Confessions of the Fox

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3, Chapters 1-7

Part 3, Chapters 8-13

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Background

Historical Context: Jack Sheppard’s Life

Jack Sheppard is a historical figure born in 1702 in London, England. Sheppard was apprenticed to a carpenter named Kneebone and began his crime spree in 1723. Jack chose a life of crime over finishing his apprenticeship and becoming a professional carpenter. Sheppard escaped from prison four times over the course of two years between 1723 and 1724, making him a local legend among the working class. Sheppard was a short and wiry man, much like Jack in Confessions; his stature was often credited for his ability to make impossible escapes. The historical Sheppard had a minor stutter like his fictional counterpart.

Sheppard chose to remain a freewheeling thief rather than work for Thief-Taker General Jonathan Wild. Sheppard was arrested for a fifth and final time in late 1724. He was executed on November 16, 1724, at the age of 22. An autobiography of Sheppard was sold at his execution by Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal, the same publication that appears in Confessions; Sheppard endorsed this autobiography before being hanged. This autobiography was likely ghostwritten by the famous author Daniel Defoe, who was a journalist at the time and reported on famous criminals like Jack Sheppard and Moll King. Sheppard’s closest lover was Edgeworth Bess, a sex worker who inspired the Bess Kahn of the novel. Defoe’s biography of Sheppard claims that Bess pushed him to give up carpentry and turn to thieving.

The historical Sheppard had a close accomplice named Joseph “Blueskin” Blake, fictionalized as the character Aurie in the novel. Blake was sentenced to death for the same robbery and charges as Sheppard. Blake slit the throat of Wild shortly before his execution for his part in Sheppard and Blake’s capture, though Wild survived (only to be executed in 1725 for his own separate crimes). Blake was executed on November 11, 1724, five days before Sheppard, at the age of 24.

Very little is known about Sheppard, Bess, and Blake outside of the stories told about their lives. After Sheppard and Blake’s executions, they quickly rose to legendary status and became the central figures in plays, novellas, and ballads. The public loved Sheppard so much that plays with “Jack Sheppard” in the name or list of characters were banned from London for several decades after his death. The authorities feared that his rebellious life would serve as inspiration for the lower classes of London and spark rebellion. Sheppard’s life has a long, complex history of being re-told and reimagined. Confessions of the Fox is the latest in a long line of Sheppard-inspired stories. Sheppard’s story resonates strongly as an example of resistance against authority, self-liberation, and the demands for economic productivity placed on working-class individuals.

Socio-Medical Context: Sexology and Transgender Bodies

Confessions explores the typical themes of Sheppard narratives—rebellion, self-liberation, and labor politics—yet Rosenberg also uses it to explore sexology and the possibilities of transgender lived experience in the 18th century. Contemporary sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality. Prior to the 21st century, sexology was the study of human anatomy and sexual dimorphism as they relate to the gender binary. Sexologists believed that all bodies had to fall neatly within these two categories—man or woman—and that any body, sexuality, or expression that strayed outside these boxes was an aberration or “disease” that required thorough study and correction.

Sexologists of the 19th and 20th centuries, along with the proto-sexologists of the 17th and 18th centuries, had an extreme fascination with atypical bodies and gender expressions. Their fascination is often criticized as voyeuristic and fetishistic today since the sexologists themselves were all cisgender and straight men making observations on people who were different than them. For example, Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) and Ray Blanchard (born 1945) have historically been treated as de facto authorities on transgender and intersex bodies, even though they routinely demonized and dehumanized their subjects. The voyeurism of sexologists is seen in their long, detailed, and often sexualized descriptions of transgender and intersex people’s bodies. Today, they are recognized for the severe damage they have done to the public perception of transgender and intersex bodies, yet they still retain some authority and relevance within their respective fields.

Jack discovers his true identity during a time when people like Evans could treat him as an object of study rather than as a human being, telling him, for example, that his body needs management. Many of the fictional “edits” to the Confessions of the Fox manuscript are meant to correct the dehumanizing tendencies of early sexology and present the bodies of intersex and transgender people in a more favorable way. The frequent references to sexualized urination are meant to lampoon the early sexologists, who would often write multiple pages within a case study, in very dehumanizing language, about a subject’s ability to urinate with intersex genitals. Rosenberg uses Jack’s position as a poor, working-class rebel to explore the often oppressed and overlooked status of transgender and intersex people in the 18th century.