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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




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