The Novel

by Steven Moore

  Of course one can ignore all the prefaces and asides and read Tom Jones only for the story, but that would downgrade it from art to entertainment. Fielding dramatizes the difference between these two approaches in the responses of Jones and Partridge to the Man of the Hill’s story (one of such great betrayal and disappointment that he has become a misanthropic hermit). Naïve Partridge keeps interrupting the tale to make irrelevant comments, to “relate” to certain events, to ask the meaning of certain words, and to speculate on characters’ motives—all to Jones’s growing irritation. (Partridge is as bad a narrator as he is a reader: his attempt at a short story, like Sancho Panza’s, is a rambling mess.) Jones, on the other hand, listens carefully to the Man of the Hill’s story, and afterward not only critiques it intelligently but challenges the author’s intended moral.217 “As for Partridge, he had fallen into a profound repose just as the stranger finished his story, for his curiosity was satisfied, and the subsequent discourse was not forcible enough in its operation to conjure down the charms of sleep” (8.15): he’s in it only for the story, while Jones is in it for the discourse, and I don’t have to tell you which kind of reader Fielding prefers for his “great work.”218

  Fielding wasn’t the first to include these self-conscious asides and metafictional intrusions, or to write a critifiction, but his decision to include tutorial materials speaks to the urgency he felt to elevate the novel genre to the ranks of capital-L Literature: the ancients limited that to poetry and the drama, a view held by some literary conservatives until the early 20th century. (An English major at Harvard in 1900 studied poems and plays, not novels—those were for recreational use only.) To achieve that goal, he combined an Ars Poetica for the 18th-century novel with a demonstration-class model of how it would look in the hands of a genius. (And as he points out in the prefatory chapter to book 9, he was interested only in geniuses writing for the pit, not in hacks writing for “the upper gallery, a place in which few of our readers ever sit” [12.12].) Like a popular teacher, he makes his master-class in narratology fun: he exhibits an urbane, easy-going attitude throughout, a bantering tone, amusing chapter titles and parodies of epic similes (à la Scarron in The Comic Novel), offers wise observations on human nature, displays wide erudition (but lampoons those who abuse learning), includes friends and associates in his novel, along with a delightful last-minute cameo by Parson Adams of Joseph Andrews—all wrapped up in what Coleridge called one of “the three most perfect plots ever planned.”219 For those who want to delve deeper, there are political implications in the novel—admirably analyzed by Thomas Keymer in his introduction to the Penguin edition of Tom Jones (xxii–xxix)—and stinging social criticism of arranged marriages, which Fielding boldly calls “legal prostitution for hire” (16.8). Upstaging Tom Jones is Fielding himself, the perfect host and narrator. In the opening chapter he compares himself to the genial owner of a tavern, but by the end he more closely resembles the landlord Squire Western stays with when he arrives in London: “I can tell you Landlord is a vast comical bitch, you will like un hugely” (17.3).

  It’s not unusual (as the other Tom Jones would say) for a successful novel to be followed by imitations, and later in 1749 there appeared an eccentric one claiming to be “the first begotten, of the poetical issue, of the much celebrated biographer of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones.” Combining the first name of Fielding’s wife (mentioned in Tom Jones as the inspiration for Sophia [13.1]) with the surname of Jones’ biological father, The History of Charlotte Summers, the Fortunate Parish Girl is the work of an anonymous wit (certainly not Sarah Fielding, as once suggested) who mounted the metafictional superstructure of Tom Jones onto a 1720s-style amatory romance. The story concerns a seven-year-old orphan adopted by a rich woman named Lady Bountiful, who raises Charlotte with her son Thomas on her estate in Wales. We learn she’s the offspring of a profligate father who abandoned his neurotically self-sacrificing wife and daughter; after the mother died, Charlotte became a ward of the parish and endured Dickensian horrors at the hands of heartless women who traffic in orphans. (Coincidentally, Charlotte later assumes the false name Sally Dickens.) Growing into a beautiful 17-year-old of “frozen virtue”—which she may have picked up from reading La Calprenède’s Cassandra and Cleopatra (2.2)—Charlotte begins to attract suitors, including one family relation who tries to rape her, the first of many sexual assaults she will endure. Too dutiful to Lady Bountiful to countenance her son’s Thomas’s marriage proposal—which the snobbish woman forbids, encouraging her instead to marry her assailant—Charlotte runs away (like Clarissa), which leads to another near-rape before she can seek refuge at a Welsh farmhouse, where she’s caught in a taffy-pull between two hayseeds who want to marry her, and thence to London, where (like Fanny Hill) she accidentally winds up in a whorehouse, and then is framed and (like Tom Jones) thrown in jail. Eventually, her long-lost, now-rich father reenters the picture (as in Roderick Random), and she is reunited with and married to her childhood sweetheart.

