A Brief Note on Henry Fielding's

Narrative Style
Examining the Realism That Would Prefigure Tom
Jones
© Michael Davis

Mar 3, 2009

The dynamic relationship between the substantive and formal qualities of Henry
Fielding's novel, Joseph Andrews, may inform the realism of Tom Jones.

Ian Watt claims, in The Rise of the Novel, that Fielding’s “patent selectiveness of vision
destroys our belief in the reality of report, or at least diverts our attention from the
content of the report to the skill of the reporter” (377). Although Watt uses Tom Jones as
an example in his essay, to what extent does Joseph Andrews both anticipate and define
this tension between Fielding’s style and subject matter?

When Adams is attacked by a squire’s hounds, Fielding begins to describe how Joseph
jumps to the parson’s defense. But the author pauses for a moment: “Reader, we would
make a Simile on this Occasion, but for two Reasons: The first is, it would interrupt the
Description, which should be rapid in this part. . . . The second, and much greater Reason
is, that we could find no Simile adequate to our Purpose.” (208)

Rhetorical Flourishes and Asides

Fielding’s purpose is not only -- not even primarily -- to describe Joseph and how he
beats back the hounds with his cudgel. Rather, the author uses a discussion of the
inadequacies of language to indirectly emphasize the “Friendship, Courage, Youth,
Beauty, Strength, and Swiftness . . . which blazed in the Person of Joseph Andrews”
(208), inserting a rhetorical flourish where figurative language would normally seem
most appropriate.

In this way, Fielding shifts the narrative emphasis from what is happening in the story to
how hard it is to describe someone as excellent as Joseph, diverting our attention from
content to style. Later in the text, Adams, Fanny, and Joseph obligated to have dinner
with the squire who owned the hounds.
Fielding's Brand of Realism

When one of the squire’s butlers spikes Adams’ ale, Fielding notes: “had it not been for
the Information which we received from a Servant of the Family, this Part of our
History . . . must have been deplorably imperfect; tho’ we must own it probable, that
some more Jokes were (as they call it) cracked during their Dinner; but we have by no
means been able to come at the Knowledge of them" (213).

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At first, this aside seems akin to the sort of realism-strengthening moves Defoe makes in
Robinson Crusoe, in which ship’s papers, star charts, and other “reliable” sources are
used to maintain a sense that it is a documentary novel. Similarly, Fielding claims that
this part of Joseph Andrews was almost lost to spiked ale and time, suggesting (as he
does intermittently throughout the text) that the novel was constructed largely from eye-
witness accounts.

These two brief instances reflect the sort of emphasis Watt talks about, the sense that
Fielding is as concerned with how his story is presented as he is with the content of the
story, its events and characters. While Fielding’s work does not show a complete
departure from the “new” realism of authors like Defoe and Richardson, his infatuation
with style and rhetoric produces fiction that is as much about the author as the story.

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The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling

An Introduction
Henry Fielding's Tom Jones is both one of the great comic masterpieces of English
literature and a major force in the development of the novel form. By 1749, the year
Tom Jones appeared, the novel was only beginning to be recognized as a potentially
literary form. Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa had appeared only the year before,
and for the most part in intellectual circles prose fiction was not considered a worthy
pursuit. Despite the publication by Jonathan Swift, a member of the literary elite
surrounding Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, of Gulliver's
Travels in 1726, the sanctioned genres of the first half of the eighteenth century
were verse and drama. The novels of Daniel Defoe, seen by many as purely
adventure tales, were not regarded as worthy of serious consideration. They were,
however, instrumental in the development of a suitable reading public, without which
Fielding probably would not have attempted any form of sustained prose fiction.

