Fetters and Free-thinking: Cylinda's Conceptual Metaphors in Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier's The Cry

Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier's The Cry (1754) is concerned with the dangerous yet creative power of language. Cylinda's two groups of conceptual metaphors—freedom and fetters, and masculine power—and her appropriation of the language of deistical free-thinking reveal a woman in conflict with society and herself. This essay presents eighteenth-century attitudes towards metaphor and how The Cry highlights the tendency of figuration to create indulgent self-centredness. The Cry's form promotes reciprocal sensibility while implicitly critiquing defective forms of masculinity as represented through Cylinda's language. By encouraging a critical awareness of Cylinda's potent metaphors, The Cry helps to establish new possibilities for living and reading.