Joseph Andrews: the Story, Books III and IV
Chapter Seventeen
Syllabus topic 1.2, "Joseph Andrews - Henry Fielding"
Pages 87 to 91 of 406
In one line
On the last stage of the journey the travellers hear Mr Wilson's life story and are tormented by a squire who hunts Adams with dogs and tries to seduce Fanny, and back in the parish Lady Booby uses a lawyer, a justice and the law of settlement to stop Joseph and Fanny marrying, until the discovery of who Joseph really is settles everything.
Book III: Wilson, the hounds, and the roasting
Chapters I and II. Fielding opens with a chapter in praise of biography, arguing that his kind of writing describes not men but manners, not an individual but a species. The travellers, walking at night, mistake a light for a gang of murderers and take shelter with a gentleman who invites them in.
Chapter III, the history of Mr Wilson. This is the second long inset story and the more important one. Wilson tells his life: a young gentleman who went to London, fell into fashionable vice, gambling, debt, and a spell in prison, and was rescued and reformed by a good woman who became his wife. They now live quietly in the country with three children. He tells Adams that fortune has paid all her debts in this retirement, and then adds one loss he cannot mend.
he was stolen away from my door by some wicked travelling people whom they call gipsies; nor could I ever, with the most diligent search, recover him.
Chapter IV. Wilson's way of living is described, and a savage neighbour's dog kills the family's pet. The chapter also contains the detail on which the whole ending turns: Wilson says he would know his lost son among ten thousand, because he had a mark on his left breast of a strawberry.
Chapters V and VI. Adams and Joseph dispute about schools, public against private education. Then the hunting adventure: a squire's hounds, out on the hunt, turn on Adams and pull him down, and Joseph beats them off.
Chapter VII, the scene of roasting. The squire takes the party home, and the meaning of his hospitality becomes clear at once. He is a bachelor of about forty, brought up by a mother and a tutor who never corrected him, who since fifteen has done nothing but hunt and drink. He orders his servants to make Joseph drunk, intends the same for Adams, and means to get Fanny alone. "Roasting" here means the systematic mockery of a guest for the amusement of the company, and the squire's friends are professionals at it.
Chapters VIII to XII. The party escapes, and the squire's men pursue them and seize Fanny. Joseph and Adams give chase, and a servant of Lady Booby's happens to rescue her. Between these, Fielding inserts a comic dialogue between a poet and a player, each blaming the other for the failure of a play, and a chapter in which Adams offers Joseph consolation.
Joseph Andrews: the Story, Books III and IV
Chapter XIII, Peter Pounce. Adams rides with Lady Booby's steward, who has grown rich lending money to servants, and they quarrel about charity. Pounce's view is that charity is a mean virtue, mostly practised by the poor because they have nothing else to give. Adams walks the rest of the way rather than sit beside him.
Book IV: the parish, the law, and the discovery
Chapters I and II. Lady Booby returns to Booby-hall and finds that Joseph is back, in her parish, and about to marry Fanny. She sends for Adams and orders him not to publish the banns. Adams answers with the line MU set on the paper.
Madam, if any one puts in a sufficient caution, and assigns a proper reason against them, I am willing to surcease.
Banns are the public announcement of an intended marriage in church on three Sundays, so that anybody with a lawful objection may state it. To surcease is to stop. Adams is saying that he will stop if there is a lawful objection, and Lady Booby's objection is that the couple are poor. His reply is the moral centre of the book: the poor have little share enough of this world already, and it would be barbarous to deny them the common privileges nature indulges to them.
Chapter III, lawyer Scout. Lady Booby turns to a lawyer, and the chapter is dealt with in full in the chapter on law in this novel. In outline: Scout explains that a year's service gains a settlement, that is, the right to be relieved by that parish, and then explains how the law can be made not to apply. He proposes taking Joseph before Justice Frolick, who will commit him on hearing Lady Booby's name.
Chapter IV. Mr Booby, Lady Booby's nephew, arrives with his new wife, who is Pamela, Joseph's sister.
Chapter V, the justice business. Joseph and Fanny are committed to Bridewell for a month on a deposition, printed in the novel in the justice's own spelling, that Joseph cut one hazel twig of the value of three halfpence and that Fanny carried it. Mr Booby arrives, asks what the crime is, and is told by the lawyer that it was leniency: "if we had called it a young tree, they would have been both hanged". The justice hands the prisoners over to the squire, burns the mittimus, and the constable is sent about his business.
Chapters VI to IX. Joseph and Pamela meet as brother and sister. Mr Booby gives Joseph the grave advice of a new gentleman to a new relation. Lady Booby, still hoping, pays a visit to the parson.
Joseph Andrews: the Story, Books III and IV
Chapter VIII, the scene readers remember. Adams is lecturing Joseph on not setting his heart too absolutely on any person, since a Christian must be able to resign whatever Providence takes, when a man rushes in to say that Adams's youngest son is drowned. Adams stamps about the room in the bitterest agony, and when Joseph offers him back his own arguments he answers, "Child, child, do not go about impossibilities." The boy then walks in alive, saved by the same poor pedlar who lent Adams the fourteen shillings in Book II. As soon as the joy is over, Adams turns to Joseph and begins the lecture again.
