Title of book: Amelia by Henry fielding

“Fielding's Amelia: Dramatic and Authorial Narration” (Fielding, 1) does a good deal to clear away misconceptions about Fielding's last novel, especially those based on unsatisfactory biographical explanations-but his argument that "Amelia is tentative and uncertain on the basic structural level of narrative method: it alternates between authorial and dramatic narration, and in such a way that the two methods inhibit one another” begs the central question. It is quite clear from his discussion of the novel that he constantly misses an old friend, the narrator of Tom Jones. His account reads like that of a man who has gone to the theater to see a star turn and instead finds an understudy with a very different style (Fielding, 5). It is not surprising to find the new actor's talent underestimated and his intentions mistaken. Hassall's conclusion is really a good starting point. The question is why Fielding, who knew well the comic value of his narrator in Tom Jones, chose to avoid authorial narration throughout much of Amelia.

The major difference between Tom Jones and Amelia is that the later novel takes the possibility of a tragic outcome more seriously. Hence the presence of the rea assurnn? narrator of Tom Jones would be a liability. Though like Hassall I would object to praise of the work on the simple grounds of verisimilitude, I think that Fielding is attempting to give us a work in which the conclusion is problematic and our sense of comedy is severely undercut (Fielding, 12). To show how Fielding accomplishes this, I will make some reference to the extensive allusions to Othello in the second half of Amelia that, until very recently, have gone virtually unnoticed by critics of the novel. Although Fielding achieves his ends by various means, these verbal and structural parallels form an allusive counterplot which suggests the tragic possibili tiees inherent in Fielding's comic plot.

Amelia differs from the two novels previously mentioned in that it does not deal primarily with the problem of courtship and pre-marital resistance to temptation, but rather with problems within marriage. Previously, the reader has been left at the end of the novels with the impression that the couples will live in peace and harmony and fidelity for the rest of their lives, having already overcome their various problems, whereas in Amelia the marriage is clearly not trouble-free (Fielding, 19). Amelia and Booth, like Tom and Sophia, have to deal with the problem that they are of different social standing. Similarly, it is once again the parents rather than the couple who object to the discrepancy in class, so Fielding continues the idea that that defiance of parents is allowable if it is a necessity for personal happiness.

Amelia is a similar character to Joseph, in that she is tempted but never yields. She is pursued by Bagillard and James, spurns them both and suffers in silence. Her constant fidelity causes Booth's liaison with Miss Matthews to be seen by the reader as particularly ...