This paper tries to tackle the problem of Henry Fielding's female characters by analyzing Lady Bellaston, one of the most interesting characters in Tom Jones, through a feminist grid. The second problem this paper deals with is Fielding's own relation to feminist claims and the extent to which he presaged feminism, in general, and the feminism of his century, in particular, taking into account that Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was published almost half a century after Fielding's death (1754).