ABSTRACT
The best discussions agree in noting that Henry Fielding seems to waver between the new fluidity and a hankering after his older method, and that some of the weaknesses of Amelia spring from the fact that the new way opened up 'complexities and ambiguities. Fielding himself was not quite ready to confront or follow out' or achieved something which in a sense 'he neither desired at the outset nor welcomed when it came'. This chapter suggests that such uncertainties are radical to Amelia, a rendering of a larger struggle between Fielding's rage for order and the senseless brutality of fact; and that they produce major and somewhat unique strengths, as well as weaknesses, in the novel. The Newgate vignettes of Amelia must be distinguished from those brief moral set-pieces of similar shape which Fielding had produced from time to time in the past which are likewise capped by some sharp reversal or ironic shock.
