Behavioural and discursive indications of male and female homosocial desire in Sarah Fielding's the adventures of David Simple, The Governess, Or the Little Female Academy and The History of The Countess of Dellwyn

Abstract

This dissertation attempts to investigate the same-sex relationships of male and female characters as significant representations of male and female homosocial desire in Sarah Fielding's fiction. This study adapts the concept of "homosocial desire" offered by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick drawing on a continuum between homosexuality and homosociality. The thesis also considers the key concepts and figures such as "exchange of women in marriage" and "triangular desire" discussed in Sedgwick's work. Considering these concepts, this study analyses how "homosocial desire" is realized in the patterns of behaviour and discourse in the selected works of Fielding. Firstly, in David Simple the desire of the main character is revealed to promote a homosocial relationship with a male when he is seen to have set off a journey with the aim of finding a real friend. Secondly, the female characters in The Governess, are observed to search for a medium of their own in which they share stories and achieve transparent communication with mutual affection by constituting a community of equal friendship and overrating this friendship between the same sexes. Thirdly, in The History of the Countess of Dellwyn, female homosocial desire is portrayed within a triangular relationship of a female character that shapes her heterosexual relations through marriage and adultery.