Joseph Andrews : concept o f morality

Concept of Morality in Joseph Andrews

Henry Fielding undoubtedly holds moral views far-ahead of his times. Morality is an approval or adherence to principles that govern ethical and virtuous conduct.

Fielding was accused of being immoral in his novels. Dr. Johnson called his novels “vicious and corrupting”. Richardson echoed the “charge of immorality” against him. Modern critics, however, has justified Fielding and gave him a credit of “an estimable ethical code”. Strachey declared him a “deep, accurate, scientific moralist”. Indeed neither “Joseph Andrews” nor “Tom Jones” strikes the modern sensibility as ‘low’ or ‘immoral’ either in purpose or in narration. Behind the truthful portrait of life, lies his broad moral vision. His aim was to correct mankind by pointing out their blunders.
“I have endeavored to laugh at mankind, out to their follies and vices.”
Fielding reacted sharply against the code of ethics as incited by Richardson in “Pamela”. He feels that Pamela’s virtue is an affectation and a commodity, exchangeable for material benefits. Virtue cannot and should not be to chastity alone. Mere external respectability is not morality. For Fielding:
“Chastity without goodness of heart is without value.”
A truly virtuous man is disregardful of material benefits. He is devoid of an affectation.
He finds:
“A delight in the happiness of mankind and a concern at their misery, with a desire, as much as possible, to procure the former and avert the latter …”
Fielding’s moral vision is much wider that Richardson’s. Morality is no longer equated with chastity or outward decorum. It is broad enough to include every aspect of human behaviour. One’s intentions, instincts, motives are equally important in judging a man.

In “Joseph Andrews” we are confronted with a chameleonic society that quickly changes its appearance to gratify personal lusts. Fielding’s  aim was to show human beings camuoflaged in various shades of vanity and hypocrisy and it is done ruthlessly and wittily in “Joseph Andrews”.

The stage-coach scene is perhaps the best illustration of Fielding’s concept of morality. In it we are confronted the haughty passengers which are all models of hypocrisy. The coachman simply bids the postillion to "Go on, Sirrah, we are confounded late”. The lady reacts in a contemptible manner: "O Jesus, a naked Man! Dear Coachman, drive on". The old gentleman deems: "Let us make all the haste imaginable, or we shall be robbed too".In addition there a lawyer who “wished they had past by without taking any notice",  although his final advice is “to save the poor creature's life, for their own sakes”. At last, it is the postillion, " who hath been since transported for robbing a hen-roost,  voluntarily strips off a great coat, his only garment" and swears that he would rather remain in a shirt than "suffer a fellow-creature to lie in so miserable a condition". Here Fielding shows the contrast between the attitude of the rich passengers and that of the poor Postillion. What sets him apart is not his class, but the fact that he alone dismisses his own comfort and he is the only person who considers Joseph a "fellow-creature" worthy of such rescue. Fielding emphatically declares: "High People" are "People of Fashion", but that they are not "higher in their Dimensions" nor in "their Characters"  The journey undertaken by Joseph and Parson Adams reveals vanity or hypocrisy at every stage.

