Characters in Joseph Andrews
Chapter Nineteen
Syllabus topic 1.2, "Joseph Andrews - Henry Fielding"
Pages 98 to 102 of 406
In one line
Parson Adams is the good man of the book, learned, poor, brave and hopeless at everything practical; Joseph is the servant who says no; Fanny is the girl everyone in the book tries to take; and Lady Booby is a woman with power who cannot get the one thing she wants.
Parson Abraham Adams
Placing. Abraham Adams is the curate of Lady Booby's parish, a clergyman of great learning and no worldly sense, who walks across England beside Joseph and is the real hero of the novel.
He is genuinely learned, and it is useless to him. He knows Greek and Latin, carries a manuscript of Aeschylus that he transcribed himself, and can correct a gentleman's Latin verse on the spot. In the world of the book that learning gets him mistaken for a robber carrying a book in cipher, and taunted by a wit who has forgotten his own schooling.
He is desperately poor and never complains of it. He has a wife and six children on twenty-three pounds a year. He sets out for London to sell nine volumes of sermons, and the entire expedition collapses because his wife packed shirts instead. He has to borrow fourteen shillings from a pedlar because a fellow clergyman refuses him.
He is brave without calculating. When a woman screams, the gentleman who has just been discoursing on heroic virtue runs away and Adams runs towards it, and knocks down her attacker. He is set on by hounds and fights them. He is the only person in the coach scene's moral world who would have acted at once, and Fielding puts him elsewhere at that moment precisely so we can see the others.
He judges by conduct and not by rank, which is the point of him. He will not stop the banns because a couple are poor, and he tells Lady Booby that the poor have little enough share of this world already. He rebukes Peter Pounce for calling charity a mean virtue.
He is human, and Fielding proves it in the one scene that matters. He is telling Joseph that a Christian must be able to resign anything Providence takes when he is told his youngest son has drowned. He stamps about the room in agony, and when Joseph offers back his own arguments he says: "Child, child, do not go about impossibilities." The boy is alive. Adams then turns round and begins the same lecture again.
What he is for. He is Fielding's answer to the question the whole novel asks: what does a good person actually look like. The answer is somebody ridiculous, poor, easily fooled, wrong about almost everything practical, and completely reliable when it costs him something.
Characters in Joseph Andrews
Joseph Andrews
Placing. Joseph is a footman in Lady Booby's household, the brother of Richardson's Pamela, and the title character.
He begins as a joke and stops being one. The parody requires a handsome young man who protects his chastity from his mistress and writes to his sister about it. By Book II he is a serious young man who has been robbed, stripped and abandoned, and who takes his part in every fight in the book.
He is loyal and physically capable. He beats the hounds off Adams, knocks down Beau Didapper for insulting Fanny, and is the one who notices that the sermons are not in the saddlebags.
He grows. By Book IV he can answer Adams back. When Adams resumes his lecture on not setting the heart too absolutely on any person, Joseph interrupts to say that it is easier to give advice than to take it, and he is right.
What he is for. He is the ordinary decent person the plot happens to, and the vehicle of the novel's argument about rank: he behaves in exactly the same way before and after he is discovered to be a gentleman's son, and everybody else's behaviour to him changes completely.
Fanny Goodwill
Placing. Fanny is a dairymaid, Joseph's beloved, and, as the last book reveals, the Andrewses' own daughter, stolen in infancy by gypsies.
She is defined by what other people try to do to her. A man attempts to rape her and is knocked down by Adams. The roasting squire's household plans to get her companions drunk so that the squire can get at her. Beau Didapper makes advances and is knocked down. She is jeered at by a room of gentlemen in front of a magistrate.
She is not weak. She sets out alone to find Joseph when she hears he has been hurt, and she refuses to be seated at the squire's table away from him.
She has little to say, and that is a criticism worth making. Fielding gives her beauty, constancy and danger, and very few words. A candidate who notices that, and says the novel is more interested in what happens to her than in what she thinks, is making a real critical point rather than repeating a summary.
What she is for. She is the test the novel applies to every man in it. How a man behaves towards a beautiful girl with no money and no protector is Fielding's quickest way of telling you what he is.
Lady Booby
Placing. Lady Booby is the widow of Sir Thomas Booby, Joseph's mistress in the household sense, and the antagonist of the novel.
She is genuinely in the grip of something. The mourning for her husband is mocked, but the desire for Joseph is not a joke to her, and Book IV gives her a chapter of real inner conflict between her passion and her pride.
Characters in Joseph Andrews
She uses power because persuasion fails. She cannot make Joseph want her, so she dismisses him. She cannot stop his marriage by asking, so she orders Adams to stop the banns. When he refuses, she sends for a lawyer, and the lawyer sends for a justice.
She is the novel's clearest statement of how the law reaches a poor person. Nothing she does is violent. She speaks to a lawyer, who speaks to a justice, and two young people end up in Bridewell over a hazel twig.
What she is for. She shows that the danger to Joseph and Fanny is not wickedness but ordinary social power used without restraint by somebody who never has to see the consequences.