Chapters X to XIV. Beau Didapper, a fashionable little man, makes advances to Fanny and is knocked down by Joseph. The pedlar reappears with information about Fanny's parentage. Lady Booby wrestles with her own feelings. The night adventures follow, in which Didapper gets into the wrong bedroom, Adams ends up in Mrs Slipslop's bed by mistake, and the confusion is sorted out by daylight.
Chapter XV, the solution. Gaffar and Gammar Andrews arrive. The pedlar's information is that Fanny was stolen in infancy by gypsies and sold, and Mrs Andrews confirms that a daughter was stolen from her and that a boy was left in the cradle in her place. For a few pages Joseph and Fanny appear to be brother and sister, which would make their marriage impossible.
Then the mark. Mrs Andrews recalls a strawberry on the breast of the boy who was left. Adams starts at the word, and Mr Wilson, who has arrived on his way to visit Adams, recognises it as the mark of his own stolen son.
I have discovered my son, I have him again in my arms!
So Fanny is the Andrewses' daughter and Pamela's sister; Joseph is Mr Wilson's son and no relation to Fanny at all.
Chapter XVI. Joseph and Fanny are married by Adams, Mr Booby gives Fanny two thousand pounds, and Joseph settles near his newly found father. Adams is given a living worth one hundred and thirty pounds a year, which is nearly six times what he had.
The two discoveries, and what to say about them
An examiner may ask whether the ending is a weakness. Take the question seriously.
The case that it is. It is the oldest device in comic fiction: a birthmark, gypsies, a lost heir. Nothing in the plot earns it, and every difficulty is solved by information nobody could have found.
The case that it is not. The whole novel has been about people being judged by rank rather than conduct. The justice will not commit a gentleman; the coach passengers will not lend a coat to a naked man; Lady Booby will not have a footman marry in her parish. The ending simply changes Joseph's rank and shows everybody's behaviour changing with it, which is the joke and the argument at once.
Joseph Andrews: the Story, Books III and IV
What beginners get wrong
They forget Wilson's story is the key to the ending. The strawberry mark is planted in Book III chapter IV and used in Book IV chapter XV.
They call the roasting squire a minor character. He is the novel's picture of what an uneducated man with money and no restraint does to people who cannot resist him, and the scene is set for exactly that reason.
They miss the point of the drowning scene. Adams is not being mocked for hypocrisy. He is being shown to be human, and Fielding's affection for him is at its clearest in the moment his own philosophy fails him.
A worked answer
Question. "How is the mystery of Joseph's birth solved, and where is it prepared?"
A model answer. It is prepared in Book III chapter IV, where Mr Wilson, having told Adams the story of his life, says that his eldest son was stolen from his door by gypsies and that he would know the boy among ten thousand because he had a mark on his left breast of a strawberry. It is solved in Book IV chapter XV, when Gaffar and Gammar Andrews arrive and Mrs Andrews recalls that a daughter was stolen from her and a boy left in the cradle in her place, and that the boy had a strawberry on his breast. For a few pages Joseph and Fanny appear to be brother and sister, which would make their marriage impossible, and then Mr Wilson, arriving on a visit to Adams, hears the word strawberry and recognises the mark of his own son.
The judgment to add. The device is as old as comic fiction, and Fielding uses it deliberately: the whole novel has shown people judged by rank rather than conduct, and the ending changes Joseph's rank without changing Joseph, so that everyone else's behaviour to him changes and his own does not.
Quick revision
Book III: praise of biography; the night scene; Mr Wilson's history, his reform, and his son stolen by gypsies with a strawberry mark on the left breast; the hunting dogs turned on Adams; the roasting squire and his design on Fanny; the poet and the player; Peter Pounce on charity.
Book IV: Lady Booby orders the banns stopped and Adams answers that he will surcease only on a proper reason; lawyer Scout and the law of settlement; the twig deposition and Bridewell; the mittimus burnt for a squire; Adams and the drowned son who is not drowned; Beau Didapper; the night confusions; the pedlar's information; the strawberry mark; Joseph is Wilson's son, Fanny is the Andrewses' daughter, and they marry.
Joseph Andrews: the Story, Books III and IV
Test yourself
1. What is the strawberry mark, and where is it planted? The mark on the left breast of Mr Wilson's stolen son, mentioned in Book III chapter IV when Wilson says he would know the boy among ten thousand. It is used in Book IV chapter XV to identify Joseph.
2. What is the crime for which Joseph and Fanny are committed to Bridewell? Cutting one hazel twig worth about three halfpence, on lawyer Scout's land, Fanny having carried it. The deposition is set out in the novel in the justice's own spelling.
3. Explain Adams's line about surceasing. He is telling Lady Booby that he will stop publishing the banns of Joseph and Fanny's marriage if anybody enters a sufficient caution and gives a proper reason. He refuses to accept poverty as a reason.
4. What is the point of the roasting squire? He shows what an uneducated man with a large fortune and no restraint does with people who cannot resist him: he hunts a clergyman with dogs, makes his guests drunk, and plans an assault on a girl, all as entertainment.
5. Why does Adams's grief for his son matter? Because he has just been telling Joseph that a Christian must be able to resign anything Providence takes, and he cannot do it himself. Fielding uses it not to expose him as a hypocrite but to show that his goodness is human rather than doctrinal.
The rest of this subject
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