It is significant that Parson Adams jumps with joy at the reunion of Fanny and Joseph. It reflects an ability to sympathize with other’s feelings. Simple, kind, generous and courageous, Adams is the epitome of true feeling and goodness of heart which is a vital aspect of Fielding’s concept of morality. Adams’ impulses always prompt him to help anyone in distress. He saves Fanny’s virginity two times.
“He is an innocent … so completely sincere in his beliefs and actions that he can’t imagine insincerity in other; he takes everyone he meets at face-value”.
Kindness achieved supreme importance in Fielding’s moral code. A good and a moral man takes joy in helping others. Fielding says:
“I don’t know a better definition of virtue, than it is a delight in doing good.”
Fielding is as liberal in ridiculing affectation as he is hard on the lack of charity. Adams’ definition:
“A generously disposition to receive the poor”,
  is the simple test employed  to men by Fielding to  check the capability of charity. When Parson Adams asks for some shillings to Parson Trulliber, he declares in frenzy:
“I know what charity is better than to give it to vagabonds.”
This shows 18th century’s clergy’s degeneracy, who is reluctant to give some shillings. The rich Parson Tulliber, Mrs. Tow-wouse, Lady Booby and Peter Pounce lacks natural kindness whereas the poor postilion, Betty and Pedler are true Christians, for they are ready to help other man in distress asking nothing in return. But Mrs. Tow-wouse scornfully declares:
“Common charity my foot.”
Fielding is against the prudish morality which considers sex as an unhealthy and dangerous for human life. He favours a healthy attitude towards sex. But he does not approve of Lady Booby’s desire for Joseph nor does he favour Mr. Slipslop’s extreme whims. But Betty’s desires spring from a natural heart and feeling. It is worth noticing that Betty is free of hypocrisy. She acts as ordered by her nature.
“She is good-natured generosity and composition.”
Summing up, Fielding’s concept of morality is realistic, tolerant, broad and fairly flexible. Modern opinion has vindicated the moral vision of Fielding as healthy, wide and practical.

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Joseph Andrews: Title

                              Joseph Andrews: A Picaresque

The title page of Henry Fielding’s first novel reads as, “The history of the adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his friend Mr. Abraham Adams, Written in imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote.” The allusion to Cervantes and his masterpiece Don Quixote is significant as it shows Fielding’s indebtedness to Cervantes . Parson Adams is indeed a truly Quixotic figure, and the structure of the book also follows Cervantes’ picaresque model. Joseph Andrews is a novel of adventures met while travelling on the road. Joseph loses his employment in Lady Booby’s service in London, on his way home to the country to his sweetheart Fanny, he meets Parson Adams. Together they run all kinds of adventures meeting a host of characters from low and middle-class layers of society: innkeepers, chambermaids, country squires and clergymen.

The picaresque tradition belongs to Spain and derived from the word “picaro”, meaning a rogue or a villain. The picaresque originally involved the misadventure of the rogue-hero, mainly on the highway. Soon, however, the rogue was replaced by a conventional hero – gallant and chivalric. The comic element lay in the nature of the hero’s adventures, through which, generally, society was satirized.

Fielding’s affinity with picaresque model appears first of all in the representation of rogue and villainous; secondly, in the humorous style which often takes a mock-heroic turn, and in the geniality of temperament; thirdly, in the portrait of characters of certain lower classes of men and women; and finally, in the humorous or satiric descriptions of the contents of the chapters and the introduction of side stories or episodes into the main narrative.

Thus, the journey in Joseph Andrews is not a mere picaresque rambling, a device solely for the purpose of introducing new adventures such as we find in the classic picaresque story, , but an allegorical journey, a moral pilgrimage, from the vanity and corruption of the city-life to the relative naturalness and simplicity of the country. The picaresque motif helps Fielding to fulfill his aim of ridiculing the affectations of human beings. The different strata of society can be represented through the picaresque mode. The travelers meet squires, innkeepers, landladies, persons, philosophers, lawyers and surgeons, beggars, pedlars and robbers and rogues. Fielding’s satire is pungent as he presents the worldly and crafty priests and the callous, vicious and inhuman country squires. Malice, selfishness, vanities, hypocrisies, lack of charity, all are ridiculed as human follies.

The Picaresque novel is the loosest in plot – the hero is literally let loose on the high road for his adventures. The hero wanders from place to place encountering thieves and rogues, rescuing damsels in distress, fighting duels, falling in love, being thrown in prison, and meeting a vast section of society. As the hero meets a gamut of characters from the country squire to the haughty aristocrat, from hypocrite to ill-tempered soldiers, the writer is able to introduce with the least possible incongruity, the saint and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious. The writer has a chance to present the life, culture and morality prevalent in his time, and to satirize the evils.

Fielding acknowledged his debt to Cervantes, whose Don Quixote is the best known picaresque novel in Spanish.

