themes in joseph andrews

موضوع: themes in joseph andrews الخميس ديسمبر 30, 2010 6:39 am

RICHARDSON'S PAMELA AND
FIELDING'S JOSEPH ANDREWS

Richardson's novel Pamela,
subtitled Virtue Rewarded, was immensely popular when it appeared in
1740. Richardson
tells the story, through letters, of the repeated attempts of Pamela's
employee, Mr. B–, to seduce her and then to rape her. Won over by her virtue
and genteel delicacy, he marries her even thought she is a mere servant. In the
view of many readers, this novel equates "virtue" with virginity and
the reward of virtue–or managing to stay a virgin–is marriage, and the focus on
seduction/rape ignores the diversity of life and of human motivation.

Fielding satirized Pamela
with Shamela (1741), whose heroine is a knowing, ambitious,
self-centered manipulator? Then in the next year, he wrote Joseph Andrews,
which is a second satire of Pamela. Why Fielding wrote two parodies of
one novel is puzzling and a variety of explanations have been offered. What is
clear is that, though Joseph Andrews may have started as a satire of Pamela,
it quickly outgrew that narrow purpose and has amused generations of readers
who never heard of Pamela.

As Fielding indicated on the
title page of Joseph Andrews, he was imitating Cervantes's Don
Quixote, so that his novel is also a picaresque novel–or novel of the road–and
an adventure novel. With the introduction of Parson Adams, who has been called
the first great comic hero in the English novel and one of the glories of human
nature, it also becomes a novel of character. In keeping with Fielding's bent
as a moralist and reformer, the satire extends beyond literary matters to
society itself, and Fielding exposes the vices and follies not merely of
individuals, but also of the upper classes, institutions, and society's values.

THEMES IN JOSEPH
ANDREWS

Appearance versus
reality. Who is truly virtuous, charitable, chaste, knowledgeable, just,
etc. and who merely pretends to be and/or has the reputation of being so?
Characters say one thing and mean another, or they act at variance with
their speech. How, in Fielding's view, can the reader distinguish the
person who pretends out of vanity or who is hypocritical from the truly
good man/woman?
Abuse of power, by
individuals, classes, institutions.
Inhumanity of
individuals and society.
Lust versus chastity.
The nature of
goodness. Fielding admired honesty, integrity, simplicity, and charity,
believed that virtue is seen in an individual's actions, but recognized
the difficulty of making moral judgments. How is the reader to judge the
postilion who gave Joseph his coat but was later convicted of stealing
chickens? or Betty, who is charitable and promiscuous? Nor do good men
necessarily have harmonious relationships or understand each other, as is
seen in Adam's interactions with the Catholic priest and the innkeeper
previously hoodwinked by the "generous gentleman."
Charity. (This theme
is related to the issue of faith versus works.)
Vanity. Are there
degrees or kinds of vanity? The vanity of a Leonora is destructive, but
what is the effect of Adams's vanity (his
pride in his worldly knowledge derived from books, his pride in his
sermons, and his pride in his excellence as a teacher)?
City living versus
living in retirement in the country. This was a common theme in eighteenth
century literature, as it had been in classical Roman literature. Wilson's story contrasts the useless, aimless,
destructive life of London
with the idyllic, simple pleasures of living in the country.

THE NARRATOR

The narrator, the I who
speaks in the novel, is a fictional [ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]; the narrator's character shifts from
historian to creator, reporter, arbiter of morals and manners to manipulator.
The narrator is not to be confused with Fielding, who is writing the novel and
for whom the narrator is a device to achieve certain effects:

The
narrator keeps readers conscious that Joseph Andrews is a fiction.
By shifting the narrator's character, Fielding reminds readers that he is
telling a story whose truth lies, not in its facts, but in the accuracy
with which human nature is depicted. The narrator contributes to what Ian
Watt calls the novel's "realism of assessment."
The
fictional narrator puts [ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط] between the reader and the pain,
the suffering, and the cruelty depicted in the novel. Does the distance
makes them bearable? Is distance perhaps necessary for the novel to be
comic? Does the distance created by the narrator allow for greater irony
at times?
Note: Fielding uses other devices to control
distance or the reader's involvement in the novel, for instance, the mock
heroic language and epic parallels.
The
narrator helps unify the novel, which is a succession of unrelated
incidents.
The
narrator contributes to the assurance with which Fielding handles his
novel by talking to us in a relaxed, at-ease manner.

THE READER

Some critics suggest that Fielding
wrote for two different kinds of readers: the first set of readers consisted of
gentlemen like himself who had a classical education and similar values; the
second consisted of everyone else. Only the educated would have appreciated
Fielding's subtleties and learned allusions and satire.

Fielding
also addresses and manipulates a fictional reader in his novel by attributing
certain values or attitudes to that reader. Thus the reader addressed or
referred to in the novel and the narrator are both fictional characters Then,
of course, there are the actual readers–us. One way that Fielding uses the
fictional reader is to make us, the actual readers, aware of our own foibles,
vanities, and hypocrisies

.

