Tom Jones Literature and Writing

This passage gives us a great example of Fielding's tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. If you read this passage literally, the narrator says: (1) I'm the boss, so I have the right to make up any rules I want about my new style of writing; (2) as readers, you have to follow my rules; (3) but I'm only bossing you around for your own good! (4) So I'm sure that you will all praise me just like I deserve.

And yet, there is a contradiction here: how can a "tyrant"rule over people "for <em>their </em>own good"? The contradiction here lets us know, hey, Fielding is being funny here. He's <em>dripping </em>sarcasm: he doesn't expect us (the readers) to obey him, and he doesn't expect us to praise him as he "shall deserve or desire." So—how much of this passage (if any) do you think we can read as straightforward? Why might Fielding present even his essays in this sly, funny, and above all <em>not </em>literal manner?

Tom Jones is a novel, which means (of course) that it's fictional. This is Literary Analysis 101: novels = not true. But Henry Fielding also says that Tom Jones *is* true: "truth distinguishes [his] writings." So how can Tom Jones be both fictional and true? It all depends on how you define "truth." For Fielding (at least in this passage), truth means "of nature." In other words, what makes Tom Jones true is that its plots and characters don't go against what we supposedly know in real life about human nature. Fielding wants us to distinguish Tom Jones from "idle romances which are filled with monsters. The "truth" lies in the novel's closeness to possible lived experience.

But using these standards, what would happen to the Harry Potters and the Hunger Games that make up our current literary landscape? Or would these books still be valuable according to Fielding, since they focus on human nature even against a backdrop of sci-fi and/or fantasy? Do you think that fiction is at its best (or its most serious) when it sidesteps "monsters"?

Tom Jones is supposed to be (mostly) realistic. But it's also a comedy, which means that some of the plot twists have to be exaggerated to make the reader laugh. In this passage, we have this ridiculous scene where the village women are so jealous and annoyed at Molly that they actually throw garbage at her. This is obviously a completely unrealistic depiction of the way people normally interact with each other—especially once Molly picks up a skull from a fresh grave nearby to throw at her attackers. Though, we can't say—maybe throwing garbage and skulls was like the eighteenth-century version of texting out an angry-face >:-(

So here's our question: why is this kind of super-exaggerated comedy still supposedly realistic, while werewolves and vampires are not? And how does Fielding's use of fancy language to present this ridiculous fight increase<em> </em>the comedy of the scene?

Back when Henry Fielding was writing, there were many more do's-and-don'ts that writers had to obey to be taken seriously. If you wanted to be a respected playwright in the classical tradition, you had to produce drama that (a) has five acts; (b) deals with "serious" themes like Love and Death and Heroism and Gods, etc., etc.; and (c) keeps to the dramatic unities.

But in this passage, the narrator is practically shouting through the page: why do we have to follow these rules? What is the reason for all of this structure? Partly, Fielding is speaking out against critics who might say that Tom Jones is bad just because it deals with funny topics and ordinary, non-heroic people. But he also has a real point to make: critics shouldn't let themselves get so distracted by the form of a work of art that they pay no attention to its substance. Just because Tom Jones is a little more realistic (and more fun) than a classical play doesn't mean that it has no serious value.

It's hard to imagine a time when reading novels was barely respectable, but the eighteenth century was, indeed, such a time. The English novel was just getting started, and a lot of people disapproved of the strong emotional content of these new books. They thought that novels were for women (in a bad way), and not worth the attention of serious readers. Ugh.

Now, we are sure that a lot of these early novels were really silly. (After all, lots of novels now are pretty dumb.) But Tom Jones is clearly making the case that, just because a novel can be emotional doesn't mean that it can't also deal with really important topics. Here, Sophia defends the novel she's reading using the same terms that the narrator uses in the first chapter of Tom Jones, that, "there appears […] to be a great deal of human nature in it." How could a book that deals in real emotions and in "human nature" not be worth reading? Why should we not value a book just because it makes its readers cry? Does everything we read have to be high-toned philosophy? Obviously, we're on Fielding's side with this one.