Like the Don Quixote and Panza, Parson Adams and Joseph set out on a journey which involves them in a series of adventures, some of them burlesque, at several country inns or rural houses. Like the Don, Parson Adams is a dreamy idealist. But there are differences, too, between Joseph Andrews and the picaresque tradition, vital enough to consider Fielding’s novel as belonging to the genre of its own.

The central journey in Joseph Andrews is not mainly a quest for adventure as it is in the picaresque tradition. It is a sober return journey homewards. Joseph and Lady Booby are taken to London and the reader is given a glimpse of society’s ways in that great city.

It is in Chapter 10 of Book I that the picaresque element enters the novel, with Joseph setting out in a borrowed coat towards home. The picaresque tradition is maintained uptil the end of Book III. Joseph meets with the first misadventure when he is set upon by robbers, beaten, stripped and thrown unconscious into a ditch. A passing stage-coach and its passengers very reluctantly convey Joseph to an inn. The incident gives ample scope to Fielding for satirizing the pretences and affectations of an essentially inhuman society.

The Tow-wouse Inn provides a grim picture of callous human beings – the vain and ignorant surgeon and the drinking parson. Once again kindness and generosity come from an apparently immoral girl, Betty the chambermaid. With the arrival of Parson Adams, the picaresque journey takes on a more humorous tone, with plenty of farce. The encounter with the “Patriot” who would like to see all cowards banged but who turns tail at the first sight of danger, leads to the meeting with Fanny. She is rescued by Adams in proper picaresque-romance style with hero. Several odd characters are met on the way – such as the hunting squire – the squire who makes false promises. Then comes the abduction of Fanny – and the reintroduction of something more serious.

We also have the interpolated stories, which belong to the picaresque tradition. In his use of this device, Fielding shows how far he has come from the picaresque school.

To conclude, Joseph Andrews has a rather rambling and discursive narrative, which makes us to believe that it is a picaresque novel. But, on the whole, it is not a picaresque novel rather the picaresque mode has helped him in the development of his comic theory – that of ridiculing the affectations of human beings.

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Discuss “Joseph Andrews” as a comic epic in prose

“Joseph Andrews” a comic epic in prose 

 

It is true that we can term “Joseph Andrews” as a ‘comic epic poem in prose’ because it has almost all the prerequisites that are important for labeling it as a ‘comic epic poem in prose’.

Fielding himself termed it as a ‘comic epic poem in prose’ in the “Preface to Joseph Andrews”. The impetus for the novel, as Fielding claims in the preface, is the establishment of a genre of writing "which I do not remember to have been hitherto attempted in our language", defined as the "comic epic  in prose": a work of prose fiction, epic in length and variety of incident and character. Fielding has combined the ideal of ‘comic epic’ and the ‘prose epic’ to produce what he termed as ‘comic epic poem in prose’.The comic tone of the novel is enhanced by the mock-heroic style, for Fielding admitted burlesque in the diction. It is instrumental in heightening the ridiculous nature of situation and affectations.

A heroic epic has a towering hero, grand theme, a continuous action, a journey to underworld, wars, digressions, discovery, high seriousness, a high moral lesson and bombastic diction in it and in“Joseph Andrews” there is an ordinary hero, a journey from one place to another place, mock-wars, digressions, discovery, humour, a high moral and a bombastic diction in it. Unlike a heroic epic, the hero of “Joseph Andrews” is an ordinary boy. He is a foot-man of Lady Booby who has fallen in love with him. But Joseph is very virtuous and chaste and therfore is dismissed from his job. We can call “Joseph Andrews” as “The Odyssey on the road” because both the works, Homer’s “Odyssey” and Fielding’s “Joseph Andrews” in the first place involve a journey. Like Odysseus, Joseph Andrews after the displeasure of a lady, sets out on his way home and meets with many misfortunes on the way. So it would be fairly justified to call Joseph Andrews “ an epic of the highway full of adventures, horseplay and not too decent fun.”

Through the journey of Joseph, Fielding satirizes the society of the day and ridicules them. The corrupt and hypocritical clergy, Parson Trilluber and Parson Barnabas, individual like Lady Booby and Mrs. Slipslop, the Squire of Fools and the Squire of False Promises have been satirized.

