Concluding Tom Jones

Western is a savage and in chapter 8 of the last book again insists he will imprison Sophia for life on bread and water in a garret if she will not marry according to his choice.

She does not so marry and is by no means condemned to such a fate, a fate that Fielding and his characters seem to think entirely and lawfully in Western's power to effect.

Mull that a while.

Anyway, brilliant, happy, amusing, triumphant, and charming, the conclusion of his masterpiece is very worthy of the whole.

Justice

Partridge, impoverished victim of a malicious neighbor and conniving shyster, spent 7 years in Winchester Prison.

Reported in chapter 6 of the last book of Tom Jones.

The Woman Question

Allworthy goes into ecstasies rehearsing proofs of Sophia's sincere deference to men, showing her wonderfully suited to the role of wife.

In the same chapter he insists he will honor a woman's right of refusal of a proposed husband, even if the law does not.

For which reason he now rejects the project of marrying Sophia to Blifil.

Bear in mind that arranged marriages were equally an imposition on men.

Marie Antoinette dealt with it much better than her husband, Louis.

But Fielding saw no need to insist upon a man's right of refusal.

Why not?

Book 17, chapter 3, reading Tom Jones.

Update, 6/15/16.

See chapter 4, book 17.

Women are prey, devoured in matrimony, says Fielding.

In the same chapter, Fielding's heroine scoffs at great wealth and nobility.

She never scoffs at wealth sufficient for living without working and nor, of course, does Tom or, for that matter, Allworthy.

But he hates her

Western tolerates his sister and defers to her regarding Sophia only because he is in her will for a fortune, and would remain so.

Reading Tom Jones.

Book 16, chapter 4.

Sounds like Nixon

RN was willing to fight well past the worth of the object lest America - or he - appear a "pitiful, helpless giant."

Squire Western, lest he appear to his sister a fool who does not rule his own family, insists Sophie marry Blifil "though dost hang thyself the next morning."

Mother of God.

Chapter 2, Book 16.

Yet in Book 16, Chapter 5, she refers to him as "the best of fathers."

His characters are all bloody loons.

All.

Every one.

Reading Tom Jones.

So Kant read Fielding?

Book 15, Chapter 1.

That virtue in this life is not rewarded with happiness is the premise for one of reason's noblest arguments for belief in immortality, says Fielding.

Reading Tom Jones, published in 1749.

Well before Kant's second critique, 1788.

Perhaps the idea was something of a commonplace among the educated of the time.

On marrying

Against arranged marriages, Fielding, through the mouth of Nightingale's uncle, urges the primary, though not exclusive, role of love in a happy marriage.

A veto is allowed to the father by that gentleman, however.

Chapter 8, Book 14.

Reading Tom Jones.

"The rich are different," says Fitzgerald. "They have more money," says Hemingway.

Oh?

See Book 14, Chapter 1, of Tom Jones.

Really, worth reading.

And about social class and writing, too.

Fascinating.

Lady Bellaston

Fielding attributes to her a secret flaw fairly early on in her role in the book, but doesn't let us know what it is.

Yet.

Book 13, Chapter 9 of Tom Jones.

Bizarre

Fielding's politics are so absurd.

The five good emperors?

Really?

The ideal of benevolent despotism?

And yet, he turns it on its head, and in the same chapter denies scriptural warrant to any absolute monarchy but that of the Devil in hell.

A live issue, in his day of the Jacobite Rebellion supported by widespread Tory (overwhelmingly Protestant) treason and an alliance of the French monarchy with Scotch Presbyterians in support of a Catholic Pretender.

Bk 12, ch 12.

An apology for cowardice

Partridge, chapter 3, book 12, provides a very amusing refusal of the role of soldier after lamenting in no Christian, but a very Epicurean, vein that death is the end, altogether.

A view not in the least contested or even deplored by Tom.

Nay, he endorses it, though he deplores Partridge's attitude toward soldiering.

Reading Fielding's masterpiece, Tom Jones.

Fitting that Fielding quotes Horace all over the place.

A slanderer of books

In Book 11, Chapter 1, Fielding attacks critics as slanderers of books.

The charge, odious in any event, would be more so if he did not understand the word as signifying one who seeks out someone's flaws in order to make them known to his harm.

Reading Tom Jones.

By the way, have you tried the Troeg Brothers' Java Head Stout?

Very nice.

Easy for you to say

Fielding's contempt for the poor, for the not quite crimes and petty crimes they would do for money in an age when the poor were desperately poor, is all a bit much.

Reading Tom Jones.

By the way, Sauza Silver tequila is not bad, and after a double of that neither is Appleton Special Reserve rum.

Beer, here

Leinenkugel's Big Butt Doppelbock is quite tasty.

And then clear the palate with a refreshing Miller Lite.

And then there was a delicious Milk Stout from The Duck-Rabbit, followed at last by a charming Sunshine Pils from Troegs.

All of them not only served cold from the fridge but on ice with a little salt.

Excellent.

Reading Tom Jones.

Utter stupidity

The most abysmal misanthropy incoherently paired with the most abject veneration of the benevolence, wisdom, and power of the Creator of that very same, loathsome human race.

What drivel.

But it is not Tom's view. 

Reading Tom Jones.

The chapters concerning The Man of the Hill, in about the middle of the book.

Left Behind

Fielding says in Ch 1 of Bk 8 that the Christian author, unlike the ancient heathens, "cannot introduce into his works any of that heavenly host which make a part of his creed[.]"

And later in the same chapter, "The only supernatural agents which can in any manner be allowed to us moderns are ghosts[.]"

And Milton?

And anyway, why not?

And how does the whole Left Behind series relate to this alleged incapacity?

Medieval mystery plays?

Miracle plays?

Dramatizations of the Passion?

What on earth?

Assume by "us moderns" he means British authors and an indeterminate breadth of other Christians of his own time.

Still, why?

But among the supernatural beings thus forbidden to modern literature he explicitly does not include "elves and fairies, and other such mummery."

Tom Jones.

A subtle moralist

Blifil is worse than a mere scoundrel.

He is a vicious illustration of the harm one can do having "the satisfaction of conveying a lie without actually telling one."

Tom Jones,  Bk 7, Ch 6.

Never married ladies

Fielding regularly refers to Squire Western's never married sister as "Mrs. Western."

He and Tom refer to the young maiden Sophia as "Madam."

Odd.

Reading Tom Jones.

On the influence of wine in 18th Century literature

After discovering Molly sharing a bed with Square and gladly wishing her good riddance, the inebriated Jones nevertheless some days later falls in with her in the bushes, one night.

Thus Fielding, in prose both amusing and rhymed.

Some of my readers may be inclined to think this event unnatural.

However, the fact is true; and perhaps may be sufficiently accounted for by suggesting that Jones probably thought one woman better than none, and Molly as probably imagined two men to be better than one.

Reading Tom Jones.

At this point in the story, Book 5 Chapter 10, while Sophia loves Tom and he loves her, their affections are not declared and Squire Western has made it abundantly clear several times that he is not the least bit open to Jones gaining possession of his daughter or his estate.

Book 5, chapter 5

About Square, stoical philosopher - or philosophe, more like - , discovered in Molly's bed.

Philosophers are composed of flesh and blood as well as other human creatures; and however sublimated or refined the theory of these may be, a little practical frailty is as incident to them as to other mortals.

It is, indeed, in theory only, and not in practice, as we have before hinted, that consists the difference: for though such great beings think much better and more wisely, they always act exactly like other men.

Reading Tom Jones.