  Commenting along the way on all this is a sardonic narrator who outdoes Fielding in some ways. He not only addresses his readers (though not as often as Fielding does), but gives them names and treats them like hecklers. After filling in Lady Bountiful’s backstory, he writes:

  I can hear Beau Thoughtless and pretty Miss Pert whispering to one another, “Hang the old woman, I wish we were done with her, I want to see the young wench there has been so much talk about, whereabout can she be? sure she’s locked up in the old lady’s closet. The devil take our conductor, after leading us such a dance from London to Carmarthenshire, to keep us so long from what we want to see.” But I must inform the pretty triflers than I am determined my readers shall learn something in every chapter, and in this, amongst other things, they must learn and practice patience, for let them be in never so great a hurry to come at the speech of Miss Summers, they cannot come near her without my permission, and as I have now got them into my custody, they must travel my pace or get back to London on foot without seeing the show. (1.1)

  The narrator maintains this antagonistic attitude throughout as he records objections made by readers named Miss Snatch-at-it and Mrs. Sit-her-time, both of whom criticize Charlotte for being so inflexible, and he mocks the prurient curiosity of Miss Censorious, sniffing for any whiff sexual scandal. After he reunites father and daughter, the narrator wants to end the novel there, but over the dead body of another paying customer: “ ‘Oh, pox!’ says widow Lock-it, ‘sure you won’t give over without marrying her? It’s impossible she can be happy without a husband. Besides, it’s contrary to all rule to end a history of this kind without marrying the hero and heroine. Plague! I would not give a rush for it without a wedding night’ ” (4.11). Cynically giving his audience what they want (rather than what they need, as Buffy producer Josh Whedon advises artists), he milks the expected ending for all it’s worth, sarcastically describing the final chapter as “Containing what few could expect, viz., an account of how Miss Summers, after all her great struggles in defense of her virtue, went at last openly to bed to a man” (4.11).

  The most remarkable dramatization of a hypothetical reader’s response occurs at the beginning of book 1, chapter 5, just after the narrator concludes the previous chapter to “permit the reader to take a nap, or entertain himself any other way most suitable to his inclinations; only let him remember that he left off at the end of the 4th chapter”:

  Pretty Miss Arabella Dimple is just now stept into bed—the evening is very warm, and the blooming fair has turned herself to and fro and cannot find herself disposed for rest; she has tossed the bedclothes almost down to her middle, and lies with her delicate arms and snowy bosom exposed to full view, while her maid Polly, envious that so much beauty should appear unshrouded, is just about to take away the candle when the charming girl calls to her: “Polly, this night is so intolerably warm, I shall not sleep this age unless you can find some means to lull me to rest. Pray step down to the parlor and bring me up the first vol
ume of the Parish Girl I was reading in the afternoon. I think I left it on the spinet.” Polly goes and returns with the dull book, and sets herself down by her mistress’s beside. “Pray, ma’am, where shall I begin, did your ladyship fold down where you left off?” “No, fool, I did not; the book is divided into chapters on purpose to prevent that ugly custom of thumbing and spoiling the leaves.220 And now I think on’t, the author bid me remember that I left off at the end of— I think it was the 6th chapter. Turn to the 7th chapter and let me hear how it begins.” Polly reads, “Chapter the 7th: The death of my Lady Fanciful’s squirrel occasioned a wonderful hurly-burly in the family, and had like to have produced very fatal consequences if the wit and address of Beau Careless had not opportunely interposed to remedy those disasters the fatal accident had occasioned.” “Hold, wench, you read too fast, and I don’t understand one word of what you are saying about a beau and a squirrel, and Lady Fanciful; I never heard of them before; I must not have got so far. Look back to the end of that chapter where the blockhead of an author bids us take a nap, and remember where he left off.” “O la, ma’am, I have found it; here it is. As your ladyship says, he says, [quotes end of chapter 4]. Is not that the place, ma’am?” “Yes, Polly, go on, and read distinctly, and not as if you were drawling over your prayers.”———

