Recent rhetorical studies of Tom Jones demonstrate convincingly
how Fielding urges us to participate in the novel by making us
conscious of our own readership. John Preston, Wolfgang Iser, and
others show that our response to Fielding's novel is "epistemological
rather than moral," that Fielding leaves gaps in the text which
encourage us to make inferences about moral actions and to revise
these inferences as more information is presented.' These studies,
JamesJ. Lynch is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Tech. His book,
Henry Fielding and the Heliodoran Novel, will be published by Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press next year.
'John Preston argues in The CreatedS elf(London: Heinemann, 1970) that Tom
Jones is a "structure of successive responses to the novel" whose effect is "epistemological
rather than moral" (p. 114). Wolfgang Iser argues in The Implied Reader
(Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1971) that Fielding's narrator stimulates
"a process of learning in the course of which one's own sense of judgment may
come under scrutiny" (p. 31). He describes two principal methods by which
Fielding leaves gaps in the text: "schematized views" (the same event viewed from
different aspects) and the "principle of contrast" (presenting characters such as
Sophia and Molly who embody contrasting moral values). Both techniques create
vacant spaces in the text that invite the reader "to enter into the proceedings in
such a way that he can construct their meaning" (p. 51).
Iser's and Preston's analyses of the internal rhetoric of Tom Jones take their
points of departure from Wayne C. Booth's TheR hetorico f Fiction( Chicago: Univ.
of Chicago Press, 1961). Booth examines the nature of Fielding's "telling" narrator
and concludes that there is no similarity between the story of Tom Jones and
the narrator's intrusive addresses in which, he notes, "there is no complication,
not even any sequence except for the gradually increasing familiarity and intimacy
leading to farewell" (pp. 216-17). For other studies on the narrative point of
view in Tom Jones see: John Ross Baker, "From Imitation to Rhetoric: The Chicago
Critics, Wayne C. Booth, and TomJ ones,"N ovel 6 (1973): 197-217; Michael
Bliss, "Fielding's Bill of Fare," ELH 3 (1963):236-43; David Goldknopf, "The
Failure of Plot in Tom Jones," Criticism 11 (1969):262-74; Thomas Lockwood,
MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
by and large, remove the stigma of moralizing that earlier critics
attached to Fielding's intrusive narrator. Yet while they remind us
that the meaning of Tom Jones is dynamic, not static - that it lies in
process not pronouncement-they concentrate on the internal
rhetoric of the novel and largely ignore the ways in which Fielding's
narrator trains our ethical judgments in his formal point of view.2
I shall argue that in the prefatory chapters to Books 6, 7, and 10,
Fielding's narrator sets up a debate between good-natured and
ill-natured readers that teaches us how to respond with sensibility
to the events in the novel. In the first of these, the narrator focuses
on benevolent love and defines a way of responding to instances of
such love that suggests a correspondence between Fielding's concept
of"good-nature" and the ethical theories of such "moral sense"
philosophers as Francis Hutcheson.3 In 7:1 and 10:1, the narrator
applies the ethical premises of his argument in 6:1 to literary criticism.
We are thus programmed as critics not only to follow the rules
which the narrator indites as the founder of a "new Province of
Writing" but also to place our critical response in the context of a
coherent ethical system. The effect of these intrusions, especially
since they come at moments in the novel when we are most apt to
doubt the hero's moral worth, is to train our sensibility-our
"Matter and Reflection in Tom Jones," ELH45, 2 (1978):226-35; Arthur Sherbo,
"The Narrator in Fielding's Novels," in his Studies in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
(East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 1-34; Philip Stevick, "On
Fielding Talking," College Literature 1 (1974):19-33.
2Bernard Harrison in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones: The Novelist as Moral Philosopher
(Sussex: Sussex Univ. Press, 1975), studies the philosophical debate that Fielding
enacts in the novel and the connections between Fielding's ethics and that of
the philosophers of the period. He argues against the puritanical view that Fielding
has left unresolved the question of Tom's infidelity by showing that Fielding's
ethical argument is completed by the ending. Harrison sees Fielding as combining
goodness of heart and prudence. Tom reaches this state at the end because of
his generosity to Mrs. Miller, to Mr. Anderson, and finally to Blifil. For other
views on Fielding's ethical philosophy see: Martin C. Battestin, The Moral Basis of
Fielding's Art (Middletown: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 52-84; Henry
Knight Miller, Essays on Fielding's Miscellanies (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press,
1961), pp. 60-75; Morris Golden, Fielding's Moral Psychology (Amherst: Univ. of
Massachusetts Press, 1966), pp. 20-41.
3Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones. Ed. Fredson Bowers (Middletown:
Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1975). All further references to Tom Jones will be cited in
the text, by book and chapter numbers.
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JAMES J. LYNCH
capacity to react sentimentally and yet be aware of the rational
limits of feeling.
It is primarily this capacity to accept the hero's sentimental goodness
that makes the ending of Tom Jones feel right. Despite the
romance hopes we are programmed to entertain early in the novel
about Tom's eventual marriage to Sophia, the mechanics of a
purely conventional romance plot do not and cannot make the
ending satisfactory. Like many a conventional hero, Tom actually
is better than he seems; indeed, many of his misfortunes result
from the malice of a conventional rival, Blifil, rather than from
Tom's own indiscretions. Yet before we can feel right about the conventional
happy ending, we must reconcile our instinctive tendency
to approve Tom's good-nature with our rational tendency to
condemn his actions. The prefatory essays to Books 6, 7, and 10
urge such a reconciliation. They prompt us to admire Tom's goodnature
and to scoff at hypothetical readers who do not feel as Fielding
urges us to do. But more importantly, they modify a purely
sentimental response by pointing out the pitfalls of both approving
and disapproving moral actions too hastily. In short, they urge a
circumspection at the mid-point of the novel when Tom himself is
least circumspect.
The prefatory chapter to Book 6 is the first to focus exclusively
on ethical matters. The previous five prefatory essays dealt primarily
with generic criticism: what this history is like and not like,
how it will be embellished, and how it will pass over incidents and
periods of time not germane to the story. In 6:1, after Tom has
grappled with contradictory feelings towards Sophia and Molly,
the narrator presents an ethical debate on love which, for the first
time in the novel, formally establishes the ethical difference
between good-natured and ill-natured readers. Just as the plot
reaches a turning point in Book 6 with Allworthy's ill-founded condemnation
of the hero, so the prefatory chapters in the novel also
reach a turning point.
The chapter is cast as an essay on Love, but, in essence, it is a
debate in which the narrator refutes philosophers in the Hobbesian
and Mandevillean traditions who maintain that there is "no such
Passion in the human Breast" (p. 268). It begins with the narrator's
observation that those philosophers who deduce that "our best
Actions come from Pride" seek truth in the "nastiest of all Places, A
BAD MIND" (p. 269). He suggests it is as absurd for such philosophers
to find any "Ray of Divinity" or anything virtuous, good,
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MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
lovely, or loving in their minds, as it is to find gold while cleaning a
latrine.
In order to avoid contention with these philosophers, he proposes
to settle the matter peaceably by conceding four points:
(1) that "many Minds . . . are entirely free from the
least Traces of such a Passion";
(2) that the word Love is often confused with Hunger;
(3) that, although Love "satisfies itself in a much more
delicate Manner," like Hunger, it "seek[s] its own Satisfaction";
(4) that, when Love "operates towards one of a different
Sex," the gratification it seeks is as strong as Hunger's.
(p. 270)
The concessions, as Bernard Harrison notes, characterize the philosophers'
position as "reductionist";4 that is, they equate the meaning
of the words Love and Hunger and thereby suggest that there is
no difference between the concepts to which they refer. Fielding's
strategy is to reduce this reduction to absurdity. He does so first by
proposing five counter-concessions by which he re-defines Love in
ethical terms:
(1) that "there is in some . . . human Breasts, a kind and
benevolent Disposition, which is gratified by contributing
to the Happiness of others";
(2) that there is delight in this gratification alone;
(3) that, if we do not call it Love, "we have no Name for
it";
(4) that this benevolent love "may be heightened and
sweetened by the Assistance of amorous Desires" but can
exist by itself;
(5) that "Esteem and Gratitude are the proper Motives"
for love; even if youth and beauty - the motives for desire -
cease, they have no effect on love.
(p. 270)
The definition Fielding asserts here, that Love is a "kind and
benevolent Disposition, which is gratified by contributing to the
Happiness of others," corresponds to the celebrated definition of
"good-nature" which Fielding sets forth in his Essay on the Knowledge
4Harrison, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, pp. 59-62.
