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

Symbols & Motifs

Something

The word “Something,” always italicized, is often used as a vague stand-in for concrete terms, definitions, and descriptions surrounding Jack’s gender and body. Jack’s body is never described concretely, nor is his gender defined using definite terms that contemporary readers would expect to communicate identity. Jack’s Something is a source of distress and pain for him in the beginning of the novel. Jack does not understand his Something but knows that it makes him different and leads others to dislike him.

Jack initially fears his Something, which makes him comfortable with his abuse in Kneebone’s household (44). Jack believes that his Something is dangerous, like a “bomb” or a sleeping monster (44). Jack’s fear of his Something makes his miserable life in Kneebone’s house a shield against his inner thoughts that keeps him separated from his Something: If he has to live as a girl and deal with daily abuse, then he is too busy to think about his Something. Jack’s abuse is a refuge from his Something, which scares him more than Kneebone’s locks and poor treatment.

Jack’s relationship with his Something changes once he becomes a thief and reclaims his body and labor. When Jack lets Bess see him fully nude during sex for the first time, Bess tells Jack that he is “[a] wonderful, fetching Something” (118). Bess’s ability to discover his “secret Word” rattles Jack and reorients his worldview. Bess touches Jack’s genitals while comparing him to mythical creatures like the Sphinx and the centaur. Bess reorients Jack’s Something away from a fearful monster hiding in Kneebone’s shop to a proud, mythical creature.

The use of Something avoids diagnosing Jack; Rosenberg refuses to give him labels or describe his anatomy in a way that would make his body fall into medical paradigms. Jack’s inability to be precisely categorized is a source of fear and anxiety for him in the beginning but becomes a source of pride central to his identity when Bess accepts him. Something allows Jack to exist outside of the bounds of the medical science of “sexual chimeras” (138) and the work of sexologists in the 18th century.

Sex

Confessions is full of sex and intimacy. As a motif, sex helps characters understand their relationships to their bodies, their society, and one another. The manuscript opens with an epigraph that reads, “Love’s mysteries in souls do grow, / But yet the body is his book” (7). The quote is from the poet John Donne (1572-1631) in his poem “The Ecstasy,” a love poem. Sex represents a writing on the “book” of the body. Rosenberg conceptualizes Jack’s and Bess’s bodies and selves as blank books that the other writes on through acts of intimacy. Bess only names Jack’s Something during sex. While Bess’s recognition of his Something allows them to have sex, it reaches beyond sex and rearranges Jack’s self-perception. Gender identity, Rebellion, and Criminality are interlinked through the unorthodox sex that occurs between Jack and Bess.

All the heroes of the novel have their identities defined through sex in some way. Jack, Bess, Jenny, Aurie, Franny, and Laurent are all defined by the ways in which they fall outside the prescribed parameters of sex and gender in their social environment. Bess and Jenny are sex workers, while Bess’s unorthodox sexual relationship with Jack sparks her rebellion against the government of London. Aurie, Franny, and Laurent are all mollies. While many mollies were what we understand as transgender women now, “molly” specifically implies a sense of deviation from heterosexuality. Aurie has sex with men, as described in several chapters. His sexual orientation makes him an outcast and, consequently, the only man to accept Jack and call Jack his “brother” (239, 255, 276, 301).

Conversely, the villains of the novel are sexless. Kneebone and his wife never have sex and go to bed immediately after dinner, which allows Jack to escape at night (46). Wild is never associated with sex, despite the novel’s preoccupation with sex. Both the Kneebones and Wild are preoccupied with profit, efficiency, and capital accumulation. Their sexlessness implies that sex is antithetical to profit, efficiency, and wage work. The heroes of the novel are all marginalized people whose identities (and means of subsistence) are built through sex, while the villains eschew sex and human connection in favor of money. While the sexual motif of the novel does not account for asexual people, it positions human intimacy and connection as incompatible with capitalist profit seeking.

Productivity

Language regarding productivity, efficiency, inefficiency, and waste appears constantly throughout the novel. This motif of language surrounding productivity communicates the culture of 18th-century London. In the 18th century, the English empire was reaching the height of its power, and London was the center of that power. The goods of every exploited and colonized country flowed into London in order to enter the rest of Britain. London authorities privatized the last common spaces, creating laws that persecuted impoverished people for idling or for taking refuse from trash—laws that still exist today. Eighteenth-century London saw a dramatic shift toward productivity and efficiency; the upper classes made economic productivity and profit a moral good. The moral good of productivity was enshrined through such laws.

Productivity in Confessions is all-consuming. Jack’s ability to eat food and rest in Kneebone’s house is based on his ability to produce wealth for his master. When Jack is not as productive as Kneebone desires, Kneebone beats him and withholds his food (66). Jack’s private life in London at night makes it impossible for him to sustain his output at work; Kneebone makes it clear that Jack’s work should take up every ounce of his energy and time. Similarly, Wild is determined to make use of every part of a criminal’s body. Due to the laws discussed above, “criminals” in the 18th century constituted anybody who was not economically productive or adhered to repressive laws. Wild’s use of the criminal body to corner the market on crime and then using their corpse to make a strength elixir is peak efficiency; no part of the rejected criminal, whom society has deemed useless, is wasted in making profit. Productivity in Confessions is used to dehumanize people and view their bodies through the lens of profit and exploitation.