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A review by fionnualalirsdottir
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
The word 'foundling' in the title of Henry Fielding's novel, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, is such an interesting concept when you think about it.
Aren't all main characters foundlings in some way or other—I mean, they may not appear one evening out of nowhere wrapped in a blanket and laid on somebody's bed as baby Tom did, but they are more or less brought into being without a back story so that the novel they are in can then provide one, since, unlike Tom, they are often already full-grown when they are born. But full-grown or not, the author still has to name them, offhandedly maybe, as in characters called Tom or Joe or Harry, or more purposefully as in the case of, say, Ernest Worthing, Lady Dedlock or Frodo Baggins.
Then again there are some characters who seem both offhandedly and purposely named such as Major Major in Catch 22.
Henry Fielding has some characters in that vein: the very virtuous Squire Allworthy, the very boring and logical Mr Square, the Reverend Thwackum, a tutor who likes to use the cane at every opportunity, Black George, who does some fairly despicable things.
I enjoy when authors like Heller and Fielding announce clearly via their characters' names that they are invented, yet still draw us in to the fiction they are creating by making believe it is fact. Fielding tells us that the Squire's sister, Miss Bridget (and note her very real-life name), is the actual person depicted in one of William Hogarth's real-life prints: I would attempt to draw her picture, but that is done already by a more able master, Mr. Hogarth himself, to whom she sat many years ago, and has been lately exhibited by that gentleman in his print of a winters morning, of which she was no improper emblem, and may be seen walking (for walk she doth in the print) to Covent-Garden church, with the starved foot-boy behind, carrying her prayer book.
So on the one hand, Fielding is saying this is all made up, and on the other, it's all real. He maintains that waltz between the real and the fictive all the way through the book. Take the chapter headings, for instance (all 208 of them spread across 18 'books' in this 6 volume novel), each one is like a tantalizing game the author plays with the reader.
Chapter vii —Containing such grave matter, that the reader cannot laugh once through the whole chapter, unless peradventure he should laugh at the author.
Or this one: —Containing what the reader may, perhaps, expect to find in it.
Or this —In which the author himself makes his appearance on the stage.
Or these two succeeding ones:
—A little chapter, in which is contained a little incident.
—A very long chapter, containing a very great incident.
Ok, just one more: —A most dreadful chapter indeed; and which few readers ought to venture upon in an evening, especially when alone.
That gives you a flavor of how funny and outright mischievous a writer Fielding is. The prologue, however, is awfully serious. He talks about how he wants to offer an example of true virtue, but the novel he then goes on to create seems to be aimed instead at examining and exposing all the hypocrisies in the society of his day: England in the 1730s and 40s.
He also seems intent on examining the very notion of what a novel should be. Each of the eighteen 'books' has a first chapter unrelated to the story. These 'essays' have titles such as:
—Of the SERIOUS in writing, and for what purpose it is introduced.
—Of those who lawfully may, and of those who may not, write such histories as this.
—Containing instructions very necessary to be perused by modern critics.
—An essay to prove that an author will write the better for having some knowledge of the subject on which he writes.
Inevitably, some of these essay titles are less serious sounding:
—Containing a portion of introductory writing.
—Containing five pages of paper.
—Containing little or nothing.
In one of these early essays, Fielding says My reader then is not to be surprized, if, in the course of this work, he shall find some chapters very short, and others altogether as long; some that contain only the time of a single day, and others that comprise years; in a word, if my history sometimes seems to stand still, and sometimes to fly. For all which I shall not look on myself as accountable to any court of critical jurisdiction whatever: for as I am, in reality, the founder of a new province of writing, so I am at liberty to make what laws I please therein. And these laws, my readers, whom I consider as my subjects, are bound to believe in and to obey; with which that they may readily and cheerfully comply, I do hereby assure them that I shall principally regard their ease and advantage...
I enjoyed all the introductory essays, and I was happy to find lots of thoughts on writing in other chapters as well. It seemed that Fielding couldn't help but constantly comment on the process of writing his story almost as if this were really the most important aspect for him. And I, in turn, began to be more interested in his opinions on writing and on devices in fiction than on the story they were embedded in. I believe Fielding intended that: since every book ought to be read with the same spirit and in the same manner as it is writ.
