ABSTRACT
Anna Maria Fielding, an Irish novelist and playwright, was born in Dublin in 1800, and lived until 1881. In 1824 she married Samuel Carter Hall, a writer on art, who encouraged his wife to publish. A number of her early works, including “The Soldier’s Wife” were published under her husband’s name, but, incontrovertibly, are hers. She was best known for several volumes of “Sketches of Irish Character” as well as a number of novels and plays, several of which had runs in West End London. “The Soldier’s Wife” deploys a number of typical devices to engage the sympathy of nineteenth-century middle-class readers: the young wife has “an interesting and youthful countenance”, has the capacity to feel deeply, and must rely on male nobility of action to resolve her problem. In short, she behaves much more like a middle-class lady than a working-class woman. Fielding also rehearses the stereotypical criticisms middle-class observers believed to apply to soldiers and their wives. The story imparts an edifying moral lesson, and turns on the kind of sentimental coincidence that many readers today deplore. In its time, however, “The Soldier’s Wife” was a popular tale that was widely reprinted. It appeared first in The Amulet, or Christian and Literary Remembrancer, an annual edited by Hall’s husband. The story also appeared in The Lily, an American annual, and was reprinted in a number of newspapers.
