The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

[kev67]

I am reading The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding, published in 1749. It's good. Fielding has a unique style and he is funny in a sardonic way. Definitely deserves its place.

[prendrelemick]

I think it's good too.
Those were the very early days of the Novel and the genre hadn't settled down. He included stuff that has generally been dropped, and stuff that caught on and is not out of place today. The humour is timeless though. (and laugh out loud funny).

[kev67]

It's not like a 19th Century novel, much less a 20th Century. That said, it is funny. The way the narrator intrudes and explains things is something that has fallen out of fashion. You don't get that in modern novels.

[kev67]

I wonder if any of the TV and film adaption have scenes of bare breasted women fighting like there are in the book. If not, why not?

[kev67]

I was thinking that part 2 was not as good as part 1, but it is picking up again. I think it is the reintroduction of some of the characters from part 1; they are so good.

[kev67]

Just finished part 2, which was not as good as part 1, but still had its moments. On the historical side, one thing that surprised me was that there were quite a few people who supported the Jacobite cause in England. I thought it was only the Scots who wanted to replace George II (I think) with Bonnie Prince Charlie. Then again, I dare say many English people resented the German transplants and thought the Young Pretender had a better claim to the throne. Squire Western complains about being taxed to fund European wars in part 1 iirc.

[Jackson Richardson]

There were English Jacobites and the Young Pretender expected to rise joyfully in his support when he entered England. They didn't and having to as far as Derby decided to withdraw.

[kev67]

One thing I like about Tom Jones over Jane Austen's books, is that Henry Fielding does not ignore 95% of the population like she does. All the plebs get their feelings and motivations explained. Nearly everyone is on the make to a greater or lesser extent. Even the squires, Squire Allworthy and Squire Western are not really like the gentlemen in Jane Austen's novels. I have not read many C18th books: only Toms Jones, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Humphry Clinker and The Monk, so I cannot tell if Fielding's relative classnessless was characteristic of books from the time.

I do like the humour. Even Sophie Western, who is perfect in virtue and beauty, is funny. She does not tell jokes, but her behaviour is amusing. I liked the nicknames she and her cousin gave each other while they were both under their aunt's care. Sophie's cousin called her Miss Graveairs, while Sophie called her Miss Giddy. They are perfectly in Sophie's character.

[Ecurb]

I think society was changing by Austen's time. Fielding and Austen both portray a number of clergymen. There is quite a gulf between Mr. Trulliber, Abraham Adams, and Mrs. Slip-Slop (a clergyman's daughter) and Dr. Grant, Henry Tilney and Edmund Bertram. Even Mr. Collins is at least considered genteel, and fit to dine with Lady Catherine. In Fielding the clergy are hangers on like Thwackum or bumpkins, like Trulliber. In Fielding's time, there was the aristocracy (the landed class) and everyone else (at least that's what I gather from reading novels, I have no historical expertise here). By the mid nineteenth century, Rev. Crawley (from Barchester) could be completely impoverished, but still genteel enough that his daughter was courted by rich men. Even Charles Hayter -- although he was regarded as ineligible by the snobbish Mary Musgrove -- had social status above some of the Fielding clergy. I believe that bishops lived in luxury, even in Fielding's time. But other clergymen had not consolidated into a professional class, fit to mingle with the rich.

[kev67]

Fielding did mention that two of his female peasant characters could claim their grandfathers were clergymen. He pointed it out as an area of concern. By Austen's time the clergy appears to have become a parachute profession for downwardly mobile younger sons.

[Jackson Richardson]

There were lower clergy in Jane Austen’s day, she just doesn’t mention them. Henry Tilney has a curate to take the services while he is at Northanger. Henry Crawford is surprised Edmund is expecting to live in his parish and take services every Sunday.

[Ecurb]

Wasn't Charles Hayter "lower clergy"? I don't really know much about Fielding (I read the novels decades ago) or his times. IN Trollope (who chronicles the clergy a half century or so after Austen, just as Fielding was a half century before her) the clergy seem to have their own social milieu, as well as mingling with the landed classes. So clergymen would (I'm guessing) associate with Charles Hayter, thus drawing him into wider circles, where he is fit to woo Henrietta Musgrove (if not one of the Eliot girls).

Since you are an actual Englishman, I defer to your more expert knowledge of reality -- my knowledge is all fictional.

[kev67]

I suspect Jackson Richardson is English, unless he's Welsh or Scottish, but he's not 250 years old.

I was reading part 3, which I was thinking was getting a little moralistic, idealistic and unrealistic, when suddenly one of the characters subverts the tone.

The part I was reading was about a friend of Tom's, who gets a girl in trouble. Tom was pleading with his friend to marry the girl; otherwise she would be ruined. She and her family would be shamed. No man would marry her. Respectable tenants would stop lodging at their house. It's a contrast to the other book I am reading, The Corner by David Simon and Ed Burns, creators of The Wire. The book is about drug culture in 1990s Baltimore. In that bit of reportage a 13-year-old girl is made pregnant by a 16-year-old, drug selling delinquent. I think in that culture most children learn who their fathers are when they are pointed out in the street.

[Ecurb]

I know more about American history than I would if I hadn't gone to school in the U.S. I assume Jackson knows more about English history than I do (although I'm not sure, of course). In any event, knowing more than I would be no great mastery, since (as I said) I know nothing about the history of the English Church except what I've read in novels and seen in movies about St. Thomas More. I have gleaned a bit about the Church debates of the 19th century from reading the Barchester series, and, of course, I take the side of Septimus Harding and his cohorts for no better reason than that I think Mr. Harding cannot possibly be wrong.