And when Fielding talks about looking out for the 'ease and advantage' of his readers (as in the long quote above), he follows through on the promise. He tells us, for example, that he's going to skip such and such a scene because we might find it boring, or that he has shortened some other passage so that we don't fall asleep, or he has realised that to relate the whole conversation of the ensuing scene is not within my power, unless I had forty pens, and could, at once, write with them all together, as the company now spoke. The reader must, therefore, content himself with the most remarkable incidents....
Notice how he implies here that, yes, this all happened and he was there, writing down what he could. It's all part of that wonderful waltz he does between the real and the fictional.
…………………………………………
This is a very old book and a very long book (in spite of Fielding's kindly editing), and you might wonder why I chose to read it instead of some contemporary novel which our current publishing world is pushing us to read. Well, Tom Jones fits into the three-volume novel project I started pursuing a few months ago when I read George Gissing's three-volume novel, [b:New Grub Street|782519|New Grub Street|George Gissing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1414700331l/782519._SY75_.jpg|768534], about the publishing world of its day—referred to by writers and publishers as Grub Street. Gissing's book lead me to read Tobias Smollett's three-volume [b:Humphry Clinker|415836|The Expedition of Humphry Clinker|Tobias Smollett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344373373l/415836._SY75_.jpg|502618] from 1770, also featuring Grub Street. And Smollett lead me back a couple of decades to this three-part novel of Fielding's in which I was pleased to find a further mention of Grub Street. It occurs in one of the introductory essays, one entitled Invocation in which he calls on the genii of Grub Street and the goddess of memory to keep his name alive so that when the little parlour in which I sit at this instant shall be reduced to a worse furnished box, I shall be read with honour by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see.
I think I read him with 'honour'.
…………………………………………… …
I must have unknowingly invoked some genii myself because while I was making my way through Fielding's tome, which is not easy to carry around in my bag, read in the bath, or even in bed, I fished a small pocket-sized [b:Unidentified|55365398|Unidentified man at left of photo|Jeff Bursey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1600396758l/55365398._SX50_.jpg|86345281] book out of my book pile for those very times. It turned out to be the perfect complementary reading: the author is focusing on the process of writing just as Fielding is, and just as humourously. And the [b:Kate Briggs|61889841|The Long Form|Kate Briggs|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1660058982l/61889841._SY75_.jpg|97570739] book I've got lined up to read when I finish Unidentified happens to be partly about Fielding too.
How grateful I am that the 'little parlour' in which I sit writing this review is well stocked with books for every occasion.
Aren't all main characters foundlings in some way or other—I mean, they may not appear one evening out of nowhere wrapped in a blanket and laid on somebody's bed as baby Tom did, but they are more or less brought into being without a back story so that the novel they are in can then provide one, since, unlike Tom, they are often already full-grown when they are born. But full-grown or not, the author still has to name them, offhandedly maybe, as in characters called Tom or Joe or Harry, or more purposefully as in the case of, say, Ernest Worthing, Lady Dedlock or Frodo Baggins.
Then again there are some characters who seem both offhandedly and purposely named such as Major Major in Catch 22.
Henry Fielding has some characters in that vein: the very virtuous Squire Allworthy, the very boring and logical Mr Square, the Reverend Thwackum, a tutor who likes to use the cane at every opportunity, Black George, who does some fairly despicable things.
I enjoy when authors like Heller and Fielding announce clearly via their characters' names that they are invented, yet still draw us in to the fiction they are creating by making believe it is fact. Fielding tells us that the Squire's sister, Miss Bridget (and note her very real-life name), is the actual person depicted in one of William Hogarth's real-life prints: I would attempt to draw her picture, but that is done already by a more able master, Mr. Hogarth himself, to whom she sat many years ago, and has been lately exhibited by that gentleman in his print of a winters morning, of which she was no improper emblem, and may be seen walking (for walk she doth in the print) to Covent-Garden church, with the starved foot-boy behind, carrying her prayer book.
So on the one hand, Fielding is saying this is all made up, and on the other, it's all real. He maintains that waltz between the real and the fictive all the way through the book. Take the chapter headings, for instance (all 208 of them spread across 18 'books' in this 6 volume novel), each one is like a tantalizing game the author plays with the reader.
Chapter vii —Containing such grave matter, that the reader cannot laugh once through the whole chapter, unless peradventure he should laugh at the author.
Or this one: —Containing what the reader may, perhaps, expect to find in it.
Or this —In which the author himself makes his appearance on the stage.
Or these two succeeding ones:
—A little chapter, in which is contained a little incident.
—A very long chapter, containing a very great incident.