But while Defoe still followed the seventeenth century tradition of claiming his fiction
was fact, and Richardson professed that his tales were moral tracts, emphasizing the
instructional rather than the fictional aspect, Fielding was the first major novelist to
unabashedly write fiction. At the same time, he undertook an initial critical theory of
the new fictional form he was creating: together with the preface to Joseph Andrews
(1742), the introductory chapters preceding the individual books in Tom Jones
constitute the first extended body of work in English which attempts to define and
explain the novel as a literary genre. In the preface Joseph Andrews, Fielding
described his own fictional form as "a comic romance" or a "comic epic poem in
prose," and in Tom Jones as a "heroical, historical prosaic poem" (IV, 1); a form of
"prosai-comi-epic writing" (V, 1). In defining the novel as an epic genre, Fielding
emphasized its function in presenting a broad picture of an era, but one, unlike verse
epic, in which primarily the weaknesses of humanity are put on display. Although he
termed his new style of writing "history," his definition of the budding genre still
influences our understanding of novelistic fiction. According to Fielding, the
appropriate subject of the novel is human nature (often in its more ridiculous guises)
rather than ghosts and fairies; he sees no excuse for the "modern" writer to
introduce supernatural agents (VIII, 1). His insistence on conforming to the rules of
probability rather than mere possibility is integral to the development of the novel as
we know it. Fielding knew what he wanted to do in prose fiction and understood the
novelty of his undertaking in a way many of his predecessors had not. He is not
modest about pointing this out either:

[...] I shall not look on myself as accountable to any court of critical jurisdiction
whatever; for as I am, in reality, the founder of a new province of writing, so I am at
liberty to make what laws I please therein. (II, 1)

Although these claims to originality are largely justified, Tom Jones contains many
conventional narrative elements as well which Fielding had already made use of in
Joseph Andrews (1742), including an ostensibly picaresque form, inserted narrative
and the discovery of true identity. But while the character Joseph, with his origins in
parody, suffers from an element of the ridiculous, Tom emerges as a deeper
character who even goes through a certain amount of superficial moral development.
Tom Jones exemplifies serious aspects of Fielding's concept of benevolence and good
nature, his generous personality reflecting Fielding's moral philosophy. At the same
time, it is from his impulsive and affectionate nature that many of his troubles
spring. He is contrasted to the inhibited, self-seeking hypocrite Blifil, his opposite
and, as it turns out, his half-brother. Fielding frequently uses this method of
contrasting pairs to manage his huge cast of characters: Tom is opposed to Blifil,
Sophia to Molly and later Lady Bellaston, and Allworthy to Squire Western. The same
technique is used with the minor characters: the tutors of Tom and Blifil are
Thwackum, representing blind respect for authority, and Square, representing
abstract ethics.

Despite Fielding's insistence on realism, for the most part the figures in Tom Jones
are recognizably indebted to stock theatrical types. Like his predecessor Aphra Behn,
Fielding was a dramatist before he was a novelist, but while this dramatic training
primarily lead Behn to introduce the rhythms of spoken language to prose fiction, the
influence of drama on Fielding's novels was in formal structural elements. For
example, he employs concrete "visual" symbols such as Sophia's muff to anchor the
reader and focus his or her attention in a way similar to the use of stage properties.
The most obvious influence of drama on Tom Jones is in the intricacies of the plot,
which are the typical confusions of comedy.

The neatly constructed plot reflects a basic eighteenth century faith in the order of
the world, which Fielding, despite skeptical overtones, displayed in this huge but far
from sprawling novel. Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw the plot of Tom Jones as one of
the three most perfectly planned plots in literature. Even seemingly random details
have a place, and at the end of the tale the reader notices that elements which
might have appeared superfluous are necessary to round off the story. The role of
the lawyer Dowling is a case in point. In his original appearance he seems only to
contribute to the busy atmosphere of the scene, but at the end he is revealed to
have been instrumental to the development of events. The scene at the inn in Upton,
exactly halfway through the novel, is a plot node of great complexity: here all of the
major actors and plot threads come together, and actions and misunderstandings
occur which will be crucial for the climax and denouement. Despite the involved
construction and numerous plot twists, the author is at great pains to provide
adequate motivation for these machinations, creating an appearance of causality
usually lacking in the monumental prose romances popular in his day.

Not only is the plot of Tom Jones famous for its intricacy, it is also highly
symmetrical in design. The novel has eighteen books, six for the beginning, six for
the middle, and six for the end, conforming to the three parts recommended by
Aristotle. The first six books give the cause of the action: Tom's open, sensual
nature; the conflict with Blifil; the misunderstanding with Squire Allworthy; Tom's
love for Sophia and their separation. The next six contain both the consequences of
the first six and the incidents and details which will bring about a resolution. The last
six books plunge Tom into disastrous circumstances through his actions and get him
out of them again. When he is in prison about to be hanged, he hears that Sophia
has refused to speak to or see him again as a result of his affair with Lady Bellaston.
As if this were not enough, he even has to face the possibility that he might have
committed incest. But it is this last misfortune which also brings about his change of
fortune: it is through Jenny Jones, Tom's purported mother who is now known as
Mrs. Waters, that the truth of Tom's birth emerges. This brings about a reconciliation
with Squire Allworthy and Sophia, and the downfall of Blifil.
The formal tidiness displayed by Tom Jones is more the exception than the rule in
the history of the novel: Clarissa or Oliver Twist do not display this kind of neatness.
And at times, Tom Jones might seem almost too well-made, since the elaborate
construction is not calculated to give the reader a sense of real, unpredictable, day-
to-day life. On the other hand, part of Fielding's originality is precisely in the honesty
and exuberance with which he creates his fictional world: by drawing attention to the
nature of the artifice, the authorial intrusions into the narrative prevent the novel
from ever taking on the appearance of a true chronicle of events. This admittance of
artifice is not common in the novel either. For the most part, the legacy of Tom
Jones was not in any influence on structure; it was to make the English novel until
the late nineteenth century primarily a comic genre.

The most original and memorable element of Tom Jones, however, is the narrative
voice informing the action and discoursing on the philosophy of writing to the reader
in the introductory chapters. Fielding controls the reader's response thorough the
urbane, tolerant presence of the figure of the omniscient author, a polished and
rational gentleman with a pronounced sense of the ridiculous who emerges as the
true moral focus in the novel. While this technique sacrifices to a certain extent the
sense of identification and verisimilitude provided by the first-person or epistolary
forms used by Defoe and Richardson, the reading experience is enriched by the
analysis of the all-knowing 'author.' On the other hand, the wry narrative voice
accounts for various comic effects Fielding achieves in this remarkable novel; it is
often the detached description which transforms a melodramatic situation into a
comic one.

This authorial presence, an integral element of Fielding's aesthetic undertaking, is a

very recognizably masculine presence; an all-knowing male author figure who rules
over his fictional world for the good of his readers:

[...] these laws my readers, whom I consider as my subjects, are bound to believe
and to obey; with which that they may readily and cheerfully comply, I do hearby
assure them that I shall principally regard their ease and advantage in all such
institutions; for I do not, like a jure divino tyrant, imagine that they are my slaves or
my commodity. I am, indeed, set over them for their own good only, and was
created for their use and not they for mine. Nor do I doubt, while I make their
interest the great rule of my writings, they will unanimously concur in supporting my
dignity and in rendering me all the honour I shall deserve or desire. (II, 1)

Fielding's implied author demonstrates a very paternal attitude towards both his
readers and his characters, displaying a humorous tolerance to all, but ruling over
them implacably.

While Fielding's aesthetics are frankly masculine, the moral assumptions exhibited in
the novel are also frankly sexist by today's standards. The characterization of Tom
Jones displays a tolerance for virile young manhood: he is a sensual youth, easily
succumbing to temptation of a sexual nature. This tolerance doesn't work the other
way around, however; the heroine Sophia is virginal and pure, while the women who
indulge in sensual pleasures are either tramps like Molly or hypocrites like Lady
Bellaston (the lowest of the low in Fielding's moral universe). An exception to this
can be found in the portrayal of Jenny Jones (Mrs. Waters), who was originally
betrayed into living an "immoral" life and once having lost her virtue had no choice
but to continue in her sinful ways. Fielding's frank acceptance of (male) sensuality
was regarded by many contemporaries with disapproval. The more puritan
Richardson criticized outright what he saw as a "very bad tendency" in Fielding's
work, and with Sir Charles Grandison (1753) he attempted to create a hero as
virtuous as any heroine.

It has become commonplace in literary history to recognize masculine and feminine

traditions in the novel going back to Tom Jones and Clarissa. This can be misleading
in more than just the fact that both of the seminal works in these supposedly gender
specific novelistic modes were written by men: Sophia, for example, has more spirit
than Richardson's feminine ideal, Clarissa. In addition, the omniscient, "masculine"
authorial voice developed by Fielding was used to great effect by that female master
of the Victorian novel, George Eliot. For most of the next century, however, it did
remain true that the wise, god-like author-figure Fielding created was not a role that
could easily be played by women writers. Social restrictions requiring them to deal
with emotions or domestic affairs made the form of the novel developed by
Richardson much more suitable for women than the social panorama of a novel like
Tom Jones. As Fielding also asserted that authors should have some experience of
what they write about (XIV, 1), it would seem to follow that women would not be
able to write in the epic fictional mode he established.

The god-like omniscience of the authorial narrator in Tom Jones needs to be taken
with a grain of salt, however. The authorial narrator is portrayed as all-knowing and
all-seeing, but a reader who relies exclusively on the expressed judgment calls of the
narrator will be deceived: one of Fielding's techniques is to introduce important
details that are given very little attention by the narrative voice, lulling the reader
into ignoring them. The omnipotent role is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as is much of
Tom Jones. Take for example one of the introductory chapters in which Fielding lays
down the rules of the new genre:

Peradventure there may be no parts in this prodigious work which will give the
reader less pleasure in perusing than those which have given the author the greatest
pains in composing. Among these, probably, may be reckoned those initial essays
which we have prefixed to the historical matter contained in every book, and which
we have determined to be essentially necessary to this kind of writing, of which we
have set ourselves at the head.

For this our determination we do not hold ourselves strictly bound to assign any
reason, it being abundantly sufficient that we have laid it down as a rule necessary
to be observed in all prosai-comi-epic writing. Who ever demanded the reasons of
that nice unity of time or place which is now established as so essential to dramatic
poetry? (V, 1)

Here the game Fielding is playing with his readers becomes obvious, especially when
he compares his prefaces to the rule of dramatic unity; the comments following this
passage make it abundantly clear that he scorns the convention. Of course, the
inclusion of prefaces is one rule set down in Tom Jones which has found next to no
imitation, and it appears likely that Fielding would not have been disappointed by
that fact. What Fielding did establish with Tom Jones, however, was the role of the
novel as the modern epic form. And many of the other "rules" he put forth --
plausibility over possibility, for example -- still exert a strong influence on novelistic
fiction today.
 . Fielding and Smollett.
§ 14. The morality and the realism of the book: the author’s openness of soul.

16
The question of the “morality” of Tom Jones is so closely bound up with the realism
which is another of its main characteristics, that it is almost impossible to treat them
apart. In Jonathan Wild, Fielding had a double object—to carry on his lifelong war
against humbug, and to show how poorly vice rewarded its votaries. Both these aims
underlie Tom Jones; but both are subdued to a wider aim—to show life as it is. “The
provision which we have here made is Human Nature.” The implication is that, if we
can see the whole of human nature, we shall find that some of it is, in itself, ugly, and
some, in itself, beautiful. That which is ugly makes people unhappy; that which is
beautiful. That which is ugly makes people unhappy; that which is beautiful makes
them happy. Fielding was content to leave to Richardson the conventions of society, of
“good form,” as it is called—the code of Sir Charles Grandison. Its place is taken in
Tom Jones, if at all, by that “prudence” which Allworthy preached to Jones, and which
is no more than the moderation that keeps a man out of reach of what is ugly in human
nature, and of those who practise it. The gist of the book’s moral purpose is to show
human nature, ugly and beautiful alike, raised to a high power of activity, so that the
contrast between what is itself beautiful and what is itself ugly shall be clearly
perceived. Incidentally, meanness, cruelty, hypocrisy, lasciviousness will be found to
bring unhappiness in their train; but it is a worse punishment to be a Blifil than to
suffer as Blifil ultimately suffered.
17
Since no man can see life whole, the question of the moral value of Tom Jones—
which has been considered a great moral work and a great immoral work—resolves
itself into the question of how much of human life Fielding could see. To much of it he
was blind. He could have understood a saint as little as he could have understood an
anarchist. The finer shades—such as were clear to Richardson—were lost to him. Of
love as a spiritual passion, he shows himself almost entirely ignorant. He was wholly
in sympathy with the average morality of his time; and he takes, quite comfortably,
what would nowadays be considered a low view of human nature. He had never known
a perfect character; therefore, he will not put one in his book; and even Allworthy, who
stands nearest to his ideal of a good man, comes out, against Fielding’s intention no
doubt, a little cold and stiff. But, of human nature that was not perfect, not exalted by
any intellectual or moral or religious passion, he knew more than any writer, except,
possibly, Shakespeare. In Tom Jones,
We shall represent human nature at first to the keen appetite of our reader, in that
more plain and simple manner in which it is found in the country, and shall hereafter
hash and ragoo it with all the high French and Italian seasoning of affectation and vice
which courts and cities afford.
True to his promise, he shows us the whole of life as he saw it, in its extremes of
poverty and luxury—from Molly Seagrim to Lady Bellaston; its extremes of folly and
wisdom—from Partridge to Allworthy; its extremes of meanness and generosity—
from Blifil to Tom Jones. And every character in the book has been thought out, not
merely adumbrated. Fielding had used to the full his opportunities of exercising his
enormous interest in men and women; his experience had brought him into contact
with nearly all kinds in nearly all circumstances; and the distinguishing feature of Tom
Jones is the solidity of thought and judgment with which the numberless types
included in it have been built together into a coherent whole.
The question then arises: what use did the author of Tom Jones make of his
knowledge? Reference has been made to his realism; and, if by a realist is meant an
artist conscientiously determined to express life exactly as he sees it, then Fielding was
one. But, if a realist is one to whom all the facts of life and character, all aims and
emotions are of equal value, Fielding cannot be called by that name. He is without the
golden dream of what life should be which shines through the work of nearly every
other great artist; but, in the place of that dream, his passionate sympathy with certain
human qualities supplies so much of direct moral as may be found in his book, and,
through it as a medium, he sees which of these qualities are ugly, and which of them
beautiful. Chastity, to him, is not a thing of much account; but, in considering the
much-discussed licence of Tom Jones, it must be remembered, first, that, in the episode
of Nightingale, a line is shown over which even Tom will not step; next, that all Tom’s
lapses—even the affair, painful as it is to modern feeling, of Lady Bellaston—leave
unimpaired the brightness of his prominent quality; and, last, that, in Fielding’s eyes,
those very lapses were caused by the untrained excess of that very quality—his
generous openness of soul. If you have that quality, in Fielding’s opinion, you cannot
go very far wrong; if you are mean, envious, cruel, you can never go right. There is a
strong spice of fatalism in the doctrine, if pressed home—a reliance on instinct which
the villains have as much right to plead in excuse as have the generous-minded. But a
candid, steady view of so much of life as we can take in shows generosity to be
beautiful and meanness to be ugly. Tom Jones is no hero; Fielding was concerned to
draw, not heroes, which, to him, were impossible abstractions or inventions, but men
as he knew them. Finally, a word should be added on Fielding’s utter absence of
pretence. His own sturdy wisdom (often, to us of later times, commonplace) is always
at hand—and not only in those introductory chapters to each book which tell us, in his
manliest, most humorous, prose, what he is thinking and what he is trying to do. In
every incident throughout the crowded story, and in every character throughout the
wonderful array of personages high and low, the force of his own knowledge and
conviction may be felt.