Themes and Reference to Context: Joseph Andrews

Theme four: chastity, and the parody of Pamela

The proposition. Richardson made chastity a commodity that paid. Fielding makes it a virtue that costs.

Where it is worked. Joseph refuses Lady Booby and loses his place. He refuses Mrs Slipslop. Fanny keeps her constancy through three attempts to take it from her by force or money. Neither of them is rewarded for it until an accident of birth intervenes, and Fielding leaves you to notice that the reward comes from a birthmark and not from the virtue.

Theme five: the road

The proposition. A journey lets a writer put the same person in front of every kind of society in turn.

Where it is worked. Inn after inn, coach after coach, magistrate, squire, clergyman, pedlar. The travellers own nothing and control nothing, so every encounter is a test of the other party. The structure is the argument.

Reference to context: the passages that are set

1. "He wished they had passed by without taking any notice; but that now they might be proved to have been last in his company; if he should die they might be called to some account for his murder." Book I chapter XII. Spoken by the young lawyer in the stage-coach that stops for Joseph, who has been robbed, stripped and thrown into a ditch. He is arguing for taking Joseph in on the ground of the passengers' own legal risk, not out of pity, which is Fielding's point.

2. "that he would rather ride in his shirt all his life than suffer a fellow-creature to lie in so miserable a condition." Book I chapter XII. Sworn by the postillion, who has just stripped off his only garment to cover the naked Joseph when nobody else in the coach would lend a greatcoat. Fielding adds in a parenthesis that this lad has since been transported for robbing a hen-roost.

3. "Is it no punishment, sir, for an innocent man to lie several months in gaol?" Book II chapter XI. Spoken by Parson Adams to the justice of the peace, who has ordered a mittimus against him and Fanny without hearing them and has told him he may prove his innocence at the assizes. It is the novel's sharpest statement that committal before trial is itself a punishment.

4. "Nobody can say I have committed a gentleman since I have been in the commission." Book II chapter XI. Spoken by the same justice, immediately after a squire tells him that Adams is a clergyman of good character. He instantly offers to take bail for Adams and commit Fanny alone, which shows that rank and not evidence has decided the case.

5. "Madam, if any one puts in a sufficient caution, and assigns a proper reason against them, I am willing to surcease." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Parson Adams to Lady Booby, who has ordered him to stop publishing the banns of marriage between Joseph and Fanny. To surcease is to stop, and Adams is saying he will do so only for a lawful objection; when she gives poverty as her reason he refuses, saying the poor have little share enough of this world already.

6. "The utmost that was in the power of a lawyer was to prevent the law's taking effect." Book IV chapter III. Spoken by lawyer Scout to Lady Booby, when she threatens to send to another lawyer because she dislikes his opinion on the law of settlement. It states, in one line, what Fielding thinks men like Scout are for.

7. "Yes, and with great lenity too; for if we had called it a young tree, they would have been both hanged." Book IV chapter V. Spoken by lawyer Scout to Mr Booby, who has asked whether they would really commit two people to Bridewell for a twig. The remark shows that the difference between a month in a house of correction and the gallows lay in the word chosen to describe the same act.

8. "Child, child, do not go about impossibilities." Book IV chapter VIII. Spoken by Parson Adams to Joseph, moments after being told that his youngest son has drowned, when Joseph offers him back the arguments about resignation to Providence that Adams himself had been urging on Joseph a minute earlier. The boy is soon found alive, rescued by the pedlar.

Nine more the University has actually set

Note. Added by the past paper check. Every one is from Book IV, and eight of the nine come from two chapters: chapter II, where Lady Booby confronts Parson Adams, and chapter III, where she sends for Lawyer Scout.

A. "I will have no more vagabonds settled here." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Lady Booby to Parson Adams, on being told that the banns of Joseph and Fanny have been published. She is using the language of the settlement laws, under which a parish could refuse to let a poor stranger settle in it, and she is applying it to a man she wants for herself.

B. "Well, and you did very wisely and honestly too, notwithstanding she is the greatest beauty in the parish." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Lady Booby to Adams, after he says that he had earlier dissuaded the couple from marrying at once. The compliment is bitter, since her objection to Fanny is precisely that she is a beauty, and Lady Booby's jealousy is the real ground of everything she says in the scene.

C. "I tell you a reason: he is a vagabond, and he shall not settle here, and bring a nest of beggars into the parish." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Lady Booby to Adams, and it is her answer when he says that he will stop the marriage if anyone assigns a proper reason against it. Joseph is the "vagabond", and the reason she gives is that the poor should not be allowed to marry and multiply, which is the law of settlement turned into a private weapon.

D. "I know not what your ladyship means by the terms master and service. I am in the service of a Master who will never discard me for doing my duty." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Parson Adams to Lady Booby, after she threatens to have him turned out of his cure. It is the moment the scene turns from a quarrel about a marriage into a statement about conscience: the Master he means is God, and he says he has never been able to pay for a licence anyway.

E. "I condemn my humility, for demeaning myself to converse with you so long." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Lady Booby to Adams, ending the interview. She has failed to move him and cannot answer him, so she withdraws on the ground of rank, which is Fielding's regular way of showing that his gentry lose arguments and then punish the winner.

