I got very little actual pleasure out of reading this book, which was kind of a surprise and disappointment to me, because usually, when I get around to reading the classics, I find them to be a hoot, and easy to understand their long term appeal. And I guess the second part of that axiom is true: Fielding is, I'm convinced, a serious thinker about novels, and he gives you a lot to work over. Really, he makes someone like Richardson look like a child, and the complexity of this book, just on the level of plotting, is astounding, and I can't think of more than a handful of "serious" books that so skillfully integrate social issues like the Jacobin movement (though not, at least to me, other social issues like those concerning class and gender). But given the incredible expansiveness of his vision, Fielding never lets up on his own sour cynicism, which makes this kind of hard to read.

If anyone has read a page of Fielding, you know how he likes to bully, cajole, and coerce his readers with his point of view, and given that this is 800 pps of that, it's kind of a lot to take. No doubt Fielding is a really bright guy, but for me at least, this novel despite its scope never exceeds Fielding's boundaries. I know I'm being anachronistic looking for Bakhtinian polyphonics in a novel from 1750, but, well, I wanted that nonetheless.

There is a lot to like here-- Jones himself is a pretty interesting character, flawed but given forgiveness and only partially redeemed. There's a lemony sourness to Sophia's final giving in to her father's commands, though I found her character one of the least interesting in the book. There is a whole range of characters here, at almost every level of society, and the scope really is impressive, as are many of the portraits Fielding renders which only occasionally go off the rails-- Partridge's behavior at the theater struck me as especially improbable, but most of the rest felt about right. I could never quite figure out what I was supposed to hear in Squire Western's dialect, but at least it was consistent, so I take the blame for that one.

I did think the book was sexist, and I might if pressed go so far as to say it's misogynist-- its not just the free range given to Western's rants, but also characters like Lady Western, Bellaston, and Jones' mother, the real one and the one he takes his surname from. Women just don't get the same chances for complexity and dynamism that Fielding gives to his male characters, which makes Sophia a kind of dim light in this romance.

Really, having read this, I hope I don't find myself in a spot where I need to read it again.