[kev67]

I am within the last 100 pages. Part 3 has picked up again, largely because all the great characters from part 1 have come back. My favourite characters:


Squire Western - irascible, insensitive, pig-headed
Mrs Western (his sister) - deluded, conceited and callous
Sophie Western - surprisingly amusing for a paragon of beauty and virtue
Mrs Honour - self-centred, conspiratorial
Mr Blifill - cunning, hypocritical, reptilian
Mr Allworthy - gullible


I never entirely warmed to Mr Partridge, which is partly why I did not like part 2 as much.

[kev67]

Finished it. It's taken about three months, but it was good. I like the way Henry Fielding attacks his critics in the introductory chapters. Now that I've finished the book, I have started the introduction. I can't remember reading any spoilers for Tom Jones, but I have for Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, which is quite annoying. Interestingly, the introduction says Henry Fielding used to write plays, but the then prime minister, Horace Walpole, brought in an act banning them. Some parts of the Tom Jones did remind me of a bedroom farce.

[prendrelemick]

I wonder if any of the TV and film adaption have scenes of bare breasted women fighting like there are in the book. If not, why not?

I've seen 2 screen adaptations. The 1963 film with Albert Finney, Susanna York and the brilliant Hugh Griffiths. Also the 1997 BBC one with Samantha Morton and Brian Blessed. Both are fantastic I would recommend both. They were both a bit risque. It depends whether you get the 12 or the 15 version.

[kev67]

I've seen 2 screen adaptations. The 1963 film with Albert Finney, Susanna York and the brilliant Hugh Griffiths. Also the 1997 BBC one with Samantha Morton and Brian Blessed. Both are fantastic I would recommend both. They were both a bit risque. It depends whether you get the 12 or the 15 version.

I bet I can guess which part Brian Blessed played.

[prendrelemick]

Yep you're right. I can't decide which Squire Weston I liked best - Hugh Griffith or Brian Blessed. Samantha Morton was the best Sophie and Albert Finney the best Tom. It's like a pick n mix. There was also The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones with Joan Collins, but that's another story .

[kev67]

I have started reading Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I have not got it with me, but I reached the point where Mr Thorpe and Catherine Morland talk about books. Mr Thorpe says he has better things to do than read novels, and that there hasn't been a good book since Tom Jones, except that he had read The Monk, which he considered a good read. I remember hearing someone on the radio say that Mr Thorpe damned himself with this sentence. The Monk was not a suitable book for a young lady. I think the speaker on the radio was author, P.D. James, who wrote detective fiction, and was a big Jane Austen fan. I have read The Monk, which I think must have been scandalous for the time. It's like something by Ken Russell. All right, so I presume Jane Austen did not approve of The Monk, but what did she think of Tom Jones? I am interested to know.

[Jackson Richardson]

Just finished reading it on Project Gutenburg. I can see why it was admired and loved as the Great C18 Novel - it isn't coy about sex unlike every other mainline novel until the C20.

I agree Sophia is so sympathetic and having a life of her own in a way none of Dicken's wimpy heroines do despite being hailed as a paragon. However there is a double standard at work: Tom can have a sex life of his own (including being a keot toy boy for Lady Bellaston despite him going on and on about his honour). Sophia would lose her status as heroine if she did. I know Clarissa is bore of a book and Clarissa herself is should be too good to be true, but we are not constantly told that - we work it out from the characters own words without the jolly omniscient narrator constantly telling us. There's also more eroticism going on there.

And despite the constant appeal to simple goodness, there is a repeated exposure of human deception, hypocrisy and malice which I found has too much relish in it.

I agree Partridge is a bore.

About the same time I read Tristram Shandy and I found the characterization far more gentle and sympathetic together with a full awareness of human self deception.

[kev67]

I will have to read Clarissa one day, but it won't be this year.

Squire Western would have had very firms views regarding his daughter's virginity, but many of the other female characters were not exactly chaste. There was Molly Seagrim, Jenny Jones, Lady Bellaston, Nancy Miller, even Squire Allworthy's sister Bridget.They all got away with it. Compare that to Jane Austen in which even putting on a play was seen as immoral.

Personally I liked Fielding's cynical view of human nature. Everyone was on the make, except for Squire Allworthy, who is naive and unworldly, despite being a magistrate. Sophie is not on the make neither, but she's our heroine, and Tom is not neither.

[Jackson Richardson]

I will have to read Clarissa one day, but it won't be this year.

I wouldn’t be in a hurry. Dr Johnson said “Why Sir if you were to read Richardson for the story your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment.”

There is an interesting comparison that both Sophia (deliberately) and Clarissa (accidentally) leave home to escape an unacceptable marriage. The odd thing is that for such a notoriously long book, there are very few characters. Tom Jones teems with characters but they are far more superficially presented.




Personally I liked Fielding's cynical view of human nature.

I often enjoy cynicism (Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh, etc) but there is something I find trite about Fielding’s. He seems to think that people must either have simple goodness or not. And life’s a bit more complicated.

[Carmilla]

One thing I like about Tom Jones over Jane Austen's books, is that Henry Fielding does not ignore 95% of the population like she does. .

I agree. :-) I like Fielding a lot. I read this book a few years ago.
Right now, I'm reading 'Jonathan Wild' by him. I'm enjoying it very much.