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JAMES J. LYNCH
of the Characters of Men: "Good-nature is that benevolent and amiable
temper of mind, which disposes us to feel the misfortunes, and
enjoy the happiness of others; and, consequently, pushes us on to
promote the latter and prevent the former; and that without any
abstract contemplation on the beauty of virtue, and without the
allurements or terrors of religion."5
Love, like good-nature, is a feeling recognized by those who
have experienced its effects. It is selfless and transcends amorous
desires. As a result, it cannot be recognized by philosophers in the
Mandevillean and Hobbesian traditions who claim that man's
ethical actions are the result of pride. The narrator reduces to
absurdity the philosophers' claim that no such passion as love exists
by suggesting that they have based their conclusion on insufficient
empirical data. "Doth the Man," he questions, "who recognizes in
his own Heart no Traces of Avarice or Ambition, conclude therefore,
that there are no such Passions in Human Nature? Why will
we not modestly observe the same Rule in judging of the Good, as
well as the Evil of others?" (p. 271). Because the philosophers' reasoning
is confined to the jakes of their own minds, they are incapable
of distinguishing the sensation of love from the sensation of
hunger. They are, in short, incapable of a sentimental ethics.
In the last paragraph of the chapter, the narrator exhorts us to
accept his definition of benevolent love by appealing to our hearts,
not our heads:
Examine your Heart, my good Reader, and resolve
whether you believe these Matters with me. If you do, you
may now proceed to their Exemplification in the following
Pages: if you do not, you have, I assure you, already read
more than you have understood; and it would be wiser to
pursue your Business, or your Pleasures (such as they are)
than to throw away any more of your Time in reading what
you can neither taste nor comprehend.
(p. 271)
Like so many of Fielding's direct addresses to the readers, this one
implicitly urges us to adopt the pose of good-natured readers.
5Henry Fielding, The Complete Works of Henry Fielding. Ed. W. E. Henley, 16
vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1903; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967),
14:285.
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MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
What is more important here, however, is that the narrator defines
the kind of response he urges us to have by further reducing to
absurdity the incapacity of ill-natured readers and philosophers to
understand a concept which the rest of the novel will exemplify:
To treat of the Effects of Love to you, must be as absurd as to
discourse on Colours to a Man born blind; since possibly
your Idea of Love may be as absurd as that which we are
told such blind Man once entertained of the Colour Scarlet:
that Colour seemed to him to be very much like the Sound
of a Trumpet; and Love probably may, in your Opinion,
very greatly resemble a Dish of Soup, or a Sir-loin of
Roast-beef.
(pp. 271-72)
Fielding's analogy, drawn from Locke's Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, points out the central deficiency of ill-natured philosophers
and readers: they lack the capacity not only to understand
love as a form of benevolence, but also to respond affectively
to its moral qualities.
In its basic form, the kind of response Fielding implicitly urges
here is similar to what ethical philosophers such as Francis Hutcheson
call the "moral sense." I do not mean to suggest that Fielding
fully accepts Hutcheson's ethical theory; indeed, in later prefatory
essays, he refines the moral sense response urged in 6:1. Nevertheless,
Hutcheson's Illustration on the Moral Sense is useful for comparison
because in it he consciously sought to modify Locke's theory of
knowledge and to answer Hobbes's notion that man is innately selfish
and Mandeville's notion that morality and virtue are social contrivances.
Hutcheson argues that there is in human nature a
genuine motive for benevolence, that it is separate from self-love,
that we have a moral sense - or a tendency to approve certain kinds
of moral actions-and that the object of this moral sense is benevolence.