The element of wars and conflicts is very important in an epic and it is no exception in “Joseph Andrews”. First of all, there is a conflict between lusty advances of lady Booby and Mrs. Slipslop and chastity of Joseph. Also there is a conflict between generosity of  Parson Adams and misely Parson Trulliber and Mrs. Tow- Wouse.Then  we see some real action in the form of a war in an inn where Joseph was insulted by the host. Parson Adams was annoyed and challenged the host. There started the first war between both the parties. The funny situation of the bloody fight in which Parson Adams gets doused in hog’s blood is described in Homeric terms. Then Parson Adams rescues Fanny from a ruffian and then, a squire attacks Parson Adams with his hounds and  a fierce battle is fought between hunter’s hounds and parson Adams. Joseph’s encounter with the dogs let loose on Parson Adams is  described in epic-style. Similarly There are many other epical elements in the novel to call it a comic epic.

Another epic convention is the use of digression. There are two major digressions in “Joseph Andrews”. There are, seemingly, irrelevant stories of Leonara and Mr. Wilson. Epic writers considered them as embellishments. Fielding, however, makes the interpolations thematically relevant. For, these are not irrelevant in reality.

The formula of discovery, as described by Aristotle, an essential element of an epic, has also been used by Fielding. In the end of the novel, we see that Joseph is recognized to be Mr. Wilson’s child and Fanny as the sister of virtuous Pamela.

High seriousness is an important element in epic. But in “Joseph Andrews” there is a great deal of comedy and humour, because it is a comic epic novel; indeed in Joseph Andrews the comic point of view is sustained throughout the novel. But behind this comedy, there lies a serious purpose of reformation. We have a gamut of vain and hypocritical characters in Parson Trilluber, Parson Barnabas, passengers in the stage-coach, Mr. Tow-wouse, Mrs. Slipslop, Peter Pounce and the various Squires. The surgeon and the lawyer and the magistrate are also some other example of hypocrisy and vanity. Each of these characters provides a great deal of humour and amusement under a serious purpose.

Every epic has a moral lesson in it and this is no exception with a comic epic. Fielding’s views on morality are practical, full of common sense and tolerance, liberal, flexible and more realistic. These are devoid of prudish and rigid codes. Fielding wanted to tear the veil of vanity and hypocrisy.

The use of grand, bombastic and elevated language is an important element in an epic. It has heroic diction. But in “Joseph Andrews” we see that Fielding has used prose for poetry because it brings us close to the real and actual life and it is much more suitable for Fielding’s purpose of dealing with comic epic. However, his use of prose is very good, up to the mark and apt for his novel.

So, we can conclude that the theory of the ‘comic epic poem in prose’ as described by Fielding in the preface of “Joseph Andrews” manifests itself in the novel. Fielding has assimilated the rules and adapted them to his way of writing so well that we are not consciously aware of the formal principles which give unity to his materials. According to Thornbury, “Joseph Andrews” by Fielding is:

“An art which conceals art, but is the art of a conscious artist.”

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Joseph Andrews as A Social Satire

Joseph Andrews as A Social Satire

       Henry Fielding is widely studied today as one of the chief begetters of the modernist movement in novel and as a master who embodied in realistic prose a panoramic survey of the contemporary society. With the novelty and vitality of the writings of Henry Fielding exerted a major influence on the succeeding writers and dominated the English fiction until the end of the 19th century.

         Fielding’s brilliant tour de force Joseph Andrews is an astounding encapsulation of the 18th century English social life and manners. It mirrors with rare force and realism, the blemishes of mankind in its true face. The novel, in its entirety, is an impassioned satire on the moral and social ills that beset the 18th century English society. In this novel we are confronted with a chameleonic society that frequently changes its appearance to gratify personal lusts of various kinds. The social life portrayed by Fielding is scrutinized in every facets of this society. The novel depicts human beings camouflaged in various shades of vanity, hypocrisy and narcissism. Here, Fielding essentially becomes a spokesman of his age and seeks to come out strongly against the affected behavior of the so-called respectable society of the day. The reader becomes a witness of characters who have a life of their own, but it is the essence of humanity, distilled through Fielding’s own vision. It is presented to us through the lines:

 “I describe not men, but manners, not an individual, but species”.

