Remarks on Richardson: Sarah Fielding and the rational reader

Abstract

Sarah Fielding promoted rational reading practices through tech niques that often differed from those used in the mid-eighteenth-century novel, particularly the contrary techniques employed by Samuel Richardson and her brother, Henry Fielding. Examining Fielding's Remarks on Clarissa and her co-authored "dramatic fable" The Cry, this essay argues that Fielding creates textual spaces where her readers can and should examine their similarities with imperfect objects. Trough both character and form, Fielding provides a number of "hooks" into her central message, all designed to engage more than one type of reader. At the same time, Fielding's work provides commentary on the work of her friend and mentor Samuel Richardson: explicitly in Remarks on Clarissa and implicitly in The Cry, the latter of which engages with Richardson's final novel, Sir Charles Grandison, in ways that have not been noted until now. © ECF.