Dissertation Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews

Antoine Le Roux - TD2

Dissertation Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews :

Introduction :

The 18th century was a period of great revolutions on many points, especially literature who saw the emergence of a new genre : the novel. The authors of the time really wanted to make a shift in the way stories were written and told. They wrote in prose the life of a fiction character who evolved in a similar universe than the readers’ one. Henry Fielding was one of the first novelists in the History, he published Joseph Andrews and Shamela in 1742 and henceforth told more realistic stories. This novel is said to be a realistic one. In addition to this, our thesis : « Life and Death in Joseph Andrews » allows us to wonder that even if Life and Death are everyday life themes, are they depicted as such in Joseph Andrews and Shamela ? In order to answer this question in the best way possible, we are going to build a three parts plan. First, we are going to tackle with life and death in the novel in a retailer general aspect, we will then see that these are serious themes among a comic novel before concluding on the narrative strategy.

In this first part we are going to examine Life and Death as serious theme and we will also see that their representation can be more subtle.

I - Life and Death in the novel, realistic tools ? :

        Life in the novel is characterized several times. In the twelfth chapter of the first book where Joseph is attacked and went very close to death l.46-47 page 45 « and Joseph begged them, to « have mercy upon him : For that he had been robbed and almost beaten to death ». When us, reader are reading this particular passage and chapter, we can suppose that he is going to die. In addition to this, this is a realistic novel and not a fairytale so it could be quite imaginable. Nevertheless, we learn a few pages later that a surgeon came to examine Joseph and predicted his death. Despite this pronostic, Joseph recovers very well and doesn’t get after-effects. This event is clearly representative of life in general, it may go wrong at some point and people can be pessimistic about your rank, no matter it if is about health, about finances or about school. What you need to do is to keep your head down and trust your own convictions.

There is another symbol of life in the novel : the wedding, in the sixteenth chapter of the fourth book. This event can be seen a the birth of a new life for Joseph and Fanny Goodwill. Will can be here interpreted as « volonté », a will of a new beginning and more precisely a better one.

        In the novel, death, the loss of someone, is depicted only one time. We can spot this tragic event in the fifth chapter of the first book with the death of Sir Thomas Booby. Of course, such an event in a realistic novel is very close to the feeling that everyday people can have : sadness and sometimes loneliness. Lady Booby, Thomas Booby’s wife is really affected with the loss of his husband and her reaction confirm the aspect of a realistic novel l.5-6-7 p.24 : « Thomas Booby, who departing this Life, left his disconsolate wife Lady confined to her House as closely as if she herself had been attacked by some violent Disease ». As tackled a few lines higher, we can identify the lexical field of sadness and loneliness : disconsolate, attacked, disease. Nevertheless, her sadness does not last very long. On the other side, death can be interpreted with a little more of subtlety, in the sixth chapter of the first book. Joseph Andrews is writing a letter to his sister, Pamela. In this letter, we can feel the distress and the pain of Joseph Andrews. He adresses to his sister in order to tell her some secrets and that he is facing a lot of psychological pain, we could go as far as suggesting that his soul is dying.

        We previously spoke of life and death in the novel in a quite realistic way, but we are now going to see that except the events tackled before, there are no real proof of life and death properly speaking. Both themes are of course present, but in a more subtle manner.

Let’s take for example the huntsmen in the sixth chapter of the third book : they start chasing the deer but are finishing their hunt by chasing human beings. No one dies but we can highlight the will to kill mankind, this is a pure act of cruelty.

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