  Earlier novelists occasionally addressed their readers, but never dramatized the actual reading experience in such a goofily realistic way. As Wayne Booth wrote long ago (with some qualification), “This is of course a great ‘advance’ over Fielding; it is unquestionably as ‘Shandean’ as anything Tristram ever does” (182). The fact that this interruption occurs within a story-within-a-story makes it almost Borgesian, especially when the narrator interrupts 16 pages later, after we’ve been lulled back into the story:

  But the reader must remember Polly, Miss Dimple’s maid, is reading all this while. She had just come to this length when she looks about at her mistress and finds her fast asleep. “Oh la,” says she softly to herself, “how can my mistress fall asleep at hearing this sweet book read? I am sure I will not sleep a wink, at least till I get to the end of this pure story of the charitable farmer, sure he was a good man; but I will steal away softly to my own bed and there read for I shall never be tired; but stay, I must not lose my place, nor yet fold down the leaves; oh, I shall remember it, for I am just as the end of a chapter. The sixth chapter is next; that I shall not forget, for I will put just six pins in my sleeve, and that will make me remember it when my mistress asks me.” The reader may do the same, if he pleases, for it’s time to put an end to the chapter when pretty Miss Dimple sleeps over it. (1.5)

  Motivating these intrusions is the conflict between what the author would prefer to write and what readers like Miss Dimple want this “blockhead” to write. The result is a sentimental fiction for the gallery, a sarcastic metafiction for the pit. Like Fielding, he prefaces each of the novel’s four books with an essay, which (unlike Fielding) stand in sophisticated contrast to the rather conventional story they preface; the one for book 3 is a “dissertation on dreaming,” specifically the role dreaming plays in the creative process. No sooner does the author announce the topic than he gets pushback from the conventional reader: “ ‘A dissertation on dreaming! What the devil does the fellow mean? What have we to do with dreaming?’ says Dick Dapperwit in a passion, ‘pray leave off fooling and go on with your History of the Parish Girl, and take some other opportunity to tell us your dreams’ ” (3.1). The narrator dares Dapperwit to skip to the next chapter, “where, for your punishment, you’ll find nothing but dreams. For what, pray, have we been doing all this while but telling our dreams?” He goes on to explain how novels begin with inchoate images from daydreams, with as-yet undeveloped characters that consist only of body parts: “for sometimes you may meet with a half-finished limb of the chaste Miss Western lying without any emotion next an unclothed member of the wicked Tom Jones”—typical of the author’s relish for Miss Censorious-bating sexual innuendo—and then describes how “the judgment and understanding are employed in picking, choosing, and rejecting materials which the imagination has furnished.” He talks of drawing inspiration from dreams, and recommends keeping a dream journal, especially women: “I wish I could recommend it to my female readers to take the trouble to commit to writing some of their sleeping or waking dreams: (What a foolish fancy is this!) By it they might learn to dream regularly, and might see in their sleep a novel as entertaining as any ever wrote by Mrs. Behn or Haywood, and conveying, perhaps, as good a moral.” Eighteen pages later, Charlotte has an erotic dream, and it’s clear that’s the kind of fiction the leering author hopes his female readers will write.

  All of this is at subversive odds with the conventional narrative of the parish girl, whose “high, enthusiastic notion of virtue” (2.5) the author pretends to admire while backhandedly dismissing it as merely “notions that at this time prevail in the polite world” (4.2, my italics). As in Tom Jones, we’re encouraged to regard the narrator, rather than the title character, as the true protagonist of the novel—in this case a clever, literary writer reduced to churning out commercial fiction for the likes of Arabella Dimple and her maid, and who can’t resist making some snarky remarks about his blockhead readers. Unlike Fielding and more like Furetière, he prefers mocking his readers to educating them, and enjoyed some success: either they enjoyed his raillery, or were too distracted by Charlotte Summers’ charms—there are several lickerish descriptions of our beautiful heroine in various states of undress—for the novel went through at least four printings in the 1750s and was freely translated into French in 1751, which was in turn translated into Russian in 1763 and influenced one of Russia’s earliest novels.221 Lost in the crowd of other Fielding imitators, Charlotte Summers deserves to be rediscovered.

  Fiction as daydreaming would explain the last significant English novel of the 1740s, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1750), a hybrid robinsonade/utopian fantasy written by a Cornish lawyer named Robert Paltock (1697–1767). Stuck in London in a lowly position, saddled with debt and four teenage children, Paltock daydreamed what it would be like to get away from it all, marry a beautiful 18-year-old, and civilize a previously unknown society of avian humanoids living near the South Pole.

