Fielding In His Country Essay Research Paper

Fielding In His Country Essay, Research Paper

Henry Fielding: Joseph Andrews

The title page of Henry Fielding’s first novel reads as follows: ‘The history of the adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his friend Mr. Abraham Adams. Written in imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote. The allusion to Cervantes and his masterpiece Don Quixote as well as the explicit definition of his own writing later in the preface as a comic epic poem in prose, shows Fielding deeply aware of being the originator of a new genre which, as he wrote in the same preface, he did not remember to have seen attempted in the English language.

As to the first point, the acknowledged debt to the Spanish writer, Parson Adams is indeed a truly Quixotic figure and the structure of the book also follows Cervantes. Joseph Andrews is a novel of adventures met while travelling on the road. Joseph loses his employment in Lady Booby’s service in London for refusing her attempts to seduce him as well as those of her maid Mrs. Slipslop. On his way home to the country to his sweetheart Fanny, he meets Parson Adams, whose teaching had so fortified his virtue, walking to London in the hope of getting his sermons published; but Adams has forgotten to bring his sermons with him and so returns with Joseph. Together they run all kinds of adventures meeting a host of characters from low and middle-class layers of society: innkeepers, chambermaids, country squires and clergymen.

The plot is a parody of romantic plots in general, with missing heirs, babies stolen and exchanged at birth and birth marks to be discovered, and foundlings restored to their heritage in the last chapter. Initially, it was also an explicit parody, or at least Fielding started his novel with that aim in mind, of Richardson’s extraordinarily popular novel Pamela, whose so far unquestioned virtue Fielding strongly despised having already published a burlesque under the name of Shamela.

Fielding’s affinity with Cervantes appears first of all in the keen perception of the ridiculous in character and action. Secondly, in the humorous style which often takes a mock-heroic turn, and in the geniality of temperament. Thirdly, in the portrait of characters of certain lower classes of men and women. And finally, in the humorous or satiric descriptions of the contents of the chapters and the introduction of side stories or episodes into the main narrative.

Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, nevertheless, has not the air of romance which is so pervasive in Don Quixote, but pictures rather the ordinary life of his time, giving faithful portraits of men and women in ordinary life. There is also a number of similarities not just in manner but in incident as well, among which we could mention the night adventure in the inn involving Don Quixote, Maritornes and the mule driver with the confusion in Mrs. Slipslop’s bedchamber; Maritornes’ charity with Sancho with that of Betty, the chambermaid, to Joseph; Don Quixote and Sancho’s frightened bewilderment at the strange lights of the funeral cortege with the reactions of Adams, Joseph and Fanny to the lights of the sheepstealers, and so on.

But much as he admired Don Quixote, Fielding regretted its diffuseness of structure which allowed a looseness and unconnection of adventures the order of which could well be altered without any injury to the whole. In the Preface he wrote to his sister Sarah’s novel David Simple, he implied that the ultimate formal model of Joseph Andrews was the Odyssey, a kind of writing, he observed, consisting of ‘a series of separate adventures, detached from and independent of each other, yet all tending to one great end, for which reason it may not be criticised for lack of unity of action’.

Thus, the journey in Joseph Andrews is not a mere picaresque rambling, a device solely for the purpose of introducing new adventures such as we find in the classic picaresque story, the comic romances or Don Quixote, but an allegorical journey, a moral pilgrimage, as Martin Battestin puts it, from the vanity and corruption of the Great City to the relative naturalness and simplicity of the country.

The two heroes of Joseph Andrews are more than merely comic characters; more than a prudish young footman and a naive parson. They embody the essential virtues of the good man: chastity, and generosity and good nature. The careers of Joseph Andrews and Abraham Adams comprise brilliantly comic analogues to those of their biblical namesakes. The use of biblical analogues is surprisingly subtle contributing to the mock-heroic character of the novel while at the same time reminding the reader of the function of Joseph and Adams as exemplars.

Characters and plot mutually function to illustrate the dominant thematic motifs of the novel, namely the exposure of vanity and hypocrisy in society and the recommendation of their antithetical virtues, charity and chastity, and the classical ideal of life.

Cervantes and the picaresque novel, and Homer’s epic poems are not the only conspicuous influences in Fielding’s novels in general and in Joseph Andrews in particular. For methods of planning, developing and unfolding his plots and presenting his characters, Fielding turned to the drama. He is particularly indebted to the comedy of manners, the light, gay, and burlesque Restoration Comedy. His early career as dramatist had given