ABSTRACT

This chapter examines two texts from juridical arena whose formal techniques demonstrate contesting conceptions of narrative authority: Mary Blandy's defense of her innocence in her autobiographical apologia, Miss Mary Blandy's Own Account of the Affair Between Her and Mr. Cranstoun, and Henry Fielding's exposition of Blandy's guilt in his theological-jurisprudential account Examples of the Interposition of Providence in the Detection and Punishment of Murder. Miss Mary Blandy's Own Account is thematically and formally organized according to conventions of amatory seductive fictions, those texts, often erotic and hyperbolic, that portray a heroine in distress and endangered by a male seducer. In a move common to seduction fiction, Blandy subtly inserts a political aim within a narrative of extravagant desire. The contradictions of Fielding's text are not available simply to chary contemporary critic. Fielding's reading of Blandy as intentional murderess refutes her claim of innocence; his reading also positions her more inherently far more powerful than she appears in her own self-representation.