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Fiction

Notes Betty and calls her a derogatory name that Fielding makes a great show of rendering, delicately,
as “She Dog.” Betty objects to the slur, and Mrs. Tow-wouse brandishes the spit; Mr. Adams,
however, intervenes and prevents the assault.

Chapter XVIII
Fielding enumerates Betty’s personality attributes, which include “Good-nature, Generosity
and Compassion,” but also lasciviousness. He then summarizes her sexual history, which is
less promiscuous than it might have been. She has been attracted to Joseph since his arrival,
but just today she made a move, which Joseph rebuffed. Lustful and wrathful, Betty considered
stabbing Joseph, “devouring him with Kisses,” and committing suicide; without resolving
these issues, she went to her master’s room to make his bed and, finding him there, received
his advances in lieu of Joseph’s. Mrs. Tow-wouse walked in at the end of the encounter, and
the uproar of the last chapter ensued. Mrs. Tow-wouse discharges Betty and brings her husband
back under her thumb.

2.3.1 Analysis
Fielding bestowed on his exemplary parson, Mr. Abraham Adams, a resoundingly biblical and
paternal name: the Adam of Genesis was the father of mankind, while Abraham was the father
of the people of Israel (and by extension, in the Christian tradition, of all the faithful). Nor
does Parson Adams fail to live up to his namesakes: as a dedicated clergyman and the spiritual
advisor of our young hero, he serves as the novel’s moral touchstone, which is to say that
other characters reveal their own moral quality through their responses to him. The goodness
of Joseph Andrews shows through in his love and admiration of Adams, while the parson’s
endless tribulations at the hands of others — in the words of one critic, Adams “is laughed
at, maligned, physically bruised, confined, dismissed, humiliated, and repeatedly made a
butt for abuse” — are an index of society’s alienation from Christian values. Mr. Adams, of
course, is not without his own flaws, which include forgetfulness, naïveté, and mild vanity;
all of these cause him to look foolish from time to time, and Fielding does not shrink
from joining in the laughter. The novelist’s leading idea, however, seems to be that anyone
who exemplifies Adams’s virtues of poverty and charity will inevitably appear foolish by
worldly standards.

Mr. Adams is, to begin with, physically eccentric: tall, thin, and strong, he is proud of his
athleticism but careless of his appearance, and Fielding never tires of recording his sartorial
lapses. Thus, in Chapter XVI, we learn: “He had on a Night-Cap drawn over his Wig, and a
short great Coat, which half covered his Cassock; a Dress which, added to something comical
enough in his Countenance, composed a Figure likely to attract the Eyes of those who were
not over-given to Observation.” (This is in fact one of the less ridiculous chapters in Fielding’s
chronicle of Mr. Adams’s toilette.) Mr. Adams’s sartorial incompetence is only one aspect of
his inability to adapt himself to his surroundings: he is totally unworldly, constantly losing
track of his money or engaging to spend money he does not have; he is perfectly humorless,
with no sense of how others, such as the mocking Surgeon, perceive him; he is endlessly
gullible; and he is optimistic to a fault, as in his serene faith that his sermons will find a
publisher and take London by storm. All of these foibles have a common denominator, namely
Mr. Adams’s childlike innocence; seen in its proper context, then, Adams’s physical shabbiness
should only enhance our sense of his moral dignity.

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