Other philosophers such as Hume and Butler theorize that
self-love plays a more direct role in our approval of moral goodness;
they explain the nature and operation of the moral sense in
terms different from Hutcheson's. What concerns us for this discussion,
however, is not the debate that took place among these
philosophers, but their common belief in an ethical faculty like
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JAMES J. LYNCH
the moral sense.6
Hutcheson holds that every simple idea requires a sense, and
that the "moral sense" is the faculty by which we perceive and process
benevolent ideas. Analogous to the external senses, it is separate
and distinct from reason - even though reason corrects disorders
in that faculty, just as it corrects disorders in the sensory
faculties. The central question in Hutcheson's ethical view is which
qualities in human motivation prompt our approval or disapproval
of moral actions. The motive cannot be simply self-love, as Hobbes
would suggest, because self-love cannot account for "friendship,
gratitude, natural affection, generosity, public spirit, compassion,"
nor can it account for our approval of things done in distant ages.7
Hutcheson offers, instead, a counterview:
that we have not only self-love, but benevolent affections
also towards others, in various degrees, making us desire
their happiness as an ultimate end without any view to private
happiness; that we have a moral sense or determination
of our mind to approve every kind affection either in
ourselves or others and all publicly useful actions which we
imagine flow from such affection, without our having a
6Henry Knight Miller notes that Fielding's "moral creed" generally follows the
line of such latitudinarian preachers as Tillotson, Barrow, Burnet, and Hoadley,
but that their ideas had become so widely disseminated that it is not possible to
trace Fielding's creed to any specific sources (pp. 66-67). R. S. Crane examines
the connection between the latitudinarian moralists and the sentimental tradition
in his seminal article, "Suggestions Toward the Genealogy of the 'Man of
Feeling,"' ELH 3 (1934):205-30. Battestin examines many of these same in his
discussion of Joseph Andrews (pp. 14-25).
Miller notes that Fielding "agrees . . in almost no important regard" with
Hutcheson, "whose ethics of feeling is nearly as rigorous and rationalistic as the
scheme of Clarke and his followers" (p. 69). J. L. Mackie, in Hume's Moral Theory
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), offers a rather different interpretation
of Hutcheson. He notes that Hutcheson's use of the term "moral sense" has a
dangerous ambiguity. It may suggest an objectivist, almost a Platonic view: that
there is necessarily attached to benevolence some quality that demands moral
approval. He argues, however, that Hutcheson's moral sense is more subjectivist:
that our moral approval is "immediate, non-inferential, non-willed, and almost
universal among men" (p. 34). David Hume, he argues, follows essentially in this
subjectivist, sentimentalist tradition, while Joseph Butler gives the moral sense
an objectivist interpretation (p. 36).
7Francis Hutcheson, Illustrations on the Moral Sense. Ed. Bernard Peach (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971), p. 117-18.
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MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
view to our private happiness in our approbation of these
actions.
(pp. 118-19)
This disposition to approve every "kind affection" exists outside of
reason, as it does in Fielding's definition of"good-nature." Indeed,
Hutcheson argues that it is not guided by choice: "We do not choose
to approve because approbation is pleasant, otherwise we would
always approve, and never condemn any actions" (p. 140). Rather,
approbation is "a perception arising without previous volition, or
choice of it, because of any concomitant pleasure. The occasion of
it is the perception of benevolent affections in ourselves, or the discovering
the like in others, even when we are incapable of any
action or election" (p. 140).
It is easy to see how Hutcheson's theory of the moral sense corresponds
both to Fielding's definition of benevolent love and to the
good-natured readers' spontaneous understanding of that kind of
love in his Heart. It is not subject to reason or to the "allurements or
terrors of religion," nor is it simply an instance of self-gratification.
Benevolent love, according to Fielding, may be "heightened and
sweetened by amorous Desires," but when age or sickness impairs
the sensual pleasures of love, the disposition to love benevolently is
not impaired.
By exhorting good-natured readers in 6:1 to accept in their
hearts the notion of benevolent love and to await its exemplification
later in the novel, Fielding implies that something like the moral
sense operates naturally within us. Yet, by presenting the illnatured
reader's deficiencies as well, Fielding implies that we must
respond critically as well as sentimentally. We must examine our
Heads as well as our Hearts. If Tom Jones were a different kind of
novel, and if Fielding's didactic purpose were simpler, an unrefined
sentimental response alone would suffice. However, since Tom has
already demonstrated a very human confusion of love and hunger,
we must concede the possibility that the ill-natured philosophers'
theory may, indeed, be an accurate way of describing Tom's
actions. Fielding's narrative point of view at this juncture thus
promises a sentimental ending, but also promises no easy means of
producing that ending. In effect, the narrative point of view creates
a kind of rhetorical suspense that anticipates the narrative suspense
of the plot.
