Page 83 - DENG404_FICTION
P. 83
Unit 7: Joseph Andrews: Character Analysis Comic Epic in Prose and Plot Construction
In London, Joseph falls in with a fast crowd of urban footmen, but despite his rakish peers and Notes
the insinuations of the libidinous Lady Booby he remains uncorrupted. After a year or so Sir
Thomas dies, leaving his widow free to make attempts on the footman’s virtue. Joseph fails
to respond to her amorous hints, however, because he is too naive to understand them; in a
letter to his sister Pamela, he indicates his belief that no woman of Lady Booby’s social stature
could possibly be attracted to a mere servant. Soon Joseph endures and rebuffs another, less
subtle attempt at seduction by Lady Booby’s waiting-gentlewoman, the middle-aged and hideous
Mrs. Slipslop.
Lady Booby sends for Joseph and tries again to beguile him, to no avail. His virtue infuriates
her, so she sends him away again, resolved to terminate his employment. She then suffers
agonies of indecision over whether to retain Joseph or not, but eventually Joseph receives his
wages and his walking papers from the miserly steward, Peter Pounce. The former footman
is actually relieved to have been dismissed, because he now believes his mistress to be both
lascivious and psychologically unhinged.
Joseph sets out for the Boobys’ country parish, where he will reunite with his childhood
sweetheart and now fiancée, the illiterate milkmaid Fanny Goodwill. On his first night out, he
runs into Two Ruffians who beat, strip, and rob him and leave him in a ditch to die. Soon a
stage-coach approaches, full of hypocritical and self-interested passengers who only admit
Joseph into the coach when a lawyer among them argues that they may be liable for Joseph’s
death if they make no effort to help him and he dies.
Notes The coach takes Joseph and the other passengers to an inn, where the chamber-
maid, Betty, cares for him and a Surgeon pronounces his injuries likely mortal.
Joseph defies the Surgeon’s prognosis the next day, receiving a visit from Mr. Barnabas the
clergyman and some wretched hospitality from Mrs. Tow-wouse, the wife of the innkeeper.
Soon another clergyman arrives at the inn and turns out to be Mr. Adams, who is on his way
to London to attempt to publish several volumes of his sermons. Joseph is thrilled to see him,
and Adams treats his penniless protégé to several meals. Adams is not flush with cash himself,
however, and he soon finds himself trying unsuccessfully to get a loan from Mr. Tow-wouse
with a volume of his sermons as security. Soon Mr. Barnabas, hearing that Adams is a clergyman,
introduces him to a Bookseller who might agree to represent him in the London publishing
trade. The Bookseller is not interested in marketing sermons, however, and soon the fruitless
discussion is interrupted by an uproar elsewhere in the inn, as Betty the chambermaid, having
been rejected by Joseph, has just been discovered in bed with Mr. Tow-wouse.
Mr. Adams ends up getting a loan from a servant from a passing coach, and he and Joseph
are about to part ways when he discovers that he has left his sermons at home and thus has
no reason to go to London. Adams and Joseph decide to take turns riding Adams’s horse on
their journey home, and after a rocky start they are well on their way, with Adams riding in
a stage-coach and Joseph riding the horse. In the coach Mr. Adams listens avidly to a gossipy
tale about a jilted woman named Leonora; at the next inn he and Joseph get into a brawl with
an insulting innkeeper and his wife. When they depart the inn, with Joseph in the coach and
Adams theoretically on horseback, the absent-minded Adams unfortunately forgets about the
horse and ends up going on foot.
On his solitary walk, Adams encounters a Sportsman who is out shooting partridge and who
boasts of the great value he places on bravery. When the sound of a woman’s cries reaches
them, however, the Sportsman flees with his gun, leaving Adams to rescue the woman from
her assailant. The athletic Adams administers a drubbing so thorough that he fears he has
killed the attacker. When a group of young men comes by, however, the assailant suddenly
recovers and accuses Adams and the woman of robbing and beating him. The young men lay
hold of Adams and the woman and drag them to the Justice of the Peace, hoping to get a
reward for turning them in. On the way Mr. Adams and the woman discover that they know
LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 77