Une romancière du siècle des Lumières: Sarah Fielding (1710–1768) (A Female Novelist in the Enlightenment) by Sylvie Auffret-Pignot (review)

173 If she relied on male models of poetic expression, it was less in the interest of imitation than in pursuit of education. Second, Mr. Stapleton makes a convincing case for the just esteem in which Cowley was held by his contemporaries , particularly for his Pindaric odes. Behn ‘‘studied Cowley to learn how the ancient Greek ode worked,’’ and Cowley’s experimentation and innovation with the form encouraged her to make the ode, rather than the less flexible heroic couplet, her favored vehicle of poetic expression. Cowley taught her, in Mr. Stapleton’s words, to ‘‘un-corset her verses.’’ Finally, in his discussion of Behn’s intellectual and personal reactions to Creech (and through him Theocritus, Horace, and Lucretius) and Rochester, Mr. Stapleton deepens our understanding of British libertinism and its philosophical seriousness . He points out that Behn ‘‘knew well that for a woman in Carolean culture to write The Rover or ‘The Disappointment ’ was the act of a libertine,’’ but he also emphasizes Behn’s deep engagement through Creech with the philosophy of Lucretius, and her equally considered judgment regarding Rochester ’s ‘‘corrosive’’ brand of libertinism. Mr. Stapleton closes his study with separate chapters on ‘‘The Juniper Tree’’ and A Voyage to the Isle of Love. While his early meticulous analysis in Admired and Understood is slow going, the payoff comes in the final chapters, which elevate Behn to a philosopher and some of her works to masterpieces. Mr. Stapleton does not seek easy explanations . He wishes to—and does— elaborate the complexities of the moment . Consequently, his book becomes, in its commitment to the complexity of truth, a solid defense of Behn as a selfconscious poetic artist who achieved exactly what she set out to achieve. Elizabeth Kraft University of Georgia SYLVIE AUFFRET-PIGNOT. Une romancie ̀re du siècle des Lumières: Sarah Fielding (1710–1768) (A Female Novelist in the Enlightenment). Paris: L’Harmattan , 2005. Pp. 280. ⫽ C25. Though Sarah Fielding has been rediscovered by English-speaking academia , she is only mentioned briefly in French studies on eighteenth-century British fiction by Philippe Séjourné, Madeleine Blondel, Alain Morvan, and Serge Soupel. This book, together with a 1994 article by Guyonne Leduc, the major French scholar on British female writing, fills the void. A short biography and a survey of editions and criticism are given as an introduction that justifies a constant linking of the author’s life and her writing through a combination of narratological, sociohistorical, and feminist approaches . The first part briefly examines Sarah Fielding’s nonfiction, her translation of Xenophon and Remarks on Clarissa, and relates them to her fiction. The second part analyzes the interactions between fictional form and moralist discourse in David Simple, The Cry, The Countess of Dellwyn, The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, and Ophelia. For each, Ms. Auffret-Pignot examines narrative choices, themes, and issues with references to literary, philosophical, and religious texts. Sarah Fielding is shown quietly to announce demands later voiced by Mary Wollstonecraft. The third part, ‘‘Woman and Knowledge ,’’ focuses on female destinies, contrasts the respectable widow who has 174 the charge of young girls in The Governess , written for a young audience, with The Cry’s self-educated Cylinda, who embodies the negative clichés of female education to be found in the fiction of Smollett, Francis Coventry, or Henry Fielding. For Ms. Auffret-Pignot, Cylinda is an exception in the author’s work, where knowledge is usually presented as the source and instrument of female emancipation. David Simple’s Cynthia anticipates by some thirty years changes in the perception of female learning. ‘‘Woman and Power’’ argues that Fielding combines a conformist discourse with one of protest, a double voice typical of a muted group within a dominant culture (Elaine Showalter is a major influence ). Like Claudine Hermann’s ‘‘tongue snatchers,’’ Fielding did not wish to be identified as a woman writer , Ms. Auffret-Pignot cogently argues. ‘‘Feminism’’ is then discarded as an anachronistic and inadequate term, in opposition to Deborah Downs-Miers and Moira Ferguson’s characterizations of Sarah Fielding. Ms. Auffret-Pignot finally shows that the author was not a forerunner of Mary Wollstonecraft: although her life somewhat contradicted what she wrote...