Ethics of Sex in H Fielding

7/29/2019 Ethics of Sex in H Fielding

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ETHICS OF SEX IN THE NOVELS OF HENRY FIELDING

Dr . Utkarsh T ri pathi

It is too well known that it was the conventional, lowpitched, sickly morality of

Richardson which provoked Henry Fielding to attempt his hand at novel writing and heap

ridicule on him in his first novel Joseph Andrews, purported to be a burlesque of RichardsonsPamela. Indeed, judged from the modern point of view, Richardson is a tiresome, mawkish

sentimentalist. But Henry Fielding, the Hogarth of literature, is in all essentials a typical

Englishman, manly English. As Leslie Stephen has written of him: - The big, full-blooded,

vigorous mass of roast beef who will stand no nonsense, and whose contempt for the fanciful and

arbitrary tends towards the coarse and materialistic.

Richardson wrote for women, Fielding the Bohemian wrote for men. The two writerswere antipathetic. Richardson was a super-sentimentalist, Fielding was a realist. His is an athleticand boisterous genius whose works illustrate the general proposition that greatness withoutgoodness is no better than badness, and that our society is not so pretty as rose pink, and we are

flesh and blood, not the figures cut in alabastor. Hence, we can err, fall down, and yet are worthy

to be called human. Mans worth is to be assessed not by material greatness but by the innate

goodness of heart, not by his doing but by his being. True virtue consists in goodness of the

heart rather than in good reputation or conventional respectability. It was in this view of supreme

virtue that Fieldings moral code differed from Richardsons. Richardsons cultural level was not

very high and his narrow notion of virtue provoked several skits. Fieldings purpose was toexpose affectation, vanity and hypocrisy. His Janathan Wild, the Great, an ironic biography of

notorious bandit, is a satire on the popular ideas of greatness. He shows the greatness of personswho occupy high positions in government, politics and society is in no way different from the

greatness of Janathan Wild and his associates. The so-called greatmen profess high ideas but

their actions are as cruel, selfish and mean as those of the basest criminals. The severe irony of

the book was meant to shock the readers in to an awareness of the great difference between

goodness and greatness.

In Tom Jones, his master piece, Fielding, again, is at some pains to emphasise his moralpurpose which is to recommend goodness and innocence and to laugh mankind out of their

follies and vices. He wants to establish that inspite of several sexual irregularities one can retain

the goodness of character, for sexual weakness may be a bad conduct, but surely not a bad

character. It may blacken the career of a man but does not altogether blur his character as awhole. Character is a very wide term and embraces so many aspects of a mans being. Tom

Jones, inspite of his numberless moral lapses has a heart of gold. He is not ideal, but he is

human. The highest virtue according to Fielding is goodness of heart. Fielding held that moral

philosophy he was preaching was indulgent to the weakness of the flesh. It may also be arguedon Fieldings behalf that a novel of epic dimensions which sets out to present the vast and

complex sense of humanity at large can not altogether ignore its black spots. Hence, the black

spots of the hero are isolated incidents and do not colour the whole book of life. Richardson

maliciously denounced Tom Jones as a dissolute book, a profligate performance and Dr.

Johnson rebuked Hannah More for having read so vicious a book. Sir John Hawkins declared


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that Fielding had done more towards corrupting the rising generation than any writer we know

of. It is true that Fielding has his own champions and in their fields as great names as thelearned doctor. Amongst his advocates may be counted Sir Walter Scott, Coleridge, Lord Bulwer

Lytton and the latest addition John Middleton Murry. Even so, the immorality of Tom Jones wasuntil recently a common place of literary criticism.

Much of this criticism is centred around the conduct of Tom Jones. However, the gravest

charge that can be brought against Tom Jones is his incontinence with women-Tom Jones fallsfour times and each one of these lapses is more serious than the last one. His initial affair with

Molly Seagrim is easiest to wink at. In truth so little had she of modesty, that Jones had more

regard for her virtue than she herself and, she soon triumphed over all the virtuous resolutions of

Jones. In fact it was her design which succeeded. It is obvious that Jones was successfully

inveigled by the more experienced Molly Seagrim. But Tom Jones, again falls a prey to the wiles

of Molly Seagrim a second time when he meets her accidentally in the wood. Here again, as in

the first affair, he is a victim to womanly snares.

