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Unit 2: Joseph Andrews-I: Detailed Study of the Text

Self Assessment Notes

Fill in the blanks:
4. Joseph appears in all his splendor before ................ .
5. The ................ go on beating the senseless Joseph.

6. Mr. Adams goes upstairs to check on ................ .
7. ................ discharges Betty and brings her husband back under her thumb.
All of Fielding’s novels are crawling with clergyman characters, and Joseph Andrews presents
several who serve as contrasts to the paragon Mr. Adams. In these chapters, Mr. Barnabas
shows himself to be perfectly sociable and impeccably orthodox but not much interested in
bettering the lot of his fellow-man: refreshing himself first with tea and then with punch
before approaching the bedside of the injured Joseph, he is clearly one of those clergymen who
looks on his vocation more as a platform for socializing than as a sacrificial commitment.
Barnabas’s moral inadequacy is further limned in the discussion of George Whitefield that
emerges from Adams’s fruitless negotiations with the Bookseller. Mr. Barnabas’s objection to
Methodism has to do with its emphasis on clerical poverty: Barnabas sees no reason why a
clergyman in the Church of England should not be able to amass as much luxury as anyone
else, whereas both Adams and Fielding consider poverty an ideal for the clergy, at least
insofar as temporal concerns should not interfere with a clergyman’s charitable ministrations.
Mr. Adams’s objection to Methodism, which is also Fielding’s objection, has to do with its
emphasis on faith over charity or good works: he gives his opinion “that a virtuous and good
Turk, or Heathen, are more acceptable in the sight of their Creator, than a vicious and wicked
Christian, tho’ his Faith was as perfectly orthodox as St. Paul’s himself.” For Adams, a man’s
formal religious commitments matter far less than his active benevolence. Hearing this moral
scheme, Mr. Barnabas exits the scene and the novel in a manner that confirms his moral
worthlessness: ringing the bell “with all the Violence imaginable” in order to make his escape
from Mr. Adams, he exiles himself from the circle of approved characters.
Fielding does not expect the clergy alone to practice charity; rather, it is a standard that he sets
for the citizenry at large. Betty the chamber-maid is an interesting case in point because
Fielding’s presentation of her conduct reveals that, despite all the uproar in the novel over the
virtue of chastity, he in fact prizes charity much more highly. When Joseph arrives at the inn,
Betty distinguishes herself through her willingness to assist him in his need: when Mrs. Tow-
wouse refuses to supply Joseph with either a shirt or a cup of tea, Betty takes it upon herself
to procure these items for him. Her other distinguishing characteristic, however, is her sexual
promiscuity: she has been “not entirely constant to [her sweetheart] John, with whom she
permitted Tom Whipwell the Stage-Coachman, and now and then a handsome young Traveller,
to share her Favours”; she also has “a Flame in her,” namely venereal disease, “which required
the Care of a Surgeon to cool.” This sexual voracity aligns her with Lady Booby and
Mrs. Slipslop, especially insofar as it prompts her to make an attempt on Joseph’s purity, and
yet Fielding does not subject Betty to anything like the level of criticism that we have seen in
the previous two cases. As Simon Varey notes, the scene in which Betty throws herself at
Joseph perhaps makes Joseph look a bit ridiculous, as he leaps away “in great Confusion” and
tells her priggishly that “he was sorry to see a young Woman cast off all Regard to Modesty”;
by contrast, Betty’s subsequent impulses toward recrimination, while they do not reflect well
on her, nevertheless do not encourage readers to laugh at her in the manner of Lady Booby’s
mood swings or Mrs. Slipslop’s satirical embodiment as the “hungry Tygress.” In keeping
with the Preface’s definition of “the true Ridiculous,” Betty never seems ridiculous because
she has no affectation; unlike Lady Booby and Mrs. Slipslop, she never sets herself above other
people or pretends to be sexually virtuous. Moreover, “[s]he had Good-nature, Generosity and

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