The love defined in the prefatory chapter to Book 6, for example,
606
JAMES J. LYNCH
anticipates the sentimentalism implicit in Tom's letter to Sophia
later in the book, after the two are separated: "Believe me, I would
not hint all my Sufferings to you, if I imagined they could possibly
escape your Ears. I know the Goodness and Tenderness of your
Heart, and would avoid giving you any of those Pains which you
always feel for the Miserable. O let nothing which you shall hear of
my hard Fortune cause a Moment's Concern; for after the Loss of
you, every thing is to me a Trifle" (p. 313). Tom's moral sense here
is highly complex; he is sensitive to Sophia's sensitivity to his feelings.
The moral sense Fielding urges us to adopt thus helps us to
understand one part of the novel's suspense, the complications
affecting two sentimentally attuned lovers. For the sentimental
ending to work, however, Fielding must also provide a means by
which we can understand Tom's anti-sentimental behaviorbehavior
that confirms the worst expectations of ill-natured
readers.
Fielding creates such an understanding in the prefatory essays to
Books 7 and 10 by urging us to adopt an ethical perspective in our
roles as critics. He urges us to suspend judgments about characters
until we fully understand their ethical complexity. Importantly
enough, our circumspect pose is most fully defined at the midpoint
of the novel, when the hero, having succumbed to a certain
quantity of Mrs. Waters's amorous flesh, seems to have abandoned
love for hunger. From that point of the novel onwards, Tom's
behavior falls roughly into two independent categories: (1) action
that results from his pursuit of Sophia, including his affair with
Lady Bellaston; and (2) purely benevolent action, resulting from
his own good-nature, including his charity to the highwayman and
his intervention on Nancy Miller's behalf. The former category
ultimately leads to the seemingly insurmountable obstacles Tom
faces in the Gatehouse prison in Books 17 and 18. The latter category
ultimately provides enough evidence of Tom's good-nature to
redeem the hero in Mrs. Miller's eyes, if not in the eyes of Squire
Allworthy, Sophia, or the reader. In short, the qualifications the
narrator places on our critical judgments in 7:1 and 10:1 prepare
us for a proper weighing of these two categories of action against
one another.
In 7:1 - "A Comparison between the World and the Stage" - the
narrator uses an analogy between human life and the stage to
define the complex ways in which readers of the novel respond ethically
to events in it. At first, the intentions of the analogy seem
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MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
merely to expose the various ways spectators respond to instances
of villainy and once again to separate good-natured readers from
ill-natured ones. As the narrator embellishes the analogy, however,
it becomes clear that for the good-natured reader to respond as
Fielding urges, he must become a privileged, behind-the-scenes
companion of the author, who sees not only the reactions of the
spectators, but also the various contradictory roles which individual
actors assume.
For the theater-goers, the process of arriving at judgments is
fairly simple. Those in the upper gallery condemn George's action
with "every Term of scurrilous Reproach" (p. 326); those in the
middle gallery respond in the same way, although with less "Noise
and Scurrility." In the Pit, opinion is divided: those "who delight in
heroic Virtue and perfect Character" object to an instance of
unpunished villainy, while the author's friends defend the action as
natural. All the "young Critics of the Age," however, call it "low." In
the Boxes, those few who bother to watch at all declare, almost
without the power to discriminate, that George was a "bad Kind of
Man," while those otherwise more politely occupied refuse "to give
their Opinion till they had heard that of the best Judges" (p. 326).
This survey of reactions, significantly enough, leads to no outright
correct view. Even the author's friends, who defend the creation
of villainy as natural, are not given prominence; their
objections are drowned out by the critics' cry of "low." What is at
issue is the very process of making judgments. In order to understand
the action, then, we must pass behind the scenes of "this great
Theatre of Nature" and circumspectly view the actors and the roles
they play. From this privileged position, we can "censure the
Action, without conceiving any absolute Detestation of the Person,
whom perhaps Nature may not have designed to act an ill Part in all
her Dramas" (p. 327). Once we are, metaphorically, behind the
scenes, the narrator urges us to see the "capricious Behaviour of the
Passions": the Managers and Directors of the theater. Since
Reason-the Patentee-is a "very idle Fellow, and seldom to exert
himself" (p. 328), the Passions "often force Men upon Parts, without
consulting their Judgement, and sometimes without regard to
their Talents" (p. 329). A man may thus act the role of a villain and
yet condemn his very own actions. Indeed, if Reason would intervene,
his Passions might even direct him to play other, more suitable
parts.