ISSUES TO
CONSIDER

Here are some questions you might
think about as you read or review the novel:

Adams has been called
a moral touchstone; that is, through contact with him, other characters
reveal, unintentionally and usually unperceived by Adams,
their moral natures. Does he serve this function in the novel?
In view the number of
fights Adams becomes involved in and the farcical incidents he is the butt
of (e.g., having hogs' blood dumped on him in one incident and urine in
another incident), is Adams's dignity,
his basic decency, or his moral authority diminished? or even canceled
completely?
Does Adams learn from his experiences?
The title suggests
that Joseph Andrews is the hero of the novel (the original title is The
History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr. Abraham
Adams). Is he? He is certainly what we would today call the romantic
lead.
Is this an education
novel or bildungsroman? Does Joseph grow or develop on their
journey? The importance of a guide or mentor runs through the novel; both
Leonora and Mr. Wilson lack a mentor to guide them and to inculcate good
values. Does Adams serve as Joseph's
mentor (and as a guide to his parishioners)? Does Joseph come to be more
understanding or more knowledgeable than Parson Adams upon occasion? and
his view more sensible?
Are actions the only
criterion for revealing a person's true character and moral nature?
Does Fielding's
practice in his novel conform to the literary theories he offers in the
preface and three books? Does he, for example, exclude portrayals of vice,
as he announces in the Preface? Does his theory of satire and the
ridiculous (which he bases on vanity and hypocrisy) apply to Adams? The ridiculous characters are intended to
make readers aware of their own vanities and hypocrisies, but would anyone
reading about Slipslop or Peter Pounce identify with either?
Does Fielding present
characters from the inside, so that the reader knows their feelings and
motives, or observe them from the outside? Are the characters presented as
they see themselves, as the narrator sees them, or as Fielding sees them?

FLAWS

Many readers and critics find the
story rambling and haphazard, its incidents neither connected to the
protagonist (whether he is perceived to be Adams or Joseph) nor contributing to
the denouement. The two interpolated tales of Leonora and Wilson have no
necessary connection to the rest of the novel. And some find the ending
unsatisfactory and disappointing.

QUOTATIONS FROM
CRITICS

I offer these quotations to
stimulate your thinking, not necessarily because they reflect my views.

Mark
Spilka: "Fielding always attempted to show that virtue can be a successful
way of life."

Maynard
Mack asserts that in comedy the reader's point of view must be continuous with
"not the character's but the author's."

According
to Andrew Wright, Fielding "elevated the novel... to the level of serious
playfulness."

Arthur
Sherbo: "Without Parson Adams and Mrs. Slipslop, Joseph Andrews is
nothing."

Martin
C. Battestin sees in Adams "the Christian
hero, the representative of good nature and charity, which form the heart of
morality."

F.
Homes Dudden is "impressed by the wideness of the gulf which seems to
separate the classes–the ‘high people' from the ‘low people..."

Major Themes

The Vulnerability and Power of Goodness

Goodness was a
preoccupation of the littérateurs of the eighteenth century no less than of the
moralists. In an age in which worldly authority was largely unaccountable and
tended to be corrupt, Fielding seems to have judged that temporal power was not
compatible with goodness. In his novels, most of the squires, magistrates,
fashionable persons, and petty capitalists are either morally ambiguous or
actively predatory; by contrast, his paragon of benevolence, Parson Adams, is
quite poor and utterly dependent for his income on the patronage of squires. As
a corollary of this antithesis, Fielding shows that Adams's
extreme goodness, one ingredient of which is ingenuous expectation of goodness
in others, makes him vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous worldlings.
Much as the novelist seems to enjoy humiliating his clergyman, however, Adams remains a transcendently vital presence whose
temporal weakness does not invalidate his moral power. If his naïve good nature
is no antidote to the evils of hypocrisy and unprincipled self-interest, that
is precisely because those evils are so pervasive; the impracticality of his
laudable principles is a judgment not on Adams
nor on goodness per se but on the world.

Charity and Religion

Fielding’s
novels are full of clergymen, many of whom are less than exemplary; in the
contrast between the benevolent Adams and his more self-interested brethren,
Fielding draws the distinction between the mere formal profession of Christian
doctrines and that active charity which he considers true Christianity.
Fielding advocated the expression of religious duty in everyday human
interactions: universal, disinterested compassion arises from the social
affections and manifests itself in general kindness to other people, relieving
the afflictions and advancing the welfare of mankind. One might say that
Fielding’s religion focuses on morality and ethics rather than on theology or
forms of worship; as Adams says to the greedy
and uncharitable Parson Trulliber, “Whoever therefore is void of Charity, I
make no scruple of pronouncing that he is no Christian.”

