William Hogarth’s satire of the profligate rake
I recently taught Tom Jones in my 18th Century Couples Comedy class and have been asking myself whether I should continue to assign it in the future, even though Fielding’s masterpiece is the work that convinced me to specialize in 18th Century British literature in graduate school. I’m in love with Fielding’s urbane humor, his love of life, and his colorful characters, especially Tom and Sophia.
But the work is almost 900 pages and is difficult to read, consuming a fourth of the course. Perhaps more seriously, it now seems dated in ways that it didn’t when I first read it in 1973. Fielding directs a few too many barbs at older women, and while I fell in love with his idealized depiction of Sophia at 22, my students don’t find her three-dimensional enough. Furthermore, the novel’s sexual innuendo, delivered with a sly nod and wink, no longer seems daring. When film director Tony Richardson won the “Best Film” Oscar in 1963 with his version of the novel, it seemed the perfect work to usher in the sexual revolution. Now that we are more permissive, the jokes don’t have the same punch.
But no sooner was I second guessing my choice than I reread the novel and found myself falling in love once again with the deft way that Fielding satirically carves up the world’s knaves and fools. From the first he promises he shall be serving one dish in his novel—human nature—and his observations about people are still on target. In today’s post I share three passages that could be applied to America’s wealthy in this age of increasing income disparity.
As we learned in the last election (if we didn’t know it before), a number of America’s one percent complain about entitled “takers” (the “47%”), even as they themselves benefit from governmental contracts, payouts, tax breaks, and the like. Likewise, in the novel no one complains about freeloaders and cheats as much as the usurer Mr. Nightingale. Here’s what he has to say about Black George, who Squire Allworthy discovers has stolen from Tom:
As there are no Men who complain more of the Frauds of Business than Highwaymen, Gamesters, and other Thieves of that Kind; so there are none who so bitterly exclaim against the Frauds of Gamesters, &c. as Usurers, Brokers, and other Thieves of this Kind; whether it be that the one Way of cheating is a Discountenance or Reflection upon the other, or that Money, which is the common Mistress of all Cheats, makes them regard each other in the Light of Rivals; but Nightingale no sooner heard the Story, than he exclaimed against the Fellow in Terms much severer than the Justice and Honesty of Allworthy had bestowed on him.
We have seen our biggest financiers, not to mention those politicians who protected them, appear to get away scot-free since sending the world into economic freefall in 2008. How do they always avoid being held accountable? Fielding has an answer:
I look upon the vulgar observation, “That the devil often deserts his friends, and leaves them in the lurch,” to be a great abuse on that gentleman’s character. Perhaps he may sometimes desert those who are only his cup acquaintance; or who, at most, are but half his; but he generally stands by those who are thoroughly his servants, and helps them off in all extremities, till their bargain expires.
And finally, how responsible are the wealthy for using their money on behalf of society? Fielding notes that there are two different views on the matter:
[T]he world are in general divided into two opinions concerning charity, which are the very reverse of each other. One party seems to hold, that all acts of this kind are to be esteemed as voluntary gifts, and, however little you give (if indeed no more than your good wishes), you acquire a great degree of merit in so doing. Others, on the contrary, appear to be as firmly persuaded, that beneficence is a positive duty, and that whenever the rich fall greatly short of their ability in relieving the distresses of the poor, their pitiful largesses are so far from being meritorious, that they have only performed their duty by halves, and are in some sense more contemptible than those who have entirely neglected it.
To reconcile these different opinions is not in my power. I shall only add, that the givers are generally of the former sentiment, and the receivers are almost universally inclined to the latter.
That’s just a taste of what Fielding offers us. The book is also filled with observations about lawyers, doctors, priests, squires, justices of the peace, innkeepers, soldiers, wives…indeed, pretty much everybody.
So I’ll probably keep teaching Tom Jones. Humor like this is a gift to humanity.
