Confessions of the Fox

Gender identity, rebellion, and criminality are inseparable in Confessions of the Fox. As 18th-century English society criminalizes and harshly punishes people than ever before, Jack’s nonconforming gender identity makes it impossible to live as his true self without rebelling against authority. Jack has two choices at the beginning of the novel: Live an inauthentic life as a woman, where he will contribute to society through profit and industriousness under a business owner, or reclaim his labor and his body under the new identity of Jack.

Jack’s rebellious reclamation of his body is not a certain outcome. Being a “part churning product towards profit” allows him to hide from his true self (his Something), which he knows is incompatible with life as a cog in a machine (25). When he first meets Bess, he is terrified of leaving his miserable life. He flees from Bess back to the “wretched unseenness to which he’d become accustom’d” (78). Jack dichotomizes being with Bess as being seen and living under Kneebone as a kind of invisibility. While life with Kneebone is miserable, it follows the social script that Jack has been given. Jack’s position as an indentured servant is a socially sanctioned one appropriate for a young adult.