Providence

If Fielding is
skeptical about the efficacy of human goodness in the corrupt world, he is
nevertheless determined that it should always be recompensed; thus, when the
"good" characters of Adams, Joseph, and Fanny are helpless to
engineer their own happiness, Fielding takes care to engineer it for them. The
role of the novelist thus becomes analogous to that of God in the real world:
he is a providential planner, vigilantly rewarding virtue and punishing vice,
and Fielding's overtly stylized plots and characterizations work to call
attention to his designing hand. The parallel between plot and providence does
not imply, however, that Fielding naïvely expects that good will always triumph
over evil in real life; rather, as Judith Hawley argues, "it implies that
life is a work of art, a work of conscious design created by a combination of
Providential authorship and individual free will." Fielding's authorly
concern for his characters, then, is not meant to encourage his readers in
their everyday lives to wait on the favor of a divine author; it should rather
encourage them to make an art out of the business of living by advancing and perfecting
the work of providence, that is, by living according to the true Christian
principles of active benevolence.

Town and Country

Fielding did
not choose the direction and destination of his hero’s travels at random;
Joseph moves from the town to the country in order to illustrate, in the words
of Martin C. Battestin, “a moral pilgrimage from the vanity and corruption of
the Great City to the relative naturalness and
simplicity of the country.” Like Mr. Wilson (albeit without having sunk nearly
so low), Joseph develops morally by leaving the city, site of vanity and
superficial pleasures, for the country, site of virtuous retirement and
contented domesticity. Not that Fielding had any utopian illusions about the
countryside; the many vicious characters whom Joseph and Adams meet on the road
home attest that Fielding believed human nature to be basically consistent
across geographic distinctions. His claim for rural life derives from the
pragmatic judgment that, away from the bustle, crime, and financial pressures
of the city, those who are so inclined may, as Battestin puts it, “attend to
the basic values of life.”

Affectation, Vanity, and Hypocrisy

Fielding’s
Preface declares that the target of his satire is the ridiculous, that “the
only Source of the true Ridiculous” is affectation, and that “Affectation
proceeds from one of these two Causes, Vanity, or Hypocrisy.” Hypocrisy, being
the dissimulation of true motives, is the more dangerous of these causes:
whereas the vain man merely considers himself better than he is, the hypocrite
pretends to be other than he is. Thus, Mr. Adams is vain about his learning,
his sermons, and his pedagogy, but while this vanity may occasionally make him
ridiculous, it remains entirely or virtually harmless. By contrast, Lady Booby
and Mrs. Slipslop counterfeit virtue in order to prey on Joseph, Parson
Trulliber counterfeits moral authority in order to keep his parish in awe,
Peter Pounce counterfeits contented poverty in order to exploit the financial
vulnerabilities of other servants, and so on. Fielding chose to combat these
two forms of affectation, the harmless and the less harmless, by poking fun at
them, on the theory that humor is more likely than invective to encourage
people to remedy their flaws.

Chastity

As his broad
hints about Joseph and Fanny’s euphoric wedding night suggest, Fielding has a
fundamentally positive attitude toward eslam; he does prefer, however, that
people’s eslamual conduct be in accordance with what they owe to God, each other,
and themselves. In the mutual attraction of Joseph and Fanny there is nothing
licentious or exploitative, and they demonstrate the virtuousness of their love
in their eagerness to undertake a lifetime commitment and in their compliance
with the Anglican forms regulating marriage, which require them to delay the
event to which they have been looking forward for years. If Fielding approves
of Joseph and Fanny, though, he does not take them too seriously; in
particular, Joseph’s “male-chastity” is somewhat incongruous given the eslamual
double-standard, and Fielding is not above playing it for laughs, particularly
while the hero is in London.
Even militant chastity is vastly preferable, however, to the loveless and
predatory eslamuality of Lady Booby and those like her: as Martin C. Battestin
argues, “Joseph’s chastity is amusing because extreme; but it functions
nonetheless as a wholesome antithesis to the fashionable lusts and intrigues of
high society.”

Class and Birth

Joseph Andrews is full of class distinctions and
concerns about high and low birth, but Fielding is probably less interested in
class difference per se than in the vices it can engender, such as
corruption and affectation. Naturally, he disapproves of those who pride
themselves on their class status to the point of deriding or exploiting those
of lower birth: Mrs. Grave-airs, who turns her nose up at Joseph, and Beau
Didapper, who believes he has a social prerogative to prey on Fanny eslamually,
are good examples of these vices. Fielding did not consider class privileges to
be evil in themselves; rather, he seems to have believed that some people
deserve social ascendancy while others do not. This view of class difference is
evident in his use of the romance convention whereby the plot turns on the
revelation of the hero’s true birth and ancestry, which is more prestigious
than everyone had thought. Fielding, then, is conservative in the sense that he
aligns high class status with moral worth; this move amounts not so much to an
endorsement of the class system as to a taking it for granted, an acceptance of
class terms for the expression of human value.

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