The ethical question Fielding raises, of course, has very little to
608
JAMES J. LYNCH
do with our response to Black George, for his predominant passion,
greed, remains fairly constant throughout, and his role is virtually
type-cast. But forJones, who is both splendidly wicked and
sentimentally heroic, the question is apropos: do we censure a bad
action without "conceiving any absolute Detestation of the Person"?
To put the question in terms of the conflicts developing in the
novel, do we condemn Tom because at times he is directed by Lust
not Love? The ending of the novel suggests that the answer must be
"No," but to be fully satisfied, Fielding implies that we must struggle
with the question itself: "the Man of Candour, and of true
Understanding, is never hasty to condemn. He can censure an
Imperfection, or even a Vice, without Rage against the guilty
Party" (p. 329). Wisdom comes from an ability to suspend judgment
about the agent of an action until we are certain whether it is
the agent himself or a Passion uncontrolled by Reason that is
responsible for the action.
Just as the narrator in 6:1 urges us to accept the definition of
good-natured love and also to recognize how ill-natured philosophers
reduce that definition to absurdity, so here we are urged to
suspend judgment and still recognize how quickly and for what
insufficient reasons others judge hastily: "The worst of Men generally
have the Words Rogue and Villain most in their Mouths, as the
lowest of all Wretches are aptest to cry out low in the Pit" (p. 329). It
is important that we recognize both sides of the argument because
the pleasure we take in Tom's eventual redemption comes, at least
in part, from thwarting the ill-natured critics' probable assumption
that Jones was born to be hanged.
The suspension of judgment Fielding urges here suggests the
kind of corrective system that Hutcheson builds into his theory of
the moral sense. In refuting the notion that reason must teach us
antecedently what is right or wrong before the moral sense can
operate, Hutcheson considers the possibility that our moral sense
might "approve what is vicious, and disapprove virtue, as a sickly
palate may dislike food, or a vitiated sense misrepresent colours or
dimensions" (p. 163). He solves the problem by asserting that reason
does not denominate objects perceived by the sense faculty
when they are in disorder, but "according to our ordinary perceptions,
or those of others in good health" (p. 164). Hutcheson is not
willing to argue that the exact same thing happens with reason and
the moral sense, but he suggests that such might be the case. The
implication of Fielding's analogy is that the Man of Candour
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MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
should see more than idle Reason does and should not hastily condemn
a character who plays the role of a villain because the Passions
may force him to play a role that Reason-the
license-holder-may be too idle to correct.
The ethical position Fielding's narrator argues us into by 7:1 is to
accept the possibility that a character might act contrary to his own
good judgment and that we might condemn that action in itself but
not therefore condemn the actor. In 10:1 Fielding applies this ethical
position to the realm of literary criticism. Initially, the chapter
seems to be another in the series of attacks on critics, such as will
later be the topic of 11:1, "A Crust for the Critics." However, when
we consider the ethical questions he raises by the end of the chapter,
we realize that his strategy is not to attack ill-natured criticism
itself but to urge a way of seeing that corrects potential misreadings
both by good-natured and ill-natured readers.
The chapter begins with the narrator's usual separation of readers
into good-natured and ill-natured camps. The good-natured
readers may be as wise as Shakespeare himself; the ill-natured
readers, no wiser than Shakespeare's editors. For the latter group,
he offers three admonitions, only the first two of which apply to our
earlier sense of ill-natured criticism: (1) do not think incidents in
the story are superfluous merely because you do not understand
the author's design; (2) do not assume that different characters,
"actuated by the same Folly or Vice," are exactly the same. These
two warnings, by and large, are consistent with the observations
the narrator made in 7:1. To understand the novel, we must, as it
were, go behind the scenes with the author and understand its
design.
The third admonition, however, moves us away from potential
misreading of the author's narrative design into the realm, of
ethics:
In the next Place, we must admonish thee, my worthy
Friend (for, perhaps, thy Heart may be better than thy
Head) not to condemn a Character as a bad one, because it
is not perfectly a good one. If thou dost delight in these
Models of Perfection, there are Books enow written to gratify
thy Taste; but as we have not, in the Course of our Conversation,
ever happened to meet with any such Person, we
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JAMES J. LYNCH
have not chosen to introduce any such here.
