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Fiction

Notes Compassion,” as her previous behavior toward Joseph has demonstrated. Perfect sexual continence
outside marriage, then, appears in Fielding’s moral scheme to be similar to doctrinal orthodoxy,
laudable in a person who is otherwise benevolent but hardly the most important moral quality.

Task Why fielding does not expect the clergy alone to practice charity?

Fielding even seems to suggest that there may be a connection, psychologically speaking,
between the disposition to perform acts of charity and the disposition to enjoy sex: anyone
who remembers that Mr. Tow-wouse dispatched Betty to give one of his own shirts to Joseph
before Mrs. Tow-wouse intervened should not be surprised, after the chambermaid’s rejection
by Joseph, to find Betty and Mr. Tow-wouse once more in league together against his wife.
Mrs. Tow-wouse, too, occupies a familiar role, that of standing on the sidelines and carping
at her husband and the maid. Fielding’s physical description of Mrs. Tow-wouse is revealing:
it reads in part, “Her Lips were two Bits of Skin, which, whenever she spoke, she drew
together in a Purse. Her Chin was peeked, and at the upper end of that Skin, which composed
her Cheeks, stood two Bones, that almost hid a Pair of small red Eyes.” It is a withered,
pinched, sour countenance, and one may conjecture that Mrs. Tow-wouse is scarcely more
pleasant as a bedmate than as a giver of alms and succor. Fielding admires honesty,
straightforwardness, and fellow-feeling, no less in sexual relations than in normal social interactions.
Unlike his literary foil Richardson, he is never coy about sex, as will soon be evident in respect
of Joseph and Fanny, who despite (or because of) their goodness are hardly less frank about
their mutual attraction than are Betty and her many lovers.

2.4 Summary

• Fielding defines and defends his chosen genre, the comic epic, or “comic Epic-Poem in
Prose.”
• Fielding anticipates the criticism that, in addition to affectation, he has given a great deal
of space in the novel to “Vices, and of a very black Kind.”
• Fielding detested the novel and the moral system implicit in it, and both Joseph Andrews
and his previous effort in fiction, Shamela, are spoofs of Richardson’s novel.
• Fielding introduces “Mr. Joseph Andrews, the Hero of our ensuing History”.
• Fielding soon presents two paragons of hypocrisy in Lady Booby and her servant and
imitator Mrs. Slipslop.
• Fielding enumerates Betty’s personality attributes, which include “Good-nature, Generosity
and Compassion,” but also lasciviousness.
• All of Fielding’s novels are crawling with clergyman characters, and Joseph Andrews
presents several who serve as contrasts to the paragon Mr. Adams.
• Fielding admires honesty, straightforwardness, and fellow-feeling, no less in sexual relations

than in normal social interactions.

2.5 Keywords

Ridiculous : absurd.
Egregious : outstandingly bad, shocking.

Burlesque : a comically exaggerated imitation.

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