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Fielding’s Amelia and the Aesthetics of Virtue

Fielding’s Amelia and the Aesthetics of Virtue

Alison Conway, University of Western Ontario

Volume 8, no. 1, October 1995

©McMaster University, 2015. All articles published on the Eighteenth-Century Fiction website are protected by copyright held by Eighteenth-Century Fiction, a journal published by the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.

ABSTRACT

Amelia’s nose rarely provokes comment in today’s readings of Fielding’s last novel, but in 1751 it featured importantly in the novel’s critical reception and demise. Beaten “all to pieces” early in the narrative, the broken nose immediately became the target of Fielding’s detractors, who pointed to the iconographic link it established between Amelia and the disreputable Blear-Eyed Moll. As Frederick Blanchard has suggested, “The reputation of the pure and womanly Amelia, owing to the unfortunate slip about her nose, was reduced to that of a common strumpet.” Fielding attempted to defend his heroine by admitting his error in forgetting to repair her nose, but to no avail; the damage was done: “As we take into account the incessant scurrility which was directed at the ill-starred heroine, Dr. Johnson’s assertion to the effect that the sale of Amelia … was spoiled by that ‘vile broken nose,’ is to be seen, in the main, a statement of actual fact.”

Other ECF articles on the topic of “Henry Fielding” include:

Henry Fielding Reinvents the Afterlife
by REGINA M. JANES (ECF 23.3, Spring 2011)

La Place’s Histoire de Tom Jones, ou l’enfant trouvé and Candide
by E.M. LANGILLE (ECF 19.3, Spring 2007)

Social Rank, “The Rise of the Novel,” and Whig Histories of Eighteenth-Century Fiction
by NICHOLAS HUDSON (ECF 17.4, July 2005)

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