(p. 526)
On the one hand, the advice seems intended for ill-natured critics
who, like the ill-natured readers of 6:1, should pursue their pleasures
elsewhere. On the other hand the critic is not, strictly speaking,
ill-natured; rather, he has a Heart that is better than his Head
and that causes him to leap to disapproval because of a character's
imperfection, not because of his utter villainy. He expects models
of perfection in Art where there are none in Nature, and, is thus no
better than the critic in 7:1 who fails to recognize that a "single bad
Act no more constitutes a Villain in Life, than a single bad Part on
the Stage" (p. 328).
Fielding argues both that the presentation of perfectly good and
perfectly evil characters misrepresents nature and that in our
moral response to characters drawn from nature, we should be cautious
at leaping to judgments drawn singularly from our moral
sense. If an author creates a character of "Angelic Perfection," a
reader contemplating that character "may be both concerned and
ashamed to see a Pattern of Excellence, in his Nature, which he
may reasonably despair of ever arriving at" (p. 527). Similarly, if an
author creates a character of "diabolical Depravity," a reader contemplating
him "may be no less affected with those uneasy Situations,
at seeing the Nature, of which he is a Partaker, degraded into
so odious and detestable a Creature." But if, on the other hand, an
author creates a character which mingles good and bad, we must
temper our approval of the former and our disapproval of the latter
with reason:
if there be enough of Goodness in a Character to engage the
Admiration and Affection of a well-disposed Mind, though
there should appear some of those little Blemishes, quas
humana parum cavit natura [which . . . human frailty has
failed to avert], they will raise our Compassion rather than
our Abhorrence. Indeed, nothing can be of more moral
Use than the Imperfections which are seen in Examples of
this Kind; since such form a Kind of Surprize, more apt to
affect and dwell upon our Minds, than the Faults of very
vicious and wicked Persons.
(p. 527)
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MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
Fielding's strategy transcends the rhetorical device of separating
good- and ill-natured critics. It is an appeal to a reader outside of
the text: one whose perception of the action is guided, as it were, by
the narrative frame. Just as a frame directs a viewer's attention to
the scene portrayed and sets limits for the painting, without
impinging upon the picture itself, so Fielding's narrative commentaries
direct our perceptions and, to a certain degree, limit or qualify
how we see the action. The particular qualification
here-responding to a character by means of a "well-disposed"
mind-prompts us to accept the hero, imperfect and imprudent as
he is, because he has enough of goodness in him to engage our
"Admiration and Affection." We are thus logically and rhetorically
argued into seeing Tom's benevolent disposition of mind at a point
in the novel when all the narrative evidence suggests he is guided by
Hunger rather than Love.
Although I have isolated 5:1, 7:1, and 10:1 primarily to show
how Fielding establishes a pattern for our moral and emotional
response to the novel, these chapters also play an important part in
the literary-critical response Fielding elicits in the other prefatory
chapters. By way of conclusion, let me briefly show how the two
patterns converge.
By urging us in 10:1 to suspend judgment about a character's
imperfections, Fielding directly connects our moral sense response
with our critical response to the text. He implies that ill-natured
critics suffer from an impaired moral sense and that their impairments
prevent them from seeing the design of his novel. Significantly
enough, Fielding's attacks on critics begin to develop about
the same time as he establishes guidelines for our moral sense
response. In 5:1, for example, he presents his "rules" for introducing
the serious into his history, lest critics, who he contends are
really more like law clerks, "assume a Dictatorial power" and "give
Laws to those Authors, from whose Predecessors they originally
received them" (p. 210). In 111: - immediately after his advice not
to condemn characters for their imperfections-Fielding argues
that ill-natured critics are merely slanderers; they pry into a book's
character "with no other Design but to discover [its] Faults, and
publish them to the World" (p. 567). Indeed, like the theater critics
in 6:1, they frequently condemn works by the general defamation,
"low," without assigning any particular faults and sometimes without
having read the work.
Fielding continues his attack on the malice and ill-humor of crit-
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JAMES J. LYNCH
ics in subsequent prefatory essays, yet the principal aim of this
strategy is to refine our capacity to make good-natured critical, as
well as moral, judgments. He achieves this end in other prefatory
chapters in two ways.
