Constructing a Moral Universe, continued

Fielding then shows readers, in the introduction to Book XIV, what takes place when humans completely subjugate passion to reason. He describes the upper class as being "entirely made up of form and affectation" so that they can be said to "have no character at all" or at least no individual characteristics that can be discerned (Fielding 649).

The lives of the upper class are the "dullest," containing "very little humour or entertainment," and "all is vanity and servile imitation" (Fielding 649). The character of Lady Bellaston is, then, an exception to the kinds of people in high society. Fielding exhorts readers against taking Lady Bellaston's behavior for the "general conduct of women of fashion," and insists that he is "convinced there never was less of love intrigue" among the upper classes than the present (Fielding 650). The dissipation of 'love intrigues' is attributed, by Fielding, to mothers instructing their daughters to "fix their thoughts only on ambition and vanity, and to despise the pleasures of love as unworthy their regard" (Fielding 650).

I believe it would be wrong to think that Fielding is thus advocating that women (and men) should disregard all material matters in the pursuit of love. Rather, Fielding is promoting a moral universe that strives for Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean; a world in which reason and passion, love and material comfort, sobriety and humor, work and play, mercy and justice, etc. are balanced evenly in the scales.

In the introductory chapter to Book XV, Fielding returns to his attack on other moral writers, who "teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery" (Fielding 687). He emphasizes that people who 'live in the world' are not completely in control of their own destiny. However 'virtuous' a person may be, sometimes he or she might suffer misfortune; likewise, vice is not always discovered and punished. For an example, Fielding describes while Tom was "acting the most virtuous part imaginable in labouring to preserve his fellow-creatures from destruction, the devil, or some other evil spirit, one perhaps clothed in human flesh, was hard at work to make him completely miserable in the ruin of his Sophia" (Fielding 688).

In his last introductory chapter, "A farewell to the reader," Fielding-the-narrator "images himself as [the] reader's traveling companion, discusses the author's public reputation, and returns to the already charged topic of slander to tighten the bonds between his 'intrusions' and his plot" (Chibka 37). In applying the appellation of "friend" to his readers, the narrator is, once more, using his rhetoric to maneuver us in the direction he wishes us to take (Fielding 809). During this last book, Fielding intends to lay aside "all jokes and raillery," throw off "whatever characters [he has] for the jest-sake personated on the road," and promises that conversation will now be "plain and serious" (Fielding 808). Fielding then takes his leave of the readers:

And now, my friend, I take this opportunity (as I shall have no other) of heartily wishing thee well. If I have been an entertaining companion to thee, I promise thee it is what I have desired. If in anything I have offended, it was really without any intention. Some things, perhaps, here said, may have hit thee or thy friends; but I do most solemnly declare they were not pointed at thee or them. (Fielding 809)

The implication here is that Fielding, knowing his readers to be 'good' readers and moral persons, was not 'pointing' his moral philosophizing or satire at our friends or us. His satire and condemnations are, of course, describing 'other' people. He then reminds us to disassociate ourselves from those persons who would do him "an injury," and slander his name or his novel (Fielding 809). Fielding then attempts to have us sympathize with him by declaring that no man "hath ever been treated with more [scurrility] than himself" (Fielding 809). Fielding has positioned us exactly where he intended us to be.

Bibliography

Chibka, Robert L. "Taking 'The Serious' Seriously: The Introductory Chapters of Tom Jones." The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 31.1 (1990): 23-45.

Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.