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Unit 4: Joseph Andrews-III: Detailed Study of the Text

away has won a £3,000 prize. His disappointment is short-lived, however, as the daughter of Notes
the winner hears of his plight, pays off his debts, and, after a brief courtship, agrees to become
his wife.
Wilson had found himself at the mercy of many of the social ills that Fielding had written
about in his journalism: the over-saturated and abused literary market, the exploitative state
lottery, and regressive laws which sanctioned imprisonment for small debts. Having seen the
corrupting influence of wealth and the town, he retires with his new wife to the rural solitude
in which Adams, Fanny and Joseph now find them. The only break in his contentment, and
one which will turn out to be significant to the plot, was the kidnapping of his eldest son,
whom he has not seen since.
Wilson promises to visit Adams when he passes through his parish, and after another mock-
epic battle on the road, this time with a party of hunting dogs, the trio proceed to the house
of a local squire, where Fielding illustrates another contemporary social ill by having Adams
subjected to a humiliating roasting. Enraged, the three depart to the nearest inn to find that,
while at the squire’s house, they had been robbed of their last half-guinea. To compound their
misery, the squire has Adams and Joseph accused of kidnapping Fanny, in order to have them
detained while he orders the abduction of the girl himself. She is rescued in transit, however,
by Lady Booby’s steward, Peter Pounce, and all four of them complete the remainder of the
journey to Booby Hall together.

4.1 Book III, Chapters I through III

Chapter I

Fielding again takes up issues of genre and begins by elevating biography over history. Historians
are always accurate in reporting circumstantial detail, but they are careless in their evaluations
of persons; thus, “Some represent the same Man as a Rogue, while others give him a great and
honest Character, yet all agree in the Scene where the Fact is supposed to have happened; and
where the Person, who is both a Rogue, and an honest Man, lived.” Biographers have exactly
the opposite priorities, presenting persons faithfully while occasionally mistaking the where
and the when. Fielding clearly sides with the biographers in this scenario, but he reserves his
highest praise for the authors of romances and novels, “who without any Assistance from
Nature or History, record Persons who never were, or will be, and Facts which never did nor
possibly can happen: Whose Heroes are of their own Creation, and their Brains the Chaos
whence all their Materials are collected.” These imaginative works are not bound to the particulars
of history, and they can be “Histories of the World in general,” expressing its eternal truths.
Accordingly, Fielding’s novel includes many instances of eternally recurring human types: the
Lawyer, the Wit, the Prude; and Fielding clarifies that none of these figures corresponds to
any one individual in real life. As he says, “I describe Men, not Manners; not an Individual,
but a Species.” Fielding’s goal is “not to expose one pitiful Wretch” in real life but “to hold
the Glass to thousands,” criticizing the common flaws of human nature. This distinction, says
Fielding, makes the difference between the libeler and the satirist.

Chapter II

The companions, who are nearing their destination, walk until nightfall and then sit down to
rest. Mr. Abraham Adams notices a light, which he takes to be a ghost. When they hear voices
“agreeing on the Murder of anyone they met,” Adams brandishes his stick and advances on
the menacing lights until Joseph Andrews pulls him back and convinces him that they should
flee. During their flight Mr. Adams trips and rolls down a hill, luckily to no ill effect. After

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