When Tom meets Mrs. Waters, whom he rescues from the murderous assault of EnsignNortherton, he is evidently more experienced. But Jones cannot resist helping himself to beauty

readily offered. Her breasts, which were well-formed and extremely white, attracted the eyes of

her deliverer. Even when she is safely lodged at the Upton Inn she does not cease to employ her

battery upon him. With such heavy odds against him Tom Jones has really no chance and he falls

a willing victim to the clever and vigorous onslaught.

The last of Tom Joness falls is the mightiest and the least defensible. In the first twocases he had succumbed to the physical charm of the girls. It is otherwise with lady Bellaston. It

is true that he stays with Lady Bellaston from two to six in the morning and is paid, what anuncharitable critic would call wages for his service in the night, fifty pounds. We later learn of

the many obligations which Lady Bellaston had heaped upon him. He felt his obligations

strongly. He knew the tacit consideration upon which all her favours were conferred ; and as his

necessity obliged him to accept them, so his honour, he concluded, forced him to pay the price.

It must, in this connection, always be borne in mind that Fielding, at no stage, tries tohold a brief for the conduct of Tom Jones. Nowhere in the story is the slightest attempt made tojustify or condone his misdemeanours. He must be punished for his wrong doings and he comes

very close to losing Sophia for ever. At the same time we must not lose sight of the many

mitigating circumstances. It should, be remembered that in each case it is the woman who takes

the initiative and lays the siege. Fielding may be said to have anticipated Bernard Shaw who toobelieved that much of the hunting was done by the so-called weaker sex and that man was the

victim to feminine snares and not the engineer of her degradation. Tom Jones is never the

seducer; but always the seduced, never the hunter but always the hunted, never the victor, but

always the vanquished. We are convinced that Tom Jones is silly but is not a knave, and the veryfullness of his gratitude to Lady Bellaston does much to dispel the sordidness of their relation.

Nor should it be forgotten that Fielding does not aim at delineating an ideal young man.

He was out and out a realist and in Tom Jones he sought to depict a normally constituted young

man, full of animal vitality, reacting in a natural way to the circumstances in which he happened


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to be placed. This may not be the way in which young lads ought to behave but, in nine cases out

of ten, this is the way in which young lads generally behave. Fielding did not allow the moralistto bury the realist in him. His ethics is all the sounder for being so close to the facts of life.

Unlike Richardson who tediously moralizes, and dotes on the sentimental woes and

conventional virtues of his heroines, Fielding is direct, vigorous, hilarious and coarse to the point

of vulgarity. He is a novelist unashamed. He is full of animal spirits and likes virile men, just as

they are, good and bad, but detests shams of every sort.

It was in Joseph Andrews that Fielding first tried to ridicule Richardsonian morality, as

exhibited in Pamela, to its true character, Pamelas virtue, so vociferously acclaimed by the

public, was not a genuine stuff. He had a fling at it in An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela

Andrews. The first ten chapters of Joseph Andrews were a naked and unashamed burlesque of

Pamela but Fielding himself was convinced of the genuineness of Josephs conduct. He,

therefore, took up this engaging problem in sexual ethics in Tom Jones and tried to expound hisown views on human morality.

Fieldings ethics of sex seems to be in tune with many theologians that other sins are

graver than sexual irregularity. Among those are malice, cruelty, meanness, hypocrisy, treachery

etc. Unlike Richardsons rewarding of virtue, in Fieldings art, virtue is its own reward. By

laying emphasis on the examination of human motive, Fielding set up a new precedent in the

realm of fiction and innovated the method, of psychological analysis which is the predominant

feature of modern novel. In other words, he paved the way for the novelists of Freudian School.

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Ethics of Sex in H Fielding