The Female Husband: Or, the Surprising History of Mrs. Mary, Alias Mr. George Hamilton
Henry Fielding
When read alongside his writings on poor law and crime, The Female Husband reveals Fielding’s view of economic and sexual deviance as intertwined, mutually constitutive phenomena. Vagrancy is not incidental to this text; the logic of vagrancy law fundamentally structures the narrative and provides Fielding scope to speculate on the invisible forces that move bodies–whether those bodies are spurred towards industry or idleness, deference or criminality, sexual virtue or sexual deviance. By tracing vagrancy as a queer category, this essay proposes an approach to eighteenth-century histories of sexuality that refuses to understand sexuality in isolation from other interlocking modes of apprehending and disciplining bodies, desires, and animation. ~ Sarah Nicolazzo
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The Female Husband is easily the most interesting piece for readers who see Fielding as novelist. Something of a Newgate life with a brief introduction on order and a hortatory conclusion, the episodic history is filled with scenes characteristic of Fielding. After side glances at the Methodists, their disorders and, therefore, perversion, Fielding presents a roaring sea captain and a sixty-eight year old bride who can stand with the vivid minor characters of the novels. Such pleasures are gratefully received since his imagination never seizes on the major character, in spite of the essentially fictional aspect of the account. The bedroom battle between the bride and ‘the female husband’ is almost as good as, if less chaotic than, the familiar ones in the graveyard and inns.
Fielding’s sense of the absurd is not constant, but Liverpool has done us a favor by presenting this fiction. In his ‘Introduction’ Professor Jones errs in noting ‘the case narrated in The Female Husband was tried before Fielding’s first cousin,’ Henry Gould, who was simply consulted on the case. Generally one might well argue that, in spite of the general availability of Sheridan Baker’s important article, ‘Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband: Fact and Fiction’, the introduction and notes seem unnecessarily brief, especially since copies of these works are so rare (only four known [original] copies of The Female Husband) and since Fielding never claimed – or disclaimed – the story.
There is no mention that Fielding’s version of the Mary Hamilton case has little basis in fact. Self-containment may not be necessary in works designed for the specialist, but it would be useful. The organization of the apparatus defies ready reference; what principles were used in determining what material belonged in the ‘Introduction,’ what in the ‘Notes,’ and what in the footnotes elude this reviewer. This awkwardness, however, is so common in volumes from English presses that it is probably not just to cite the problem in this instance . ~ John Graham Source: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Jan., 1962)
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Details
| Genre | Autobiographical Fiction; Grier Rated |
| Publication Date | 1746 |
| Publisher | The Globe in Paternoster Row |
| Format | Pamphlet |
| Notes | Document available in various forms, publishers, editions etc. Pay attention to who the editor is, foreword is written by, etc. |
| Language | English |
| Rating | Great |
| BookID | 13033 |
