Comment on Fielding's art of characterization in Joseph Andrews.
Or,
Consider the claim that Joseph Andrews is not merely a novel of adventure but a novel of character.
Or,
Write an essay on Fielding as a creator of comic characters with reference to Joseph Andrews.
Or,
"Fielding is one of the of the strongest delineators of character among English writers". Discuss and illustrate with reference to Joseph Andrews.
Answer: Joseph Andrews is panoramic in scope. The reader is introduced to the whole teeming world of the eighteenth century, from the highest to the lowest social planes; almost every new page introduces a new character as the novel moves from the Booby parish to London and back again. Generally speaking, all the characters, no matter how brief their appearance, are vital and serve to complement the main curve of the action and the progress of the main characters.
Though Fielding mentions in his preface that he has painted manners and not man, it is not thoroughly true, as he has also given much insight into presenting individuals. Joseph Andrews, as in his other novels, 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. Therefore, he appears as a great delineator of man and his manner.
We have noted the importance of Fielding's dramatic training in the structure of the novel. This same training also taught Fielding to delineate his characters primarily through idiom. The main characters are summarized fully enough for the reader, but many of the minor ones (and, actually, to a great degree the major ones too) are identifiable through lines. Much of the characterization in the novel is summarized by a line typical of the character speaking: Adam's Latin tags; Slipslop's malapropisms; Trulliber's "I Caal'dvurst", Mrs. Tow-Wouse's "common charity, an f-t!"; Lady Booby's "did ever mortal hear of a man's virtue?" Pounce's "How can any man complain of hunger in a country where such excellent salads are to be gathered in every field?" -all illustrated with very little exaggeration that the reader can open the novel at almost any page and tell who is speaking by the accent.
Going through the novel, we come to know that Fielding has projected a vivid picture of the 18the century society through the portrayal of a large number of men and women. He shows a rare gift for portraying the human character in many of its forms and manifestations. In fact, the range of his characterization is very wide. In it, we come to know of the sensuality and sexual appetite of the women of the time through his live portrayal of Lady Booby, Mrs. Slipslop, and Betty. Here, each of these women had been depicted in such a way that we start thinking of them as our known people. The state of their mind has been analyzed by Fielding in the most convincing manner. Indeed, the author has given evidence of his psychological insight in the presentation of his characters and thus has made them live before us.
Another feature of Fielding's characterization is conditioned by the nature of comedy itself. The curve of comic action is largely one of self-exposure, and the emphasis is on the permanence and typicality of human experience, as projected in persistent social species whose sufficient destiny is simply to go on revealing themselves to us. For this reason, the great comic characters of literature, whether Shakespeare's, Fidelding's, or Dickens, do not essentially change. They are enveloped in events without being involved by them, and they remain immutable like Fielding's Lawyer, who has been “alive...these four thousand years" and seems good for us many more. Thus, at the close of Joseph Andrews, Lady Booby, on the one hand, and Parson Adams, on the other, are as self-deceived as they were at the start; they have uncovered others, but they have not discovered themselves. Had they done so-had Fielding allowed them to do so they would have lost precisely that perpetual possession of being well-deceived in which their comic essence consists.
The novel essentially revolves around five characters: Parson Adams; Joseph Andrews; Fanny Good Will; Mrs. Slipslop; Lady Booby. Of these, Fanny and Joseph are the least important. The reader is concerned with their fate, true enough, but he is less concerned with them as characters than he is with the other three. They are rather pale and are more or less pawns in the main course of the action. Actually, Fielding keeps the reader's attention focused on, in order of importance, Adams, Slipslop, and Lady Booby.
Fielding has shown greater skill in the delineation of the principal characters in this novel. Fanny with her beauty and constancy in love is certainly a living woman. At the same time, we may mention the name of Joseph who is a somewhat anemic or bloodless hero but he is still a living being-manly, faithful, and determined to preserve the purity of his character. Parson Adams is the triumph of characterization and the novel is largely indebted to him for its immense popularity. Fielding presents him as an irresponsible man, full of scholarship and high spirits. Though he often becomes ridiculous and excites our laughter, he wins our love, respect, and sympathy at last. Therefore, the portrayal of Parson Adams alone shows that Fielding is not only a painter of manners but also a delineator of individuals. Besides these leading characters, there is a score of other characters who have been made to live on the page of the novel. The surgeon is a living surgeon; Mr. Barnabas and Mr. Trulliber are some living persons who are forgetful of their spiritual functions. Peter Pounce is a convincing steward who grows rich by dishonest means. The innkeepers too have been given a vivid description. Thus, Beau Didapper is a live description of a pleasure-seeking squire who does not show any hesitation in his efforts to seduce young women. Indeed, it is surprising to find the author giving us individual pictures of the various innkeepers and their manners. Each of them is a living being in their own right.
Finally, we may conclude that Fielding proves his skill as a popular novelist of 18th-century English literature by making a vivid depiction of the character and their manners in Joseph Andrews. His excellence lies in the fact of his duel performance. In fact, it is impossible to present successfully without a true presentation of the character. Like a skillful novelist, Fielding has done it in his dominating work Joseph Andrews and thus got wide applause from his readers.
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