II. The performative gender play and its problems
Sensibility and sentiment flow spontaneously around many eighteenth-century male protagonists in novels, and David Simple is not an exception. Ever since the inaugurating publication of Pamela in 1740, the English novel began the “establishment of sentiment as the dominating principle ” to novels and values (Ballaster 197). Four years after Pamela, Sarah Fielding published her novel with a sentimental hero— David— and it became a current success. Readers are not told whether Fielding had been inspired by the sentiment and goodness in Pamela, yet it is undeniable that the sentimentality in David Simple will not shock its readers too much. Besides the mentioned sentiment, the advancing moral has been brought to attention as well. The virtuous maid, Pamela, proves the moral treasures in human nature, even though virtue and morality may end up with nothing within the
materialistic society but it will eventually be rewarded. With the happy ending of Pamela, people are encouraged to be virtuous with advanced moral quality. The superior moral position enables human beings, in particular women, to obtain the admissible superiority from the masculine achievement in the materialistic society (Rizzo 240). In the first
published volume of Fielding’s book, she proposed the spectacular sentiment in David Simple to indicate the connection between virtues and happiness.
Femininity, not necessary a quality specifically found in women, maintains its close relationship with sentiment in this novel. In general reading, the sentiment and sensitivity possessed resemble the womanly quality, and that is also represented in David Simple. The abundant use of femininity inevitably makes the novel a women’s story, or a story about women. Still, women are not allowed to speak unless they are asked to: young women who receive David ’s help and tell him the stories of her own only when David asked; they are
“silenced by the eighteenth-century gender ideology, ” so none of them can speak fluently without David (Woodward 68). In light of this, David, as the catalyst, gathers all these sensitive women together with his feminine appeal. While women are mentally passive and physically weak before telling him the ir lives, David, by contrast, nourishes himself with these feminine qualities after knowing the stories. He, as it were, absorbs femininity from the stories to become a feminine character, while the females get rid of gender burden after finishing their unhappy past. Only after Cynthia and Camilla tell all their miserable past can they begin their new lives with David and Valentine to participate in their little utopia. After disclosing their womanly weakness, the women may not be as independent as the modern females, but they certainly live out of the past misfortunes to join their utopian dream delightedly. The process of sharing feminine quality is important in developing the
feminine utopia; by speaking and listening to the stories, the two sexes not only make friends with each other, but also attribute an agreement on their feminine utopia that is very different from the ordinary expectation.
From these stories about women, and narrated by women, there is a clear display on female developing in their contemporary eighteenth-century London. The female characters are forced to mould into the stereotype given by others, regardless of their personality. Take Cynthia for instance, she is made to fit the masculine stereotype of women ever since she was
young; most of the girls then were urged not to read too much because it does not help in their further marriage. Therefore, “whenever [Cynthia] asked any Questions of any kind whatsoever, [she] was always told, such Things were not proper for Girls of [her] Age to know;” in a word, knowledge from books are forbidden for young women (92; emphasis in original). During the years, she gives up her interest in reading merely because of other people, and learns to be the good-woman with little study but much obedience. Compared to other female characters, such as Camilla and Isabella, Cynthia is certainly lucky because she still bears the individuality even after marriage. Unlike other females, she dares to travel by herself and is capable in dealing with worldly affairs, which is certainly a marvelous achievement for a woman at that time. Camilla and Isabella, on the contrary, have already lost their individuality after they successfully became stylized women by the help of males.
Men, including father, brother, husband, and son, become the first priority in their perspective.
The lack of individuality answers to why Isabella determines to give up her lover only because her brother feels uneasy about their close relationship, as well as the reason why Camilla “[considers] [she] was the Cause that Valentine lay in such a Condition” when her only brother was sick (152). Frankly speaking, what the two sisters feel sorry for is their inferiority to males. Out of feminine inadequacy, both of them suffer from unnecessary predicament and give up individualities in pursuing their own happiness. In the stories, all of the women are, very like livestock, waiting for sale; animals are sold to be cuisine while women to be wives. In need of individual independence, a woman of eighteenth-century England survives under the patriarchal nurturance. While Cynthia expresses her interest on reading rather than on marriage, the sisters scornfully claims that reading is not necessary for women in marriage. Moreover, her father even told Cynthia that “if [she] would be a good Girl— [She] should be married very soon” (98; emphasis in original). The responses of contemporary eighteenth-century people seem to suggest that “becoming a woman” for marriage is no longer a torture for most of the women at that time; it turns to be the
acceptable preparation for marriage, and the good performers in marriage deserve to award the ticket for ever-happy utopia. For them, marriage and the feminine trainings are the only way out for women, while reading would only disturb the relationship between husbands and wives.
