William Hogarth, “The Harlot’s Progress,” plate 4.
Continuing our discussion of whether literature can teach virtue, I present as an interesting case study Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, which I am currently teaching in my 18th Century Couples Comedy class. I’ve mentioned in a past post that moralist Samuel Johnson attacked Tom Jones for corrupting young people. Furthermore, the Bishop of London accused it (along with Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random) of causing the 1750 London earthquakes. I find it interesting that Henry Fielding himself anticipates such attacks (well, not that his book would cause earthquakes) within the novel.
In one way, the book works as a counterattack against moralists of the day. Fielding shows that merely lecturing on values to young people is of dubious use. Throughout Tom Jones, lectures seldom have their intended effect.
For example, the exemplary Squire Allworthy lectures Jenny Jones for becoming pregnant with Tom. His words make a momentary impression but she then goes on to become a loose woman. He delivers virtually the same lecture to Tom for getting Molly Seagrim pregnant. This leads to some sober self-reflection but doesn’t end Tom’s sexual escapades. Tom’s tutor, the aptly named Thwackum (who according to Fielding looks like the man on the left in the Hogarth print above), is constantly lecturing him, but he’s an arrant hypocrite.
Allworthy and Thwackum both take the opportunity of Tom’s broken arm to deliver a series of lectures, but they use contrasting styles. Allworthy, in the “mildest and tenderest manner,” advises him “to make a good use of this accident, that so in the end it might prove a visitation for his own good.”
Thwackum, on the other hand, has a different approach, which proves even less effective:
“Thwackum was likewise pretty assiduous in his visits; and he too considered a sick-bed to be a convenient scene for lectures. His stile, however, was more severe than Mr. Allworthy’s: he told his pupil, “That he ought to look on his broken limb as a judgment from heaven on his sins. That it would become him to be daily on his knees, pouring forth thanksgivings that he had broken his arm only, and not his neck; which latter,” he said, “was very probably reserved for some future occasion, and that, perhaps, not very remote. For his part,” he said, “he had often wondered some judgment had not overtaken him before; but it might be perceived by this, that Divine punishments, though slow, are always sure.” Hence likewise he advised him, “to foresee, with equal certainty, the greater evils which were yet behind, and which were as sure as this of overtaking him in his state of reprobacy. “These are,” said he, “to be averted only by such a thorough and sincere repentance as is not to be expected or hoped for from one so abandoned in his youth, and whose mind, I am afraid, is totally corrupted. It is my duty, however, to exhort you to this repentance, though I too well know all exhortations will be vain and fruitless. But liberavi animam meam [I have freed my soul.] I can accuse my own conscience of no neglect; though it is at the same time with the utmost concern I see you travelling on to certain misery in this world, and to as certain damnation in the next.”
Then there is Square, Tom’s other tutor, who advises him to be stoic in the face of pain but who then bites his tongue and reveals that stoicism is easier preached than practiced. Meanwhile Mrs. Western, the heroine’s aunt, is always lecturing her niece about being prudent–by which she means, making a mercenary match of which she approves.
Anticipating the criticism that people will be led astray by his hero’s “wantonness, wildness, and want of caution,” Fielding himself finds it necessary to lecture youthful readers of his book. It’s not enough that you are good-hearted, he tells them. You must be prudent and act properly. In fact, Tom’s imprudence will get him in trouble time and again, almost leading to disaster. Here’s Fielding’s lecture:
“In recording some instances of these [Tom’s indiscretions], we shall, if rightly understood, afford a very useful lesson to those well-disposed youths who shall hereafter be our readers; for they may here find, that goodness of heart, and openness of temper, though these may give them great comfort within, and administer to an honest pride in their own minds, will by no means, alas! do their business in the world. Prudence and circumspection are necessary even to the best of men. They are indeed, as it were, a guard to Virtue, without which she can never be safe. It is not enough that your designs, nay, that your actions, are intrinsically good; you must take care they shall appear so. If your inside be never so beautiful, you must preserve a fair outside also. This must be constantly looked to, or malice and envy will take care to blacken it so, that the sagacity and goodness of an Allworthy will not be able to see through it, and to discern the beauties within. Let this, my young readers, be your constant maxim, that no man can be good enough to enable him to neglect the rules of prudence; nor will Virtue herself look beautiful, unless she be bedecked with the outward ornaments of decency and decorum. And this precept, my worthy disciples, if you read with due attention, you will, I hope, find sufficiently enforced by examples in the following pages.
I ask pardon for this short appearance, by way of chorus, on the stage. It is in reality for my own sake, that, while I am discovering the rocks on which innocence and goodness often split, I may not be misunderstood to recommend the very means to my worthy readers, by which I intend to show them they will be undone. And this, as I could not prevail on any of my actors to speak, I myself was obliged to declare.
Fielding is deeply serious in his advocacy of prudence (real prudence, not Mrs. Western’s self-interested variety), which is a central concern of the book. In fact, Tom cannot have his happy ending until he attains prudence and religion, worldly wisdom and heavenly wisdom (or Sophia, the name of the heroine).
But because advice just rolls off of young people, Fielding acknowledges that he can’t find any characters in his book that can deliver his advice in a way that will make it stick. So he banters with his readers, all but acknowledging the ineffectiveness of lectures and thereby hoping that some of his words will in fact rub off on them. Maybe through this semi-humorous means can something get through.
Ultimately, however, he knows that, if he’s really going to have an impact on young people, he has to do it through the story and not through a lecture. He just hopes that people will take Tom’s final transformation as their model and not his earlier carousing.
Not everyone was convinced that he had succeeded. But then, they had no better alternatives. Fielding at least was able to capture the attention of young people. And because he trusted them in the end to do the right thing, maybe in the end his novel does convey virtue.
I feel like I’ve done something right in that both of my sons love this novel and that both rank high in the virtue department.