          Fielding's exploration begins with his survey on the nature and temperament of women of his time. Women of all classes were snobbish and amorous to some extent . The sensuality of women is reflected at its best through the representatives like Lady Booby, Mrs. Slipslop and Betty. Lady Booby feels greatly attracted by Joseph’s manliness and personality and seeks in vain to evoke his sexual response to gratify her sensual appetite. Mrs. Slipslop also follows her mistress’ path and tries to win Joseph as a lover. Even Betty falls in love with Joseph and seeks in vain to have sexual gratification from him. All these amorous intentions show a fair picture of the amoral side of the 18th century women.

      The society that Fielding portrays in Joseph Andrews is extremely inhuman, callous, indifferent, uncharitable and narcissistic. The insensitive hardness of this society is clearly exposed in the stage-coach scene in which we find inhuman stubborness. When Postillion tells the Coachman that someone is groaning within a ditch, he bids the postillion to "Go on, Sirrah, we are confounded late”. Then there is a lady who reacts in a contemptible manner, when  Postillion relates Joseph’s nakedness : "O Jesus, a naked Man! Dear Coachman, drive on and leave him". Thus both the coachman and the lady decide to leave Joseph to his own lot, the coachman because he is behind schedule, and the lady because she cannot tolerate the idea of aiding a naked man. Seeing the gentlemen, Joseph appeals to them and details the circumstances of his situation, upon which an old gentleman cries: "Robbed! Let us make all the haste imaginable, or we shall be robbed too", showing again a similar willingness as the others have displayed to abandon Joseph. In addition, the other gentleman, who studies law, deems that they should not abandon Joseph at all, although for contemptible reasons. Although he agrees with the rest that "he wished they had past by without taking any notice",  his final conclusion is  that they would be held accountable for murder if Joseph died in that situation  and he therefore thought “it adviseable to save the poor creature's life, for their own sakes”. Although Joseph does require clothing to fight against the cold in his enfeebled state, both the lawyer and the older gentlemen do not condescend to vouchsafe any assistance. The coachman also declines, in spite of his  two large coats, because of  fears that  "they should be made bloody" At last, it is the postillion, "a lad who hath been since transported for robbing a hen-roost,  voluntarily strips off a great coat, his only garment" and swore that he would rather remain in a shirt than "suffer a fellow-creature to lie in so miserable a condition". Here Fielding shows the contrast between the attitude of the rich passengers and that of the poor Postillion. What sets him apart is not his class, but the fact that he alone dismisses his own comfort and he is the only person who considers Joseph a "fellow-creature" worthy of such rescue. Fielding emphatically declares: "High People" are "People of Fashion", but that they are not "higher in their Dimensions" nor in "their Characters" The incident gives ample scope to Fielding for satirizing the pretences and affectations of an essentially inhuman society.

        Fielding also provides some glimpses of the chaotic, greedy, opportunistic and insincere sides of the 18th century society. The chaotic side is exposed by the robbery incident. It is also revealed by the incident in which a villain attempts to rape Fanny. Human greed is exposed by the characters of the surgeons and the clergymen. The surgeon refused to treat Joseph because was unable to pay fees. The clergymen of the time were the most selfish and materialistic. Parson Barnabas and Parson Trulliber are the true embodiments of corrupt clergy. Then there is a squire who is fond of hunting hares, tries to satisfy his lustful desire for Fanny taking advantages of her poor condition. The insincerity of the society is also revealed by the depiction of the justices, who were as dishonest as the clergymen and the squires. Justice Frolick, for instance, goes out of his way to send Joseph and Fanny to prison, without any trial, only to satisfy a whim of Lady Booby.

       In brief, Joseph Andrews is a fine social document that represents an inclusive picture of the 18the century English society. The novel directs its satire not only against particular individuals but also against the follies and vices of the entire society.

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