Women have to obey the teaching of being good daughter before marriage, and eagerly prepare oneself to be good mother and wife after marriage. The procedures of “becoming”
the identical female roles are, in fact, steps in learning and performing. To imitate the admirable females around, each of the women can be good wife if they want to be. Those well performed become the “angel in the house,” rather than the detested “mad woman in the attic.” As Judith Butler claims in Gender Trouble, gender is undoubtedly performative.
… [A]cts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause.
Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means.
That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has an interior essence, that very interiority apart from the various acts which constitutes its reality. … In other words, acts and gestures, articulated and enacted desires create the illusion of am interior and organizing gender core, an illusion discursively maintained for the purpose of the regulation of sexuality within the obligatory frame of reproductive heterosexsuality. (Butler 136)
Butler claims that through the outer costume, gesture, and speaking, the inner gender is reformed. In her argument, the mutual interaction between decorative gestures and interior action decides a person; the performance not only changes the outlook of everyone, but also the mental status of people. While a male character is installed in David Simple to perform
feminine gestures, people might ask why is a male chosen to search for friends but not a female to travel around, and the answer is easily found. According to eighteenth-century traditions, it is quite impossible for a woman to make friends with strangers of different social position; hence a male protagonist has to be the leader of the friendly utopia in order to facilitate the journey. Besides, as declared above, women dare not to travel alone without the company of masculine companion. It answers to why the girls can only lead their lives happily with the company of males, especially with husbands.21 However, males conflicts with the feminine structure in David Simple. Breaking the feminine structure in the novel, the males can hardly find a place to identify themselves. The novel is a story about women, and that makes David become a misfit among the females. In other words, David ’s masculinity is never encouraged in the novel, so it has to be eliminated into femininity. David has to suppress his masculinity so that he can be the leader of this feminine utopia. Fielding plays the trick of double gender and double sexes on these characters, interrupting her readers in designating David’s real intention. After gathering the ideal true friends, he takes a mental sex change operation to get rid of his unwanted masculinity, putting in femininity for a substitute.22 That is why David gradually acts like woman; though he never wears the women’s clothes, David has already put on the feminine coat. Little by little, the inner gender alters with the change on his gesture, talking, and even facial expression. He is indeed a good performer on tears and over-exaggerated benevolence.
Strange enough, he cries passionately whenever hearing the melancholy stories that happened on other people in order to express his benevolence. His facial expression is certainly touching to those friends, especially when they finish telling their miseries and see
21 However, the description in Roxana is certainly an exception. She travels abroad by herself, which is because she is never tagged as “housewives” as Cynthia and Camilla. These ladies were lead to very different lives and social experiences.
22 Obviously, this is not a successful surgery for David. He is only coated with the feminine qualities but not able to think himself in women’s shoes. He learns the gestures, but never the minds.
[h]is Eyes expressed so much Sorrow as he spoke this, and his Mind appeared so agitated, that Camilla gave him a thousand Thanks for the good-natured part he took in her Afflictions, and said, she would now take Leave of him, it being late, and to-morrow would resume her story. (133; emphasis mine)
Teardrops indeed move people, making people believe that David is a sympathetic good man who cares much about them, in particular to drop one’s tear at the correct occasion. To illustrate femininity, the gesture of weeping gives David a good hand to be different from other male characters. At an early scene of David’s sentimental movement after hearing the stories told by Mr. Orgueil, the story teller purposely stops “seeing poor David could hear no more, not being able to stifle his Sighs and Tears” because Mr. Orgueil does not think a man should cry out of such tenderness (57). Such a consideration on men’s crying is shared among most of eighteenth-century males, regarding their teardrops inappropriate to fall at ordinary occasions. David adopts the strategy of weeping from time to time to express his feminine qualities in exaggeration.23 Actually, David “is not only always ready to weep at a story of suffering, but also energetic in seeking out any who might have such a story to tell”
by detecting the signs, such as “the sound of ‘lamentation’ from the next room” (Mullan 141).
In a word, David is enthusiastic with sentiment gestures and he is also sensitive enough to detect people with melancholy fragrance of his kind.
David himself plays well on performing the femininity; paradoxically, he cannot
abandon the masculine perspective on molding the stereotype wives in other families. Since he is a good performer, it should be obvious to him that performance is easy to be imitated rather than some born ability. An early and short passage depicting relationships between two married couples vividly displays the public stereotype on gender as well as David’s
23 What is more interesting is that, in its sequel Volume the Last, there are no more teardrops from David even on the death of his children and wife. He “led his Daughter weeping from the Bed-side— he could not weep— he sat as one [stupefied]” and then thanks God for Camilla’s reaching out o f pain and sorrow (385).