The others, in short
Mrs Slipslop. Lady Booby's chambermaid, who also wants Joseph and who mangles long words at every opportunity. She refuses to recognise Fanny in the coach, which sets up Fielding's essay on high people and low people.
Peter Pounce. Lady Booby's steward, grown rich by lending money to the servants at heavy interest. He tells Adams that charity is a mean virtue, mostly a matter of the poor giving to the poor, and Adams gets out of his coach rather than travel with him.
Parson Trulliber. A clergyman with a farm, who mistakes Adams for a pig dealer, refuses him fourteen shillings, and tells him he is no Christian. He is the anti-Adams: the same office, the opposite man.
The pedlar. Poor, unnamed for most of the book, and the person who lends Adams the money, saves his son from drowning, and supplies the information that resolves Fanny's parentage. Fielding gives every decisive act of kindness in the novel to people with nothing.
Mr Wilson. The gentleman whose life story fills Book III, a reformed man of the town living quietly in the country, and, as it turns out, Joseph's father.
Beau Didapper. A small fashionable man of no substance who tries to buy Fanny's favour and is knocked down.
Distinctions worth a table
| Adams | Trulliber | |
|---|---|---|
| Office | Curate | Clergyman with a farm |
| Wealth | Twenty-three pounds a year, six children | Pigs, land, comfortable |
| Response to a fellow clergyman in need | Would give what he has not got | Refuses fourteen shillings and calls him no Christian |
| Learning | Greek and Latin, a manuscript of Aeschylus | Not shown |
| Function | The good man | The proof that the office is not the man |
What beginners get wrong
They reduce Adams to absent-mindedness. The forgotten sermons are one joke. His courage, his poverty and his refusal to stop a poor couple's marriage are the character.
Characters in Joseph Andrews
They call Joseph the hero and stop. Say why the book is named after him and yet belongs to Adams, and you have made an argument.
They ignore Fanny's silence. Noticing it is worth more than describing her beauty for a page.
They treat Lady Booby as a comic villain. Book IV gives her genuine internal conflict, and her power is the real threat in the plot.
A worked answer
Question. "Write a character sketch of Parson Adams."
A model answer. Abraham Adams is the curate of Lady Booby's parish and the true hero of Joseph Andrews, a man of great learning, no worldly sense, and complete moral reliability. His learning is real and useless to him: he carries a manuscript of Aeschylus that he transcribed himself, and it gets him taken before a justice as a man with a book in cipher who may be in a plot against the Government. His poverty is extreme and never complained of: he keeps a wife and six children on twenty-three pounds a year, sets out to sell nine volumes of sermons that his wife has replaced with shirts, and has to borrow fourteen shillings from a pedlar after a fellow clergyman refuses him. His courage is instinctive: when a woman screams, the gentleman who has just been discoursing on heroic virtue runs away and Adams runs towards it. And his judgment is by conduct and never by rank: he refuses Lady Booby's order to stop the banns because the parties are poor, telling her that the poor have little share enough of this world already. Fielding's final touch is the one that makes him human rather than a model: told that his youngest son has drowned, he stamps about the room in agony, and when Joseph gives him back his own arguments about resignation he answers, "Child, child, do not go about impossibilities."
Why it scores. Five qualities, each proved by an incident, and a closing detail that complicates rather than repeats.
Quick revision
Adams: learned, poor, brave, unworldly, judges by conduct, and breaks down over his son after preaching resignation.
Joseph: begins as a parody of Pamela, becomes a serious young man, behaves identically before and after his rank changes.
Fanny: constant, endangered by every man with power in the book, given very little to say.
Lady Booby: uses dismissal, then a parson, then a lawyer, then a justice, and never touches anybody herself.
Slipslop, Peter Pounce, Trulliber, the pedlar, Wilson, Didapper: the supporting cast, and the pedlar is the one who matters.
Test yourself
1. Write the opening sentence of a character sketch of Parson Adams. Abraham Adams is the poor and learned curate who walks home across England beside Joseph, and he is the character in whom Fielding puts everything he means by goodness: courage without calculation, charity without means, and an almost total incapacity to look after himself.
Characters in Joseph Andrews
2. Why is the drowning scene the best evidence in a sketch of Adams? Because it shows the gap between his doctrine and his heart. He is preaching resignation to Providence when he is told his son is dead, cannot practise a word of it, and then resumes the lecture the moment the boy is found alive.
3. What is the function of Parson Trulliber? To be Adams's opposite in the same office. He has land, pigs and money, refuses a fellow clergyman fourteen shillings, and tells him he is no Christian, which proves that the office guarantees nothing.
4. What criticism can fairly be made of Fielding's handling of Fanny? That she is given beauty, constancy and constant danger but very little speech or interior life, so the novel is more interested in what happens to her than in what she thinks.
5. How does Lady Booby pursue Joseph after he refuses her? She has him dismissed; she orders Adams not to publish the banns; when he refuses she employs lawyer Scout; and Scout arranges for a justice to commit Joseph and Fanny to Bridewell on a charge of cutting a twig.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.