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Unit 5: Joseph Andrews-IV: Detailed Study of the Text

Chapter XV Notes
Joseph returns to Fanny’s room after she has dressed, and they vow that in case they should
turn out really to be siblings, they will both remain perpetually celibate. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews
arrive after breakfast, and when Mr. Booby broaches the topic of the stolen child, Mr. Andrews
denies that he and his wife ever lost a child in that manner. Lady Booby calls the Pedlar to
repeat his story, however, and it prompts Mrs. Andrews to claim Fanny as her child. Mrs.
Andrews then explains to her husband that she bore him a daughter when he was a soldier
away in Gibraltar and that the gypsies stole the child and replaced it with a sickly boy, whom
she soon named Joseph. The Pedlar asks Mrs. Andrews whether the boy had a distinctive
mark on his chest; she answers in the affirmative, and Joseph unbuttons his coat to show the
evidence. At the mention of the birthmark Mr. Adams begins to remember his conversation
with Wilson, but the Pedlar makes the crucial connection, assuring Joseph “that his Parents
were Persons of much greater Circumstances than those he had hitherto mistaken for such.”
It so happens that Wilson has just arrived at the gates of Booby Hall for his promised visit to
the parish. A servant apprises him of the connection that has just been discovered, and Wilson
hastens to the room to embrace Joseph as his long-lost son. Joseph, after things have been
explained to him, falls at the feet of his new father and begs his blessing.

Task Who identify Joseph by a birthmark on his Chest?

Chapter XVI
Mr. Booby invites everyone to accompany him and Pamela to their country home, since Lady
Booby is now too bitter over the loss of Joseph to entertain any company. They all comply, and
during the ride Joseph arranges with Wilson that he and Fanny will marry after Mrs. Wilson
is with them. Everyone arrives safely, and Saturday night brings Mrs. Wilson. Soon the happy
day arrives, and Fielding describes the wardrobe and wedding arrangements in some detail.
The events of the wedding night he leaves to the reader’s imagination, though he makes clear
in general terms that it is a rousing success.
Soon the Wilsons return home with the newlyweds in tow. Mr. Booby awards Fanny a fortune
of £2,000, with which Joseph purchases a small estate near his father’s; Fanny manages the
dairy and is soon on her way to producing their first child. Mr. Booby also awards Mr. Adams
a living of £130 per year and makes the Pedlar an excise-man. Lady Booby soon returns to
London, where card games and a young soldier allow her to forget Joseph.

5.2.1 Analysis

Fielding’s great theme of appearance versus reality dominates the last chapters of the novel,
obtruding itself in a couple of spectacular plot developments. The climactic sequence in which
both Joseph and Fanny turn out to have been involved in separate but linked gypsy-changeling
incidents is of course the most consequential deployment of the theme in the entire novel; by
far the funniest, however, is the episode in which a number of the overnight guests at Booby
Hall find themselves in the wrong beds.

In addition to being good screwball comedy, the nocturnal confusion sequence epitomizes the
entire story and culminates the novel’s pervasive sexual comedy. As Hamilton Macallister
remarks, “Each character re-enacts the role he plays in the novel. It is Didapper’s fate not to

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