Feminine gestures are not importantly featured in this volume, so that explains why Fielding does not plan the crying scene of David in the sequel.
illusion on gender. David visits two couples with very different wive s, one is ugly and lazy while the other is beautiful and diligent: he was “perplexed” with the husband of the first woman, thinking that “it was a wonder any Man could think of her at all” (46), but amazed with the husband of the second woman on his continual complaining on the modest wife (47).
The two separate stories about the two couples happen to be visited by our protagonist one after the other, without clear description on the husbands but only the wives. The pretty woman who does all housewifery has been tagged with “Modest” and is friendly questioned about her misery past, but the other woman receives no attention from David for she breaks his stereotype on wife. Women’s duty, especially in the eighteenth century, lies on taking good care of the family; people who did a good job is regarded as a “good women” while others failing ones are “lazy women. ” The pretty wife has been suppressed to the worldly value and follows it obediently without her voice; she is the admirable woman to David and to many other readers mainly because she is a good performer of that stereotype. By contrast, though the ugly woman makes her husband happy and satisfied, she fails to satisfy others’ admiration and unfortunately becomes the inferior type to David.24 Happiness in marriage may not necessary lie in a modest wife. Frankly speaking, both the two women are performing gender roles by choosing two very different positions. In the novel, it is not an open question for readers to judge who is a good wife and who is not, because the answer is already given by an extremely subjective observer— David.25 Irony comes when this good gender performer, David, fails to sympathize with these two women as well as to acknowledge that, in fact, the three of them are doing the very same gender performance.
David thinks that only good wives constitute for a utopian happy family, but denying that
24 We are not told in the novel how does the lazy woman satisfy her husband, yet according to her husband she indeed makes him happy in the marriage (46).
25 At the end of this chapter about wives, David is amazed with these two couples and gives clear judgment on the wives by thinking that “how it was possible for one Man to be continually rejoicing his own Happiness, and declaring he had the best of Wives, altho’ she spent all his Substance, and threw the burden of everything upon him, while another was continually complaining of his Wife, when her whole Time and [Labor] was spent to promote his Interest, and support him and his Children” (51).
males can be “good wife” to fulfill the need in a family. Though he successfully performs femininity to construct his ideal utopia, masculine superiority still exist within him. In other words, he surveys people with masculine looks and judges them with it. The feminine performance does not teach him how to read the world with feminine perspective.
The gender performance reflects the fact: gender exists nowhere and now- here, because human beings can hardly find any specific identity of it. Butler concludes one of the
passage about sex and identity as follow, “[t]here is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; the identity is performative constituted by the very ‘expressions ’ that are said to be its result” (Butler 25). In the “becoming” process, people are learning the so-called result of the specific gender, mimicking the features and quality to be like that. That is why gender occurs nowhere and now here: on the one hand, there is no gender at all, on the other hand, everyone who successfully learns the gender qualities can transform oneself into a specific gender in seconds. David mimics the feminine qualities and drags himself
spiritually with the “imitative structure of gender itself” (Butler 137). By doing this, people who unveil the gender are revealing the public structure of gender under the sun. David endangers himself with the blurred gender and the problematic behavior as a gender-bender, making himself lost in both being a sexually male or a mentally feminine. As a matter of fact, it is possible for David to possess the qualities of man and feminine simultaneously.
Butler’s theory on gender performance does not aim to deny individual sexuality. That is to say, the made-up gender may not necessary be what one is, and it does not always deduct to the conclusion that one cannot be a woman or a man. Gender performance is a means that
“capable of change and modification” to tell that gender is not a “fixed state” but a flexible process which is changeable all the time (Harris 20).26
26 A big problem with gender performance in David Simple comes from the fixed state of gender. Among the characters, only David succeeds in transforming his gender, while others are obligated to their sexual identity.
Thus, the worldly Cynthia can only be a housewife who strives to meet the requirement even in their utopian household.
Problems arouse when it is hard to define real from the forged, especially when there is no definite definition on any of each. A related problem of gender performance is that, since gender is gained through performative gestures— action, reaction, and interaction— whether consciously or unconsciously, it is hard to tell the authentic from the fake. Furthermore, if gender and human interaction were skeptical of being performative, there would be further noise about the emphasized true friendship in David Simple. The novel of “Moral
Romance” becomes problematic. None of the characters is convincing in the novel, because the benevolent gesture may arouse from unknown intentions. People cannot really
distinguish benevolence from malevolence because all of us are natural performers to suggest qualities that we do not have.
What is important in Butler’s argument is that the performance decides gender; that is to say, gender is made up not of spontaneous reasons and natural sources. As for the
description in The Adventures of David Simple, the characteristics of David are even more artificial and unbelievable.
Fielding depicts David as an incredibly nice person with extraordinary benevolence and innocence, who is attractive to all the readers. At his last night at home, when his
Fielding depicts David as an incredibly nice person with extraordinary benevolence and innocence, who is attractive to all the readers. At his last night at home, when his