The essay both builds upon and questions previous interpretations of Amelia. Sexual encounters retroactively disavowed as non-consensual abound in Amelia. Amelia reveals the degree to which notions of single-minded 'formal Persons' are both legal fictions and narratological distortions upon which law and novels in general frequently depend. This essay demonstrates that Henry Fielding's final novel, Amelia (1751), challenges a prevailing model of consent, a model based on presupposing harmony of will.
