Page 52 - DENG404_FICTION

Fiction

Notes Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. At the age of .............. Wilson’s father died.
2. Mr. Abraham Adams notices a light, which he takes to be a .............. .

3. .............. plans when appropriate and springing into physical action against betable adversaries.
4. Mr. Adams and .............. discuss the first part of wilson’s story.
5. .............. demands what Joseph meant by assaulting the dogs.

4.2.1. Analysis
Wilson’s biography prompts Mr. Adams and Joseph to have a nature-versus-nurture debate
about how men acquire moral insight; the ensuing exchange provides further evidence both
of Adams’s faulty ideas about human nature and of Joseph’s increasing shrewdness and confidence.
Adams, it appears, has some unsound notions regarding the origins of virtue and vice: in
declaring public schools “the Nurseries of all Vice and Immorality,” he implies that moral
character, for good or ill, derives from external conditioning, so that a proper moral education
entails sheltering boys from depravity and keeping them forever “in Innocence and Ignorance.”
Such a theory hardly has room for the doctrine of Original Sin; one thing it can accommodate,
however, is Mr. Adams’s high opinion of his own skill and importance as a pedagogue: as
Fielding observes, Adams’s emphasis on the moral significance of education owes much to his
belief in the schoolmaster as “the greatest Character in the World, and himself as the greatest
of Schoolmasters.” As if this reference to the parson’s vanity were not enough to render his
arguments suspect, Homer Goldberg points out a discrepancy between Adams’s theory and
his practice: whereas Adams here professes to consider the world at large to be corrupt in the
main, when he himself is abroad in the world he demonstrably expects that its inhabitants will
be as innocent and ignorant as the most sheltered private-school boy or as Adams himself.
Joseph propounds a more cogent theory of moral education and in the process shows himself
to have a better command than his mentor of some of the most important themes of the novel.
Fundamentally, Joseph rejects Adams’s premise of the universality of original innocence, suggesting
instead that while some boys are born with basically virtuous natures, others are naturally
vicious. External factors, including education, exert only limited influence on the development
of moral character, for “if a Boy be of a mischievous wicked inclination, no School, though’
ever so private, will ever make him good; on the contrary, if he be of a righteous Temper, you
may trust him to London, or wherever else you please, he will be in no danger of being
corrupted.” Joseph himself, having emerged immaculate from the cesspool of London, is Exhibit
A in support of this argument; nor does the case of Wilson, who eventually transcended his
corrupt environment (and after all had left his public school early), at all disprove it. Thus,
having previously excelled only in commonsensical matters, Joseph suddenly evinces superior
insight into human nature; his ability to overshadow the parson in the parson’s own specialty,
namely education and moral philosophy, suggests that Fielding may be priming him to retake
center stage, which Adams has occupied since his entrance late in Book I.

Joseph is not infallible, however, and ensuing events belie his assertion that a good action
defies ridicule: the bizarre Squire whose hunting dogs harass Adams so relishes “everything
ridiculous, odious, and absurd in his own Species” that he does not hesitate to “turn even
Virtue and Wisdom themselves to Ridicule.” Readers have often criticized the scene in which
the pack of hounds dismantles the “poor innocent” hare and then turns its attentions to the
poor innocent parson, on the grounds that the slapstick action goes beyond comedy to cruelty.

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