F. "I would obey your ladyship in everything that is lawful; but surely the parties being poor is no reason against their marrying." Book IV chapter II. Spoken by Parson Adams to Lady Booby. He adds that God forbid there should be any such law, and that it would be barbarous to deny the poor the common privileges nature allows them. It is the most direct statement in the novel of the principle Lady Booby and Scout are trying to defeat.

G. "If she sent to a hundred lawyers, not one or all of them could alter the law." Book IV chapter III. Said by Lawyer Scout, in reply to Lady Booby's threat to send to another lawyer if he cannot give her the answer she wants. He follows it at once with the sentence set out as passage 6 above, that the utmost in a lawyer's power is to prevent the law taking effect, which is the novel's judgment on him and on his trade.

H. "The ugliest creature almost I ever beheld; a poor dirty drab, your ladyship never saw such a wretch." Book IV chapter III. Spoken by Lawyer Scout to Lady Booby, describing Fanny. He has never seen her; he is telling his client what she wishes to hear, having just been told that Adams described Fanny as a beauty. The line is set often, and the answer that scores says who says it and why he says it.

I. "Don't tell me your facts and your ifs; I don't understand your gibberish." Book IV chapter III. Spoken by Lady Booby to Scout, when he begins to qualify his advice with the actual state of the law about settlement. "Gibberish" means unintelligible jargon, and the line shows that what she wants from a lawyer is not law but obedience.

How to place a passage from this novel

Look for the names. Adams, Joseph, Fanny, Slipslop, Trulliber, Booby, Didapper, Pounce and Scout belong to no other text on this paper.

Look for the eighteenth-century legal furniture. Mittimus, Bridewell, settlement, banns, assizes and justice of the peace point here rather than to Dickens, whose court is a Victorian one with attorneys and serjeants.

Look for the narrator. Fielding talks to the reader directly, calls him "reader", and makes jokes about his own chapters. Nobody else on this paper does that.

What beginners get wrong

They write "charity" and stop. Prove it with the table above. Three tests, three refusals, three people with nothing who help.

They confuse this novel's law with Pickwick's. Both have a trial-like scene, but this one is a committal before a country justice in the 1740s and Pickwick's is a jury trial in a London court in the 1830s.

They mistake the parody for the theme. The Pamela joke sets the plot going; charity is what the book is about.

A worked answer

Question. "Charity is the theme of Joseph Andrews. Discuss."

The thesis sentence. Fielding's subject is not charity as a feeling but charity as conduct, and he proves his case by putting the same test to different people three times and recording what each of them does.

The evidence, in one paragraph. In Book I chapter XII a coachful of respectable people refuse a naked and bleeding man a greatcoat, and the postillion gives him his only garment. In Book II chapter XIV a clergyman with land and pigs refuses a fellow clergyman fourteen shillings and tells him he is no Christian, and a penniless pedlar then lends the money. In Book II chapter XVI a gentleman promises Adams horses, a living and every kindness, and disappears before morning.

The turn that lifts the answer. Fielding is not sentimental about the poor. The postillion has since been transported for robbing a hen-roost, and the novel says so in the same sentence that records his generosity. The argument is not that poverty makes people good; it is that professions of goodness are worth nothing and only conduct counts.

The conclusion. Which is why the ending is not a betrayal of the theme. Joseph behaves identically before and after he is found to be a gentleman's son, and everybody else's behaviour to him changes completely.

Quick revision

Themes: charity as conduct rather than profession; hypocrisy and vanity, which Fielding calls affectation; rank deciding treatment; chastity that costs instead of paying; the road as a structure.

The three tests: the coach and the postillion; Trulliber and the pedlar; the gentleman of promises and nobody.

Set passages: the lawyer's calculation; the postillion's oath; Adams on lying months in gaol; the justice on never committing a gentleman; Adams on surceasing; Scout on preventing the law taking effect; the young tree; and "do not go about impossibilities".

Test yourself

1. State Fielding's theme of charity in one sentence and prove it twice. That goodness is shown by conduct and never by profession: the coach passengers who can afford a greatcoat refuse one while the postillion gives his only garment, and Parson Trulliber, a clergyman with land, refuses fourteen shillings that a penniless pedlar then lends.

2. Place: "Nobody can say I have committed a gentleman since I have been in the commission." The justice of the peace in Book II chapter XI, immediately after a squire vouches for Adams as a clergyman of good character. It shows that the outcome turned on rank rather than on the depositions he had sworn without reading.

3. What does "surcease" mean, and who says it to whom? To stop or desist. Parson Adams says it to Lady Booby in Book IV chapter II, meaning he will stop publishing the banns of Joseph and Fanny's marriage if anybody enters a sufficient caution and gives a proper reason.

4. How does the ending prove the theme of rank? Joseph behaves in exactly the same way before and after he is discovered to be Mr Wilson's son, and everybody else's behaviour towards him changes completely. The virtue was always there; only the rank is new.

5. What does Fielding say in his preface is the source of the ridiculous? Affectation, which he says proceeds from vanity or hypocrisy. That is the theory behind Slipslop's long words, Trulliber's religion, Barnabas's punch and Didapper's fashion.