First, he defines the qualities he himself deems necessary for a
good historian, thus inviting us to share in them, just as we are
invited to examine our good-natured hearts in 6:1. In 9:1 he
defines three of these qualities: Genius, Learning, and a good
Heart; that is, the ability to make rational discernments, the
rational collection of knowledge about human nature from books
and experience, and the ability to feel. This same combination of
the rational and the sentimental later influences Fielding's invocation
in 13: 1 . Here asking personifications of these same qualities to
inspire his work, he calls upon "Humanity" to bring with it "tender
Sensations" from which proceed "the noble, disinterested Friendship,
the melting Love, the generous Sentiment, the ardent Gratitude,
the soft Compassion, the candid Opinion, and all those
strong Energies of a good Mind, which fill the moistened Eyes with
Tears, the glowing Cheeks with Blood, and swell the Heart with
Tides of Grief, Joy, and Benevolence" (p. 687).
Second, Fielding calls our attention to potential ways of misreading
and misjudging his history, even without being illnatured.
In 8:1, a discussion of the literary uses of the marvelous,
Fielding notes that a writer must pay attention to probability and
possibility, particularly in "painting what is greatly good and amiable"
(p. 402). Readers will easily believe in "Knavery and Folly" he
tells us, because "Ill-nature adds a great Support and Strength to
Faith," yet a reader might easily think incredible a portrayal of pure
goodness. He demonstrates this fact by relating first the history of
a cold-blooded murderer, Henry Fisher, and then a sketch of
Ralph Allen's benevolence. The caution here amounts virtually to
the same thing as his explanation in 10:1 that an imperfectly good
character is more likely to affect our sensibilities than a character of
"Angelic Perfection."
In the same essay, Fielding also notes that a writer might be
tempted to violate the rules of probability by allowing a character
to behave inconsistently just to draw his work to a conclusion.
"Modern Authors of Comedy" almost universally violate probability
in this way, he argues, when they present heroes who are
"notorious Rogues" and heroines who are "abandoned Jades" in
the first four acts and then allow them to become, in the fifth act,
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MORAL SENSE IN TOM JONES
"very worthy Gentlemen" and "Women of Virtue and Discretion"
(p. 406). His caution applies to the history he is writing and to our
response to it. A happy ending for Tom Jones might violate consistency
under two conditions: if Fielding made him into a character
of angelic perfection in the final books, or if Fielding failed to make
Tom's goodness of heart convincing. The moral sense response we
are urged to adopt prevents the former and adds conviction to the
latter.
Notably, the two cautions Fielding presents in 8:1 bear directly
on our response to events in the last half of the novel. While the
ill-natured critic in us tends to distrust instances of Tom's benevolent
goodness, the unrefined sentimentalist in us wishes for a
happy ending, despite Tom's behavior.
Fielding dramatically brings these impulses together in the
penultimate prefatory chapter. With Jones at the brink of despair
in the Gatehouse prison, Fielding pauses to tease the reader about
the probable conclusion of the novel. Despite his avowed "Affection"
for Jones and despite, perhaps, our willingness to accept an
improbable romance conclusion, Fielding insists that he will "do no
Violence to the Truth and Dignity of History" for the hero's sake (p.
876). He would rather confirm the worst suspicions of illnatured
readers and let Tom be hanged at Tyburn than forfeit his
"Integrity" or "shock the Faith of our Reader."
The strategy is to create suspense, but it is suspense, importantly
enough, about his allegiance to truth even at the risk of losing a
good-natured ending. We are thus left at this juncture with the
very uncertainty Fielding builds into our moral sense response to
the novel. We are torn between our intangible, intuitive feelings
about Tom's good heart and our rational inclination to condemn
him for his infidelity. Since Tom is not a character of angelic perfection,
the only way for Fielding to make a happy ending probable is
to force us finally to weigh his goodness against his imperfections.
The balance is clearly tipped in Tom's favor by Mrs. Miller's testimony
about Tom's good heart and by the exposure of Blifil as a
villain. Yet Fielding maintains the suspense even up to the penultimate
chapter, where Tom and Sophia are at last reunited. The
happy ending occurs only when Sophia is able to recognize, as we
have been urged to do from 10:1 onward, that there is enough
goodness in Tom's character, despite his infidelity, to raise her compassion
rather than her abhorrence.
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