Ok, just one more: —A most dreadful chapter indeed; and which few readers ought to venture upon in an evening, especially when alone.
That gives you a flavor of how funny and outright mischievous a writer Fielding is. The prologue, however, is awfully serious. He talks about how he wants to offer an example of true virtue, but the novel he then goes on to create seems to be aimed instead at examining and exposing all the hypocrisies in the society of his day: England in the 1730s and 40s.
He also seems intent on examining the very notion of what a novel should be. Each of the eighteen 'books' has a first chapter unrelated to the story. These 'essays' have titles such as:
—Of the SERIOUS in writing, and for what purpose it is introduced.
—Of those who lawfully may, and of those who may not, write such histories as this.
—Containing instructions very necessary to be perused by modern critics.
—An essay to prove that an author will write the better for having some knowledge of the subject on which he writes.
Inevitably, some of these essay titles are less serious sounding:
—Containing a portion of introductory writing.
—Containing five pages of paper.
—Containing little or nothing.
In one of these early essays, Fielding says My reader then is not to be surprized, if, in the course of this work, he shall find some chapters very short, and others altogether as long; some that contain only the time of a single day, and others that comprise years; in a word, if my history sometimes seems to stand still, and sometimes to fly. For all which I shall not look on myself as accountable to any court of critical jurisdiction whatever: for as I am, in reality, the founder of a new province of writing, so I am at liberty to make what laws I please therein. And these laws, my readers, whom I consider as my subjects, are bound to believe in and to obey; with which that they may readily and cheerfully comply, I do hereby assure them that I shall principally regard their ease and advantage...
I enjoyed all the introductory essays, and I was happy to find lots of thoughts on writing in other chapters as well. It seemed that Fielding couldn't help but constantly comment on the process of writing his story almost as if this were really the most important aspect for him. And I, in turn, began to be more interested in his opinions on writing and on devices in fiction than on the story they were embedded in. I believe Fielding intended that: since every book ought to be read with the same spirit and in the same manner as it is writ.
And when Fielding talks about looking out for the 'ease and advantage' of his readers (as in the long quote above), he follows through on the promise. He tells us, for example, that he's going to skip such and such a scene because we might find it boring, or that he has shortened some other passage so that we don't fall asleep, or he has realised that to relate the whole conversation of the ensuing scene is not within my power, unless I had forty pens, and could, at once, write with them all together, as the company now spoke. The reader must, therefore, content himself with the most remarkable incidents....
Notice how he implies here that, yes, this all happened and he was there, writing down what he could. It's all part of that wonderful waltz he does between the real and the fictional.
…………………………………………
This is a very old book and a very long book (in spite of Fielding's kindly editing), and you might wonder why I chose to read it instead of some contemporary novel which our current publishing world is pushing us to read. Well, Tom Jones fits into the three-volume novel project I started pursuing a few months ago when I read George Gissing's three-volume novel, [b:New Grub Street|782519|New Grub Street|George Gissing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1414700331l/782519._SY75_.jpg|768534], about the publishing world of its day—referred to by writers and publishers as Grub Street. Gissing's book lead me to read Tobias Smollett's three-volume [b:Humphry Clinker|415836|The Expedition of Humphry Clinker|Tobias Smollett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344373373l/415836._SY75_.jpg|502618] from 1770, also featuring Grub Street. And Smollett lead me back a couple of decades to this three-part novel of Fielding's in which I was pleased to find a further mention of Grub Street. It occurs in one of the introductory essays, one entitled Invocation in which he calls on the genii of Grub Street and the goddess of memory to keep his name alive so that when the little parlour in which I sit at this instant shall be reduced to a worse furnished box, I shall be read with honour by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see.
I think I read him with 'honour'.
…………………………………………… …
I must have unknowingly invoked some genii myself because while I was making my way through Fielding's tome, which is not easy to carry around in my bag, read in the bath, or even in bed, I fished a small pocket-sized [b:Unidentified|55365398|Unidentified man at left of photo|Jeff Bursey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1600396758l/55365398._SX50_.jpg|86345281] book out of my book pile for those very times. It turned out to be the perfect complementary reading: the author is focusing on the process of writing just as Fielding is, and just as humourously. And the [b:Kate Briggs|61889841|The Long Form|Kate Briggs|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1660058982l/61889841._SY75_.jpg|97570739] book I've got lined up to read when I finish Unidentified happens to be partly about Fielding too.
How grateful I am that the 'little parlour' in which I sit writing this review is well stocked with books for every occasion.