Some parts of Tom Jones read less like a novel and more like a rant about What Literature Should Be Like. This is definitely one of those parts: the narrator stops the novel for a while to talk about ghosts, elves, and fairies and why they should never be in real works of art ever, ever, ever.

We're not surprised at Fielding's anti-elf policy, since he keeps emphasizing that his novel is about "human nature" (emphasis on the "human"). But it does raise another question, which is: what exactly is literature for? Obviously, this question is huge, and we don't want to get too philosophical. It's just that Fielding gives us this list of do's-and-don'ts for novel writing. Having a set of guidelines implies that there is something specific that the novel can achieve or accomplish if it follows these rules. Do you think that there is something in particular that novels should do? Or are they purely entertaining? Are novels supposed to teach us something about life? About other people? What's the end game here?

It's funny that the Man of the Hill so admires the minds of Aristotle and Plato when he so hates mankind. Like, why do Aristotle and Plato get a pass from his hatred of other people? Is it just because they've been dead for a really long time? Is it because he doesn't have to meet them face to face? But anyway, we picked out this passage because it outlines why the Man of the Hill thinks literature is important: it guides us to be better, and it supports us against the pressures of the world. In other words, if the Man of the World believes that it is society that makes individuals bad, he also appears to think that literature can protect you from those social evils. According to this guy, literature is like a defense mechanism—a Kevlar vest against evil influences.

We can't find a real-life person who matches this description of "Mr. King," but that doesn't mean there wasn't one. Still, moments like these, when the narrator stops the plot to give what amounts to a commercial in the middle of the novel, happen pretty often. Think of the narrator's admiration for the Bell at Gloucester (Book 8, Chapter 8). Or his shout-out to "the celebrated Mrs. Hussey" (10.3.25), who makes fashionable gowns for ladies. How do these non-fictional recommendations affect your experience reading Tom Jones? How do these moments influence your sense of Tom Jones's realism? Do they give you any ideas about the reading audience at the time, or about Fielding's intended readership?

And here, we say to Fielding: oh, so you can dish it out, but you can't take it? "Slander" means spreading hurtful lies about a person. But Fielding uses "slander" in this passage specifically to refer to unfairly critical judgments of good books. Fielding claims that such criticism is worse than a sword wound, because people can recover from physical injuries, but criticism hurts them forever. (So Fielding is presenting the opposite view of that old saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." For Fielding, only words really hurt.)

However, we are sure that Nicholas Rowe (whom Fielding dismisses as an "imitator" (9.1.4) of Shakespeare) would say that Fielding is the harsh one. Fielding is hyper-critical. Fielding may be super-sensitive about his own work, but he's perfectly happy to rip apart other authors he doesn't respect—double standard, much?

Fielding really lays on the poetic language at the beginning of this passage. Check out the line, "the sturdy hind now attends the levee of his fellow-labourer the ox." A "hind" in an old-fashioned word for a farm worker. A "levee" is a reception that aristocrats and kings used to hold immediately after getting up for the day. So basically, all Fielding is saying in this line is that it's that time of the day when the farmer goes to deal with his awakening oxen. But Fielding doesn't just say all of this to be poetic. He provides his own snarky translation of all this high-flown language, when he adds, "In simple phrase, the clock had no sooner struck seven." Fielding makes a joke out of his lovely language by bringing everything right back down to earth. Fielding is showing off here: he can be elaborate and stylish and he can be straightforward and easy to follow.

Fielding basically describes modern copyright law: it's okay for him to copy the ideas of ancient writers without always mentioning them by name because their work is the common property of all modern scholars. But he's not going to borrow the work of anyone writing now without carefully citing that person's name. The problem with taking the work of his "poor brethren" writing now is that it's a matter of money—he doesn't want to deprive them of their financial rights to their own work. The ancients can't profit off their ideas, since they're long dead and don't have to worry about money any longer. It makes sense that this question of plagiarism and copyright would matter a lot to Fielding because (a) he made his living as a writer, and (b) copyright was just becoming a settled part of English law in the eighteenth century, when this novel was published.