  Out of a dark swarm in the sky one night around 1730, a man falls into the sea near a ship rounding Cape Horn, is hauled aboard, and insists on telling his unbelievable story to a sympathetic passenger. Wasting his youth, cheated out of his inheritance by an evil stepfather, knocking up a maid and reluctantly marrying her while still a teenager, Peter Wilkins runs away to hop a ship sailing south, is captured and conveyed to a slave colony in Angola, and then escapes thanks to a resourceful African. Wilkins and some other Europeans hijack a ship and try to return to England, but instead shipwreck on a magnetic island, with all hands lost except for Wilkins, who survives long enough to discover a cavern river that expels him (with obvious birth imagery) “into a kind of new world,” as the descriptive title page has it. Like Robinson Crusoe, he builds a hut and learns to fend for himself on an uninhabited island. After dreaming one night that his wife back home has died, he hears a noise outside and learns that a woman wearing a strange outfit has crash-landed on his porch. Nursing her back to health in his dimly lit hut, he learns her language—she calls herself Youwarkee—and they fall in love and decide to marry; it is not until their wedding night, when he tries to take off her form-fitting garment, that Wilkins discovers Youwarkee is encased in wings—not feathered ones but membranous, like a bat’s. He has some trouble locating the entrance to her bat-cave (so to speak), but thereafter they lead an idyllic life and produce several half-breeds.

  One indication this is a daydream is the alacrity with which Youwarkee conforms to Wilkins’s wishes. When she learns that Englishwomen wear clothes, she plans to make herself a suit like her husband’s, which throws him into a panic:

  “No, Youwarkee,” replied I, “you must not do so; if you make
such a jacket as mine, there will be no distinction between glumm and gawry [man and woman]; the gawren praave [modest women] in my country would not on any account go dressed like a glumm, for they wear a fine, flowing garment called a gown that sits tight about the waist and hangs down thence in folds . . . almost to the ground, so that you can hardly discern their feet and no other part of their body but their hands and face, and about as much of their necks and breasts as you show in your graundee [wings].” (1:20).222

  Youwarkee cheerfully fashions a sheath-like dress that, along with her bat-wings and the sunglasses Wilkins makes for her, must have made her look like a wicked vampire, though a wingéd angel is probably what Paltock had in mind.

  Eventually Youwarkee wants to visit home, and Wilkins learns that in her country there’s a prophecy that a stranger will arrive someday to reorganize their society. Deciding to play that role, Wilkins travels there (seated in a chair on the backs of a squadron of Youwarkee’s fellow aviators) and first puts down a rebellion based on the Jacobite threat to George I’s England to restore the deposed Stuart royal family.223 Over the next decade, Wilkins slowly converts his wife’s simple, pastoral country into a European-style nation, complete with capitalism, scientific activity, guns and artillery, the arts, industrialization, and of course Christianity. Near the end, he ponders what he has done, transforming a contented people that “seemed to desire only what they had” into one that desired “to be supplied not only with the conveniences but the superfluities of life” (2.22). The previous society wasn’t perfect—it depended heavily on slavery, which Wilkins vehemently opposes—but only a colonial entrepreneur could regard this new commodity culture as an improvement.

  What Paltock thought isn’t clear. He makes it obvious that young Wilkins isn’t very bright; one critic writing during the Cold War called him “an exceptionally stupid young man . . . as morally obtuse as an American politician brandishing an atom bomb.”224 But it’s difficult to tell whether Paltock is satirizing him or commending him for pulling his life together, overcoming his prejudices against blacks and women, learning to be a responsible and loving husband (as he certainly is with Youwarkee), and for bringing European values to an unambitious, illiterate, slave-holding society of heathen bird-people. (Probably the latter.) It’s also unclear whether Youwarkee’s literal descent from unfettered flight to obedient domesticity and maternity (7 kids over 14 years) is an improvement: she was on an aerial joyride with friends, and as a governor’s daughter she lowers herself socially by marrying him. Most readers of the 18th century would say yes, but even back then some would demur. (Wilkins’s sense of social inferiority is expressed by his envy of her ability to fly.) As a lawyer, Paltock could have made his case stronger, or perhaps he was content to provide the evidence and let us the jury decide.