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Notes spontaneous, sympathetic good nature that has generally distinguished him. He has a rationalistic
side to his personality; it is the part of him that responds to the literature of classical stoicism
with its injunction to transcend all human feelings and attachments.
In the opposition between the sternly sententious clergyman and the warm and disconsolate
lover, the former surely forfeits a great deal of the reader’s sympathy. In Book IV, Chapter
VIII, however, Fielding revisits this opposition and may qualify it somewhat, depending on
one’s interpretation. Here, Adams again admonishes his parishioner to “divest himself of all
human Passion”; this time he is concerned that Joseph is too eager to get married, and he
warns that if sexual avidity is the motivation then Joseph is sinning, while if anxiety for
Fanny’s welfare is the motivation then Joseph ought to be putting his trust in providence.
Adams instructs Joseph to prepare himself to accept even the loss of his beloved Fanny “peaceably,
quietly, and contentedly,” “at which Words one came hastily in, and acquainted Mr. Adams
that his youngest Son was drowned.” Suddenly, the preacher who insisted that anyone who
indulges in exorbitant grief is “not worthy the Name of a Christian” begins lamenting his own
personal loss. Like the biblical Abraham, Mr. Abraham Adams has to confront the idea that
the divine will has demanded the death of his beloved son; in both cases, the apparent necessity
of the son’s death is a test of the father’s faith and resignation. Joseph urges the parson to
follow his own advice, resign himself, and look forward to a reunion in heaven; Adams, with
unconscious irony, refuses this counsel, so it is doubly fortunate that Dick eventually turns
out not to have drowned at all. As usual, however, Adams fails to see when his weaknesses
have been exposed, and he quickly snaps back to his formal sermonizing mode.
Mr. Adams’s conspicuous failure by the lights of his own code has emboldened Joseph: the
young man points out his mentor’s inconsistency and observes that it is “easier to give Advice
than to take it.” Adams’s rather petulant response to this challenge of his authority sharpens
the issue for the reader, who must decide whether the parson has revealed that all his supposed
virtue is in fact just a hypocritical penchant for arrogating a position of moral authority.
Despite how neatly this scene seems to fit into Fielding’s dominant theme of the exposure of
pretense, however, few readers are likely to take the condemnation of Adams as far as this;
Homer Goldberg articulates a sensible position when he observes that “although the incident
is similar in structure to Fielding’s unmaskings of hypocrisy, the paradox of Adams’s behavior
is not that he is worse than he pretends to be but that he is better than he knows.” Indeed,
the passive-resignation brand of Christianity that Adams has recommended in his stoical
sermonizing is by no means identical with the active charitable love of neighbor that he
elsewhere advocates and consistently enacts; his extraordinary goodness takes its distinctive
character not from his erudition or from his reason but rather from his natural and spontaneous
affections, of the sort that he keeps censuring in Joseph. The proper attitude toward Mr.
Adams is probably the one that Mrs. Adams espouses near the end of the scene when, after
expressing at length her affection for the husband who is more generous that he will admit,
she undercuts his teaching authority by saying, “Don’t hearken to him, Mr. Joseph.” As Maurice
Johnson suggests, Fielding likely means for readers to follow Mrs. Adams in regarding the
parson as thoroughly lovable but not always a reliable moral philosopher.

5.2 Book IV, Chapters IX through XVI

Chapter IX

Lady Booby meets the Gentleman who assaulted Fanny Goodwill and immediately conceives
plans of using him to get Joseph Andrews away from Fanny. In order to give this Gentleman,
Beau Didapper, access to his intended victim, Lady Booby takes her guests to see the Adams

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