are almost allegorical.  The derivation of Mrs. Teachum’s name is obvious. Jenny Peace is the oldest girl, who both has the most peaceful demeanor of the students and is the peacemaker for all.  Dolly Friendly is the one younger girl who does not immediately enter the fray, but finally does so in defence of her friend.  Lucy Sly’s particular flaw is being deceitful, Henny Frett’s that of being constantly anxious or fretful; Polly Suckling is the youngest in age of the girls, and looks still younger yet.  The allegorical naming is particularly evident in the fairy tale: Barbarico is cruel and barbaric, Benefico kind and beneficient, Mignon is a dwarf (the name derives from the French for a pretty child).  The two lovers are Fidus and Amata, derived from Latin for “faithful” and “loved.”

FAIRY TALE:   The fairy tale is arguably somewhat heavy-handed – even more than most fairy tales, characters are flat and unchanging.  Barbarico is unreformable (in contrast to the novel’s implicit position that all flaws may be reformed) and his cruelty is not just incidental, but intentional.  He is a bully, and like all literary bullies is also a coward (NACL 190).  (Note that Benefico is just as reluctant to engage his enemy directly, but where Barbarico’s reluctance is attributed to cowardice, Benefico’s is the result of “prudence.”)  Fielding insists on attributing motives to the characters, something that many folk fairy tales avoid, and the motives are always broad passions.  Furthermore, she inserts morals at various points, not just at the end, as when Mignon’s gentleness is contrasted to Barbarico’s cruelty:

      “His [i.e., Mignon’s] Countenance was at once sprightly and soft; and whatever his Head thought, or his Heart felt, his Eyes by their Looks expressed; and his Temper was as sweet as his Person was amiable.  Such was the gentle Creature Barbarico chose to torment: For wicked Geiants, no less than wicked Men and Women, are constantly tormented at the Appearance of those Perfections in another, to which they themselves have no pretension. (NACL 192)

Again, when Mignon is imprisoned by the evil giant, “he soon recollected, that Patience and Resignation were his only Succour” (NACL 194).  The narrative thus repeatedly forces its interpretation on the reader, rather than trusting her to comprehend it for herself.  This is reinforced by Mrs. Teachum’s advice to Jenny when she hears of the fairy-tale reading:

      “I have no Objection, Miss Jenny, to your reading any Stories to amuse you, provided you read them with the Disposition of Mind not to be hurt by them.  A very good Moral may indeed be drawn from the Whole, and likewise from almost every Part of it; and as you had this Story from your Mamma, I dobut not but you are very well qualified to make the proper Remarks yourself upon the Moral of it to your Companions.  But here let me observe to you (which I would have you communicate to your little Friends) that Giants, Magic, Fairies, and all Sorts of supernatural Assistance in a Story, are introduced only to amuse and diver: For a Giant is called so only to express a Man of great Power; and the magic Fillet round the Statue was intended only to shew you, that by Patience you will overcome all Difficulties.  Therefore by no means let the Notion of Giants or Magic dwell upon your minds.                         (NACL 1832)

      Fielding’s novels for adults are often connected to the sentimental school of writers who explored the 18^th-century concept of the “Man of Feeling.” The reunion of the lovers (NACL 198) is perhaps overly sentimental to modern readers, though consist with the values of the novel of sentiment.

SOURCES:  Judith Burdan, “Girls Must Be Seen and Heard: Domestic Surveillence in Sarah Fielding’s The Governess,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 19, 1 (Spring 1994) 8-14; Candace Ward, “Introduction,” The Governess, Petersborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2005, 7-37; Jack Zipes et al., Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature: The Traditions in English (NACL), New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.

A. Waller Hastings
Professor of English
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD  57401

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