Page 22 - DENG404_FICTION

Fiction

Notes 2.2.1 Analysis

If Fielding’s universe is a providential one, the society that he depicts is incongruously violent.
Joseph’s journey out of London soon brings him into contact with two savage highwaymen,
but ferocity exists even in the household of Lady Booby. Fielding suggests an element of
violence in Lady Booby’s feelings for Joseph: she flies “into a violent Passion” when ordering
him to leave her room, then wonders aloud, “Whither does this violent Passion hurry us?,”
then rings the bell for Slipslop “with infinite more Violence than was necessary.” She swerves
between extremes of emotion, and this emotional volatility arises, like other manifestations of
violence, from her high social status. As Hamilton Macallister observes, Lady Booby may do
almost anything she wants — except marry Joseph, because to do so would be beneath her.
Unable, therefore, to reconcile what she wants with what she is, she experiences desire as
degradation, with a consequent impulse to punish both herself and the object of her desire.
Thus follows, in Macallister’s words, “the whole gamut of the passions: pride followed by
contempt, disdain, hatred of Joseph, revenge.” Lady Booby indeed endures more intense and
protracted emotional pain than any other character in the book, and Fielding presents her pain
in detail; yet the novel does not encourage sympathy for Lady Booby, and indeed virtually no
readers feel any. She is a personality spoiled by privilege: as her status is unconditional, her
power is irresponsible; her inability (or refusal) to control her emotions results from her
exemption from accountability and, being a function of her selfishness, does not call forth
sympathy.
Mrs. Slipslop has violent hankerings as well, and they emerge most obviously in the famous
mock-epic simile in which Fielding compares her to “a hungry Tygress” craving the “Lamb”
Joseph. Fielding thus makes Slipslop’s violent tendencies more explicit than Lady Booby’s, but
interestingly, one of the effects of this explicitness is to make Slipslop seem less threatening
than her mistress. The mock-epic simile is inherently belittling, as the burlesque diction measures
the distance between the heroic subjects of true epic and the ignoble subjects of the present
comedy. This mockery is consistent with Fielding’s whole presentation of Slipslop, which is
entirely trivializing. His physical description of her sets the tone: she is a forty-five-year-old
virgin, short and corpulent, florid and pimply, with small eyes, a large nose, bovine breasts,
and legs of uneven length. Many readers have detected something cruel in the zest with which
Fielding enumerates the physical disadvantages of this middle-aged spinster, but such sympathy
is perhaps misplaced: in Fielding’s scheme of character, Mrs. Slipslop is simply not a feeling
subject. She is a character type rather than a naturalistic personality; she does not exist in
everyday life, rather she represents a category of women who do. With characters such as
Slipslop — and the majority of Fielding’s characters exist on this plane of typicality — Fielding
imposes a distance between the reader on the one hand and the characters and their actions
on the other. Many modern readers, accustomed to considering psychological realism one of
the great virtues of the novel, will regret Fielding’s objectification of his characters, but as
Macallister observes, “if we lose by this, we also gain. We see the characters in their context;
not only their social context but their moral context.” By fixing characters by their eternal
qualities in this way, Fielding’s distant, omniscient, and judgmental narrator offers “a picture
of society that is wider, more comprehensive,” than that of the novelist who treats characters
as realistic, developing, and morally ambiguous subjects.
Two characters Joseph encounters on his journey appear to be types of the pursuit of violence
for its own sake. They are of course the Two Ruffians who beat and strip Joseph and steal his
money. In rendering this episode, Fielding again does not encourage the reader to identify
with any of its participants, not even with the victimized hero Joseph. The matter-of-fact way
in which he describes the violations does not focus our attention on Joseph’s experience of
pain; rather, its effect is much different: “Both [Ruffians] together fell to be-labouring poor
Joseph with their Sticks, till they were convinced they had put an end to his miserable Being:

16 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY