Plot Summary of the Novel Joseph Andrews

Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding

Plot Summary of the Novel

Book I

The novel begins with the affable, intrusive narrator outlining the nature of our hero. Joseph Andrews is the brother of Richardson's Pamela and is of the same rustic parentage and patchy. ancestry. At the age of ten years, he found himself tending to animals as an apprentice to Sir Thomas Booby. It was in proving his worth as a horseman that he first caught the eye of Sir Thomas's wife, Lady Booby, who employed him (now seventeen) as her footman.

After the death of Sir Thomas, Joseph finds that his Lady's affections have redoubled as she offers herself to him in her chamber while on a trip to London. In a scene analogous to many of Pamela's refusals of Mr. B in Richardson's novel, however, Lady Booby finds that Joseph's Christian commitment to chastity before marriage is unwavering. After suffering the Lady's fury, Joseph dispatches a letter to his sister very much typical of Pamela's anguished missives in her own novel. The Lady calls him once again to her chamber and makes one last withering attempt at seduction before dismissing him from both his job and his lodgings.

With Joseph setting out from London by moonlight, the narrator introduces the reader to the heroine of the novel, Fanny Goodwill. A poor illiterate girl of 'extraordinary beauty' (I, xi) now living with a farmer close to Lady Booby's parish, she and Joseph had grown ever closer since their childhood, before their local parson and mentor, Abraham Adams, recommended that they postpone marriage until they have the means to live comfortably.

On his way to see Fanny, Joseph is mugged and laid up in a nearby inn where, by dint of circumstance, he is reconciled with Adams, who is on his way to London to sell three volumes of his sermons. The thief, too, is found and brought to the inn (only to escape later that night), and Joseph is reunited with his possessions. Adams and Joseph catch up with each other, and the person, in spite of his own poverty, offers his last 9s 32d to Joseph's disposal.

Joseph and Adams' stay in the inn is capped by one of the many burlesques, slapstick digressions in the novel. Betty, the inn's 21-year- old chambermaid, had taken a liking to Joseph since he arrived; a liking doomed to inevitable disappointment by Joseph's constancy to Fanny. The landlord, Mr. Tow-wouse, had always admired Betty and saw this disappointment as an opportunity to take advantage. Locked in an embrace, they are discovered by the choleric Mrs. Tow-wouse, who chases the maid through the house before Adams is forced to restrain her. With the landlord promising not to transgress again, his lady allows him to make his peace at the cost of 'quietly and contentedly bearing to be reminded of his transgressions, as a kind of penance, once or twice a day, during the residue of his life (I, xviii).

Book II

During his stay in the inn, Adams' hopes for his sermons were mocked in a discussion with a traveling bookseller and another person. Nevertheless, Adams remains resolved to continue his journey to London until it is revealed that his wife, deciding that he would be more in need of shirts than sermons on his journey, has neglected to pack them. The pair thus decide to return to the parson's parish: Joseph in search of Fanny, and Adams in search of his sermons.

With Joseph following on horseback, Adams finds himself sharing a stagecoach with an anonymous lady and Madam Slipslop, an admirer of Joseph's and a servant of Lady Booby. When they pass the house of a teenage girl named Leonora, the anonymous lady is reminded of a story and begins one of the novel's three interpolated tales, "The History of Leonora, or the Unfortunate Jilt'. The story of Leonora continues for a number of chapters, punctuated by the questions and interruptions of the other passengers.

After stopping at an inn, Adams relinquishes his seat to Joseph and, forgetting his horse, embarks ahead on foot. Finding himself some time ahead of his friend, Adams rests by the side of the road where he becomes so engaged in conversation with a fellow traveler that he misses the stagecoach as it passes. As the night falls and Adams and the stranger discourse on courage and duty, a shriek is heard. The stranger, having seconds earlier lauded the virtues of bravery and chivalry, makes his excuses and flees the scene without turning back. Adams, however, rushes to the girl's aid and after a mock-epic struggle knocks her attacker unconscious. In spite of Adams' good intentions, he and the girl, who reveals herself to be none other than Fanny Goodwill (in search of Joseph after hearing of his mugging), find themselves accused of assault and robbery.

After some comic litigious wrangling before the local magistrate, the pair are eventually released and depart shortly after midnight in search of Joseph. They do not have to walk far before a storm forces them into the same inn that Joseph and Slipslop have chosen for the night. Slipslop, her jealousy ignited by seeing the two lovers reunited, departs angrily. When Adams, Joseph, and Fanny come to leave the following morning, they find their departure delayed by an inability to settle the bill, and, with Adams' solicitations of a loan from the local parson and his wealthy parishioners failing, it falls on a local peddler to rescue the trio by loaning them his last 6s 6d.

The solicitations of charity that Adams is forced to make, and the complications which surround their stay in the parish, bring him into contact with many local squires, gentlemen, and parsons, and much of the latter portion of Book II is occupied with the discussions of literature, religion, philosophy, and trade which result.

Book III

The three depart the inn by night, and it is not long before Fanny needs to rest. With the party silent, they overhear approaching voices agreeing on 'the murder of anyone they meet' (III, ii) and flee to a local house. Inviting them in, the owner, Mr. Wilson, informs them that the gang of supposed murderers was in fact sheep-stealers, intent more on the killing of livestock than on Adams and his friend's party being settled, Wilson begins the novel's most lengthy interpolated tale by recounting his life story; a story which bears a notable resemblance to Fielding's own young adulthood.

At the age of 16, Wilson's father died and left him a modest fortune. Finding himself the master of his own destiny, he left school and traveled to London where he soon acquainted himself with the dress, manners, and reputation for womanizing necessary to consider himself a 'beau'. Wilson's life in the town is a façade: he writes love letters to himself, obtains his fine clothes on credit, and is concerned more with being seen at the theatre than with watching the play. After two bad experiences with women, he is financially crippled and, much like Fielding himself, falls into the company of a group of Deists, freethinkers, and gamblers. Finding himself in debt, he turns to the writing of plays and hacks journalism to alleviate his financial burden (again, much like the author himself). He spends his last few pence on a lottery ticket but, with no reliable income, is soon forced to exchange it for food. While in jail for his debts, news reaches him that the ticket he gave away has won a £3,000 prize. His disappointment is short-lived, however, as the daughter of the winner hears of his plight, pays off his debts, and, after a brief courtship, agrees to become his wife.

Wilson had found himself at the mercy of many of the social ills that Fielding had written about in his journalism: the over-saturated and abused literary market, the exploitative state lottery, and regressive laws which sanctioned imprisonment for small debts. Having seen the corrupting influence of wealth and the town, he retires with his new wife to the rural solitude in which Adams, Fanny, and Joseph now find them. The only break in his contentment, and one which will turn out to be significant to the plot, was the kidnapping of his eldest son, whom he has not seen since.

Wilson promises to visit Adams when he passes through his parish, and after another mock-epic battle on the road, this time with a party of hunting dogs, the trio proceed to the house of a local squire, where Fielding illustrates another contemporary social ill by having Adams subjected to a humiliating roasting. Enraged, the three, depart to the nearest inn to find that, while at the Squire's house, they had been robbed of their last half-guinea. To compound their misery, the Squire has Adams and Joseph accused of kidnapping Fanny, in order to have them detained while he orders the abduction of the girl himself. She is rescued in transit, however, by Lady Booby's steward, Peter Pounce, and all four of them complete the remainder of the journey to Booby Hall together.

Book IV

On seeing Joseph arrive back in the parish, a jealous Lady Booby meanders through emotions as diverse as rage, pity, hatred, pride, and love. The next morning Joseph and Fanny's banns are published and the Lady turns her anger onto Parson Adams, who is accommodating Fanny at his house. Finding herself powerless either to stop the marriage or to expel them from the parish, she enlists the help of Lawyer Scout, who brings a spurious charge of larceny against Joseph and Fanny in order to prevent, or at least postpone, the wedding.

Three days later, the Lady's plans are foiled by the visit of her nephew, Mr. Booby, and a surprise guest: Booby has married Pamela, granting Joseph a powerful new ally and brother-in-law. What is more, Booby is an acquaintance of the justice presiding over Joseph and Fanny's trial, and instead of Bridewell, has them committed to his own custody. Knowing of his sister's antipathy to the two lovers, Booby offers to reunite Joseph with his sister and take him and Fanny into his own parish and his own family.

In a discourse with Joseph on stoicism and fatalism, Adams instructs his friend to submit to the will of God and control his passions, even in the face of overwhelming tragedy. In the kind of cruel juxtaposition usually reserved for Fielding's less savory characters, Adams is informed that his youngest son, Jacky, has drowned. After indulging his grief in a manner contrary to his lecture a few minutes previously, Adams is informed that the report was premature and that his son had in fact been rescued by the same pedlar that loaned him his last few shillings in Book II.

Lady Booby, in a last-ditch attempt to sabotage the marriage, brings a young beau named Didapper to Adams' house to seduce Fanny. Didapper is a little too bold in his approach and provokes Joseph into a fight. The Lady and the beau depart in disgust, but the pedlar, having seen the Lady, is compelled to relate a tale. The pedlar had met his wife while in the army, and she died young. While on her death bed, she confessed that she once stole an exquisitely beautiful baby girl from a family named Andrews, and sold her on to Sir Thomas Booby, thus raising the possibility that Fanny may, in fact, be Joseph's sister. The company is shocked, but there is general relief that the crime of incest may have been narrowly averted.

The following morning, Joseph and Pamela's parents arrive, and, together with the pedlar and Adams; they piece together the question of Fanny's parentage. The Andrews identify her as their lost daughter, but have a twist to add to the tale: when Fanny was an infant, she was indeed stolen from her parents, but the thieves left behind a sickly infant Joseph in return, who was raised as their own. It is immediately apparent that Joseph is the abovementioned kidnapped son of Wilson, and when Wilson arrives on his promised visit, he identifies Joseph with a birthmark on his chest. Joseph is now the son of a respected gentleman, Fanny an in-law of the Booby family, and the couple is no longer suspected of being siblings. Two days later they are married by Adams in a humble ceremony, and the narrator, after bringing the story to a close, and in a disparaging allusion to Richardson, assures the reader that there will be no sequel.

Characterization of Joseph Andrews:

One of the main attractions of Joseph Andrews is its characterization. As one critic declares, the novel "lives by virtue of the extraordinary vitality of its characters and the picture it gives of the manners of early eighteenth-century England." The comic approach precluded a profound psychological probing into an individual character's mind.

In Joseph Andrews, Fielding has given attention to delineating a large number of persons chosen from different sectors of society. He has not only depicted human nature artistically but also portrayed some individuals and thus made them different from each other. The novel essentially revolves around five characters: Parson Adams; Joseph Andrews; Fanny Goodwill; Mrs. Slipslop; Lady Booby.

Parson Adams: Although the title of the novel comes with the name of Joseph, Abraham Adams is the center of interest in the novel. The readers are more involved in the old foolish Parson and his encounters with the inhuman, callous, hypocritical, and vain people around him. He is a comic, but hugely appealing figure. He is also an outstanding good man, a notoriously difficult thing to portray. An ideal Christian Parson Adams is a Quixotic figure. He is absent-minded. He leaves for London to sell his sermons but leaves the precious manuscripts behind and does not discover the fact till he has accomplished half the journey. He has three sources of vanity: his self-conceit, his pride in his sermons and his being a schoolteacher.

Joseph Andrews: Joseph Andrews is a titular hero. He is the hero of the novel because the title of the novel bears his name; otherwise, the heart of the novel is Parson Adams. His origin as a male counterpart to Pamela is not favorable: as a symbol of male chastity, he is not quite credible. Fielding perhaps implies that chastity is not the only virtue, nor is it the most important one. However, the novel goes far beyond the scope of the author's original intention, so Joseph does display some heroic qualities, although he lacks the humor and dynamism of Fielding's great hero Tom Jones.

Fanny Goodwill: Fanny is the heroine of the novel. Yet she performs only a minor role in the novel. She is so beautiful that she engages the eyes of everyone present. She is nineteen and is tall and delicately shaped. She is the typical country girl. She is a girl of innocent sensuousness, modesty, and sweet nature. She is a good-natured girl and a contrast to women like Lady Booby and Mrs. Slipslop. She is far away from hypocrisy and artificiality. She is intelligent either. However, Fanny has not been painted elaborately.

Mrs. Slipslop: Mrs. Slipslop, Lady Booby's waiting gentlewoman, is the most original character. Her appearance is alarmingly repulsive. She is as imperious and lecherous as her mistress Lady Booby. She imagines that she can succeed where her mistress had failed. That is why she begins to seduce Joseph in vain. Her passion for Joseph is a parody of Lady Booby's fascination for him. Mrs. Slipslop is a harsh speaker. But in spite of the harshness of her tone, Mrs. Slipslop is milder and more humane than Lady Booby. However, like her mistress, she is egoistic, conniving, lustful, status-conscious, and hypocritical.

Lady Booby: Lady Booby is a dissolute and lecherous woman. Like Bellaston in Tom Jones, she is meant to be a repulsive character. She is highly attracted to the handsomeness and youthful appearance of Joseph and takes him as her footman. She is a sex-perturbed lady. After her husband's death, she wants to seduce Joseph Andrews and wants to have bliss in bed. Though she may be called the villain of the novel, she is not as evil as the real villains are.

Plot-Construction of the Novel:

Joseph Andrews lacks a united plot. The plot of the novel is somewhat rambling but still disciplined. In the novel, the author has projected the events in the shape of a journey that Adams experienced. The novel is a long string of incidents, events, actions, happenings, deeds, and episodes without a thematic idea to bind them together or unify them. Most of these incidents and events occur on the road, by the roadside, or in country houses. Though the incidents are dispersed, the unity is brought about by the recurrence of a theme. The recurrent themes in the novel establish some kind of unity in its structure of it. Themes like charity and appearance versus reality recur in the novel giving the events a sort of unity. The lack of an organic unity behind the events is not the only error in the structure of the novel. There are many digressions in the novel that further disrupt the structure. There are stories within the main story. We find three such stories-the stories of Leonora and Jilt, the story of Mr. Wilson, and the story of two friends. These stories have hardly anything to do with the principal figures in the novel. Joseph Andrews is a work of experience gathered by its author in different levels of life and society. The journey motif is important for the unity of the plot in the novel.

Themes in Joseph Andrews:

Themes play a vital role in the novel. In fact, it is through the recurrent themes that the unity of a somewhat rambling plot has been achieved. Charity is certainly one of the most conspicuous themes of the novel. Fielding seeks to uphold the Christian ideology through the characterization of Parson Adams, Joseph, and Fanny. The writer seems to preach the importance of charity. Fielding shows that there is a greater spirit of charity in the poor than in the rich when a coachman's assistant gives his own overcoat to Joseph to cover his nakedness. A number of events happen in the novel upholding the value of charity. Squire Booby appears to be the supreme example of Christian benevolence. He not only serves Joseph and Fanny from imprisonment but also takes necessary measures to have them married. But it is Adams who appears as the most ardent advocate of the spirit of charity. He is not only charitable and generous himself, but also keeps urging other people to develop the spirit of charity. Charity as a theme runs throughout the novel.

There are other themes too. The themes of male chastity and female incontinence are also prominent in the novel. The novel begins with a picture of a lady's sexuality or sensuality, and a man's firm resistance to it. It begins with an account of Lady Booby's growing sexual interest in her footman, her amorous advances to him, and his rejection of them. The theme of male chastity versus female incontinence receives emphasis when Lady Booby's woman-in-waiting, namely Mrs. Slipslop, behaves towards Joseph in very much the same manner as Lady Booby had done. Towards the end of the novel the theme returns. Lady Booby's passion for Joseph revives when she returns from London to her country residence. In the novel, in the character of Joseph, Fielding establishes male chastity whereas Lady Booby or Mrs. Slipslop is the embodiment of the passionate, immoral, and dishonest landladies of the 18th century. They represent female incontinence.

Other themes include appearance versus reality, abuse of power, by individuals, classes, and institutions, the inhumanity of individuals and society, vanity, city living versus living in retirement in the country, etc. Throughout the novel, Fielding admired honesty, integrity, simplicity, and charity, believed that virtue is seen in an individual's actions, but recognized the difficulty of making moral judgments. The author touches on the common theme in eighteenth-century literature of the contrast between city life and country life. Wilson's story contrasts the useless, aimless, destructive life of London with the idyllic, simple pleasures of living in the country.

Social Elements in Joseph Andrews:

The novel Joseph Andrews is a satire on eighteenth-century English social life chiefly in the countryside but also, to some extent, of life in the big city of London. The novel gives us a satirical picture of an upper-class lady's becoming infatuated with her footman but feeling frustrated in her passion for him. This picture is followed immediately by an equally satirical picture of the failure of that lady's woman-in-waiting (Mrs. Slipslop) to acquire the same footman as a lover for herself.

There is plenty in social satire in Joseph Andrews, and most of the targets of satire here are affectations of different kinds as well as certain vices. Lady Booby prides herself on her high social status and yet she gets infatuated with a mere footman. In the figures of Mr. Barnabas and Mr. Trulliber, the attitude of the eighteenth-century clergymen has been satirized. Fielding pokes fun at the surgeon who refuses to treat wounded Joseph because of the latter's low position in society. Fashionable life in London is satirized. Mr. Wilson's story of his past life is meant to be a picture of the life being led by young men in the London of Fielding's time, and this picture is satirical. The society Fielding portrays is marked by astounding callousness and selfishness. Class distinction is clear. The rich seem to be rather hard and selfish. The poor seem to uphold the virtue of charity. In short, in the novel, we get a comprehensive picture of 18th-century English society.

The Issue of Morality in Joseph Andrews:

The main purpose of Fielding as a novelist is to expose evil, hypocrisy, affectation, falsehood, and pretense. He was a realist, as was Defoe, and his morality is not prudish. He judges people on their heart or basic motivation much more than on their actions, though bad actions are always punished. Fielding's morality is always warm and compassionate, though fierce when applied to true evil which hurts other people. The effectiveness and humanity of the book's morality are one of the most attractive features.

Style and Technique in Joseph Andrews:

Fielding's novel Joseph Andrews was a major innovation in form and style. He claimed that he was writing a new type of literature-“a comic epic in prose". The preface to Joseph Andrews is significant in that it endeavors to expound a theory of the novel. According to Fielding, the new type of novel would combine the state and serious purpose of the epic with the realism and humor of comic writing. The novel is richly comic and utilizes a wide range of comic techniques, including irony, coarse physical humor, bathos, and comic set-piece situations.

Joseph Andrews is written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes the author of Don Quixote. Indeed, after the initial ten chapters, the herò along with Parson Adams is cast onto the roads to encounter a series of misadventures before they reach their destination. The picaresque mode helps Fielding in the development of his comic theory - that of ridiculing the affectations of human beings. The picaresque mode of the novel helps the author make his characters encounter a variety of people and a large section of society on the long journey from London to the countryside. Though admittedly loose in structure, Joseph Andrews is unified by a theme. All its incidents and characters project the theme of a discrepancy between appearance and reality, affectation and truth, hypocrisy, and inherent goodness.

Written in the picaresque tradition Fielding's Joseph Andrews is a great novel of all times. It is one of the most successful novels for the magnetic beauty of its structure. In this novel plot and characters are not related by a cause-effect scheme. The unity is achieved by means of recurrent themes. Fielding vividly depicts the character and their manners in Joseph Andrews. He also gives a realistic picture of eighteenth-century English society with its vices, follies, and frivolities as well as good qualities like charity, benevolence, and chastity.